Heavenly. Teen Wolf (s.s)

xxxiii. window of opportunity

Gracie shook her head in complete shock. Jackson wasn't supposed to be dead. He was the kanima, the kanima that Gerard controlled. And now he was dead?

He couldn't be dead.

He couldn't be.

"Get down here!" Melissa barked at her, in full nurse mood. "Get down her and hold his head."

Gracie scrambled to obey, dropping to her knees right by Jackson's head. She tilted his head up just as Melissa instructed her.

"Where's my son?" She suddenly heard Noah shouted from a few feet away, looking around the thinning crowd. The Hale girl stood up as she let Lydia take her place. She looked out into the crowd of people around her. "Where the hell is my son?"

Gracie stood in the boy's locker room frozen. Most of the players had left, really unable to celebrate their victory after Jackson was killed and Stiles had gone "missing".

Whatever Gracie was feeling, she couldn't snap out it. She couldn't ignore it. It was the overwhelming feeling to move, to stop fighting whatever was inside of her and find where Stiles had been taken.

"Gracie, hun, are you okay?"

Gracie blinked at the gruff voice and quickly focused, nodding her head at Stiles' dad, who hadn't left since the game ended after calling in all his deputies. "Yeah, sorry Sheriff."

Noah waved her off and continued telling her, Scott, and Isaac what he had planned on doing.

"I've got to meet with the medical examiner and try to figure out what happened with Jackson," he listed. "I've got an APB out on Stiles. His Jeep is still in the parking lot, so that means...Hell, I don't know what that means."

Gracie knew what it meant and so did Scott and Isaac. Gerard had taken Stiles as soon as that game buzzer went off, taking him who knows where.

"Look," he sighed heavily, shoving his little notebook into his pocket. "If he answers his phone, if he answers his emails, if any of you see him..."

"We'll call you," Isaac assured him kindly.

"He's probably just freaked out from all the attention or something," Scott tried to make Noah feel better. Anything was better than telling him a geriatric psychopath—in the words of her father—had kidnapped him. "We'll find him."

Noah nodded solemnly. "Yeah...I'll see you, okay?" he patted Gracie on the shoulder. "I'm sorry for your loss."

She managed a sad smile before he walked away. "Thank you."

Even though Jackson wasn't really her loss, she still felt bad. He was still someone's kid. He still meant something to someone. But she was still focused on his death –– specifically why?

She didn't know why, but she had this feeling that told her that Jackson wasn't as dead as they thought he was. It didn't make sense that Gerard would just kill off his best player so soon to the final battle because she knew that Jackson would never kill himself. It was Jackson, for crying out loud.

"McCall," Coach approached them now, hardly bothering with the fact that Gracie was in the locker room. "We need you on the team, okay? You know I can't put you on the field next season if you don't get your grades up."

There weren't the right words but Coach's tone told them that he was grieving Jackson just like his players were.

"I know, Coach."

"All right," Coach faltered for a second. "I mean, I know I yell a lot but it's not like I hate you guys...Well, I hate Greenberg, but, you know, that's different. It's Greenberg." He chuckled a little bit before sobering. "I'm just saying we—I need you on the team. Get your grades back up."