• Grace Stilinski •

„The surest way to keep a secret
is to make someone believe
they already know the answer."

Although Stiles had since returned from Mexico, Grace had not been able to find out the real reason for his trip either from him or from her father. Stiles fed her with weak-minded excuses, while the single father just dodged her questions and advised her to focus on school instead, which, incidentally, hadn't even started yet.

In fact, she had the entire house for herself almost every day after Christmas. Her father pursued his usual work as sheriff, and god knew where her brother was. On those days, Grace found it particularly difficult to get used to her new situation, especially since she didn't even have any friends in the small town.

Sighing, she slapped white paint on her room wall, hoping that she had enough painterly talent to achieve a streak-free result. That the summer semester would begin in a few days didn't cheer the brunette up. She was almost afraid to meet old and new faces. She had never been a person who could openly reach out to others. She preferred to stick to the friends she already had. But this number was limited to one person at her new school; Stiles.

Grace painted over the wall one last time with the paint roller and found that the result wasn't even that bad. At least as long as the sun did not shine directly into her room and highlighted the few stripes. She proudly tucked one of her brown curls out of her face and took a look at her alarm clock. It was already noon and she had finished just in time to surprise her father with something to eat at work. Or rather to bribe.

Humming to herself, she left everything behind for the time being and made her way to Arby's, the place with the best Curly Fries, and then took them to the police station. In front of the flat building, Grace promptly noticed the Jeep that had once belonged to her mother and was now the sanctuary of her brother, who affectionately called it Roscoe. The possibility that Stiles had also come up with the idea of happying her father with food seemed a little too far-fetched to her at that moment.

Suspiciously, the brunette entered the open entrance and threw a half-hearted, "hello" into the department. Hardly any of the deputies seemed to pay real attention to her, they were probably too busy with a case involving a boy her age who was inconclusively squatting on one of the chairs. Grace, meanwhile, approached the sheriff's office purposefully and could hear the angry voice of her father and another one who sounded also very familiar to her from a distance. Through the half-drawn window panes she was able to discover Stiles, who stood wildly gesticulating in front of her father, "... buried in a tomb in a temple in Mexico..."

Well, if that wasn't a coincidence. For a while, Grace stood at the door with a pounding heart, but the further confrontation between father and son did not reach her ears but was completely lost in the sounds of the department.

With a small triumphant smile, she opened the rickety door, this time her brother would not be able to talk himself out of this so easily. However, her confidemce received a powerful dampener when she spotted another person in the small office and hesitated for a moment. For she almost wouldn't have recognized the black-haired boy in the dark green hoodie. It seemed that puberty had probably meant it well for the once slender asthmatic.

But what else did Scott McCall have to do with the matter? Although, in fact, she should have known that Stiles' best friend was probably not entirely uninvolved in the whole thing. Even if it seemed that he had not been involved in much of the ongoing conversation.

"What is it all about?" asked Grace, smiling innocently, but her senses were tightened as if she were in the middle of a fencing fight. After all, she had not been one of the best fencers at her old school for nothing. Her father looked at her a little stressed, but gave her a half-hearted smile, "What are you doing here, Grace?"

"Bringing you lunch," she grinned, placing the light brown paper bag on the desk. The sheriff first shook his head at Stiles and then looked at her gratefully, "And that's why you're my favorite child."

Although this statement was hardly meant seriously, Grace couldn't resist pinching out her tongue towards her brother and then started fishing in the paper bag for one of the curly fries herself.

"Wow Grace, long time no see! What is ist like to be back in Beacon Hills?" asked Scott, surprised, and seemed to intentionally lead the issue in a different direction from what they had dealt with before. Of course, Grace had not missed this poor attempt of his and simply replied a dryly, "I've been here in summer."

"You have to excuse her, Scott," Stiles sighed visibly annoyed, adding with an artificial smile, "Grazyna is still a bit sensitive about Beacon Hills and probably doesn't manage to be nice at least once."

"Don't call me that," she hissed back, and threw a warning glare at her brother as she could easily turn the tables.

