This book is Part 1 in a series of 5 books. Because of your choice in what ending you want to believe at the end of this book, you will choose either Book 2 with the original ending or Book 3 as the alternate ending.
Book 1: Gracie: One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Breast
Book 2: Gracie Loves Patrick
Book 3: Gracie: The Chase
Book 4: Gina – My View
Book 5: Patrick -My Story
PROLOGUE
They were the class of '99, though there were only 69 graduating members. They had started with 72 at the beginning of the year, but like so many other schools, they had seen a few dropouts along the way.
A new millennium was about to begin, and the excitement and anticipation filled the air. Prince had sung about this year and parties in its honor had broken out all year long. The national and local news networks and outlets were extolling the possible destruction of life as they all knew it because of the failure of the computers and the programming of their dates. The eternal damnation that had been predicted never happened, and the class carried on with their lives, even though most of them would become as screwed up as the world had been predicted to follow.
This book will focus on the lives of Gracie and 5 of those class members and how their lives intermingled together, even though sometimes they never knew it.
Any characters mentioned and incidents are fictional, and any resemblance is coincidence. All the active sexual participants are a minimum age of 18, and at no time were any consensual or nonconsensual sexual situations with minors considered.
Content Warning: Sexual Content with LGBTQ and heterosexual situations and descriptions, as well as profanity.
GRACIE
I was born Grace Elaine Smith, but my parents enjoyed using a derivative of my name, Grace E. which became Gracie. Born on July 4, 1981, I came into this world as a little bundle of energy. A full head of brown hair that tried to curl at the ends made my face look diminutive, even in my early years. Tiny but so cute. Dimples that tried to start but found that there was no place to go on that face of mine.
My parents were farmers by trade. They grew up in a farming community and were taught the value of hard work at an early age. Timothy, my dad, decided that he didn't want to pursue that kind of life for a career. After his Junior year in High School, he signed up to go into the U.S. Army at 17. His parents scoffed at the idea at first but relented and signed on the dotted line for him to go. They both knew he hated school and wouldn't pursue a college education if he graduated, nor was he happy there at the farm, so they hoped he would find some direction while serving his country. My daddy grew and matured in many ways after entering service. Then in the fall of 1980, he was injured while on maneuvers and was sent home for 30 days to rest and recover so that he could return to the unit whole and healthy. It was then that daddy started dating my mom, and nine months later, I was born.
THE FOUR AMIGOS
Let me tell you about my family. I am the oldest of four children. Next comes Freddy, who was born two years after me. Arlene was born 18 months after Freddy and then Regina, or Gina as we called her, was born when I was 6.
I knew Freddy was different. He seemed slower than most of the other kids. He didn't talk much either. He liked to go off and play in the yard out front of the house when he was big enough, usually grabbing a stick that was lying around and drawing things in the dirt that surrounded the house.
Arlene was a carbon copy of me, except that she was a bit more tomboyish than I was. Many days you could find her outside playing with Freddy under the trees. We never had much for toys, so mostly we had to use anything that we could scrounge. Pictures torn from the pages of magazines and taped to cardboard cutouts served as dolls for the girls in our house. Gina seemed to be too prim and proper to want to play with most of our "toys" and always said that she would find her place in the world. She had hoped to become a different person than her parents had turned out to be. Little did she know at the time how correct that prediction would be.
Sometimes I would come home from school and find my mom sitting in the rocking chair in the living room, singing softly to Gina or telling her about the big, broad world that existed beyond the boundaries of our property, and especially our town. Problem is, most of the stories were made up as mama had never really ventured out much after she married. My daddy would tell stories from his travels during his Army days, and mama would spin a web of stories off of them, most of them being her fantasies which were carried on further than the actual happenings.
It made for an entertaining time for all the family to listen to what mama would come up with next. We had a TV, but it only had "rabbit ears" and few stations could be found by adjusting the tuner. My parents refused to get cable TV when it was offered in town, saying that there was no way they were going to pay for what could be seen for free.
Problem was that they didn't realize how much bigger the picture of the world that was waiting on them to explore would be on the big box. I really didn't even understand it until I went off to college and sat in front of all the channels for the first time in the school lounge.
