Finding Grace Read online

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Citra, Becky, author

  Finding Grace / by Becky Citra.

  (The gutsy girl series)

  Issued in print and electronic formats.

  ISBN 978-1-927583-25-8 (pbk.). —ISBN 978-1-927583-26-5 (epub)

  I. Title. II. Series: Gutsy girl book

  PS8555 I87 F55 2014 jC813’.54 C2014-900600-4

  C2014-900601-2

  Copyright © 2014 by Becky Citra

  Cover by Gillian Newland

  Edited by Gena Gorrell and Kya McMillan

  Designed by Melissa Kaita

  Printed and bound in Canada

  Second Story Press gratefully acknowledges the support of the Ontario Arts Council

  and the Canada Council for the Arts for our publishing program. We acknowledge

  the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund.

  Published by

  Second Story Press

  20 Maud Street, Suite 401

  Toronto, ON M5V 2M5

  www.secondstorypress.ca

  Dedication: For Bev

  Chapter One

  Dear Grace,

  I have been accused of a crime! Someone stole Nancy Collier’s brand-new glow-in-the-dark yo-yo today. Miss Noonan did a desk check. I wasn’t worried (why would I be?), but guess where the yo-yo turned up? In MY desk! Sweartogod I didn’t take it. Miss Noonan made me stay in at recess and lunch, but I refused to confess. I’m innocent!

  Mom didn’t get out of bed all day. She pretended she did, but I can tell. She was in her nightie when I got home, and her hair was smushed on one side and she smelled sour, like sweaty running shoes. That means she will want to stay up all night, and she’ll make me watch TV with her and I’ll be tired again at school tomorrow.

  She just called me to bring her a cup of coffee.

  “You got a broken leg?” I yelled back.

  But I better go. I’ll write some more later.

  Your best friend,

  Hope

  Mom hates Grace. That’s why I have to hide these letters in a shoebox in my cupboard. I think I was about three years old when I made Grace up. When I started kindergarten, Mom said I had to stop talking about Grace. She said imaginary friends were for little kids, and that everyone would think I was weird. I remember her slapping my hand when I set three places at the table and poured an extra glass of milk. Then she started yelling at me if I even said the name.

  After that, I went underground with Grace.

  When I’m feeling sad or worried, I write to Grace every day. Then I forget about her for weeks and weeks. I think I’m what Granny calls a fair-weather friend.

  Right now I’m smack in the middle of a bad stretch. Really bad. This is why:

  Mom hasn’t been to her job at the dry cleaners for exactly twenty-seven days. I’m pretty sure we’re running out of money fast. Proof: I eat almost all my meals at Granny’s, and she makes my lunch for school every day. That’s not as inconvenient as it sounds, because she lives in an apartment one floor below us. Granny makes these weirdly amazing soups, like peanut butter and onion. Mom won’t touch them. As far as I can figure out, she only eats crackers and tomato soup from a can.

  I wish I knew what was wrong with her, but I don’t. I wish I knew what to do.

  Chapter Two

  We’re doing family trees at school. So far I have three names:

  Me: Hope Rose King

  Mom: Flora Rosalie King

  Granny: Lillian Janet King

  I suck the end of my pencil and pretend to be thinking. The girl who sits beside me, Lesley Thomas, is writing furiously. She leans back in her chair and says, “Eighteen cousins! Phew!”

  How could anyone have eighteen cousins???

  “I don’t give a darn,” I tell her. I stop myself from rolling my eyes just in time. I’m trying very hard to make a best friend at this school.

  “Whoops, nineteen.” She glances sideways at me. “I forgot Oliver.”

  I slide my arm around my paper so she can’t see it.

  The girl behind me (that nasty Barbara Porter) puts up her hand and asks, “Can we include great-great-grandparents?”

  Who even knows about great-great-grandparents? Granny must have had parents and grandparents, but I have no clue who they were. She had a husband who’s dead. I know she has no brothers or sisters. We’re a family of only children: Granny, and then Mom, and now me.

  When class started, kids pulled out scraps of paper covered with names, and I remembered too late that we were supposed to interview our parents and grandparents last night.

  I glance around the room. I’m the only one who isn’t writing. Lesley is coloring her family tree now. Purple for her nineteen cousins. Her paper has lines going everywhere, like a giant rainbow spider web.

  “Be creative,” Miss Noonan says. She holds up Mark’s paper – he has drawn an actual tree with leaves.

  Miss Noonan is floating between the desks. She wears short, brightly colored dresses – a different one every day of the week – and she smells like strawberries. Half the girls in the class have a crush on her. Probably all the boys, too.

  “You can have the rest of the afternoon to work on these,” she says.

  I peek at the clock. Forty-five minutes until bell time. What I really want to do is put my head down and sleep.

  I know you can fail math tests (I’ve failed seven and I’m in serious danger of failing grade five), but can you fail family trees?

  I decide to give Granny some parents. I draw two spokes coming out of her name. At the end of one I print Mortimer Noah King. On the other one I print Joelle Hyacinth King.

  I give Granny a sister, Camilla Dominique King, and a brother, Chadwick Lucas King.

