• Grace Stilinski •

„New beginnings are often disguised
as painful endings."

Grace Stilinski's sea-blue eyes were set out of the window of the moving car. Suburban residential areas flew past her, but the region seemed to be getting wilder and wilder, until she saw nothing more than the green shades of the forest, which had partly turned reddish due to last autumn. She wasn't even a day out of sunny San Diego, when she already started to miss the numerous palm trees, the pleasant climate, and especially the ocean.

From the back seat, she cast a sinister glance into the rear-view mirror and knew that her father must have seen it very well. Sheriff Stilinski sighed, "Grace, don't pull a face like that now! It will certainly be nice when you see all your old friends again."

"The last time I talked to them was in fourth grade," she said bluntly. Although she had grown up in Beacon Hills, it was no longer a home to her. Only at Christmas and during the summer holidays she had returned, even then she had spent most of the time just hiding in her room. It was not that she did not love her father and her brother; on the contrary. But it had felt strange after her mom died, even though she was quite young at the time, in fact, eight years old. She had been aware from the beginning that she wanted to get out of the small town as soon as possible and she had seized this opportunity after primary school. While her father and Stiles had become accustomed to all the memories, returning was always a punch in the guts for her.

"There is no help for it right now," he said, visibly overwhelmed, "When I have paid the bill for Stiles' MRI we may talk about it again."

Grace gasped for air because she could still remember the psychiatric facility. As a child, they had always told each other stories about the Eichen House, one crazier and scarier than the other, "So just because Stiles is a little soft in the head I have to change schools?"

Her older brother turned to her angrily, "If you hadn't received special treatment from the beginning, then..."

"You could have left too, but you wanted to stay with Scott," she said, adding with a nasty smile, "And of course with Lydia, she probably still doesn't even know that you exist."

"Well, times have changed, dear sister," Stiles said with a grin, "Lydia and I are good friends now, and also I have a girlfriend."

The dark-haired girl raised an eyebrow amusedly and theatrically slapped her hand against her head, "Oh yes! Your imaginary friend Malia, right? How could I forget!"

"She's not imaginary!"

"Not? Then you met her in this institution, didn't you?" It was meant as a joke, but judging by her brother's facial expression, she had hit a soft spot. Promptly, her queasy conscience overcame her, which was only drowned out by her father's intervening, „Grazyna's enough now!"

"My name is Grace, Dad," she said, rolling her blue eyes, "G-r-a-c-e."

He groaned and seemed to regret his decision to bring her home, which she satisfyingly noticed. Stiles, meanwhile, had turned away from his sister and looked amused from the window, "You shouldn't have given us such stupid Polish names, Dad."

With a pretended surprised expression, Grace looked at him smirking and seemed to be the only one in Beacon Hills, except her brother and her father, that can pronounce his real name correctly, and that alone probably deserved a first-class order, "What do you have against Mieczysław?"

"Shut up, Grace," he grumbled, but by his voice, the respondent recognized that he had turned his mouth to a grin, or at least a smile. Even Stiles had not been able to pronounce his own name correctly as a child, but instead, he had affectionately called himself Mischief.

The brunette looked triumphantly out of the window, but her haughty mood faded abruptly when she noticed they had already passed the Beacon Hills sign. In the passing environment, Grace was also able to discover the high school she would go to. Although she did not change schools in the middle of the semester, she would have preferred her father to have brought her home at least half a year before or later. After all, she would have been the new student at the beginning of the school year and not the semester immediately after the Christmas holidays.

Her father didn't seem to have thought about that Christmas was just around the corner, because unlike the years before, no cheesy fairy lights hung around the modest beige-colored cottage at the edge of the small town. Grace sighed and tried to hoist her suitcase out of the police car before Stiles generously came to her aid, "Let me help you."

"Thank you," she replied, smiling, and decided to pull herself together. Maybe it wouldn't be that bad? After all, she could not deny that she did not miss her family sometimes. But whether she would admit that loudly at that moment of defiance was probably another question.

The newfound optimism was to get a sudden end when she entered her old room. She had completely forgotten that circumstance. It was still set up the way she had left it at the beginning of middle school, which had never really disturbed her in the short periods of visiting, but now she realized how horrible her taste had actually been at that time.

Posters of past idols stuck to the acidic yellow walls, the books on the rickety shelf were in need of an overhaul, and cheesy stickers stuck to almost every piece of furniture. For a while, Grace stood at the doorstep and decided to repaint the walls of this room as soon as possible. Maybe that was exactly what she needed. A completely new beginning and perhaps her grief for the boarding school would be somewhat eclipsed for the time being.

A hrumph brought the girl out of her thoughts and seemed to have come from her father, who stood sighing behind her, "I know you want to go back to San Diego as soon as possible, but I'm really glad that you're back here and we can spend a little more time together. As a family."

Grace bit her lip in debt, "I'm looking forward to it too, it's just... so hard."

"I took the evening off and I'm going to cook something delicious to celebrate the day, what do you think?" he suggested, almost pleading with his bright eyes, which were so similar to hers.

