Just Grace and the Terrible Tutu by Charise Mericle Harper Read Free Book Online

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.

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

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    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 except 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.

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    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.

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

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    WHAT HAPPENED AFTER SCHOOL
    Sammy wanted to walk home with Mimi and me so he could get his stone. It was nice to have Mimi being normal again and being friendly to Sammy. As soon as we got to my front yard Lily came running over. "Hi, Grace." She grabbed my hand like we were best friends. She said hi to Mimi too, but she did not say her name. I was sorry about that. Mom says you should use a person's name when you meet them, because it makes them feel more special. She is right about that, because it really does.
    HERE IS AN EXAMPLE:

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    I introduced Lily to Sammy, but she said she'd already met him when he'd gotten his jar of rocks. They kind of just smiled at each other and didn't say anything.
    Today Lily was wearing a yellow tutu. I was suddenly getting the feeling that she probably had a big collection of tutus in all sorts of colors.
    WHAT HAPPENED NEXT
    Lily's mom, Yvonne, came over to drag Lily back to their house. This was a big relief, because I had a lot to do for the show, plus I had all my regular homework too. I did not have any extra time left over to be playing with Lily. Everyone else went home too except for Sammy. He waited on the front steps while I ran in to get his rock.

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    WHAT I WOULD NEVER SAY
    "Wow! This is a great rock—thank you." But coming out of Sammy's mouth it sounded perfectly normal, and it made me happy.

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    WHAT I SAW THAT WAS UNUSUAL
    After Sammy left, I saw Mimi standing in Mrs. Luther's driveway. She was talking to Yvonne and Lily. Normally I would have run over there to see what was going on, but instead I made myself sneak over to Mimi's house to talk to her mom about part two.

    WHAT FEELS GOOD
    Mimi's mom is so nice. Now that I did my talking to her, it's hard to even remember why I was thinking I was going to be nervous about it. She said yes to part two of the plan. And the best part of all was that Mimi didn't even see me asking her. The show was still going to be a surprise, and I was happy about that! It made it even more exciting.
    I was back in my yard when Mimi