Just Grace

by Charise Mericle Harper

  3

  Walking all over the neighborhood without telling Mom and Dad where I was going.

  This was the biggest get-in-trouble of all, and when they were saying it I wished I were invisible and could sneak away so I wouldn't have to hear how worried sick they said they would have been if they had known what I was doing, even though it was over and I was standing right in front of them, 100 percent perfectly fine. Making your parents worried sick is not a good feeling.

  4

  Dad said all the other things in one sentence, so that means that they were small troubles and nothing he was going to remember forever and ever until I was all grown up, like the other stuff. These things were taking the stamps without asking, spying on Mrs. Luther, and being a bad example to Mimi. I know that Mimi does not need me to help her be a bad example, but I did not say that right then because it was not a good way to get the trouble-talk to stop.

  STAMPS TALKING

  The almost worst part about the whole getting-in-trouble was that Dad said I had to walk over to Mrs. Luther's house and apologize for the postcards all over again, even though I already said I was sorry to her at school. Dad even came with me to make sure I did it right.

  MRS. LUTHER'S WITCH DRESS

  I was hoping and hoping that Mrs. Luther would not be home, but I was not lucky about that, because she answered the door in her rainbow witch dress. I said, "I'm really sorry about the postcards." And then Mrs. Luther said, "That's all right, dear. I suppose it's quite flattering that you went to so much trouble, isn't it?" Which was something I did not understand but I nodded "yes" because yes is mostly the right answer if you are confused by a grownup's question and the grownup is smiling when she asks you. If she is not smiling, then the answer is probably no.

  Then Mrs. Luther asked Dad if he had seen the postcards, and when he said no she went to get them. I asked Dad if I could go home, because I was standing there 100 percent sure that seeing the postcards was going to make him all mad again. He said, "You are not to move," which means, "No, you cannot go home," but it does not mean I have to be perfectly like a statue still.

  Dad Is Not So Mad

  Dad and Mrs. Luther talked, and talked, and talked about the postcards and how wonderful they looked. Dad said he could not believe that it was not Crinkles standing in the shopping cart. I was trying not to smile, so I looked at the ground and Mrs. Luther's scary masks behind her. Not smiling is hard to do, but when you are in trouble it is better to stay looking sad so you won't have to get told again about how much trouble you are in. When you are in trouble, looking sad and unhappy for a pretty long time makes your parents think you are very, very, sorry.

  On the way home Dad said, "I'm very impressed with you, but that does not mean you are not in trouble and grounded for one week."

  Revenge

  Mrs. Luther is not friendly! Yesterday she was only pretending to be nice, because last night I am 100 percent sure that she sent some ghosts over to my house to punish me. I heard them when it was dark and I was sleeping. They were making scary spooky sounds right near my room! Mom and Dad let me sleep in their room on the big chair in the corner. I think Mom whispered to Dad that she heard something too, but she didn't make him put on his clothes to go outside and look around.

  SLEEPING CHAIR

  In the morning Dad looked in my room and outside my window but he couldn't find anything creepy or scary. The only thing he found was Sammy Stringer, who was poking around in our yard. Dad invited Sammy to come inside our house, which I could not believe! And it was right when I was eating breakfast, so Dad asked him if he wanted some pancakes too. I had to sit across from the disgusting Sammy Stringer and watch him eat food, at my very own breakfast table!

  Dad said, "Your friend Sammy here was outside looking for Mrs. Luther's cat. Maybe after breakfast you'd like to give him a hand? You seem to know all about that cat. It'd be nice to get that poor woman back her pet."

  Mom came downstairs and gave Sammy and me one of her super-big surprised looks. I was mad at Sammy Stringer for getting invited into my very own house and eating my very own pancakes right in front of me, so I said, "How come you're not wearing your red oven mitts?"

  HOW SAMMY SHOULD EAT PANCAKES

  I was not going to be nice, even if I did save him from trouble because I couldn't help but do it, and even if he was in my house.

