Episode Report Card Niki: D | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Daddy's Girl
By Niki | Season 1 | Episode 16 | Aired on 02.13.2000
Cut to the school library, where the camera follows Jared through a busy main area to the stacks. Grace is sitting there against one of the bookshelves, and they discover that they have the same secret spot. He sits next to her and asks what she's reading. "Jane Eyre," she replies, because she finds it calming. She recounts the basic plot, which of course isn't calming at all, and then explains it's not the story that soothes her, but the pace. She likes that things take so much longer to happen. She catches herself and grows self-conscious, but the awkward moment is broken by a stereotypically owlish librarian shushing her. They laugh about it and then Grace gets serious, telling Jared that she's not going to camp but she doesn't want to say why. She gets up and informs him, "I'm not together in any way. I just think you should know," but he disagrees. She says she's not like other girls, as if he needs her to point that out. He's glad she's different and tells her that he thinks she's "amazing, truly. Like the way a lake is amazing. Or snow. You don't have to doanything." Wow, this guy's good. Why weren't boys like this when I was in high school? And if they were, where the hell were they hiding? Grace is suitably impressed: "Whoa. That's good." No, not the line, the sentiment. It's "good because [she] never knows what it is that [she's] supposed to be doing."
Oh good, here's black-and-white Grace to put her spin on things, saying, "I think they should invent a new word -- a word that describes how you feel before you kiss someone." Well I guess we can see where this is going...
Yep. They kiss. A very sweet, innocent first kiss.
And then black-and-white Grace is back. She's continuing her thread and says, "I think it's like when a bird decides that it can fly." Hey, that's nice.
Cut to Grace in her room sitting in front of her computer. Black-and-white Grace talks about the way writing helps her sort out her life, especially when it starts moving too fast. Lily comes to the door to see whether Grace is almost ready to go to the re-opening. Grace tells her she's not going, that the situation with Lily and Jake and the restaurant is just too weird for her to deal with. Lily tells her how much it would mean to Jake to have her there, but Grace obviously feels caught in the middle. Lily explains that Grace's relationship with Jake is her own and that Lily has nothing to do with it. She insists that Grace should decide for herself whether she wants to go.