Still Just Grace Read online

  This was one of Mr. Frank's new ideas, and it seemed like a good one, except a lot of kids weren't listening and got confused. They thought we were supposed to write a story about a peanut butter sandwich. Marta, the girl with the longest hair in our whole class, said, "Excuse me, Mr. Frank, but I'm allergic to peanuts, so I shouldn't write about them because I might get sick and then have to get a shot."

  Miss Lois didn't even let Mr. Frank answer. She said, "Now, children, forget about the peanut butter sandwich and just write a story about something that is smaller than this square." And then she drew a square that was the same size as a peanut butter sandwich on the chalkboard.

  Mr. Frank looked unhappy and his face got red. Grace F. was looking at Mr. Frank at exactly the same time as I was. It looked like she gave him a secret smile to try to make him feel better, but it must have been a mistake, because there is no way the Big Meanie could have even one drop of empathy power inside her.

  Mimi and Max

  After school I told Mimi all about my big surprise vacation. I said, "I'm sorry I won't be here to watch Unlikely Heroes with you tomorrow night," but she didn't seem very sad about my being gone.

  "Oh, that's okay," said Mimi. "Max is coming over with his parents for dinner, so I can watch it with him."

  This was not what I was wanting to hear, so I said, "What if he doesn't like it? Lots of boys don't like that sort of show because the heroes don't wear costumes or capes or even have big muscles." Mimi surprised me 100 percent by what she said next. "Don't worry," she said. "He loves Unlikely Heroes, just like us. I already asked him. Isn't that great?" "Yeah," I answered, "great."

  But I wasn't being even 50 percent truthful, because great is getting lots of amazing super-surprise presents when it is not even your birthday. Great is not having your next-door-neighbor-best-friend-in-the-whole-world become best friends with her new next-door-handstanding-boy-neighbor while you have to go away on vacation.

  Surprise Presents

  That night Mom said she had some surprise presents for me if I promised to be extra good on the drive to Chicago and not complainy when we drove by stuff that looked cool but didn't stop and get out of the car to see it. Stuff like a toothpick castle, a fairy land, a giant petrified forest, or even the world's largest sandwich. "Can I complain on the way back?" I asked. "No, it's a two-way deal," said Mom, and she held out a big sparkly bag with polka-dot tissue paper popping out the top. It's hard to say, "No deal," when you are looking at a bag filled with presents. So I said, "Okay, I promise."

  The bag was filled with tons of great things, but the most excellent thing was the Supergirl underwear. It was exactly what I had always wanted, and the same kind that the girl on Unlikely Heroes wore when she rescued a grown-up man from drowning! I called Mimi up on the phone to tell her right away, and then I held them up at my bedroom window so she could look out her bedroom window and see them.

  That's when I remembered that my window and Mimi's window would always be across from each other, and this could never happen with Max's window unless Mimi's whole house was turned completely around, back to front. Turning a house around is not easy and would probably not happen, because Mimi's dad is very careful and full of worry about his lawn all the time. He would not be excited about a house project that would ruin his grass. And if you turned a whole huge house around, your lawn would be 100 percent turned into mud.

  TURNING MIMI'S HOUSE AROUND

  The Drive to Chicago

  We drove for a while and then Mom told Dad we had to stop for dinner or she was going to faint with hunger. I had pizza and then pie and ice cream, but mostly ice cream, for dessert. When we got back in the car it was dark, which made it really hard to see anything interesting. It is hard not to think about stuff in your head when there is nothing else to do, like look out the window. I had two big thoughts:

  1 Was this vacation really going to be fun?

  2 Was something important going to happen back at home while I was gone?

  These are not the most perfect kinds of things to be thinking right before you fall asleep, but it is what happened. When I woke up it was morning and we were driving right into the big city of Chicago.

  The Welcome to Chicago sign would be even cooler if it had your name on it.

  Grandma lives right near the middle of the city. If I were older, Dad said it would only take me fifteen minutes to ride my bike from Grandma's house right to the entrance of the tallest building in the whole United States. Mom would never in a million years let me ride my bike on the road, so I would have to do it in secret. The tallest building is called the Sears Tower, and from the top you can see everything in Chicago, because Chicago's ground is as flat as a pancake.

  Promise

  Right before we got to Grandma's house Mom asked Dad to park the car on the side of the road so she could talk to me without worrying about if we were going in the right direction or not. She said three things:

  1 "This move is going to be hard for Grandma, so please try to be cheerful."

  2 "If Grandma gives you something to keep, just take it and say thank you, even if you don't want it. We can throw it away later."

  3 "Don't say anything about Grandma's new apartment building, Shady Grove, unless the something you are going to say is a nice thing."

