Bravo, Grace!

by Mary Hoffman

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Copyright Page

  Grace Goes Through the Gate

  Grace Goes Up the Aisle

  Grace in Memory Lane

  Grace and the Gingerbread House

  Five Heads Are Better than One

  Grace and the Bombshell

  Grace and the Right Story

  Bravo, Grace!

  One More Present

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  Fading friendships?

  Now that she was aware of all the other changes, Grace was noticing that the gang spent less time together at school. They all still sat together at lunchtime, but often Kester and Raj went off to play soccer with Julio and Jason, and now they didn’t usually ask the girls to join them.

  Grace and Maria were quite good at soccer, though Crishell had never played with them much. But during all the wedding conversations, they’d gotten out of the habit of playing with the boys. Grace realized that she was more often in a group of girls now, with Crishell and Maria and often La Tasha and Sophie as well, while Kester and Raj spent time with other boys. The gang still came around to Grace’s on the weekend, but now she wondered how long that would last.

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  For Janetta

  PUFFIN BOOKS

  Published by the Penguin Group

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  First published in Great Britain by Frances Lincoln Children’s Books, 2005

  Published by Puffin Books, a division of Penguin Young Readers Group, 2011

  Bravo, Grace! copyright © Frances Lincoln Limited, 2005

  Text copyright © Mary Hoffman, 2005

  Illustrations copyright © June Allan, 2005

  All rights reserved

  CIP DATA IS AVAILABLE

  ISBN : 978-1-101-55258-2

  Set in Goudy Old Style

  The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party Web sites or their content.

  ISBN : 978-1-101-55258-2

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  Grace is a girl who loves stories. The first story about her was Amazing Grace, where she learned from her nana that she could be and do anything she wanted. Stories often help Grace to decide what to do and be, though sometimes the traditional ones confuse her, as in Grace and Family, where she decided to write her own story to make her feel better about her father’s new family in The Gambia. That helped her to accept Jatou, her stepmother, and her half siblings, Neneh and Bakary.

  Grace returned in two storybooks of her own— Starring Grace and Encore, Grace!—in which her life with her friends and family began to change. Now here are nine more stories about Grace’s gang, the changing friendships, her ma’s marriage to Vincent, their new living arrangements, and in some ways the biggest change of all. And, of course, there are stories involving stories. . . .

  Grace Goes Through the Gate

  “How can a room as small as mine have so much stuff in it?” demanded Grace.

  It was the busiest New Year that she had ever known. Normally, just starting a new school term without her best friend Aimee would have been huge enough, but now…

  “I thought we had plenty of changes last year,” she told Nana, as they went through Grace’s things, “but this is the biggest change of all.”

  “Don’t worry about it, honey,” said Nana. “You’ll soon settle down to your new routine when we’ve got everything sorted out at the house.”

  But Grace wasn’t really worried; it was all pretty exciting. They were getting organized to move. At least, Grace and Ma were. Nana was staying put. If anyone had told Grace a year ago that she and Ma would move out of their garden apartment, leaving Nana behind, she would never have believed them. For as long as Grace could remember, they had all lived together in that apartment.

  “It wasn’t always this way,” Ma tried to explain. “When we lived here with your papa, Nana wasn’t with us. She moved in after Grandpa died and your papa went away.”

  Grace couldn’t remember any of that and she couldn’t remember Grandpa either. She couldn’t remember the Papa of those days, who was married to Ma but moved out when Grace was still little. But she knew the Papa of now, because she had visited him in The Gambia with his new family: his wife, Jatou, and their children, Neneh and Bakary. Now, they wrote to each other every month and spoke on the phone once a week. It wasn’t as good as having him around all the time, but it was better than knowing him just from old photos.

  Grace’s ma was getting married again and her new husband, Vincent, would be moving in with them. The little apartment would have been bursting at the seams if Nana hadn’t come up with a solution. The house that Ma and Grace and Vince were moving into was really Nana’s and it was just over the garden fence from the apartment. It used to belong to Grace’s old friend, Mrs. Myerson, who had died that winter and left it to Nana.

  “It was a surprise to me when Gerda’s lawyer told me about the house,” Nana said. “I never dreamed I’d own a house of my own—let alone at my age.”

  “But you were very kind to Mrs. Myerson,” said Grace. Secretly, she wondered what it would be like moving in there. The house was dark and had bars on all the windows. When Grace and her friends first visited it, they thought it must be haunted. But both Ma and Nana told her it would be all right.

  “Mrs. Myerson had no family left,” said Ma, coming in with a pile of ironing. She sat down on Grace’s bed. “I think Nana and you and your friends were like a family to her those last few months.”

  Since Christmas, when Vince had asked Ma to marry him and Nana had told them about Mrs. Myerson’s house, they had talked about it a lot.

