Just Grace and the Terrible Tutu

by Charise Mericle Harper

  "It's blue! See!" shouted Lily. She held out her skirt and twirled so we could both see. I was glad that she wasn't just talking to me. "And you love pink," she said, pointing at Mimi. "I liked pink five weeks ago, but now I love blue." "She changes almost every day," said Yvonne. Mimi looked uncomfortable, like maybe she wanted to run away or throw up, but she just fidgeted and looked down. I was glad she was staying.

  WHAT I WAS HAPPY ABOUT

  Even though they pretty much all looked the same, Lily really liked the balloon creations.

  She did not ask Mimi to be a troll or any other kind of disgusting creature.

  Yvonne made us sandwiches and lemonade so we could have a picnic outside.

  Mimi had a great activity suggestion that took up a huge part of the time, plus it was lots of fun.

  The only bad thing was that Lily didn't spend any time talking to Mimi. She wasn't mean to Mimi, but she wasn't super friendly to her either.

  WHAT WAS HARD TO BELIEVE

  When it turned two o'clock, I couldn't believe it was already time to be done. Yvonne came over to thank us for watching Lily, and it was a good thing that she was taking Lily somewhere fun, or she would have for sure been upset about us leaving. I know this because as soon as Lily saw her mom walking over she said, "I don't want them to go. Can Grace stay for a sleepover?" Mimi was probably not so happy that Lily had said only my name, but she was kind and generous and didn't say one word about it.

  THE OTHER THINK THAT WAS HARD TO BELIEVE

  Yvonne gave us each ten dollars! That was a lot of money. Mom was going to be freaked out! Hopefully she wasn't going to make me give it back. Of course we said, "Thank you. Thank you. Thank you." About ten thousand times.

  WHAT BEING A MOTHER'S HELPER CAN DO TO YOU

  Both Mimi and I were super tired so we decided to just go home instead of hanging out. I guess even though it seemed pretty fun, having a job really is hard work.

  WHAT YOU HAVE TO DO

  Sometimes when you get something unexpected you have to touch it over and over again to help your brain believe that it is real. It's almost like it has magic powers, because each time you look at it and touch it, it makes you feel happy all over again. After a while Mom said I had to put the ten dollars away before it got ripped. She was right—it was probably a good thing to do. Somehow this ten dollars felt special and different from the ten dollars Grandma gave me for my birthday. I didn't want to get them mixed up, so I put the new ten dollars in my jewelry case instead of in my money box.

  WHAT I AM GLAD ABOUT

  I'm glad that no one gets to see my comics except me, because now I was feeling a little bad about making Lily into the Terrible Tutu.

  WHAT I ALMOST FORGOT

  Just as I was about to fall asleep I remembered that I forgot to flash my lights for Mimi. I was super tired, but I got out of bed anyway. It's like having to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night. Your body wants to stay in the cozy bed, but your brain knows you really need to get up, and so you make yourself do it. As soon as my hand reached the light switch Mimi flicked her lights at me too. That made it totally worth it.

  CURSIVE DAY

  I was happy about school today, and feeling pretty good about going. Today we were going to finish off learning all of the capital cursive letters. On Friday, Miss Lois had said that if we practiced enough we might be able to have our writing look as good as the writing that is on fancy invitations. Mostly everyone was excited about that.

  LILY ON A MONDAY

  While I was waiting outside for Mimi I saw Lily getting into the car with her mom. She saw me watching her and shouted, "Au revoir, Grace! I'm going to school!" "Me too!" I answered back. From far away like this she was cute. Of course she wasn't going to real school.

  MIMI

  I was glad to see that Mimi was not wearing an all-blue outfit. She actually looked pretty normal, except for a big flower in her hair. It didn't look bad—it just wasn't a usual Mimi thing.

  TWO BY TWO

  We started walking and by the time we got to the corner Sammy and Max were walking with us too. Sammy seemed much happier than he had been on Friday. Max was full of questions about the new Fren ch family, but I had to answer them all because Mimi was not being her normal chatty self. I don't think he was finding what I was saying very interesting. As soon as we got to the playground, he waved at us all and ran off.

  "Boys are so rude," said Mimi. She crossed her arms and made a grumpy face. Sammy was still standing next to us, so I felt like I had to say something. "Well, maybe not all boys." "Thanks," said Sammy. He shrugged his shoulders and walked on without us. "Mimi, what's going on? Are you mad at Max or Sammy?" Mimi seemed nervous. "No, I'm fine. It's okay." And then before I could ask her anything more the bell rang and we had to run so we wouldn't be late.

  THE GIGGLY GIRLS

  Normally at school Mimi and I don't do too much with the Giggly Girls. We call them that because they are always telling secrets and laughing. I don't know what they think is so funny, but after a while just being near them is kind of annoying.

  After we had been in class for about an hour, I could tell that Mimi was being interested in them. She asked Bethany if she could borrow her eraser, and then when she gave it back she whispered something that made her laugh. Bethany is the leader of the Giggly Girls. She lives in a house full of sisters. My friend Jordan once said that someone told her that all the sisters were gigglers. I don't know if it's true, but if it is, being in their house would for sure make me crazy.

