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  WHAT WAS LUCKY

  It was lucky that Mimi was not like me and drawing flyers when Miss Lois was teaching the class about how to use the compass. She had been paying 100 percent attention, and she knew exactly how to use it. I gave her the compass and I took the instructions. At first I thought everyone would be rushing off to the same place, but it didn’t work that way—all of our instructions were different. That was good and bad. Good because there was no cheating by just following someone else, but bad because we couldn’t tell if we were winning or not.

  Mimi was fantastic with the compass. She said the only tricky part was holding it still. When we finished the last clue, we were standing right in front of a tree. Mimi saw the paper before I did. It was just above our heads wrapped around a branch. She pulled it off and we raced back to where Miss Lois was standing. As soon as we started running I knew that we were not going to win. There were two other teams running back too, and they were closer to Miss Lois than we were. We tried to run faster, but we couldn’t beat them. We came in third place.

  When we handed in our treasure paper, Miss Lois told us that she had changed her mind. “Everyone who finishes can have a treat,” she said. This was great news, and almost everyone was happy about it.

  After the treasure hunt Miss Lois made us all promise two things:

  We would not tell the other teams about what we had done until everyone had had their turn.

  We would work quietly on our projects in the library.

  Mostly we had to promise the last thing because Miss Lois knew that some kids get wild and crazy after they eat candy, and she didn’t want to get in trouble from the librarian.

  WHAT WAS NOT HARD AND SURPRISINGLY KIND OF FUN

  Keeping the promises to Miss Lois. Sometimes it’s fun to have a secret, especially if it is not the kind of secret that is going to get you into trouble.

  The research stuff was pretty easy. Mimi’s fact was that South America has the world’s largest rainforest and it is home to more than two and a half MILLION different kinds of bugs. After she told me that, I was pretty sure about one thing.

  My fact was that South America has the world’s highest waterfall. It’s called Santo Del Angel Falls and is 3,212 feet high. That’s taller than three Eiffel Towers standing together on top of each other. It’s pretty had to imagine what that would look like. It almost made me want to go to South America to see it, but then I remembered the bugs. If millions of bugs stood on each other’s shoulders they’d be pretty tall too, and that many bugs I did not want to see.

  Our last fact was that the Andes mountain range is more than four thousand miles long. That’s a lot of mountains.

  WHAT I WAS SURPRISED TO FIND OUT

  After school Mimi and I went to go and look at the recycling bin outside the art room, but we couldn’t find it—it was gone. There was a recycling bin there, but it was the wrong one—the number on the side was not 083, but was 054. Right away Mimi wanted to walk around the school and look for the missing one. I was hoping it would be gone for good, but we found it outside the teachers’ lunchroom. Mr. Woods was tricky in moving it around, but he wasn’t tricky enough. If we could find it, other kids would too.

  WHAT IS NOT VERY EXCITING

  Staring at a recycling container when nothing is happening. After a few minutes of looking, we decided to go home. Mimi was going to come over and work with me on our earth project, but she was going to wait until I had played with Mr. Scruffers first. Mimi likes calm dogs much better than excited dogs.

  EARTH PRESENTATIONS

  For our earth projects Miss Lois wanted us to write out the facts in nice sentences and add pictures. Some kids complained about that, but Mimi and I like projects. I drew a picture of the world’s largest waterfall and Mimi drew a picture of the Andes Mountains. When we got to the Amazon forest part of the project, Mimi surprised me. Sometimes even if you aren’t crazy about an idea you can still agree to do it.

  I’m good at making fancy letters, so Mimi said I should be the one to write the title of our project on our board.

  WHAT LOOKED REALLY GREAT FOR ABOUT TWO SECONDS, UNTIL I NOTICED THE HUGE MISTAKE

  I had spelled the word facts wrong! It was a disaster because everything else was already stuck on the board.

  It’s not a good feeling to be excited and proud about something and then find out the next second that you made a huge mistake. The only lucky part of the whole thing was that Mimi was not mad about it. Mimi is more of a problem solver than a get-mad-because-there-is-a-problem type of person. She looked at it for a second and scrunched up her nose. “Glue a piece of paper on top of the mistake,” she said. That was all it took—suddenly I knew exactly what to do. Sometimes easy answers are not easy to see. I was lucky that Mimi was there to help me.

  The best thing about Mimi’s idea was that after I fixed the title, it looked even better than before. Sometimes that can happen with mistakes.

  THE NEW THING I WAS SUDDENLY THINKING ABOUT AFTER MIMI LEFT

  That simple ideas are sometimes better than complicated ideas.

  WHAT MY BRAIN THOUGHT OF

  Even though the good deed thing was working, I knew it still wasn’t right. A happy ghost is still a ghost, and to make everything right I needed the ghost to be gone, and gone forever!

  THE SPECIAL GUEST

  Mimi and I had to carry our project and Marvin to school for our presentation. It was not easy to carry all that stuff without dropping anything. It made me wonder if Marvin was worried.

  TWO LUCKY THINGS

  I’m not usually excited to see Sammy first thing in the morning, but today things were different. I couldn’t wait to get to school and find him. I made Mimi walk faster than usual, but I was lucky—she didn’t ask why. When we got to school she saw Grace F. on the playground and wanted to stop and talk with her. That was lucky again, because now I could go and find Sammy by myself.

  Sammy was not very hard to find. His favorite jacket is bright orange. When someone is wearing a bright orange jacket, he is easy to see.

  THE NOTE

  Right after I gave Sammy the note he said, “That’s too bad—I was kind of getting to like the ghost, but Mr. Woods will be happy.” I thought about what he said, but forced myself to shake my head. I was kind of liking the ghost too, but it was wrong to keep the lie going. We had to get rid of it.