  Then Mom said, "Do you promise?" and I said, "Yes, I promise."

  Dad started up the car and we drove two more blocks until we got to Grandma's house. Then we drove around and around and around, and finally we had to park in the same spot where Mom had made the promise talk because there weren't any other places to park.

  It's really hard to find a parking spot in Grandma's neighborhood because lots of people like to go to there. There are amazing stores and restaurants all over the place.

  MAP OF WHERE THE AMAZING THINGS ARE THAT I KNOW ABOUT

  X Grandma's house.

  1 Letizia's ice cream store/bakery (they have yummy everything!).

  2 Store called Sparkly (everything in the whole store has sparkles on it). If you liked sparkles, then you would be crazy with joy the second you walked inside.

  3 Lulu's Supply Shack—I am actually allowed to walk to this store by myself and buy stuff. They have normal things like cereal, milk, and candies.

  4 Store that sells crazy lamps. It's fun to look in here even if you don't want to buy anything.

  5 Comic book store—Grandma never lets me go in there because she said they only sell comics for grownups. It's on my list for when I'm grown up—I'm definitely going to go back there and go inside.

  6 Coffee shop that has the best doughnuts in the whole world, even better than the doughnuts made in the doughnut store.

  7 Art store. This is where I am sometimes allowed to buy art supplies when mine are all used up. If I were a famous artist I would for sure shop in here.

  Two blocks is a long way to go if you have to carry lots of stuff, so it was good that we had the kind of suitcases with wheels. On the last block Mom raced me, but I won, so I got the first hug from the lady at the finish line. Of course it was Grandma.

  My Favorite Thing About Grandma

  Grandma always tells the truth, even if it could kind of hurt your feelings, which you might think is not good, but really it's okay, because she is not doing it to be mean. She just can't help it. She doesn't know how to tell a lie, even a teeny-tiny mini one. She says, "I've got truth serum in my veins—that's just how I was made."

  It's kind of like my empathy power: sometimes it's a good power to have and sometimes it's not, but you can't pick and choose when you want it, because it's with you 100 percent of your whole life, which means always! And you have to live with it forever and let it be part of you, just like if you had big feet, stick-out ears, or long monkey arms. Except it is invisible, which is probably better, because people can't look at you and see it right away.

  BIG FEET

  STICK-OUT EARS

  LONG MONKEY ARMS

  The Second Thing Gra
ndma Said

  The first thing Grandma said was "I'm so happy to see all of you." The second thing Grandma said was "I can't wait to move!" "Really?" asked Mom. "Really!" said Grandma, and I believed her because of the not lying power, but Mom, who has known Grandma her whole entire life, didn't seem sure. "Come on, I have a picnic in the backyard," said Grandma. "Race you," I yelled, but it really wasn't fair, because the first one through Grandma's side gate is always going to be the winner, and I was already there.

  Things that are Good About Picnics

  Picnic food

  Sitting outside

  Cool air

  Listening to the city

  Things that are Bad About Picnics

  Ants

  We had to move the picnic inside because Grandma's backyard is right on top of a giant underground ant farm. Grandma said they moved in last year and now the ant army is the biggest one she has ever seen. She said they probably can't wait until she leaves so that they can take over her house too! I especially don't like the big black ones. For some reason it's easier to squish a little ant than a big one. Grandma's ants were little, and she promised me that they did not go upstairs to where the bedrooms were. That was good news, because I did not want to worry about eating one when I was asleep. Not many people know this, but sleeping people eat bugs all the time. The bugs crawl into their mouth and then the sleeping people just swallow them up by accident. It's disgusting!

  Mostly this happens with little bugs.

  What we didn't know About Grandma

  Mom was surprised, Dad was surprised, and I was surprised. Grandma has a new friend who is a man, and he is a great packer! Almost everything in Grandma's whole house was in a box with a colored label on it and very nice printing on the label. Grandma doesn't like to pack, which is why Mom and Dad brought their work gloves and lots of markers and tape, but now they didn't need any of that stuff. Grandma told Mom and Dad that they should go out for dinner and not to worry about us because she had a pizza ready to pop in the oven. She was getting rid of them so we could have some special time together, which I was happy about. I love having Grandma all for me. Mom loved the idea too, but first she said I had to do my schoolwork while she asked Grandma some questions.

  These were Grandma's answers:

  "Two months ago."

  "At the grocery store near the canned tomatoes."

  "Roger Costello."

  "Nice-looking, nice smile."

  "Shady Grove."

  "Nine grandchildren."

  "It's just him and Captain Furry."

  From where I was sitting I could only hear Grandma's part of the talking, but it wasn't very hard to figure out what most of the questions were. The Captain Furry one was a mystery, though.

