Just Grace and the Double Surprise (4 page)

I'm not good at guessing what's in Mom and Dad's brain, so all I could do was hope—hope for something good! Lately there's a lot of hoping going on in my life, and I'm getting kind of good at it.

WHAT MIMI AND I ARE HOPING

We know it will never happen, but if you are going to spend energy wishing you should probably wish for a whole pie and not just a little piece of pie.

OUR WISH PIE

Mimi decided that the perfect age for the new sister is three years old. That way there will be no diapers, she can talk, she can play and do stuff, and she is still small enough to be picked up. Mimi really wants a sister she can carry around. The only bad part about a three-year-old sister is that she is for sure going to already have a name. Mimi's mom said that if the sister was not a baby they would probably have to keep the name she came with. It could be anything, even a name like Helga or Mildred, but Mimi and I are using all our energy to hope for a Jasmine. We looked at hundreds of sister names and it's our favorite.

WHAT YOU CAN'T DO

Adopting a new sister is not like shopping in a grocery store. You can't just look at all the kids and then point to the one you want. Mimi said there are special people who decide which families should get which children. They don't want to make a mistake and put the wrong kid in the wrong family—that's why the whole thing takes so long. I don't really understand how it all works, but we have some adopted kids at school and they seem happy so I guess the decider people know how to do it right.

WHAT I DIDN'T TELL MIMI

I was thinking that even if the sister was named something else maybe we could train her to like the Jasmine name better. It could start off as sort of a nickname, and then when she was knowing it really well, we could make the switch. Right now Mimi was really worried about doing stuff wrong and then not getting to have a sister at all, so I decided it was better to not tell her about the idea until later.

WHAT I DID RIGHT BEFORE BED

Mimi and I always flash our lights on and off at each other before we go to sleep. Our bedroom windows are right across from each other so it's perfect. Usually we just flash our lights a couple of times and then that's it, but lately Mimi wants us each to do it an exact number of times: one flash for each letter in the word
sister.
She says it's for luck. I haven't asked her but I bet she spells out
sister
when she does her flashes. I just count to six—it's easier.

We did our flashes and then right before I jumped in bed I put Chip-Up in his little bed next to me on the floor. I don't know why, but I have been deciding to do that lately. Chip-Up's the pretend dog I made hoping that Mom and Dad would get the hint and let me have a real dog. It didn't work so well. At first I was really disappointed, but then I kind of got over it. I guess we're just not a pet kind of family. I'm pretty happy with how Chip-Up turned out. Sometimes at night, if I wake up sleepy and look down at him, he almost looks real.

THE BREAKFAST OF MYSTERY

Dad wasn't at the table when I got down to breakfast. He doesn't usually leave for work until after I leave for school. I asked Mom just to be sure. "Is Dad gone? Did he have a meeting?" He had forgotten to say goodbye, which was also really weird. "Oh, honey, he was late for the train and you were in the bathroom," said Mom. "He shouted good-bye, but you must not have heard him. I'm sorry." "He could have tried harder," I mumbled. This was not starting out as a good day. I don't like it when things are different by surprise.

Mom tried to cheer me up by being all smiley. Then she said, "Oh, I almost forgot. Your father is coming home early today, so hurry home from school. He's taking you on an errand." The word
errand
is never for something good. It almost always means having to go somewhere that is boring and not fun. "Do I have to? I bet it's the dumb hardware store." Now I was grumpy.

"Yes, you have to go," said Mom. "Plus I think you're going to like it." She had a big smile on her face that instantly made a giant invisible question mark pop up right above my head.

WHAT MOM IS EXCELLENT AT

"What? What is it? Tell me! Tell me! Where are we going?" I was jumping up and down and filled with need-to-know energy. I 100 percent wanted to know what she was talking about, but Mom just smiled and turned around. "You'll have to wait and see," she said. Mom is probably one of the best secret keepers in the whole entire world. It's not easy being her daughter. I had tried before so I knew that if she said no, there was no way she was going to change her mind. Asking her over and over again was not going to work. Mom would never tell. The best thing to do was to try and stop thinking about the secret. This is not easy.

Mom was making my lunch so I made myself ask her about that instead. "What am I having today?" "Turkey and cheese," said Mom. This was not an exciting answer. "Turkey and cheese again?" I stuck my tongue out. "But you love turkey and cheese," said Mom. She was right—I did—but having the same lunch every day was getting boring. I wanted lunch to be fun. I wanted my lunch bag to be full of little surprise packages—each one filled with something new and exciting to eat—like presents for my mouth.

"Well, how about a jam sandwich?" asked Mom. Ugh—jam was boring too. "No, I guess I'll just have the turkey and cheese." I slouched in my chair. "I'll cut it in four pieces," said Mom. "That'll make it more fun." I could tell she was smiling at her own joke. When you know someone, even if you can't see their face, you can still tell if they are smiling while talking. Smiling makes a voice sound different.

THE WALK TO SCHOOL

I was ready a little early, so I walked across the yard to get Mimi. These days Mimi doesn't like to leave for school until the last possible second. She wants to wait as long as she can just in case the sister people call. Yesterday we had to run the last two blocks just to make it before the second bell. I'm hoping things are going to go back to normal once the sister gets here.

I was talking to Mom about it yesterday, but she said not to get my hopes up about everything being normal anytime soon. She said it was going to take a while for Mimi to adjust to a new sister. I'm hoping she is wrong. I like normal.

WHY WE DID NOT WALK TO SCHOOL

Okay. It's official. Mimi is going a little crazy. When I got to her house she said I should go back home and put my sneakers on. "Let's run to school," said Mimi. "Because it's good exercise." Of course I was right away knowing that she didn't want to run to school for exercise. She wanted to run to school so that she could have more time at home waiting for the phone to ring.

If she wasn't my best friend I would have said, "See you at school," and walked on without her, but she
is
my best friend, so I went home and changed my shoes. I'm not so big on getting all sweaty first thing in the morning, but by the time Mimi's mom made us leave we didn't have a choice—we had to run.

I tried to tell Mimi about my breakfast mystery but it was hard to run and talk at the same time.