  "I'm not going to touch the cat, I'm just going to find him. Mrs. Luther said if I could find him she would let me have that jar of lion poop for my collection and I could keep it forever."

  "Well, that's certainly a prize!" said Mom. I don't know how she could smile so nice and not make a disgusted face like I did—she is really good at pretend faces.

  "I'll tell you what," said Dad, pointing at me. "You two do a team-up and find that cat and I'll forget about the grounding. Deal?"

  "Deal!" said Sammy even though it was not his deal, because Dad was not even talking to him. He was talking to me.

  "Great," said Dad. And Sammy Stringer smiled at me with his mouth sort of open, so I could see all the bits of pancakes in between his teeth.

  Forced Partner

  Sammy wanted to do lots of talking and acting like we were friends on a special catfinding mission, but I told him right away the truth.

  I said, "Sammy Stringer, I am not going to be your friend. I am only doing this cat project with you because my dad says I have to."

  "Me too!" said Sammy, but then he wouldn't be quiet and kept asking me all about how I made the postcards, and if I was going to make any more. I don't think he has very good understanding skills!

  We looked all over Mrs. Luther's yard and all over my yard, and even in Mimi's yard, which did not make me happy, because I did not want Mimi to see me with Sammy Stringer, even if I was not talking and being friends with him. We looked and looked and looked, but we did not find Crinkles.

  I broke my don't-talk-to-Sammy rule and said, "I guess Crinkles ran away. Mrs. Luther is just too scary for him to be around."

  "She's not scary," said Sammy, and he was looking at me like he could not understand what I was saying. "She's really cool and interesting, plus, she makes the best cookies ever because they have ... Hey! What's that sound?"

  It was the ghosts—they were back and still scary-sounding, even in the daytime.

  WHAT THE GHOSTS PROBABLY LOOK LIKE

  "It's ghosts! She sent them over here to scare me!" My insides were shaking and I was pulling at Sammy's jacket, which I would not do if things were normal because I would never in a million years touch him on purpose.

  "She's mad because of the postcards. Come on! Let's get my dad!" But Sammy was not moving.

  "She's not mad. She's got the postcards on her fridge—she likes them. What, do you think she's a witch or something?" Sammy walked away from me and then I heard him yell! I couldn't understand what he was saying. My brain said, "Save Sammy or run for help?" I was running for help when he yelled again, and this time I heard him. He was yelling, "It's Crinkles!"

  Crinkles

  I ran around the corner of my house, right into Sammy's pointing finger. It was pointing right at me and he said, "You were the catnapper all along! You're a liar!!" Then he pointed at Augustine Dupre's window, which is on my house. Crinkles was looking out at us from inside, and he was making the horrible ghost noises.

  Forced Partner

  It took a long time to tell Sammy Stringer the truth of why Crinkles would be in my house by accident. A normal person would understand the reason really fast, but Sammy Stinger is not a normal person. Plus, he asked me a million hundred questions about every little thing, so the whole story took forever! At the end he believed me that I was not an on-purpose catnapper, which was good, because I was not in a hurry to get into even more trouble. We both looked at Crinkles and we each had our own thoughts, because we did not say anything. My thoughts were...

  1

  I cannot let Dad know where Crinkles is.

  2


  I must get Crinkles out of Augustine Dupre's apartment.

  3

  I only want to be grounded for a week ... not longer, even if things go really, really bad.

  I do not know what Sammy Stringer's thoughts were, but I bet they were not as many or as hard as mine.

  I had to trade promises with Sammy Stringer so that we could both, in the end, get the thing we wanted. It made us real partners instead of pretend partners like before, which was not so perfect if I thought about who I was a partner with, but much better than being alone if I thought about what I had to do next—it is not easy to be sneaky and careful at the same time if you are all alone.