  CAPTAIN FURRY?

  What's so Great About Trendy?

  Mom said she and Dad were going to go somewhere fun and trendy. So I said, "What's so great about trendy?" Mom said that trendy was another word for popular, and that trendy restaurants were usually crowded with people who were famous, wished they were famous, or were hoping to see someone famous. She said there were at least ten trendy restaurants right near Grandma's house. After they left, Grandma said she didn't know anything about trendy but she knew what she liked, and what she was going to like after our pizza dinner was some tasty Italian ice cream. I said I was going to like that too!

  What we Talked About at Dinner

  I told Grandma all about still being called Just Grace, all about Mimi and Max, and all about Mr. Frank and the Big Meanie. It was a lot of stuff to tell, and it lasted from the first bite of pizza all through the walk to the bakery/ice cream store and right up until we were picking out our favorite flavors for dessert.

  MY FAVORITES

  GRANDMA'S FAVORITES

  What Grandma Said

  "The most important thing," said Grandma, "is to not be afraid of change. And sometimes change can be tricky. What looks like a bad change might really turn out to be a good change. It's always hard to tell at first—you have to let it sit for a while and see what happens." And then she said that being called Just Grace seemed a lot like a bad change and she was sorry about that. I was hoping she would tell me how to fix it, but she said she didn't know everything even though she had been around for a long time and was pretty old. I made a list in my head but I couldn't see how any of my bad changes were going to turn out to be good.

  Mr. Frank calling me Just Grace.

  Mimi becoming best friends with Max.

  The Big Meanie pretending to have empathy feelings and hating me at the same time.

  What Would have Been Great

  I know that this could never happen in real life, but I was hoping that Grandma would say, "I have just the thing to fix your problem," and then we'd go upstairs into her attic and she would give me a book with magic spells, a hypnotism ring, or some kind of special potion in a bottle, and then I would just follow some directions and everything could turn out exactly how I wanted.

  What Grandma Gave Me

  Some promises are harder to keep than other promises, but the promise to pretend to like what Grandma gave me was not even needed at all, because Grandma only gave me great stuff that I really for truly liked. Everything was in a box with my name scribbled in Grandma's messy handwriting on the side. I was glad that she made the box all by herself and didn't let her new packer man friend do it. My favorite thing in the whole box was Grandma's very own special silver heart locket on a chain. She said I could put a special picture in it and no one but me would know about it.

  LOCKET GRANDMA GAVE ME

  There was one special memory thing in the box. It was a poster I made for Grandma's dog Barnaby the time he ran after a squirrel and got lost by accident. We made sixty copies and put them everywhere we could think of until someone called and said he found him eating pizza out of a garbage can behind his house. Barnaby loved pizza crusts, which was good for me because that is the only part of the pizza I don't like. He died two years ago, and even though Grandma says she still misses him, she always smiles and laughs when we talk about him. She says it's because Barnaby made her days happy, which is exactly the perfect way for a pet to be.

  The other stuff in the box was two wooden treasure boxes, a red velvet pillow with a map of Arizona sewn on the front of it, Mom's vest with all her Girl Scout badges, five big balls of colored string, a not real leopard skin purse—real leopard skin would be gross for me because I love animals—a scrapbook album from Grandma's trip to New York when she was fifteen, lots of pens with little things inside them that moved, and a Supergirl T-shirt. The T-shirt was new and not an old thing because Grandma said they didn't have Supergirls when she was young.

  Trendy Restaurant

  Mom and Dad were very excited about their dinner. They saw one famous person, the man who used to do the weather on the TV news. Plus they said the food was spicy and very good, which means I would not have liked it one bit. Mom said the walls of the restaurant were painted red and the windows had big velvety curtains on them. It sounded a lot like Augustine Dupre's living room, which would be a very nice place to eat dinner if you were not worried about spilling something on her white carpet. Dad said the restaurant did not have a white carpet on the floor, which was probably a good idea if you don't make people take their shoes off before they eat. Augustine Dupre has a no-shoe rule if you want to walk on her carpet; this is how she makes it stay nice and clean.

  Super me

  Today I was Supergirl from my insides, which no one could see, to my outsides. I wore my new Supergirl underwear and my new Supergirl T-shirt both at the same time. The moving people got to the house really early and started putting everything with a red label on it into the truck. Grandma's packer friend was super good at organizing. He even made a color chart that explained all about the labels.

  Green label means ... donate it to someone needy, who might like it even if Grandma or no one in our family wants it anymore.

  Red label means .
.. Grandma is keeping it with her and taking it to her new Shady Grove apartment.

  Yellow label means ... it goes in the garbage.