Graceful Read online

  I make it through the afternoon, but just barely. As often as I can risk it, I get a bathroom pass and hide out in a stall. By the time I’m back on the bus, I’m completely, utterly exhausted. Since Bailey’s mom picked her up, I use our two-seater to curl up and cover my head with the extra sweatshirt I keep in my backpack. Connor has to wake me up when we get to our bus stop.

  I stumble groggily down the bus steps while Connor leaps from the top step and is already on our lawn by the time the bus driver scolds him for jumping. This happens every day.

  “Isn’t life grand?” he asks, tossing me my backpack, which apparently I’d left on my seat. “Sun is shining, parents are still normal — or as normal as parents can be — and I’m working on a top secret invention that’s going to change the way the world sees 3-D movies!”

  “Huh?” is pretty much all I can think of to say. Now that I’m home, the quiet in my head is blissful. I think I’m still half-asleep.

  Mom meets us at the door with a smile. “Greetings, offspring. How was school today?”

  I want to tell her everything, and I can’t! That’s been the one downside to the whole forgetting thing. Instead, I fall into her arms and hang on. She hugs me back, and I don’t let go.

  “Now that’s the best greeting I’ve had in months!” she says. “Everything okay, sweetie?”

  I nod, relieved that the protective bubble is keeping her mind blank to me. “Just happy to see you!”

  She gives me a last squeeze and pulls away. Connor has already disappeared. “Snack? Homework?”

  “Actually, I was hoping you could drop me at the phone store? I’m supposed to meet Rory there. She’s going to help me work on a project at the library afterward.”

  “Rory? Oh, that’s David Goldberg’s friend, right? She was in the play with you.”

  I swallow past the lump that is forming in my throat. Another hazard of the forgetting spell — Mom no longer remembers how important Team Grace is in my life. Or even that there is a Team Grace, even though she was the one who named the group. “Yes,” I choke out. “She’s great.”

  “Okay. Grab a snack, and I’ll meet you outside.”

  I probably won’t be hungry for a week after the lunch I had, but I don’t want to make her suspicious, so I grab a bag of mini-muffins and a juice pouch and wait out in the driveway.

  Connor is tinkering away in the garage, the door up to let in the air. I peek in while sipping the juice. “Are those my old costumes?” I ask.

  “No,” he says, grabbing the muffins from my hand.

  I point to the side of the plastic crate next to his work bench. “Then why does it say GRACE’S COSTUMES in big black letters?”

  “Oh, those!” he jokes. “Yes, they’re your costumes.”

  I sift through the pieces of old lace scarves and half-broken masks. Bailey and I have pulled apart most of this stuff to make new stuff over the years, so it’s not usable for much.

  “What do you need these things for?” I ask, slipping on a pair of oversized, pink plastic sunglasses. I strike a pose like a movie star. “No autographs, please.”

  “Those would be perfect!” he says, grabbing them off my face and taking a few hairs in the process.

  “Ouch!” I rub my temple. “You could have just asked.”

  “Sorry.” He holds the glasses up next to a sketch he’s made, then he puts them down and starts taking notes. I back away to let him work.

  Mom drops me off in front of the phone store where Rory is waiting. I introduce them.

  “Of course!” Mom says. “Now I remember you from the bar mitzvah party.”

  “Yes,” Rory says after a second’s hesitation. “It’s nice to see you again.”

  They chat for a minute about how wonderful a job David did, and Mom says how proud of him she was, and how he’s been such a wonderful friend to Connor all these years, and Rory talks about how hard he practiced.

  Mom finally says good-bye, and we watch the car pull away without talking. “That was a powerful spell you cast,” Rory finally says. “I doubt Angelina herself could have done it any better. She really thinks you guys were at the whole bar mitzvah.”

  I nod and swallow the lump in my throat.

  We walk into the phone store, and everyone starts clapping and cheering and calling Rory’s name. I feel like she should be wearing those huge, pink, movie star sunglasses! Rory waves them off, laughing. I’ve heard it’s like this when she comes here but have never seen it with my own eyes.

  She hands them her cracked phone, and I stand off to the side, listening to their thoughts. Mostly they are trying to figure out which one of them just won the twenty-dollar bet they’d placed on how many days it would be until Rory came in again.

  In a few minutes, she’s all set. They’d transferred all her data to a new phone and wiped the old one clean. “Wow, that was fast,” I say as we head down the street to the library.

  “We’ve got it down,” Rory says.

  “Do you know they place bets on you?”

  She laughs. “Yup. I think it’s funny. Sometimes I go in there even when I don’t have to, just to mess with them.”

  I nod in approval. “Nice.”

  We stop outside the library. “Hey, how did it go at the nurse’s?” she asks.

  “Apparently I was invisible. She couldn’t hear or see me, so I got about an hour before someone else needed the room.”

  “Nice!” she says, holding up her hand for a high five. “So, what exactly are we looking for in here?”

  “I really don’t know,” I admit. “Angelina was a little vague on that part.”

  “Why doesn’t that surprise me?” she says. “What exactly did she tell you?”

  I glance around to make sure no one can hear us. “All she said when I asked how to increase and focus my powers was that I should look in the library.”

  To Rory’s credit, she doesn’t ask me when Angelina told me this. That’s the kind of person she is. All she says is, “Well, all right, then. Maybe it’s a ‘know it when we see it’ kind of thing.”

  We slowly climb the few steps to the library door. “We should check the V section first,” she suggests. “For vortex.”

  “Good idea,” I reply. “Bailey thinks we should look for a secret room hidden in the basement with lanterns lining the halls.”

  Rory laughs. “That might only be in the movies. Let’s look for something a little less obvious.”

  She swings open the door and we step inside. I point ahead of us. “Something like THAT?”

  Not more than five feet in front of us is a big sign that says:

  Angelina’s Tea Party

  Willow Falls Library Storage Room B

  4:30 today

  Hosted by Rory Swenson and Grace A. Kelly

  BYOT (Bring your own tea)

  Latecomers will not be admitted.

  Clearly Angelina knew exactly when I’d be here and who’d be with me, even if I didn’t know it myself. Rory peels the sign off the wall and rolls it up. “Gotta hand it to her. Just when you think she’s going to zig, she zags.”

  “We don’t have any tea,” I point out as we go in search of Storage Room B. It’s not hard to find, seeing as every three feet there’s a sign that reads TEA PARTY THIS WAY with an arrow. I tear those down as we go.

  “I think the tea is optional,” Rory says. She stops in front of a solid wooden door with two masks painted in fading colors — one happy face, one sad. I’ve seen that symbol before — it was on the playbill for the show Tara produced over the summer.

  Rory reaches out to touch the drawing. “I think this used to be the break room where the actors would wait, back when this building was the old playhouse.” She pulls out her new phone and checks the time. “Four twenty-nine. Right on time.”

  I take a deep breath and push open the door. I half expect to see Angelina in there, calmly sipping a cup of tea in a rocking chair, maybe with a ball of yarn on her lap, ready to knit. Isn’t that what p