  I tried to open the window, but the little latch thing had snapped closed and the window would not open even a sliver. Sammy said he would stay by the window and talk nice to Crinkles to keep him from howling while I did the sneaking-upstairs part to borrow the spare apartment key from Dad's desk. Sammy also had the job of keeping everyone away from the window in case someone was nosy and came too close. I was not sure if he could do these two things at the same time, but I had to trust him.

  Finding the exact key was not easy, because Dad keeps his entire key collection all together in one box and none of the keys has any writing on it to say what it is for. I had to take the whole box outside to Augustine Dupre's door and try almost every single one in the door.

  Sammy was nervous that Crinkles would jump through the door the minute I put the right key in, like he was an attack lion or something. If I liked talking to him I would have said, "Don't you think it's crazy to be scared of a cat when you think lions are so great?" but I didn't say that. I said, "He won't jump out. He's just a furry little cozy kittie."

  I don't know if Sammy could tell, but what I said was a little bit mean, but then, because I am not good at being mean, even if someone sort of deserves it like he does, I gave him the two oven mitts I brought down from upstairs so he could protect himself Sammy seemed a lot happier even though he looked completely silly

  Crinkles was crazy with joy when I opened the door. I told Sammy to stand guard outside until I locked Crinkles in the bathroom, which was not so easy to do because he kept sneaking out when I tried to push him in—plus, his claws were sharp and pointy

  Finally Crinkles was locked up so I could let Sammy in. "It stinks in here! Like a cat bathroom!" said Sammy. He made a really good disgusted face and was trying to hold his nose closed with the big oven mitties.

  He was right! It smelled terrible! This whole time while he was locked in, Crinkles was using Augustine Dupre's two fancy trees in pots as a cat toilet.

  "Yuck! It's disgusting! It's coming from there," I said, and I pointed at the plants. I 100 percent did not want to touch the smelly pots filled with Crinkles's cat poop, even though I liked Crinkles and he is a very nice cat.

  "I'll do it. I'll take them outside," said Sammy. "It's fair, because you have to do the carry-the-cat part." And then right there, even though I could hardly believe it, Sammy turned into the exact perfect-for-me partner. I hate poop and I love cats, and he hates cats and he loves poop. The chance of this perfect-partner-happening was probably something like .008 percent.

  While Sammy was outside I looked for some kind of perfumey stuff to spray around the apartment. Augustine Dupre is fancy, so she had lots of choices. I used a little bit of each one, and pretty soon I couldn't even tell if the cat smell was there anymore.

  Sammy said he wanted to wait outside the apartment when I went upstairs to take back the keys and the oven mitts. I don't think he wanted to be in the apartment alone with Crinkles, but he said it was because he didn't like the smell of the fancy perfumes.

  Cat Return

  Sammy walked in front of me and Crinkles just in case Crinkles got away. If Crinkles escaped me, which he was not going to do because I know how to hold a cat, Sammy thought Crinkles would run back to my house instead of in front to Mrs. Luther's house, and he did not want to be a person who was in Crinkles's way. This was perfect with me, because I did not want to be the first person Mrs. Luther saw when she opened her front door.

  This was not a problem, because even though Sammy was standing in front, the first thing Mrs. Luther saw was Crinkles. She told me to hold him tight and come in quick so she could close the door so he couldn't run off. Then she asked us to go into the scary mask room and sit down.

  I gave her Crinkles and he sat on Mrs. Luther's lap, giving her leg a massage with his claws. This is something cats do when they are happy, and she didn't seem to mind that his claws were sharp and pointy. Mrs. Luther wiped some probably happy tears away from her eyes and said, "So where did you find him?"

  I could not believe that Sammy and I had forgotten all about practicing this part.

  "Under some bushes near Grace's house."

  Yeah, Sammy! He remembered his promise, and he didn't even call me Just Grace like normal.

