Still Just Grace Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Table of Contents

  Photo

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Me

  Things that are Unusual (Some Good, Some Bad, Some not Sure)

  Mystery Boy (Sounds better than it is)

  Magic Boy (Still Sounds Better than it is)

  Sammy Stringer Surprise

  A Perfect Night

  What is Going to be Different at School

  What was Different at School

  What was Different at Home

  Why We are Going on a Vacation at a not Normal Vacation Time

  What is Super Excellent

  What is not Super Excellent

  Mimi and Max

  Surprise Presents

  The Drive to Chicago

  Promise

  My Favorite Thing About Grandma

  The Second Thing Grandma Said

  Things that are Good About Picnics

  Things that are Bad About Picnics

  What we didn't know About Grandma

  What's so Great About Trendy?

  What we Talked About at Dinner

  What Grandma Said

  What Would have Been Great

  What Grandma Gave Me

  Trendy Restaurant

  Super me

  Another Easy Promise

  No Wallet for Me

  What We did the Rest of the Day

  Insides Out

  Captain Furry

  Not a Normal Breakfast

  The Drive Back Home

  What I Saw When I Got Home

  What I Wanted To See on My Very Own Front Door

  What I Saw in the Morning

  Wish Necklace

  Help Wanted

  What Mimi Said

  Wish

  Mr. Frank's New Idea

  Big Meanie Bossy-Pants

  Mr. Frank

  Mr. Frank's New Ideas that Miss Lois didn't Like

  Three Graces

  The Project Idea

  Surprise

  Mimi's Project

  What was Lucky

  If you Learn a Lesson you Should Try Not to Forget it

  Fancy Handwriting

  What I Forgot

  What is Impossible

  The Project at School

  Something New at My House

  My Room

  The Big Secret

  Things About Mr. Frank

  Morning

  Project Day

  The Projects

  What you Lost

  So far so Good

  More Projects

  My Favorite Posters

  What Happened at Lunchtime

  More and More Projects

  Then Finally We Got to Open Our Boxes

  In My Box

  What Happened When the Bell Rang at the End of the Day

  My Secret Helper

  Epilogue

  What Grace Will be Thinking About in her Next Book

  Copyright © 2007 by Charise Mericle Harper

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

  www.houghtonmifflinbooks.com

  The text of this book is set in Dante

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

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Harper, Charise Meride.

  Still just Grace written and illustrated by Charise Mericle Harper.

  p. cm.

  Summary: When a struggling student teacher assigns a group project, third-grader Just Grace gets so involved in working with Grace W. and Grace F. that she fails to understand why she and her best friend. Mimi, are drifting apart. ISBN-13: 978-0-618-64643-2 (hardcover) ISBN-10: 0-618-64643-4 (hardcover) [1. Best friends—Fiction. 2. Friendship—Fiction. 3. Teachers—Fiction. 4. Schools—Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7.H231323Sti 2007

  [Fic]—dc22

  2007012746

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  MP 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3

  For Ivy,

  My empathy girl

  Me

  My real name is Grace, and if that was your real name then you would think that if someone wanted your attention they would shout "Grace!" but that is not what happens for me. I am not a usual person, but you can't tell that by just looking at me, because most of my unusualness is pretty much on the inside. My outside wrapping looks like any other girl's, except I don't wear very much pink because that is definitely not one of my favorite colors.

  Things that are Unusual (Some Good, Some Bad, Some not Sure)

  1 Having four girls named Grace in the same class, and not letting any of them use the name Grace. Instead, calling them Grace W., Gracie, Grace F. (secretly named the Big Meanie by me, because that is what she is), and Just Grace. The Just Grace name probably being the most dumb name in the whole world ever, which is especially bad and sad because that's the one that is mine.

  FOUR GRACES IN A ROW

  2 Thinking that someone is 100 percent disgusting and not likable, and then having something happen that changes your mind a little bit so that the gross disgusting feeling is almost all gone, even when you have to stand right next to him and say, "Hi, Sammy."

  3 Having a little superpower that almost no one knows about. Empathy power is the power to feel someone else's sadness, and then to try to make that sadness go away. It's not an easy power to have. I know, because I have it.

  USING MY EMPATHY POWER LAST WEEK WHEN MOM MESSED UP DAD'S BIRTHDAY CAKE

  It still tasted good, though!

  ONE OF MY NEW COMIC DRAWINGS

  4 Girls who draw comics, because mostly that's a boy thing, though it just doesn't make any sense why it would be that way.

  Butterfly Lady can make you feel better just by wrapping you in her big beautiful wings.

  5 Living next door to your most perfect friend in the whole world. And having that friend be someone as great as Mimi.

  ME AND MIMI

  6 Having a cool French flight attendant named Augustine Dupre living right in your very own basement. But living in a great apartment that your dad made, not in the scary-spider part next to the furnace.

