Just Grace and the Super Sleepover Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Table of Contents

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Just Grace and the Super Sleepover

  Read More from the Just Grace Series

  About the Author

  Copyright © 2013 by Charise Mericle Harper

  All rights reserved. For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 215 Park Avenue South, New York, New York 10003.

  www.hmhco.com

  The illustrations are pen-and-ink drawings digitally colored in Photoshop.

  The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:

  Harper, Charise Mericle, author, illustrator.

  Just Grace and the super sleepover / written and illustrated by

  Charise Mericle Harper.

  p. cm.

  Summary: Just Grace is excited to attend her classmate Grace F.’s sleepover birthday party until she learns it will be a camp-out, and then her fears begin to cause trouble.

  ISBN 978-0-544-04584-2

  [1. Schools—Fiction. 2. Friendship—Fiction. 3. Fear—Fiction. 4. Honesty—Fiction. 5. Camping—Fiction. 6. Sleepovers—Fiction. 7. Birthdays—Fiction.]

  I. Title.

  PZ7.H231323Jue 2014

  [Fic]—dc23

  2013004813

  eISBN 978-0-544-15155-0

  v1.0114

  For my friend Laurie Keller, who likes Grace

  and is a super sleepover guest.

  THINGS THAT ARE UNUSUAL ABOUT ME

  At school my teacher calls me Just Grace instead of Grace. This kind of thing can happen if your teacher is not paying attention when you say, Please call me just Grace.

  My best friend lives right next door to me, and I can see her bedroom window from my bedroom window.

  I have a flight attendant living in the apartment in my basement. Her name is Augustine Dupre, and she lives there with her husband, Luke. Augustine Dupre is super nice and her apartment is amazing and beautiful.

  I have a dog that is a girl dog, but she has a boy-dog name. Her name is Mr. Scruffers. When I adopted her I tried to change her name, but it was too hard. She loves being called Mr. Scruffers.

  I have a teeny-tiny superpower. It’s empathy power, and every time someone is sad or unhappy it starts working, and I have to help them feel better. Empathy power is not an easy superpower to live with—sometimes it can get you into trouble, but if I’m lucky it works out just fine.

  HOW MY EMPATHY POWER WORKS

  WHAT IS STRANGE

  Sometimes even if you know that something is true, you can still have trouble believing it. That’s how I felt when Miss Lois was showing us the globe of the world, and talking about the earth spinning. I should have been listening, but it’s hard to do two things at once, especially if one of those things is trying to figure out if you might be hanging upside down.

  Miss Lois is good at noticing stuff, because even though I was being careful and only moving when she was looking away, she still saw me. This was unlucky, because Miss Lois is not the kind of teacher who just nods and gives you a silent I-need-you-to-pay-attention look. She’s loud. If you get caught doing something wrong in her class, everyone is going to know about it. That’s why as soon as she stopped talking and looked at me, I knew I was in trouble. Miss Lois pointed her finger and said, “Just Grace, stop fidgeting in your seat and pay attention.” As soon as she said that, everyone in the whole class turned around and looked at me. This kind of attention is not the same as getting attention when you are on stage.

  I put my head down and stared at the eraser on my desk until my face felt normal, and not hot and red anymore. When I looked up, everyone was back to looking at Miss Lois, except for one person, but that was okay, because I was expecting it. I looked across the room and found Mimi. She nodded her head and gave me a big you’ll-be-okay smile. Instantly I started to feel better. It was the exact right thing for a best friend to do.

  Owen 1 says that the reason that Miss Lois is good at noticing stuff is because she has fly eyes. Of course that’s 100 percent crazy and not true, but when Owen 1 says weird stuff, it’s better to pretend you didn’t hear him. Arguing with Owen 1 is not a good idea. He’s a bad loser.

  Sometimes when I am mad or upset I like to draw comics. I don’t know why it works, but it usually helps me feel better. I did that the last time Owen 1 was a bad loser, and when I was done I felt almost 100 percent better, plus it was fun to draw him saying he was sorry. Even if something doesn’t happen in real life, it can help you feel better just imagining it.

  Of course the fantasy ending didn’t really happen—instead what really happened was that Owen 1 just looked at me with a mean face and then walked away. I knew he wasn’t one bit sorry.

  I was thinking about that comic when suddenly someone poked me in the back with a pencil. That kind of thing is impossible to ignore, especially when you know who the someone is and they are not one of your favorite people. Owen 1 sits right behind me, and every time he doesn’t understand something, wants to tell me a stupid joke, or is bored, he pokes me. I’ve told Miss Lois about it a million times, but it doesn’t make a difference.

  CIRCLE OF NOTHING HAPPENING

  After a while, instead of Owen 1 stopping poking me, it was me who did the stopping. I stopped complaining.