  THE OTHER BIG REASON WHY I KNOW THAT MIMI IS INTERESTED IN THE GIGGLY GIRLS

  Sometimes even if you notice something unusual, you might not understand why the unusual thing is there until later on. This is exactly what happened with Mimi's hair flower. Looking at her, and then at all the Giggly Girls, I suddenly knew why she had the flower in her hair.

  It was shocking! It was surprising! It was unbelievable! Mimi was trying to look just like them.

  Now I knew exactly why Mimi was being so quiet and not friendly with Max and Sammy. The Giggly Girls never talk to boys.

  WHAT I WAS GLAD ABOUT

  I was glad that Miss Lois was teaching us something interesting, because just trying to think about why Mimi was being weird was making my head hurt. I decided not to pay attention to her, and instead I used all my energy to make the best capital script D that I had ever made in my entire life. It was pretty good!

  When I looked up, Mimi had taken the flower out of her hair and was smiling at me. A normal me would have been super happy about that, but this new suspicious-of-Mimi me was not 100 percent sure that Mimi wasn't going to suddenly change and be weird again by lunchtime.

  WHAT HAPPENED AT LUNCHTIME

  Nothing new. Mimi was completely normal. I was surprised, and now it seemed safe to be happy about it. Mimi even waved to Max when he ran by with Sammy. We did the monkey bars, played box ball, and went on the swings—all my favorite things.

  WHAT MIMI DID NOT EVEN MENTION ONCE

  The Fairy Girls

  The Giggly Girls

  WHAT IS HARD TO HIDE

  If you have a friend who is acting strange it is hard to say, "Hey, how come you are acting so strange?" For some reason it is easier to ask about happy and sad than it is about weird. That is why, even though Mimi and I are best friends, I asked, "Is everything okay?" instead of "Why are you acting so strange?" Mimi looked down at the ground for a second and then she said, "Do you think my new sister is going to like me? What if she's all girly and I'm not? What if she wants me to be giggly or play fairy games or something I haven't even thought of yet? You don't have to worry. Little girls like you. Like Lily—she totally loves you, and you're not even her sister."

  This was a big problem to solve during lunchtime, especially a lunchtime that was probably going to be ending in about three minutes. "Oh, Mimi," I said, and I gave her a hug. A hug almost always helps a sad person feel even just a little bit better, plus I couldn't think
of anything else to say.

  I was happy and sad at the same time—happy to know that Mimi was the same old Mimi, but sad to think that maybe she thought being the same old Mimi wasn't going to be good enough.

  WHAT HAPPENED NEXT

  Of course as soon as I knew about Mimi being sad, my empathy power started working super fast. This made regular school learning much harder.

  It was not easy to make up math word problems while my brain was thinking about Mimi.

  It was not easy to study the continents and the oceans of the world while my brain was thinking about Mimi.

  By the time school ended I was as unhappy as she was.

  THE ONE THING I WAS PRETTY MUCH KNOWING

  Even if Mimi's sister turned out to be super pink, doll loving, and girly, she was for sure still going to love Mimi, because Mimi is fun and great and fantastic! And after being with her, and doing stuff with her, the new sister would not be able to help it—she would end up loving Mimi just as much as I do. And then, as soon as I thought that, I got an idea about exactly what to do.

  MY GOOD LUCK SIGN

  I didn't tell Mimi about my plan as we walked home. I wanted to, but the part of me that wanted it to be a good surprise for her was bigger than the part of me that wanted to tell her, so I kept it secret. Instead I tried to cheer her up by talking about other stuff.

  The biggest thing we talked about was Gary the Great. He is a magician that is going to come to our school and do tricks. The boys are all hoping he is going to saw someone in half. Mostly they would like him to saw Mrs. Hopkins in half. She is one of the bossy ladies who stand outside and make sure everyone lines up properly when the bell rings. She yells a lot, and usually it's at the boys.

  Right when we were talking about Gary the Great, we passed a poster about him that was taped to a light pole. Mimi wanted to stop and look at it so we would be able to recognize him if we saw him around town. We were both wondering if he did magic tricks in his real life, like maybe at the grocery store. A good magician could probably trick people all the time and the people wouldn't even know about it. He could pay the grocery person, and then when they weren't looking, use his tricks to sneak the money back into his pocket—stuff like that. Mimi said, "If we see him in the grocery store we should one hundred percent spy on him." Just thinking about that was kind of exciting.

  While Mimi was putting his face into her memory, I thought some more about my plan. And then for no real reason I looked down at my foot, and there by my pinky toe was an almost perfectly round white stone. Of course I had to pick it up. "Ewww," said Mimi. "What if a dog peed on it?" But she was too late. It was already in my pocket.

  WHAT MIMI WANTED

  "Do you want to come over?" asked Mimi. "We could work on the room." This was a hard question to answer. I wanted to go over and keep her company, but also I wanted to get home and start on my big plan. To keep her happy and not suspicious I said, "Okay, but I can only come over for an hour."

  WHAT TOOK US AN HOUR

  It took one whole hour to decide which wall was going to be the one we were going to paint pink. This was mostly because Mimi kept changing her mind. In the end I think she picked the right one.