  Sammy took the note and promised he would give it to Mr. Woods. I made him put his hand over his heart when he promised, because after what he’d just said, I didn’t want him changing his mind.

  WHAT THE NOTE SAID

  THE SURPRISE IN MISS LOIS’S CLASS

  After we all were sitting in our seats, Miss Lois said, “I have a special treat for you. Our surprise guest is here.” Of course instantly everyone was paying attention. What she said next was not what anyone was expecting. “Our guest is the earth,” said Miss Lois. The earth is not a normal guest. Miss Lois went over to the door and opened it, and in walked Mr. Frank dressed up like the earth.

  At first everyone was too surprised to speak, but then a few seconds later, we all jumped out of our seats and ran up to him. It was double love for me.

  Mr. Frank is everyone’s favorite almost-teacher. We all know him because he used to be the student teacher in our classroom and now he is studying to get his teaching certificate. Once he is a real teacher everyone is hoping he will come back and teach us again. It was great to see him. Miss Lois was right—he was an excellent surprise. After everyone had talked to him for a few minutes, Miss Lois made us all sit down again. She loves the earth, so seeing Mr. Frank in the earth costume was probably helping her to be in a good mood. When we were all quiet, she said, “Mr. Frank is going to help us take a mini quiz about the world.” Usually no one likes quizzes, but a quiz with your favorite teacher dressed up as the earth is not a normal quiz. Having the earth in your classroom makes it a lot more exciting. Miss Lois gave out the test papers, and then we started.

  WHAT WAS HAR
D

  It was hard to be serious and not laugh while we were taking the test. I kept imagining that it would be funny if Mr. Frank started dancing. A dancing earth is something that I’d like to see.

  After the quiz Mr. Frank came around and we had to tell him the facts we had learned for our assignment. If we got them right and did a good job, he gave us a pencil and a sticker. Pretty much everyone did a good job except for Owen 1 and Robert Walters. They got mixed up and did their project on the wrong continent. Instead of finding facts for Asia, they found them for Australia. At first I though Miss Lois was going to be mad, but she surprised me and said it was okay. They were probably the most lucky that Mr. Frank was there to help her be in a good mood.

  WHAT I CAN’T WAIT TO SEE

  Right before lunch Miss Lois had us all stand with Mr. Frank so she could take a photo, and the best part is that we are each going to get a copy to put in our earth books to keep. Mimi and I got a really good spot right next to him on the South America side. That was extra lucky, because that’s what our project was about.

  MY SURPRISE AT LUNCH

  It wasn’t as fancy as Sunni’s bento lunches, but I loved it. Sometimes even just a little surprise can seem huge when you are 100 percent not expecting it.

  WHAT HAPPENED AT LUNCH

  After we finished eating, Mimi wanted to go and look for the recycling bin. I followed her through every hall in the school, but we couldn’t find it. “It’s gone,” said Mimi. She sounded disappointed, but I wasn’t. I was the exact opposite, and that was because we were standing in front of the principal’s office right in front of a recycling bin with the number 088 on it.

  I thought Mimi would say something else about the recycling bin, but she didn’t. Instead she changed the subject and said, “Race you to the front doors.” We aren’t allowed to run in school, but no one was around, so I nodded. “Three, two, one,” said Mimi, and then we took off. I’m usually faster than Mimi, but I let her win. It was one of those things that made her happy and me happy both at the same time.

  WHAT IS HARD TO DO

  It’s hard to be brave, especially if being brave will get you into trouble, but sometimes it’s worth taking a chance. When I was walking home with Mimi and Marvin, I made a list of all the things I had been brave about. There were only two things on the list, the beetle and the raccoobat.

  WHAT IS BETTER THAN A LIST WITH TWO BRAVE THINGS ON IT

  A list with three brave things, so I took a big breath and said...

  After I said it, I closed my eyes and tried not to look at Mimi. She was quiet and not saying anything, so finally I opened my eyes to see what was going on.

  WHAT MIMI’S FACE DID NOT LOOK LIKE

  WHAT MIMI’S FACE LOOKED LIKE

  I couldn’t believe it. She wasn’t mad, and she didn’t look one bit surprised. “I thought so,” said Mimi. “I don’t believe in ghosts, plus you’re not a very good liar.” “I’m not?” I asked. Mimi shook her head. This was good news. I didn’t want to be a good liar. In fact, I wanted to be the worst liar in the whole world. If there was a trophy for that, I wanted to win it.

  Thinking about the trophy made me imagine some other imaginary trophies. Life isn’t fair—if it was there would be trophies for a lot more things than sports and spelling tests.

  For the whole rest of the walk home, Mimi and I talked about the lie and the ghost. Some of it made me uncomfortable, but some of it was funny, too. When we got to my house there was only one thing I wanted to do: give a hug to my almost-like-a-sister best friend. That was my best idea.

  WHAT GRACE WILL BE THINKING ABOUT IN HER NEXT BOOK

  Visit www.hmhbooks.com to find all of the books in the Just Grace series.

  About the Author

  CHARISE MERICLE HARPER is the author and illustrator of many books for children, including the Just Grace series. In a starred review, Booklist called Just Grace “Hilarious,” and said, “The kids come alive in the story, and Harper enhances the comical goings-on with sparkling cartoon sketches. Give this to . . . anyone looking for a funny book.” Charise lives in Westchester County, New York. Visit her website at www.chariseharper.com and visit Just Grace’s website at www.justgracebooks.com, where you’ll find all sorts of fun things, including videos, quizzes, and information about all the Just Grace books.