  RULE OF COMPLAINING

  If you complain about someone a lot, the person who you are complaining to will start to get annoyed by all your complaining, and suddenly you might be the one who is getting into trouble instead of the person who is doing the thing that you are complaining about. Sometimes when something sounds complicated a drawing can make it easier to understand.

  DRAWING THAT EXPLAINS THE RULE OF COMPLAINING

  These kinds of rules are not fair, but sometimes in life, unfair things happen.

  MY NEW PLAN FOR HANDLING OWEN 1

  When Owen 1 pokes me, I spin around and try to grab his pencil away from him before he can pull it back. At first this was really hard to do, but he pokes me a lot so I’ve had lots of practice, and I’ve gotten better. If I can get his pencil, I break the lead off and then drop the pencil back on his desk. This works perfectly, because Miss Lois doesn’t like people walking up to the front of the class and using the pencil sharpener when she is in the middle of talking. So if she gets mad at Owen 1 and he gets into trouble, it’s kind of fair.

  THE REASON OWEN 1 WAS POKING ME

  To ask me if I thought we were hanging upside down right this minute and didn’t even know it. This was a surprise. I wasn’t expecting him to be thinking the same thing as me. And if we were both thinking it, then probably lots of other people were thinking it too. I looked around the class, but you can’t tell what people are thinking just by looking at them. I wish you could. It would be cool if people had bubbles above their heads, like they do in comics. But I’d only want them to last for a second, because longer than a second is probably too much information.

  READING MINDS FOR A SECOND—GOOD

  Sometimes, right things can suddenly turn into wrong things. That’s what happened with Owen 1’s pencil. Now I felt bad that I’d broken his pencil. I thought he was just poking me to be annoying, but now that I knew that he had the same thoughts as me, it made things different. So for this time only, when I gave him back his pencil I gave him one of my extra pencils too. That way he wouldn’t have to go up front and sharpen his broken one and get into trouble with Miss Lois. It was good that Miss Lois was busy looking for something in her desk or we would have for sure gotten into trouble.

&nb
sp; PENCILS CHOICES FOR OWEN 1

  MISS LOIS AND THE EARTH

  Miss Lois doesn’t just love the earth because it is round. She said round is a nice shape, but the reason she really loves the earth is because it has so many amazing features.

  Of course no one knew what she was talking about, so she had to explain that she was meaning all the shapes that make the earth look the way it does. Things like mountains, valleys, oceans, and continents, and we were going to learn about all of them. When you study the physical features of the earth, that is called geography, and that’s what Miss Lois was really in love with.

  She said we were all going to love geography as much as she did, and then she smiled really big so we could all see how excited she was. After she said that, I could tell what was coming next. Miss Lois was making a team-up of love and learning. That kind of team-up can take all the fun out of love, but I made myself stay quiet and not say anything.

  It’s not a good idea to tell a teacher that their idea is a bad one. Teachers are a little like Owen 1—they don’t like to hear about their mistakes. But at least they don’t throw things.

  When Miss Lois was sure that everyone looked excited about learning about the earth, she told us all about what we were going to do. She said we were going to make special books filled with earth facts. Then she went to her desk and pulled out one of the books. It looked like a regular notebook, except instead of being rectangular-shaped, it was rounded like the earth. Miss Lois said a friend of hers had made them by cutting off all the corners of the notebooks with his saw. I don’t know why, but round notebooks suddenly made Miss Lois’s project a lot more exciting.

  WHAT HAPPENED AT LUNCH

  Mimi and I ate lunch together like usual. It’s nice when something is a pattern and you don’t have to worry about it. The only thing I have to worry about at lunchtime is what kind of sandwich I have. Mom hates making lunches, and if I didn’t complain, she’d give me the exact same sandwich every day for the whole year.

  Sunni’s mom is the exact opposite of Mom. She loves making lunches. In fact, she loves it so much, she took a special course to learn how to do it better. Sunni says that the course was definitely worth it, because before her mom went to bento box school, she used to only get leftovers, but now she gets masterpieces instead.

  Pretty much everyone is jealous of Sunni’s new lunches—even the boys. Sunni’s mom has only been making them for about a week, but they’re already kind of famous. Sunni says the only part she doesn’t like is that everyone wants to see them. She says it’s hard to be excited about eating a lunch after everyone has breathed on it.

  Today Sunni’s lunch was an alien—it was one of my favorites. So far she’s eaten a smiling sun, an underwater scene, a panda, a character from her favorite video game, and her own name in big fancy letters. I don’t know how all those things tasted, but they looked amazing.

  Sunni said bento boxes are a big thing in Japan, and Japanese mothers like to make them as a way of showing their children how much they love them. As soon as she said that, Mimi said, “Well, your mom must really love you.” Sunni nodded, smiled, and then picked up her alien sandwich. “She does,” said Sunni. “But she also loves craft projects, so it kind of works out well for both of us.” I thought she might say something else, but she didn’t—she just bit off the alien’s head. A lot of boys were smiling and watching her. None of them said anything, but I knew exactly what they were thinking.