  WHAT I DID AS SOON AS I GOT HOME

  I started my big plan. I was going to make a shadow show in my window for Lily and Mimi to watch together from Mimi's window. I even had a name for the show In my best script writing I wrote the title out on a black piece of paper. It looked great. The only hard part was cutting out all the white parts so just the black heart and words were showing.

  It was lucky that we were learning cursive, because if you want to cut out words and have all the letters stay together the only way to do it is to use script writing.

  WHAT I DON'T KNOW THE WORDS FOR

  There is probably a name for the kind of plan that was in my brain. It was the kind of plan where the people watching the show (Mimi and Lily) weren't going to know that the watching of the show was only one part of the plan. Them being together and doing things together was the other part of the plan. Lily was definitely going to be liking Mimi once she spent time with her and found out how fun and special she was.

  HOW THIS CAN HAPPEN

  Lily needs to love Mimi like she loves me. And if Lily is around Mimi, and does stuff with Mimi, she won't be able to help herself. Before long she will love Mimi as much as she loves me.

  PART ONE OF THE PLAN

  It was kind of hard to decide which part of the plan should be part one. When you are at the beginning of something you can start from all sorts of places. I decided that my part one should start with Augustine Dupre. Lucky for me, it wasn't dinnertime yet so I was still allowed to go downstairs and visit her.

  When I walked in Crinkles was lying on the sofa like usual. "I think he's scared of Lily," said Augustine Dupre. "He's over here all the time." I didn't say it, but if I were a cat, I'd pick Augustine Dupre instead of Lily too. I didn't want to waste time talking about Crinkles, so I told her about my plan right away. And just like I was hoping, she said she would talk to Lily's mom and set it up so Lily could go to Mimi's house.

  PART TWO OF THE PLAN

  It's not always easy to explain big ideas to grownups. Mimi's mom is super nice, but what I had to ask her about was not something she normally would say yes to. I was going to ask her if we could break one of her big house rules—the rule of no food in Mimi's bedroom—and I was nervous about that.

  The only good thing about part two of the plan was that I had to wait until tomorrow to do it, because Mom was calling me down for dinner.

  PART THREE OF THE PLAN

  After dinner I started part three of the plan. Sometimes you have to be able to skip around in a plan and not be worried about the number order so much. I was happy about that, because the invitation was really fun to do.

  WHAT IS HARD TO HIDE

  A really good mood.

  GOOD MOOD ANALOGY

  WHO IT IS HARD TO HIDE IT FROM

  Your parents.

  At breakfast both Mom and Dad said, "Why are you in such a good mood today?" Lucky for me, I had already thought of an answer. "We are having this really cool magician come to the school today. His name is Gary the Great and he does all sort of cool tricks. He might even saw someone in half."

  Whenever there is something new and interesting at school Mom and Dad always say the same thing. It's usually something like, "I wish I could go to school. We never had things like that when we were kids. All we did was work." And then they look at each other and shake their heads. I'm glad I wasn't a kid when they were kids. It must have been really boring.

  Your best friend.

  I tried to not seem excited and happy when I saw Mimi, but she could tell I was hiding something. "Why are you smiling?" she asked. I tried to use the same Gary the Great excuse, but right when I was explaining how fun I thought he was going to be, Sammy walked up. "Hey, are you guys talking about Gary the Great?" "Yeah." I said. "I hope he's good. I like magic tricks." Sammy did not seem excited. "He's not a magician," said Sammy. "He's a math-gician. He does tricks with numbers. Boring math stuff." "Ohhh," said Mimi.

  I looked at Sammy. "It's true," he said. I didn't want to, but I believed him. Now school was not going to be as fun as I thought it was. I should have known the school would try to sneak some lessons into something that was supposed to be all fun.

  Now I was not as happy as before. My really good mood was now only a medium good mood.

  GARY THE GREAT

  SURPRISE! Gary the Great was great! He did a lot of math tricks that were math problems, but they had stories and real magic tricks mixed in so it was fun. I thought he would just do lots of adding and subtracting, but it wasn't like that at all.

  My favorite trick was when he made a recipe of all sorts of crazy things. Before the trick started he asked the audience for a number. Then Gary the Great put that many things into a bucket to make the recipe. At the end of the trick, the bucket was empty excep
t for a super-long stuffed snake. He even used the word "TA-DA!" Which is one of my favorite things to say that I had mostly forgotten about.

  He was so good that only a couple of kids complained that he had not sawed anyone in half. They were probably kids that did not like math or Mrs. Hopkins.

  HOW MISS LOIS SURPRISED US

  She said we had to write a secret note in cursive writing and pass it to the person who was sitting to the right of us. This was the first on-purpose note passing we had ever done. Miss Lois said that we had to be sure that the note was something nice, and not anything that would hurt someone's feelings. She said, "I don't want anyone writing Your sneakers smell like old cheese." This made us all smile and joke around.

  Sammy was sitting on my right, which was lucky for me because I had the perfect thing to write for him.

  Sunni gave me her note. Her script writing was excellent, which was no surprise. It was nice that she wrote me a compliment.