  “Just think, Grace,” Nana often said. “You can have two bedrooms, one here and one there. And whenever you want, you can come and spend the night here, just like before.”

  Grace liked that idea. She had a very tiny bedroom in the apartment and now she could have a much bigger one and choose exactly how to decorate it.

  “We will only be just across the garden from Nana,” said Ma, smoothing Grace’s newly ironed bedsheets. “You’ll still see her every day.”

  Grace heard the sound of a key in the door and knew that meant Vince had arrived. Ma smiled and jumped up, leaving the ironing in an untidy heap. Grace and Nana exchanged looks; they couldn’t remember seeing Ma so happy.

  When they went downstairs, they found Vince sitting on the sofa drinking coffee with Ma. He was dressed in jeans and a checkered shirt and had brought a toolbox with him. Propped up against the sofa was a large wooden gate.

  Grace’s eyes widened. “What’s that for?” she asked.

  “It’s your magic gateway,” said Vince, win
king. “It will let you slip between your old and new lives in seconds.”

  Grace liked the sound of that. She went out into the garden with the grown-ups to watch Vince work. “You can help, if you like, Grace,” he said. “I’ll need someone to hand me screws and things.”

  By the time Grace’s friends arrived, the gate was finished and where there had been a high fence to scramble over, there was now just a latch and a push between the two gardens.

  “Wow!” said Maria. “You’ll be able to get from one home to another so easily. I have to cross town on two buses to see my dad.”

  “But that’s because your parents are divorced,” said Crishell. “Like mine. They don’t want to live close together, like Grace’s family.”

  “I bet my ma and papa live further apart than any other divorced parents,” said Grace. “They live on different continents, not just different streets.”

  “Who’s talking about divorce?” said Nana, coming out with a tray of warm shortbread she had just made. “Grace’s ma is getting married and that’s what this gate is all about—keeping the family together, not breaking it apart.”

  “I’m not sure I like it as much as climbing over the fence to Mrs. Myerson’s,” said Kester, his mouth full of shortbread. “That made it more of an adventure.”

  “Well, adventure or not,” said Vince, “I can tell you it’s going to make life a lot easier coming and going while we get the old house fixed up.”

  He ceremoniously opened the new gate and showed them all through. Nana led the way, with a bunch of keys. They all walked across the grass, followed by Paw-Paw the cat, to the back door of their old friend’s house.

  Nana unlocked it and pulled it open, letting the pale winter sunlight in. The house had a sad and quiet feeling and it was hard for Grace to imagine living there.

  “Do you think it will ever feel like home?” she whispered to Nana.

  “ ’Course it will,” said Vince. “Just you wait till we’ve fixed it up. And remember, you’ve already chosen your room on the second floor. Imagine actually climbing stairs up to bed—you haven’t done that before, have you?”

  That made Grace think of all the games she could play, using the stairs as steps in a tower, or ladders up walls, or pirate-ship rigging.

  One of today’s jobs was going to be getting the bars off all the windows and Kester and Maria were excited to help Vince do it. Ma and Nana were measuring for new curtains in all the rooms. Crishell and Raj were going to make a list of all Mrs. Myerson’s furniture and Grace was going to decide what she wanted to do with her room.

  She sat on the iron bed on the stiff, shiny blue bedspread that Nana called a “counterpane,” with Paw-Paw on her lap, looking around the strange room. There was a dark wooden chest of drawers with a mirror in three sections on top of it and a large heavy wardrobe in the corner. The walls were a rather dirty pale blue-green and there were gray prints of old castles in Germany, which Grace rather liked. But she couldn’t imagine this being her own bedroom. It was so grown-up.

  There was a knock at the door and Raj and Crishell came in. Crishell had a very efficient-looking clipboard and was writing down all the furniture as Raj described it, and they had already finished downstairs. Now they looked round Grace’s new room.

  “More dark wood,” said Raj. “It’s a bit gloomy, isn’t it?”

  “It will look a lot lighter when the bars are off,” said Crishell, seeing that Grace looked a bit worried. “And you can paint it bright colors too, can’t you, Grace?”

  Grace nodded. “I can choose. And I don’t have to keep any of the furniture I don’t want.”

  “I wonder what Mrs. Myerson used this room for,” said Raj. The gang never used to come upstairs when they visited the old lady and they were a bit overwhelmed by the big bedrooms and their old-fashioned furniture. Vince and Grace’s ma were going to have Mrs. Myerson’s old room and there would still be two to spare—plenty of room for Nana to visit.

  “Didn’t she live on her own?” asked Crishell, who wasn’t part of the gang until after the old lady died.

  “Yes,” said Grace. “She got the house from her uncle, who died years ago. I expect most of this stuff was his.”