"You cook?" she quipped, half surprised, half suspicious. Normally, even at Christmas, there was something warmed up or from a fast-food chain. Grace didn't blame him for that, after all, he was very busy as a sheriff, and even as a single father he never had it easy. Hesitantly, he nodded, but he didn't seem as enthusiastic as before, "I'm trying."

"Well, I'm excited," she grinned, but in her head she had already gone through the menu of her favorite restaurant because she knew that they would probably fall back on it.

While she was skeptical of the sounds from the kitchen, Grace began to make a list of things she needed for her new room. She was glad that she had saved some money, so she didn't have to ask her father about it because he seemed to be deep enough in the debt with Stiles' bills.

It wasn't long before the two siblings were called to dinner. Stiles looked at least as suspicious as his sister, and walked slowly towards the covered dining table with his eyebrows drawn together, "Did anyone die?"

"Can't I cook for my two children?" his father said, a little annoyed. Armed with two pot holders, he placed a steaming baking dish on the table, which took up almost the entire space of the small dining room. To Grace's surprise, it didn't smell burnt, nor disgusting, and it actually looked good. She exchanged a suspicious look with Stiles, even he didn't seem to trust the seemingly perfect lasagna in front of him.

"That's a convenience lasagne, isn't it?" she finally asked. The sheriff contradicted, "No! I've been in the kitchen all evening.'

The dark-haired girl nodded in surprise and began cutting through the crispy surface with a knife. But there was nothing else to cut. Confused, she fished around with a trowel in the sauce, "Dad, you forgot the noodles."

Stiles grunted into his palm and began to stir in the soft mass with his fork. Triumphantly, he fished out something limp, "Here's one! And probably the only one."

"What pizza do you want?" the father of the family sighed capitulating and already had the phone in his hand. Grace began to feel a little pity for him and suggested cooking some noodles and just eating them with the sauce. Her suggestion was finally adopted unanimously, so they did not have a food order that evening. As for her, this was one of the few moments when she forgot about her beloved boarding school and was happy to be with her family.

"And what else are you going to do during the holidays?" Sheriff Stilinski asked his two children, loading his plate with a second serving of noodles. Grace shrugged, "Probably reorganizing my room."

"We go camping." Stiles said with how mouth full of food, which is why his sister thought at first that she had misheard him, "Camping? Since when do you go camping?"

"Camping is great," he said, shrugging and giving her a hesitant grin. Grace looked confused at her father, who only half-heartedly agreed. Was she the only one who found Stiles' new hobby strange? "Where do you want to camp?" she asked casually, but with the intention to learn more.

"Mexico."

Grace promptly raised an eyebrow, "Mexico?" she had asked almost amusedly, but her brother seemed to be serious. Like a fish in the dry, she quickly closed her open mouth and was reassured when her father swallowed his beer and the whole thing didn't seem so normal anymore to him, "Mexico?" he hissed to the eleventh-grader in shock.

"Yes, Dad. Mexico," he said, stretching, and looking at him after carefully looking at his sister, "We've been talking about it."

The addressee nodded hesitantly and turned back to his food, shaking his head, muttering quietly more to himself than to those present, "Must it be Mexico..."

"Can I come?" Grace asked straight and looked at Stiles, who nearly choked on a noodle, "Why do you want to join?" He asked and took a sip of water to presumably rinse down the stubborn noodle in his throat.

"I like tacos."

"But it won't be a trip like this. Actually, it will probably be rather boring... for you."

"What are you doing there then?" asked Grace, completely confused, and even more confused when Stiles couldn't even give her a reasonable answer, "Uh... so in... in Mexico there are... Um... very good... Parties?"

The fact that his answer sounded like a question, and also the stammering, weren't the reason why she eventually became suspicious and pulled a face like she always did in physics classes, "Since when do you go to parties? And since when do you think I'd find parties boring?"

"More often than you think," he replied dryly, appearing to skillfully bypass the other part of the question, turning to her father, "Right, Dad?"

"Sure," the addressee assured half-heartedly, looking as if he wasn't quite comfortable with the subject of the conversation, but the shadow play on his face betrayed him. His daughter looked at him completely irritated, "And you just let him go to Mexico and go to sketchy parties?!"

This did not sound like her father, and Stiles' behavior was more than questionable. Grace turns to look suspiciously at the two of them, but none of them seemed to notice her. They were far too busy staring at each other as if they were silently talking to each other. For a few seconds, the two failed to hide their fleeting gaze from her.

"You have secrets," she said, crumpled, defiantly entwining her arms in front of her chest. Both now turned their eyes to the brunette girl, who steadfastly answered their denying looks.

But her interest had already been aroused.

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Hello ✌🏻
First of all, thank you so much for choosing my story! I really hope you enjoy it!
As I am from Germany and english is not my native language, I would really appreciate it if you could point out some grammatical errors or if something sounds weird. It would help me a lot to improve, so feel free to correct me anytime 🥰