The house only had 2 bedrooms. Mama and Daddy slept in one bedroom, and until each child reached their first birthday, so did the little ones. Then they just kept adding bunk beds. Daddy could build anything, and mama knew how to sew, so together they constructed the beds as they were needed. Feathers, cotton, and potato sacks were what the mattresses were comprised of. Linens that mama could spare from her sewing stash served as bedsheets along with the quilts that she made for each of us.
During the early years, Mama also sewed our clothes until I reached school age. Mama took me down to Ms. Mabel's store and picked out several outfits that would be suitable for a young girl in first grade. She had saved some extra money by doing odd sewing jobs for other ladies in the town, and she wanted her daughter to look nice when I went off to school. An education was very important in her and Daddy's eyes, though they had not completed theirs. Mama was close to finishing hers when she became pregnant with me, and she had honestly planned to go back to school at some point. Problem was that the demands of a new marriage, a young child with more added to the equation pretty quickly and life in general just didn't allow her the luxury of finishing her education.
GRACIE: THE EARLY SCHOOL YEARS
Some kids made fun of me in the first grade when I started school. I didn't get to attend kindergarten as most of the other kids did. Mom and dad both had said that they didn't have time to be running up and down the roads, taking the kids to school for only a few hours each day. Mama had spent a lot of time reading to all of us kids, borrowing books from the town library, as we really didn't have many around the house. During the summer, there was a large bus that would come around with books that you could check out and return the next time it came around.
I loved exploring all the titles and as I got older, I turned more and more to books as my comfort zone took hold. I could feel myself getting lost in the pages, just like my mama would spin the yarns about places far away. Just like mom, I imagined what it would be like to live in lands that no one here had ever seen before.
By the time I was in the 6th grade, I was reading at least a book a week, sometimes even more if they were shorter ones.
I still had to do the chores and help around the house. I was the oldest of the siblings and I had the responsibility of helping monitor them when mama and papa were busy with other things.
Thankfully, by the time that I had grown big enough to really help with the babysitting, all the other siblings had passed their time of potty training, so I didn't have to deal with the dirty diapers too many times.
Freddy hated baths. Sometimes mama could be seen chasing him around the house. Freddy would be naked as a jaybird, squealing with delight as he slithered out of her reach and ran to hide in the nook and crannies in the house. Mama would get so outdone with him and his antics, and then I noticed she got out of breath, too. More and more, it seemed to happen as the days went by. She always brushed it off and made an excuse why she felt how she did, but something inside told me that there had to be more to the story than was being told. Sometimes I would step in and swoop up my brother as he passed by and hand him off to mama so that she could make sure that he was properly bathed.
In doing so, sometimes my hands would brush across his privates by accident and I could feel a twinge deep down in my soul. I just pushed it to the back of my mind and went about helping mama with any remaining chores of the day.
One day during sixth grade, I came bursting through the front door, tears streaming down my face, arms flailing as I ran to my room. I never noticed mama sitting at the kitchen table when I passed by it. Actually, no one said anything until daddy came in from working the pasture and hollered for me to come quickly.
My face was still wet, and my clothes were rumpled as I rounded the corner and saw the expression on daddy's face. I turned my attention to mama and caught a blood-curdling scream in my throat as daddy reached down to scoop up mama and take her to the car. She lay limp in his arms while I held the front door and screen open so that daddy could get out easily and quickly.
Hours later that night, Daddy returned home. Mama was nowhere to be found when he pulled into the driveway. I had stayed home and kept the kids busy so that they would not get upset about what had happened.
"Daddy, is mama going to be alright?"
"Yeah baby, she is going to be fine. Mama is really sick though right now and the doctors are keeping her overnight and they are giving her some medicines to make her feel better."
"What happened?"
"They think she may have had a minor heart attack. She may have had something wrong with her heart as a child and never knew it. Then it festered as she got older until now when it turned into a full-blown problem."
"Don't worry about anything, Daddy. I'll take care of it all. I promise."
As I have done on many evenings, I climbed up into his lap and snuggled my arms around his neck, laying my head softly where the creases fell on his collar.
After a short while, I was falling asleep, and my arms slipped down to my side. My right arm brushed down against his chest and I could feel it slightly heaving as he sat holding me. My arm continued down to my hips and, for a moment, brushed against his groin area. Daddy made a grunting noise and that familiar feeling welled up in me again at the sight of him being a little uncomfortable.
By that time, it was bedtime for everyone, so I gathered my siblings up and headed everyone off towards the bedroom while my father sat in the chair and contemplated the happenings of the day.