  When I first saw Sunni’s bento lunches, I told Mom all about them and how much Sunni’s mom loved making them for her. I was hoping it would make her excited and get the idea to make one for me, but she just shook her head and said she was glad she wasn’t Japanese. It wasn’t a complete no, but it wasn’t a yes either. I had a feeling bento lunches were not in my future.

  THE SONG WE LEARNED AFTER LUNCH

  If Miss Lois ever gets tired of being a teacher, she could get a new job as a professional singer. I didn’t know this before, but she has a great singing voice. Even though she only sang us a baby song, I could still tell that she was good. Miss Lois said she made up the baby song to help our brains remember the names of the seven continents on the earth.

  Remembering seven new things is not easy, especially if you haven’t thought about them before. Some kids were kind of embarrassed about standing up and doing hand motions, but that was crazy, because moving around was a lot more fun than sitting at our desks. Plus Miss Lois said that when we had the earth test we were allowed to move our arms and hands around to help us remember everything. Robert Walters asked if we were going to be allowed to stand up and sing during the test, but I already knew the answer to that. Most of Robert Walters’s questions end up with the same answer from Miss Lois. It’s not a spoken out loud answer but it means no—she shakes her head and scrunches her eyebrows down.

  Miss Lois changed the words from a real song that we already knew and made it about the continents instead. Sometimes she can be kind of smart.

  The Real Song

  Head, shoulders,

  Knees and toes,

  Knees and toes

  Head, shoulders,

  Knees and toes,

  Knees and toes.

  Eyes and ears and mouth and nose,

  Head, shoulders, knees and toes, knees and toes!

  Our Song

  Europe, Asia,

  North and South

  America

  Europe, Asia,

  North and South

  America

  Africa, Antarctica, Australia

  Europe, Asia,

  North and South

  America

  Once we were done with the continents, I thought we’d be done with the earth, but Miss Lois said that we had to learn the oceans of the world too. There are only five of them, but it was harder than the continents, because she didn’t have a song. I wanted to ask why, but Owen 1 surprised me and asked the question before I could even put my hand up. This was the second time that Owen 1 and I were thinking the exact same things. What was going on? Was he reading my mind? I hoped not. This was not a super skill I was excited about him having.

  MISS LOIS’S SURPRISES

  After we wrote down the oceans of the world Miss Lois surprised us with an announcement. “Next week we’re going to have a surprise guest in our classroom.” Of course everyone wanted to know who it was, but she wouldn’t even give us any clues. Robert Walters put his hand up and asked, “Is it going to be the president?” Miss Lois looked surprised for a second, and then she shook her head. That was too bad—the president would be a surprise guest I’d be excited to meet.

  Today should have been called surprise day, because as soon as Miss Lois finished telling us about the guest surprise, she surprised us again.

  Usually when Miss Lois says this kind of thing, I get nervous. Miss Lois is not a you can-pick-your-own-partner kind of person. Having a partner can be super fun if you’re excited about the person you are working with. But not all partners are the same. Sometimes certain people make you feel uncomfortable. I was hoping that Owen 1 was not reading my mind again, because my brain was making a list and his name was on it.

  PEOPLE I DON’T WANT AS A PARTNER

  So I guess it’s good that thoughts can’t be heard, because a lot of people would get their feelings hurt. Thinking about Owen 1 and his mind-reading skills made me suddenly feel sad for real mind readers. Mind reading is probably a really hard superpower to live with.

  WHAT MIMI AND I PRACTICED ON THE WAY HOME FROM SCHOOL

  The continents. It was fun to sing the song.

  WHAT WE WOULD NOT HAVE PRACTICED IF IT WAS JUST A LIST TO MEMORIZE

  The continents. Sometimes Miss Lois is a teaching genius.

  WHAT HAPPENED WHEN I GOT HOME

  I said goodbye to Mimi (that took two seconds).

  I said hello to Mr. Scruffers (that took twenty minutes).

  If you are your dog’s favorite person in the whole world, you have to be good
about spending time with her, even if you are sometimes tired and maybe don’t always feel like it. When I leave for school in the morning, Mr. Scruffers has to wait for more than twenty-six thousand seconds until she gets to see me again. That’s a long time, and that kind of waiting deserves a lot of attention.

  Mr. Scruffers’s favorite thing to do is to chase squirrels. I got her a ball that looks like a squirrel, but I think she can tell that difference.

  Mr. Scruffers is good about bringing the ball back. She’s not one of those dogs who keep the ball in their mouth and then run off with it every time you get close to taking it away. Those kinds of dogs are annoying—to get the ball you have to stick your hand in their mouth and yank it out. Even though I love Mr. Scruffers, I think I would have a hard time with that. A person can only take so much dog slobber.