Just Grace and the Terrible Tutu (12 page)

 

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

 

1. A really good mood.
   GOOD MOOD ANALOGY
   

WHO IT IS HARD TO HIDE IT FROM

 

1. 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.
   
2. 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 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.

 

 

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.