Just Grace Goes Green (13 page)

THE FOUR THINGS SAMMY SOLD

WHAT HAPPENED NEXT

"Three dollars and fifty cents!" said Sammy, holding up his money.

"Well, your stuff is only selling because of your notes," said Mimi.

"Well, don't get mad at me," said Sammy. "It was Grace's idea. Why don't you just write your own notes?"

Sammy is not a boy who likes to pick a fight. Sammy is not even a boy who knows if you are trying to pick a fight with him.
Sammy is just Sammy. And Sammy's idea was a great one, even if he thought it was mine, which it wasn't.

EVERYTHING HAS A STORY

I had to run inside and get some paper so Mimi and I could write notes for our stuff too. We wanted to get finished before more people showed up and spent all their money at Sammy's table. But sometimes, if you really think about something and why you have it, and how you used it in your life, you can change your mind about giving it away.

TWO THINGS I TOOK OFF MY SALE TABLE

MIMI'S SALE TABLE

Writing notes was not a good idea for Mimi, because after writing about her stuff she decided she liked it so much that she couldn't sell any of it. She and Gwen went back to her house to take her stuff inside so it wouldn't get sold by accident.

While they were gone, I put Owly in a bag under my table. That way no one could buy him. I still wasn't ready to give up on helping Mimi. A good superhero always has more than one plan of action, and I just had to think of another one.

MAX

Max finally showed up while Mimi and Gwen were at Mimi's house. I told him he
could use Mimi's table to sell his stuff. Max said he didn't have anything to sell because he had sold all his old stuff before he moved next door to Mimi. He said he was there to shop. He spent a lot of time at Sammy's table saying things like "I can't believe you are selling this. This is so awesome! I've got to get this." It was very annoying!

When he finally got to my table he only had fifty cents left to spend. I let him have a plastic box that was marked for one dollar. Sometimes you have to make deals if you want to make a sale. It was better than nothing.

I was hoping some girl customers would come by because they were probably not going to be thinking that Sammy's collection was so awesome and amazing. They were going to be looking for girl stuff.

WHAT WAS A BIT OF A SURPRISE

Sometimes girls can be really hard shoppers. I thought for sure that the girls who came by would just snap up all my great stuff no problem, but that was not what happened. The girls really liked to bargain. One girl even tried to get me to sell two almost brand-new Barbie dolls for only ten cents each. And it wasn't even like she had only twenty cents. Her purse was full of dollar bills—I saw them. Sometimes you have to be tough or
else your entire table of really great stuff will get sold for almost nothing.

I finally said I would sell the dolls for fifty cents each. The girl seemed really happy because the original price was a dollar each, so she thought she was getting a real bargain. She probably thought she was a super shopper, but I was happy to get rid of them. I don't play with Barbies anymore anyway. the sale

THE SALE

I was pretty sure that Gwen noticed that Owly was gone, but she didn't say anything about it and I didn't talk about it either. We decided to end the sale at lunchtime. There is only so much fun you can have standing around in your front yard. Everyone counted up the money and this is how it all ended up.

MIMI

No money. No things reused by anyone else.

SAMMY

$22.25

More than twenty things reused by someone else—lots of it to Max.

ME

$12.50

Seventeen things reused by someone else.

I was a little bit upset that Sammy had made more money than me, but mostly that was because the sale had been my idea in the first place. Sometimes you have to stop yourself from getting angry about something like that, because the best thing is that everyone
is happy. Surprisingly even Mimi was happy, and she didn't make even one single penny.

Mom said we should donate all the rest of the stuff on our tables to charity. She said if we boxed it up in the garage, she'd take it over to the donation box the next time she went out. Sammy said he was just going to take his leftovers home, so Gwen and Mimi helped me pack my stuff up and put it next to the car.

WHAT WAS THE BIGGEST SURPRISE OF THE DAY

When Sammy was leaving with his box Gwen went over and asked him if he wanted to come out to dinner with us on her birthday. I couldn't believe it. Sammy looked like he couldn't believe it either, but he smiled.
He looked even happier when Gwen said it was the kind of restaurant where the chef does tricks with fire. Sammy is the kind of boy who would be excited about things exploding.

Gwen invited Max too, but mostly I think that was because he was standing right next to Sammy.

This was going to be the first time I had ever eaten with Sammy in a restaurant. Once he had pancakes at my house, but that had been a mistake invitation.

Sammy is the kind of boy who gets food stuck in his teeth and dribbles on his shirt. He was going to be a mess. 1 Especially since this was the
kind of restaurant where you use chopsticks instead of a fork. I was definitely not going to sit next to him.

Gwen seemed happy and kind of excited about her birthday when she got back from talking to Sammy and Max. She was not thinking the same things about Sammy that I was, and that was because she had never sat near Sammy while he was eating. She was going to be in for a surprise too!

WHAT WAS NOT THE BIGGEST SURPRISE OF THE DAY

When we went upstairs to Mimi's room Gwen started playing with Willoughby right away.
I could tell that Mimi was pretty upset that the Owly plan had not worked out. Poor Mimi. It's not easy to watch someone take over one of your most favorite things in the world. It's even harder not to say anything about it while you're watching it happen. Mimi was being great.

THE BOTTLE PROJECT

While we were in Mimi's room we finished up organizing the bottle project. We told Gwen that we had to come up with examples of how to decorate the bottles—that way even some of the really uncreative people in our class would be able to do it. There are some people who don't have brains full of ideas. You have to help these kinds of people out.

FOUR BOTTLE-DECORATING IDEAS

After we finished putting our posters together with the examples of how to decorate the bottles, and all the facts about recycling plastic, it was time for me to go home for dinner. Mom doesn't like it if I eat too many dinners at Mimi's house. She says she doesn't want me to be a burden to Mimi's mom, but I just think it's mostly because she misses me.

OUR NIGHTTIME

At dinner Mom apologized for telling the Wee Tiny Mee Mee story in front of my friends. I said, "Wee Tiny Mee Mee's name is almost more embarrassing than the story," and then we all laughed. I was only two years old when I named her Mee Mee. I called her that because I thought she looked like me. Dad added the Wee Tiny part because he thought it was funny. And then the nickname just stuck. It's kind of like me now with my crazy name of Just Grace—only I'm not laughing about that one.