  SPIDER

  AUGUSTINE DUPRE

  Hopefully they will never meet!

  Mystery Boy (Sounds better than it is)

  Mimi and I were watching the new people move into the house that the workers built right next door to her, where before there were just a bunch a weeds, broken glass, and prickle bushes.

  Actually, we were spying on them from her upstairs window, so they couldn't see us and we wouldn't have to talk to them. Especially the mystery new boy who was going to be in our class. Mimi's mom was all excited about having new neighbors. She told Mimi she had to be nice to the new boy and let him play with us because he was going to be nervous and lonely. This did not sound like the kind of boy we wanted to play with. In my head I made a list of what could happen if you played with nervous, lonely creatures. It was not good.

  We saw the mom, the dad, and eight or nine moving people, but there was no boy. The moving people were like big ants and hard to count because they were all wearing the same blue shirt and not keeping still. "Maybe they left: him at their old house," said Mimi. "Because he is terrible and they wanted to get rid of him," I said. "Because he is very gassy and has horrible breath," added Mimi. "And he burps and picks his nose!" I finished. "I'm glad he's not coming!" I said. "Me too!" said Mimi, and this made me secretly happy, because I did not want the new boy neighbor to be someone Mimi was going to like more than she liked
me, her old girl neighbor.

  Magic Boy (Still Sounds Better than it is)

  Poof! Like magic, the next time we looked out the window we saw the boy. He was smiling and walking around the front lawn on his hands. He did not look nervous. The lonely part was hard to tell because that's an inside feeling so it's invisible. But most lonely people don't laugh and wave at strangers, which is what happened next, right after Mimi's mom pointed at the window where we were watching. Mimi's mom waved, the boy waved, and then they waited, looking at us, so we had to wave too. That's how the rule of waving works: you have to wave back if someone waves at you.

  "He looks okay, like maybe he's fun," said Mimi. "I guess so," I said, but I looked out the window again just to make sure. "Oh, no! It's Sammy Stringer!" I cried. Sammy was talking to the new boy and Mimi's mom, and then Sammy was waving at us too. We waved, but then we made a pretend throw-up noise because you can't help but do that if something gets up there on your disgusto-meter.

  MY DISGUSTO-METER CHART

  "We have to go down and say hello, or I'll get in trouble," said Mimi. "I know you hate Sammy Stringer, but you have to do this."

  Then Mimi held my hand to give me some of her extra braveness. I used to hate Sammy Stringer. But now I just don't like him very much. It's not a big difference, and one day it might matter, but it didn't so much right then in that exact minute because I didn't want to talk to him, and, especially, I did not want him to call me Just Grace in front of the new boy.

  Sammy Stringer Surprise

  The first words out of Sammy Stringer's mouth were "Hey, Grace. Hey, Mimi. This is Max."

  I couldn't believe that he didn't call me Just Grace, that he was being normal like a regular boy, and that his shirt wasn't covered in disgusting bits of food. This was all a big surprise for me. Mimi said hi. I said hi. Max said hi, and then Sammy said, "We're going to look at some stuff at Mrs. Luther's house."

  Mrs. Luther is my neighbor on the side that is not next to Mimi's house. She is a teacher at our school, but she only teaches the kids that are older than us. Sammy likes her because she has collections of weird stuff like scary masks, animal poops, and other not regular stuff. And he probably also likes her because she makes amazing cookies that have real pieces of chocolate bars in them. I know about the cookies because I have tasted maybe ten of them, and they are excellent!

  "Huh," said Mimi, and we watched them walk away. Sometimes when something completely unexpected happens your brain can't think of anything to say, so while your mouth is waiting for your brain it makes a little "huh" sound. So I knew what was happening in Mimi's head.

  "Oh, well," I said. "That wasn't so bad." Sammy had been nice, Max had a new friend, and Mimi was still all mine. But maybe Mimi was thinking, Now that fun handstand-walking Max boy won't be my new friend, and that disgusting and totally annoying Sammy Stringer is going to he hanging around next door. I couldn't tell.

  A Perfect Night

  Mimi came over and we watched a new episode of Unlikely Heroes, which is our most favorite TV show ever. It's a show about real people who do things that usually only comic book heroes can do, and it's all 100 percent true.

  This time there was a man who swam two whole miles in the ocean with a broken arm and a lady on his back. He had to save the lady when their boat tipped over because she couldn't swim and for some reason wasn't wearing a life jacket, which is a dumb thing to forget to wear if you don't know how to swim and you are on a boat in the middle of the ocean.