  Mom gets four sisters and a brother. Presto! I now have aunts and an uncle.

  I give Mom a husband (which she never had) who is also my father (whom I’ve never known). I spend some time on his name and come up with Nigel Nicholas King.

  I’d love to give myself a sister. I would call her a beautiful name, like Jacqueline, but then everyone would wonder where she is. Instead, I work on giving my aunts and my uncle lots of kids.

  When the bell rings, I put my pencil down. Lesley is staring at me.

  “Twenty cousins,” I say. “Beat that.”

  Dear Grace,

  Miss Noonan handed back the family trees today. Everyone got a mark except me. I got “See me.”

  I stayed behind at recess.

  “Something is puzzling me,” Miss Noonan said. “Everyone in your extended family has the same last name, King.”

  Oops. I should have thought of that. I should have invented some different last names, like Montgomery (my favorite author).

  I’ve only been at this school for three months and I really want Miss Noonan to like me. Now she thinks I’m a cheater and a thief (I am still the chief suspect in the stolen yo-yo mystery). All the kids will think so too, and I’ll never have any friends except for you.

  Your best friend,

  Hope

  Chapter Three

  “I humiliated myself in front of Miss Noonan,” I tell Mom. “Couldn’t you at least tell me my father’s name?”

  Mom, Granny, and I are the only ones on a bus going downtown, so we can have this conversation without anyone listening in.

  Granny says snarkily, “Wouldn’t we all like to know?”

  Mom lowers her sunglasses and n
arrows her eyes at her. Then she turns to me. “Do you do this on purpose to upset me?” she asks me.

  What did Granny mean? Did my mother have so many boyfriends that she doesn’t know who my father is?

  “I can’t talk about this right now,” Mom snaps.

  Up until now, I’ve been sort of enjoying myself. The three of us are on a mission to buy me some new clothes for the summer. Well, not exactly new. That’s why I said sort of. We’re going to a thrift shop.

  Let one thing be clear: I have never worn used clothes before. This is further proof that we are running out of money.

  The best part of today is that it’s bright and sunny outside and Mom is outdoors. She squinted when she came out of the apartment building, like a lizard that has been under a rock too long. Then she put on sunglasses to hide her puffy eyes. She has lipstick and blusher on and is wearing a dress with sunflowers on it and white sandals. She looks gorgeous, like a movie star.

  Granny knows two thrift shops in our part of the city. One is near our apartment building, but it’s too near my school. A fate worse than death would be to show up at school in nasty Barbara Porter’s old dress. So I make Mom take me to the other shop, which means we have to ride the bus.

  The thrift shop is in a green building beside a Laundromat. Outside the door there are two huge bins for donations. They’re full of toys, a kitchen chair missing rungs, a small record player, and a scruffy-looking fur coat.

  Inside, at the front, is a long counter. A woman is sorting clothes into piles. She glances up and says, “Good afternoon.”

  “Good afternoon,” Mom says.

  “Do you wash these clothes before you put them out on the racks?” I ask. Mom gives me a dirty look and Granny jabs me with a sharp elbow. The woman ignores me.

  I look around. Clothes are lined up on hangers, in rows labeled with signs that read jackets, women’s blouses, and suits. I poke through the girls’ sections. I find a pair of pale yellow pants that look brand-new, a blue top with white polka dots, and some plain brown shorts. Finding a dress takes longer, but I finally settle on a cute green shirtdress with a white belt.

  I try on everything behind a curtain in the corner of the store. It all fits. I check each item carefully for rips or stains, but don’t find any. I have to wait ages while Mom and Granny try on piles of clothes. Then Mom says suddenly that she’s exhausted and has to go home. Granny says, “Don’t let me hold you up,” and neither of them buys anything.

  When we get out to the sidewalk, a voice calls, “Hello, Flora.”

  Flora is my mother. We all spin around. A tall man in a dark suit and a gray hat is smiling at us. “Nice to see you’re feeling better,” he says. “We’ve missed you at work.”

  Mom turns bright red – like a tomato.

  She nods and mumbles something about coming back on Monday. Then she herds Granny and me toward the bus stop.

  “Is he my long-lost father?” I whisper.

  “Hope!” Mom says.

  “Just kidding!”

  Mom peers behind her to make sure the man is gone. “That’s Mr. Finlater. He owns the dry-cleaning shop where I work.”

  Granny notices Mom blushing too. “He has a wedding ring,” she points out. “That probably means he has a wife.”

  That’s what Mom calls one of Granny’s cheap shots. And it isn’t fair. Anyone with half a brain can tell that Mom isn’t blushing because she likes Mr. Finlater. She’s blushing because he caught her out shopping when she’s supposed to be sick. Besides, she doesn’t fall all over men. She’s just so pretty that they want to go out with her. I can count back at least five boyfriends. The last one, Calvin, was the best. He brought chocolates – Mom shared – and flowers and Chanel Number 5 perfume that Mom let me try.

  The night Mom broke it off (she always breaks up with her boyfriends, not the other way around), I found her in her bed, crying. “I’m a terrible person,” she wailed. “I don’t deserve to be happy.”

