Just Grace and the Terrible Tutu (11 page)

 

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

 

1. The Fairy Girls
   
2. 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.

1. It was not easy to make up math word problems while my brain was thinking about Mimi.
   
2. 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.