2019.

“Can we talk?” Kristen said quietly when they got to the register. She wasn’t holding eye contact with Gracie.

“Yeah, sure,” said Gracie. She turned to Brianna, “You cool with that?”

“Of course, go on. Go on.”

They went out back to the back alley, and before Gracie could ask how Kristen was, she said, in a quaking voice, “He’s gone.”

“Okay,” said Gracie. To her, that was a damn victory, but Kristen didn’t sound victorious.

“I asked him where he was going,” Kristen continued. “He wouldn’t say. Just took all his things and drove off.”

“Okay,” Gracie said again. There didn’t seem any point Kristen was getting to just yet.

“He’s not on social media. Or if he is, he blocked me, everywhere. It’s like…” Kristen gritted her teeth to bite back a sob. “It’s like he just died. And it’s killing me.”

This time, Gracie didn’t say “okay.” It wasn’t okay. What it was was making her mad.

Tears came as Kristen continued. “I reached out to Josh — you know, his weed guy? He said Zack just bolted. He isn’t even in town anymore. He’s just gone. He’s just fucking gone.” Then she brought her eyes to Gracie’s. “Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why did you do it? Was it not enough to nearly cut his leg off? Did you have to get the Crimson Wraith to threaten him too?”

“Whoa…” said Gracie.

But Kristen continued. “He told me,” she said. “He told me how the Crimson Wraith nearly threw him off a building for you.”

“He said what?”

“The Crimson Wraith was going to kill him!” Kristen’s eyes bulged like a horse on the verge of bolting. “He was going to drop Zack off the Snyder-Finn Building if he didn’t change his story for you!

Anyone else in Titan City might call her crazy for saying something like that, or stupid for believing Zack’s claim, except that Gracie knew the truth. 

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” She wasn’t experienced in lying like this, denying a direct question from someone she cared about. 

“Yes, you do,” said Kristen. “Look at me. I know you did this. I don’t know how, but I know you got the Crimson Wraith to threaten him.”

Will you let me help you? That was what Kevin, as the Crimson Wraith, had asked her. Gracie had said, “yes.” But now, looking at the terror and ache on Kristen’s face, she didn’t know what to say. Her pause seemed to say enough though.

Kristen’s voice was soft, almost a whisper. “Why, Gracie? Just tell me why?”

“Why?”

“Yes, why?”

But that question had a simple answer. “For you,” said Gracie. “Everything I did to Zack that night, I did for you. And what happened to him with the Crimson Wraith, that was for you too.” She wanted to grab Kristen by the shoulders, but held back. “Why can’t you get that?”

Kristen shook her head with a look on her face as if she pitied Gracie. “This was never going to be a thing between us. You knew that right? I mean, a few times making out when we had some drinks was fun and all, but that was all it was, just fun.”

“You think… Wait, you think…” It can be very difficult sometimes to understand someone who is just so wrong that you don’t know where to start in order to get to the very wrong conclusion they reached. “You think I was jealous?”

“Whatever you think you feel for me, Zack and I are in love. Don’t you know the difference? Don’t you know what love is?”

And that was just too much for Gracie. “Why the fuck do you think you were in the hospital?” she shouted. “Who do you think put you there? Is that what you think love is?”

But Kristen just shrugged, “You can’t understand. And you don’t have to understand. Just please, tell the Crimson Wraith to back off, okay? I need Zack. I need him. I don’t know who I am without him.”

Kristen didn’t have to live with that image in her head of how Gracie found her. Gracie did. It was a point she refused to back down from.

“Well, I guess you’re gonna have to fucking figure that out because I promise you, if Zack breathes even a whiff of Titan City air, it will be the last.”

The look on Kristen’s face hurt her to see. Gracie had never been cruel to her before, and it did not feel good, but there was no taking it back.

Kristen shook her head and whispered, “You’re a monster.” 

She turned and ran, tears flinging from her face as she fled. It made Gracie all the happier to be moving away from Sprang & Sons, to a job where Kristen wouldn’t be able to find her.