  "Well, thank you, Grace, and thank you, Sammy, for everything." And then Mrs. Luther winked at me and her smile didn't look exactly so much like a crocodile's. "Sammy, run into the kitchen and get some cookies for you and your friend. He loves my cookies, that Sammy," said Mrs. Luther, and she smiled again—definitely not crocodilelike this time either.

  Sammy was right. Mrs. Luther's cookies were amazing. They had real pieces of chocolate bar right in the cookies, which was such a great idea and one I had never seen or eaten before. The masks on the wall still looked kind of scary even up close, but they did not look scarier than they did from my room, which was not how I thought it was going to be. And there was my room, right through Mrs. Luther's window. She could see me as well as I could see her. This was not something I had thought about either.

  COOKIES

  MY BEDROOM WINDOW

  After the cookies—I got to eat three, which is a lot of cookies to eat at once if they are big ones—it was time to go home. Mrs. Luther locked Crinkles in the kitchen with some food, then came with Sammy and me to the door.

  Sammy was holding his jar of lion poop and was so happy, he couldn't stop smiling. Mrs. Luther had a new kind of cast that she could walk on, and it was not bright orange.

  "Green, my favorite color," she said, pointing at her cast. "Like spring. How about you?"

  "Brown," said Sammy. I was thinking it was probably because of poop, but Sammy said, "Like chocolate."

  Then it was my turn: "Green, like tree leaves." I couldn't believe that Mrs. Luther and I had the same favorite color and for almost the same exact reason.

  "Thank you both so much. I'm glad that you and Sammy are friends!"

  "We're not friends," said Sammy, and he smiled at me and I could see bits of chocolate cookie stuck in between his teeth.

  I said, "He's right, we're not," and I smiled back at him. But Mrs. Luther had closed her door so she could not hear us anyway.

  Then Sammy walked home and I walked home and I thought, Maybe he's got magnetic teeth. Maybe that's why food gets stuck there. And I don't know why, but that made it seem a lot less disgusting.

  WHAT GRACE WILL BE THINKING ABOUT IN HER NEXT BOOK

  1. That my teacher, Miss Lois, decided to call me Just Grace instead of my real name, which is Grace, without the Just part in front of it. This happened a while ago, but it still bugs me! Even just thinking about it can make me grumpy. Yesterday I drew a cartoon explaining how the whole thing happened. Sometimes drawing cartoons helps me feel better. I don't know why it works, but it does. I'm glad about that.

  2. That I finally got a real live pet, and it’s NOT a turtle or a fish! A while ago I had a big idea to make a pretend dog. I called him Chip-Up and I made him out of cardboard boxes. I took care of him like he was real. That way Mom and Dad could see how'responsible I was and then they’d let me get a real dog. Chip-Up looked super good, and even though I worked really hard to take care of him, Dad did not seem like he was ever going to turn into a dog-loving person. But one day he surprised me and did. The day I got Mr. Scruffers was the best day of my
entire life! A cardboard dog is okay, but a real dog is 100 percent better. And even though Mr. Scruffers is a girl dog and has a boy name, she is still amazing and perfect for me!

  3. That Augustine Dupre is getting married in two weeks and I didn't even know she had a boyfriend.

  4. That Augustine Dupre is having her wedding in the middle of Mrs. Luther’s backyard. Mrs. Luther is one of my next-door neighbors, so if I wanted to, I could spy on the wedding and see the whole thing right from my bedroom window. Of course I am 100 percent invited to the wedding, so the spying part doesn’t matter, but still even just knowing that I could do it is kind of cool.

  5. That I am NOT going to be the flower girl at Augustine Dupre’s wedding!

  1. She is a very good listener. If there is something you want to say, she can make the air around her quiet and still so the words just float out of your mouth without you even having to think about pushing them.

  2. She is in love with Mrs. Luther's cat, Crinkles. Even though Crinkles lives next door with Mrs. Luther, he spends a lot of time visiting with Augustine Dupre and sitting on her sofa.