Good Graces Read Online Free Page A

straight when she tells a story, so that works out good for both of us.
    “Sorry?” I answer.
    “I was just sayin’ that you’d probably need to take at least three buses to get out to the new zoo to see Sampson.”
    “Really?” I ask. I’m never sure if what she’s telling me is the whole truth or not. You really do have to be careful with her. I used to think she was the biggest, fattest liar around, but she isn’t. Not exactly. Mary Lane is what my other best friend, Ethel Jenkins, describes as “a no-tripper.” That’s what Mississippi folks call somebody who doesn’t let the truth trip them up when they’re telling you a story.
    “Yeah, at least three buses,” Mary Lane says, picking at a scab on her knee. “Maybe four, but it could be as many as seven.”
    “What do ya think?” I ask Troo, who isn’t really paying attention.
    Now that she’s done one-upping Mary Lane about getting to go to Camp Towering Pines this summer, going so far as to bring her Golden Tomahawk talent trophy in a shopping bag so she can shove it in our best friend’s face, my sister is paging through a book she got yesterday from the Finney Library. She’s not actually reading Around the World in Eighty Days because according to her, books are for boneheads like me. Troo’s looking at the pictures to get the idea of the story so she can tell it to Mrs. Kambowski. You can’t hardly go anywhere these days without hearing a joke about how dumb the Polacks are, so that’s why there’s not a doubt in my mind the librarian will fall for my sister’s plan. Troo wants to win the Billy the Bookworm prize this summer in the worst way. She got the free movie passes to the Uptown Theatre last summer even though she didn’t really win them fair and square; Mary Lane did. For some dopey reason, Mrs. Kambowski gave my sister the prize anyway.
    “What do I think about what?” Troo says, turning the page.
    “Could we take three buses or more to visit Sampson out on Bluemound Road?” I say, trying, but not able, to keep the shakiness out of my voice.
    “H-E-double hockey sticks,” Troo says, slamming the book down on the bench. “I knew this was gonna happen. I just knew it! You bein’ a wet blanket at camp wasn’t bad enough, now you’re gonna be cryin’ and worryin’ about that dumb ape . . . and anything else you can dream up for the rest of the summer, aren’t you?” Troo laughs mean out of her nose that funny French way she does now. “Hunh . . . hunh . . . hunh. You’re goin’ loonier by the second, Sally.”
    “Shut your trap, O’Malley,” Mary Lane shouts as she springs up off the bench. “Her missin’ Sampson is not any loonier than you tellin’ everybody to call you Leeze .”
    Troo made Mary Lane and me go see An American in Paris with her during old-timey movie week up at the Uptown Theatre. My sister’s French problem got even worse after that. She wants all of us to call her Leeze now, which was the name of the girl star in that movie, and if we don’t, she’ll give you an Indian burn that’ll sting for days because that’s another thing she perfected at camp.
    “Fuck you, Lane,” Troo says. She loves all words that begin with the letter f but this is her absolute favorite. “You’re always stickin’ your monkey nose in where it don’t belong.”
    “Oh, yeah?” Mary Lane yells. “If my ma wasn’t already married, she . . . she wouldn’t be livin’ in sin the way yours is, I can tell ya that.”
    Mary Lane’s not the only one, a lotta people in the neighborhood are saying that about Mother because her and Dave are living under the same roof and aren’t married. Not yet anyway. They were supposed to get hitched right after high school, but that wedding got called off because Dave’s mother, who was dying from tuberculosis at the time, thought that our mother was just another Mick in an ankle bracelet and wasn’t good enough for her Danish boy. Ignoring the orders of an about-to-die