  Ma and Nana came in then with their tape measures.

  “What kind of curtains would you like, Grace?” asked Ma. “Have you decided on a color yet?”

  “I like purple best,” said Grace.

  “You can’t have purple on the walls, though, Grace,” said Ma. “It’d drive you crazy within a week.”

  Kester and Vince and Maria were coming in with the toolbox; they had reached Grace’s room on their round of removing window bars.

  “I like purple myself,” said Vince. “It would take a lot of purple to make me crazy.”

  “Can I make a suggestion?” asked Crishell. “If you had a light matching color on the walls, like lavender, you could have real purple in the curtains and that wouldn’t be so hard to change if you got tired of it.”

  “Good idea,” said Vince. “Now let’s get those bars down.”

  “Why did she have so many bars and locks?” asked Crishell, as the metal grill came away, letting the sun in.

  “Gerda Myerson was afraid,” said Nana, shaking her head. “She had a terrible time during the war in Germany. Her whole family was wiped out by the Nazis and she was the only one left. When her uncle died, she had the house barred up to make her feel safe.”

  “Do you think she’d mind about all the changes we’re making?” asked Grace.

  “No,” said Ma. “I think she’d be pleased to have young people living here again. You know how she liked you children.”

  Grace looked around “her” room, which was now rather full of people: all five gang members, Ma, Nana and Vince. Even Paw-Paw seemed quite at home. She closed her eyes and tried to imagine it transformed with the bunk beds Ma had promised her, bright walls and new curtains.

  It took all term, but by the Easter holidays Mrs. Myerson’s house was transformed. All the window bars were down and there was only the normal amount of locks and bolts to keep a house secure. Nana took a big chest of drawers from Mrs. Myerson’s old bedroom, one of the triple mirrors and a fancy umbrella stand from the hall. All the other furniture was sold to an antique shop, and with the money Nana bought a new sofa for the old apartment and a new washing machine and fridge for the house.

  Every room was now painted and all the old carpets cleaned. Grace’s room had lavender walls and pine bunk beds, a chest of drawers and a small desk. There were purple and white striped curtains at the window and duvet covers made of the same material. In the corner, where the big wardrobe used to be, was a clothes bar with a canvas cover. There were bookshelves (put up by Vince) and a full-length mirror and a brightly colored rug on the clean, gray carpet.

  Everything smelled fresh and new; the only things left from the old room were the castle prints on the wall, which were now in new white frames. Apart from the fact that it was very tidy, it looked like a young girl’s room. Crishell had helped a lot.

  “And there’s plenty of space for you to have someone to stay,” pointed out Ma, for the umpteenth time.

  Grace knew that Ma and Vince had done more for her room than any other. They still hadn’t gotten new curtains up anywhere but the living room, and she was the only one whose bookshelves had been put up. She knew how keen they were for her to like it, and she did.

  “It’s great,” she said. “I can’t wait to show it to Aimee. When can she come and stay?”

  “Well,” said Ma. “I’ve already had a word with Carol about that. How would you like Aimee to come and stay here with you and Nana while Vince and I are on our honeymoon?”

  “Great!” said Grace, but it reminded her how close the wedding was. Only a week away!

  In the meantime, moving day arrived. On the weekend, the whole gang came around to help, together with Maria’s mom’s boyfriend and two friends of Vince’s from work. There was no moving truck
because the two homes were so close together, but that made it even harder work. The four men carried all the furniture that was moving from the apartment to the house and the heaviest boxes.

  Kester could carry heavy boxes too and all the children helped with the many, many bags and heaps of things. It was a cold, crisp day but soon everyone was sweating and pulling off their coats and woolly sweaters.

  “Your room looks as if a hurricane has hit it,” Maria said to Grace.

  “It’s because I can’t decide what to take to the new house and what to leave behind,” said Grace. “I was going to take all my books but the shelves here look so bare without them.”

  “Well, put some back,” said Crishell.

  “Shall I take all my Harry Potters and Jackie Wilsons?” asked Grace, sitting in the middle of a heap of books. “Suppose I come back here for the night and want to read one of them again?”

  “Then you can bring it with you, can’t you?” said Maria.

  “Yes, and you’ll be close enough to your house to go back and get anything you forget,” said Crishell.

  Both girls had rooms they used in their father’s new homes, so they were much more experienced at this kind of thing than Grace. In the end, she put all her fairy tales and picture books back on the shelves and packed all the longer storybooks in cardboard boxes. But there were still all the clothes and soft toys and decorations. It took all day Saturday and even then, they weren’t ready to sleep in the new house.

  Grace went to bed in her old room that night, missing the things that had already been taken to the house. She hugged her old blue rabbit and then felt sad that she had decided not to take him with her. Or the pink teddy. Or the cuddling koalas velcroed together.