  I don’t think she was talking about breaking Calvin’s heart. I think she meant something else.

  The truth is, I have always known that Mom has some deep, dark secret. But I don’t have the foggiest idea what it is.

  Right now Mom is boyfriendless. Mr. Finlater is handsome, but he is too old for her. And yes, he probably has a wife.

  The bus wheezes to a stop in front of us and the door swings open. Mom goes first. “Putting up with the two of you,” she says over her shoulder, “it’s no wonder I’m crazy.”

  Dear Grace,

  Do you think Mom really could be crazy?

  I have never considered that possibility before. I think of her as just terribly, terribly sad. So sad that sometimes she won’t get out of bed.

  Frightened.

  Worried.

  Sometimes mad at me for no reason.

  But crazy? I don’t want her to end up in a mental institution.

  Your best friend,

  Hope

  P.S. Do you think the chemicals at the dry-cleaning shop have done something to her brain?

  • • • • •

  Dear Grace,

  Good news! Nancy Collier confessed that SHE hid her yo-yo in my desk! So no one stole it after all! Miss Noonan apologized to me, and said that sometimes people who are very unhappy do peculiar things for attention.

  I don’t feel sorry for Nancy. She may be unhappy, but she can’t have half the problems I have. I also have to admit that in a crazy way, I was starting to enjoy my situation. At least I had a certain kind of notoriety.

  Your best friend,

  Hope

  Chapter Four

  Mom went to work this morning, but she’s home in her nightie when I get back from school.

  “Mr. Finlater gave my job to someone else,” she says.

  “What?” I remember how he smiled at Mom in front of the thrift shop. “The creep! How could he?”

  Mom shrugs. “Anyway, I can’t afford the rent anymore. We’re going to have to move.”

  “Again?”

  Before coming here, we lived in the basement of someone’s house, and before that, in half of a duplex. Each time we moved, it was to a different part of the city and I had to change schools. We moved into this apartment three months ago. Granny has been living in this building for twenty years, since my grandfather died. When a rental became available upstairs, Mom hemmed and hawed and said she wasn’t sure. Granny said, “Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth, Flora. It’s a good neighborhood, and I can help keep an eye on Hope.”

  And now we have to move again.

  Mom gives me a tired smile. “Not so far this time. Just downstairs with Granny.”

  Granny’s apartment is cluttered with spindly chairs and little tables and tons of fragile ornaments you’re not even allowed to breathe on. “How will there be room for us?” I ask.

  “We’ll put most of our stuff in boxes,” Mom says. “There’s lots of storage space in the basement.”

  I try to imagine us squeezed in with Granny. Her apartment is the same layout as ours: kitchen, living room, two bedrooms, and one bathroom.

  Wait a sec. Two bedrooms.

  “So you and Granny are going to share a bedroom?”

  “That’s impossible,” Mom says. “I need my own room.”

  “I need my own room too!”

  “I’m sorry. The couch in the living room makes into a bed. That will have to do for you for a while. Until I get another job and we can afford our own place again.”

  “The living room? I’m going to sleep in Granny’s living room?” I’m shouting, but I can’t help it. “I need privacy. Where am I supposed to get dressed?”

  “The bathroom?” Mom closes her eyes. “Don’t do this to me, Hope. I’m going to lie down.” She disappears in
to her bedroom.

  I slam a few doors to make my point. Then I go downstairs to Granny’s. Her cat, Jingle, is lying in a patch of sun on the kitchen floor, glaring at me through slitted eyes.

  “It’s not fair,” I tell Granny.

  She looks up from the pot of beet borscht she’s stirring. “Life isn’t fair, chicklet,” she says. “Now come and taste this for me.”

  Borscht is my absolute favorite soup, and I’m pretty sure she’s making it specially for me.

  Chapter Five

  It’s moving day.

  Mom stands in the doorway of my bedroom, her hands folded across her chest. “You can’t take your books. There’s no room. We’ll have to put them in storage.”

  She can’t be serious.

  “I need them,” I say.

  “But you’ve read them all.” She’s trying to be patient, but a muscle in her cheek is twitching.

  “I might want to read them again.”

  “Three. The rest go in the basement.”

  This is agony. I have exactly twenty-seven books. Books are mostly all I ask for at Christmas and on my birthday. I keep changing my mind, but finally I decide on The Wind in the Willows, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, and Jane of Lantern Hill (my all-time favorite – Jane lives with her mother and grandmother too, and suffers almost as much as I do).

  The rest of my packing is easy: winter clothes and my ice skates go into three cardboard cartons for storage, and summer clothes go into a couple of laundry baskets. My jacks, my bag of marbles, my Slinky, my writing paper and pens, my skipping rope, and my stuffed hippo, Harry, all go in a shopping bag.

  I hide my Dear Grace letters in one of the laundry baskets, under a pile of tops.

  The furniture belongs with the apartment. We store our dishes and pots and pans in boxes since Granny has enough stuff for all of us. Mom has arranged for the landlord’s son to move all the boxes into the basement.