"I'll call you that until you stop being that bitchy," he said, putting on a stern face, which was damn unusual for the otherwise sarcastic eleventh-grader. With his voice lowered, he quietly added, "Dad makes such an effort."

The sheriff sighed and raised both hands in the air, "Please keep me out of this."

"Beautiful, Mieczyslaw." Said Grace quietly and looked guiltily at her hands, which suddenly seemed quite interesting to her. She knew she might be behaving a little unfairly, but her accrued emotions, also called hormones, needed a valve. She took a deep breath, she shouldn't forget why she was actually there, and then looked up again with a little devilish smile on her lips, "But I won't stop until you tell me what was buried in a temple in Mexico."

"Something we brought here to get it checked by the police," her brother replied slowly, looking for help to his best friend, who seemed just as lost.

"Something valuable." Scott finally nods to him, "A-and old."

"At least older than it looks."

Grace's blue eyes narrowed suspiciously, "And what is it?" she asked impatiently. But before one of the two boys could reply, her father spoke up and rose from his desk chair with a sigh, "Grace, could you postpone this discussion until later? I have to work here and still have to clarify something with the two boys regarding their.... find."

"But..." She wanted to contradict, but with one hand on her back, he had already pushed her out of his office, "We'll talk later."

The door fell behind the girl into the hinge. Frustrated, she bit her lower lip. Irresoluted, she looked around in the office one last time and began to make her way home. It was to no avail anyway.

In the early evening, her father returned home as usual, but without Stiles, who he said had gone to Scott. Grace had made herself comfortable on the grey couch in the living room when he put a picture in front of her, "That's what your brother and his friends found in Mexico."

She looked up at him in amazement before looking at the picture. It was an expensive-looking smashed vase. Grace raised an eyebrow, "And they brought that all the way to Beacon Hills?"

Her father nodded, "It's worthless though, we've investigated it."

"But why didn't they say it on the spot?" the brunette asked frowning, but the sheriff also had an answer to that, "You know Stiles, he just likes to take matters into his own hands."

Grace sighed and weighed her head in both hands. Was she too paranoid? The explanations she had received sounded plausible. Why did she even think that Stiles and her dad would lie to her? Her brother may have had fewer problems with it than her father, the sheriff. She knew immediately, the town didn't do her well, because normally she wasn't like this. Suspicious. Disrespectful. Calculating. It almost seemed as if the place brought out her darkest side, but after all, she was just a teenager who still wasn't over the death of her mother. Although this was eight years ago. It was time for her to bury the past. Just as this ugly vase had been buried.

In thoughts, the girl had to laugh at herself. Her darkest side? She was probably quite dramatic. Another thing that Beacon Hills made her do. Stiles was right; she really had been making a fuss.

In the meantime, she once again sat alone in the room with her frantic thoughts. She wandered through the living room uneasily, she just didn't want to rest. In front of the fireplace, she finally stopped and stared at the family pictures that stood on its sims. Carefully, Grace rode her fingers over a picture of her mother showing the pretty dark-haired woman when she was still healthy. Suddenly she felt the grief in the form of a heavy mass forming into a tough lump inside of her. She wondered what her life would have been like if she had not died. A life in Beacon Hills with her family. Without secrets and mistrust.

Even by late evening, Grace had not gotten the vase out of her head, which Stiles had allegedly dugged out of a temple. If anyone took such crap home, it was her brother. But she also found this subject quite interesting, which is why she consulted her laptop in the semi-darkness onto her bed. She searched for ancient Mexican treasures, read articles, and admired the excavations. Perhaps she should become an archaeologist, shot through her head.

She eventually scrolled through a variety of images and suddenly stopped short. The fairy lights that she had hung in one of the corners of her room were the only light source lighting the room besides her computer. Which is why Grace jumped up from her bed and pressed the light switch to take a better look at the picture her father had printed out to her.

She placed it right next to her keyboard and was confirmed in her suspicion. The image she had found online was identical to the printout. Her father, the sheriff, had actually confronted her with a simple image from Google.