  Then there was Sally, a pet parrot who pecked some robbers and kept them trapped in the house they were robbing until the police came to take them away. The owners of the parrot said Sally was a hero. Sally squawked, "Save me, Sweetie! Save me!" right on the TV, which is exactly what one of the robbers said when he was being attacked. The police said Sally was copying the robbers. Parrots love to copy sounds. Sally could also say, "Sally wants a biscuit" and "Hello, handsome," and make the beeping sound the microwave makes when the food is ready. Sweetie was the girl robber. They didn't say what the boy robber's name was. "Maybe Cupcake," joked Mimi.

  What is Going to be Different at School

  We are getting a student teacher for our class and his name is Mr. Frank. Mr. Frank is going to watch Miss Lois, our regular teacher, for a week, and then he is going to take over the whole class and teach it himself. Mr. Frank is a student teacher, which means he still goes to college, and still has to do homework, and is still mostly just learning about teaching stuff. This is good because it will be nice to have someone different and interesting for a change.

  Miss Lois says student teachers have a lot of energy because they are young and fresh and full of new ideas. One of the new ideas I'm going to help Mr. Frank with is calling me Grace, or if I have to Grace S. for Grace Stewart. But I am definitely 100 percent not going to help him call me Just Grace!

  What was Different at School

  Mr. Frank was young and maybe fresh. I couldn't really tell that part, but the part I could tell right away was that Miss Lois was not going to let him use very many new ideas, especially when it came to changing names. As soon as I said, "Excuse me, Mr. Frank. I want to be called Grace or Grace's., please," Miss Lois said, "Now is not the time to be confusing everyone with new names." And then she said, "We will be keeping the same class name list even while Mr. Frank is here." Nobody seemed upset except me, but that is because I'm the only one with a stupid dumb name.

  I looked over at Grace F. by mistake, and just like always, she was being mean. She was giving me a ha-ha smile right on her Big Meanie lips. Mr. Frank went around the room and introduced himself to everyone. I was not happy one bit when he said, "Hello, Just Grace. I'm happy to meet you," even though it's Miss Lois's rule and not his fault.

  Once someone has started calling you one thing, it's almost impossible to get that person to change and call you anything different. So now of course I could tell that Mr. Frank was going to call me Just Grace forever and ever and ever. Even if I saw him on the street fifty-one years from now he was still going to say, "Excuse me, Just Grace, is that you?"

  Then, to make everything even more worse, Mr. Frank kept calling Grace F. "Grace," instead of "Grace F." like he was supposed to. This was totally not fair to any of the other Graces, because Miss Lois said that no one could be called that. Grace F. seemed very happy that the mistake was happening and was all super chatty with Mr. Frank even though we didn't even know him yet. She was probably trying to put some kind of Big Meanie spell on him.

  After lunch, Mr. Harris, the principal, brought Max to our class. He didn't get to sit next to Sammy because the only empty seat was the one next to the Big Meanie. I saw Sammy smile at Max, and then when none of the teachers was looking, Grace F. stuck her tongue out at Sammy. She probably thought he was smiling at her, which I know would never happen because even though Sammy Stringer likes disgusting and unusual things, he would never in a billion years like anyone like the Big Meanie.

  What was Different at Home

  When I got home, I went right downstairs to visit Augustine Dupre. She is very good about making you feel better if something has happened that you do not like. She lets you talk and talk and talk until most of the unhappy feelings have been let out of your body in words.

  COMPLAINY WORDS COMING OUT OF MY MOUTH

  Lots of people don't have time for this kind of thing, but Augustine Dupre is not a time rusher. When I finished telling her about how I was still probably going to be called Just Grace forever, she patted my arm and said, "Well, some time away will probably make you feel better." This is how I found out that I was going to miss three days of school and go on a trip to Chicago to visit my grandma.

  Why We are Going on a Vacation at a not Normal Vacation Time

  Mom says it is time for Grandma to move out of her house and into an apartment building, and that Grandma is going to be so much happier in a new, smaller apartment. She says there are lots of other old people living right in the same bui
lding, so Grandma won't be alone so much. She says they have movie nights, and dances, big dinners, and lots of art and music classes. It sounds a lot like summer camp except there are probably no bugs, and you don't have to go to a special building to use the bathroom.

  I am thinking that maybe Grandma can make me a new wallet like the kind we made at camp last year, because my laces part got messed up and then the wallet couldn't open, which is not great because that is where the money is supposed to go. Plus, Grandma is good at sewing and making her fingers do exactly the right thing when they are holding string, or glue, or tiny little pieces of tape.

  WALLET THAT GRANDMA COULD MAKE ME

  What is Super Excellent

  Telling everyone at school that you get to miss school and go on vacation is one of the best things ever. It's more special than going when it's regular vacation time, because you are the only one who gets to do it and everyone else has to stay and work on boring school stuff.

  What is not Super Excellent

  Miss Lois gave me homework to do while I was gone. So now I have to take the boring school stuff with me, which is not as fun as I thought it was going to be. The only okay part of the homework is the project to write a two-page story about something smaller than a peanut butter sandwich.