Chapter 1: Gracie

“Mama, what’s a ‘grit’?” I ask, watching the goopy globs falling off the wooden spoon. Mama is standing in the kitchen, stirring the pot with her hand on her hip.

She’s pinching her side like she does sometimes when she’s cranky or nervous.

“For the sake of this conversation, it’s breakfast, baby girl,” she says with a small laugh, adding, “I can’t believe I’ve never made you grits before.”

The grit smells okay, but it looks so gross that I don’t know what to believe. But Mama knows what I like, so maybe the grit won’t be so bad.

“It looks like something the worm would eat,” I say, and Mama goes quiet. Her back is to me, but she gets all stiff and still. I can tell she doesn’t like that I brought up the worm.

Grandfather’s had the worm in his brain for two years now. That’s what Mama says. Most days the worm is sleep ing, but it’s always there. On the sleeping days, Grandfather tells me he loves me. He brushes my hair back and tells me I’m the most marvelous girl in the whole wide world.

But sometimes, when it’s late and the sun goes down, the worm wakes up. When the worm is awake, Grandfather doesn’t know my name. Sometimes it’s even worse than him not knowing my name—he stares past me like his eyes are covered with a blindfold. I covered my eyes with a blindfold once at Becky’s birth day party. There was a giant horse, and her belly was filled with candy. I know the horse was a girl because only girls have things come out of their bellies. I wore the blindfold because Becky’s mama told me that was the way to play the game. But I didn’t like wearing it because I always like to see what’s around me. How horrible it must be for Grandfather when he can’t see.

Last week, after “the incident,” Mama told me that the worm is invisible. She thinks the worm will always be there and there’s no getting around it, but I know better.

“Mama, what does the worm eat?” I ask her, even though I know she doesn’t want to talk about it. Sometimes I can’t help it. There are too many questions in my head.

Mama keeps stirring the pot and pinching her side. She still won’t turn around to face me. “Umm, brains, I guess?” she replies.

“The worm is eating Grandfather’s brains?” I shout a little.

I picture the invisible worm—or at least its squiggly outline that’s shaped like Grandfather’s twisty mustache—chomping through his brain. Maybe that’s what made him look that gray color the other day. That day he had to sit in the wheel chair after his accident and Mama cried.

“Oh, sweet pea, I’m not sure. I guess the worm lives in Grandfather’s brain, but we don’t know what it eats,” Mama says, turning around and giving me one of her special smiles that she only gives me.

My mama reminds me of the sun. Some days she is so happy and bright. On those days she is the tickle monster, tickling my tummy until I fall on the ground laughing so hard I can barely breathe. On those days, she plays music on her phone and spins me around the kitchen and even lets me wear some of her sparkly eye shadow. But other days it’s like there’s a storm cloud in front of her, blocking her light. On those days she doesn’t wear any eye shadow. Sometimes I just see her sitting there, staring at the wall, and I have to call her name a few times to get her to hear me. One time I asked Mama if she had a worm in her brain too, and she looked surprised and said, “No, baby, I’m just tired. That’s all.”

But lately it seems like she’s always tired. Some days she’s too tired to take a shower and she just wears her pajamas all day, and I have to remind her to make me dinner. Some days I make my own dinner. I am very good at making peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. I can’t cut the crusts off as good as Mama does, but I know what each side of the bread needs—two scoops of grape jelly on one and one scoop of extra crunchy peanut butter on the other.

On the sunshine days, Mama looks like a princess. When I get “old enough” I hope I look like her on her sunniest days. Becky’s mama is not beautiful like my mama. She wears cat sweaters and has lots of wrinkles. But she is nice, and Mama says looks aren’t important.

“Looks can only get you so far,” Mama once told me. “And in my case, they sent me in the wrong direction.”

I know she’s talking about Daddy when she says this, but I don’t ask her any more questions, even though I have about one million. Mama says lying is bad and that’s why Daddy went away, but Grandfather says some lies are necessary.

Necessary lies are for when you don’t want to upset people. I never want to upset people, so I’ll probably have to tell many necessary lies.

Daddy used to live with us in a different house, but then we moved here to Grandfather’s house when I was four years old, and now I don’t see Daddy very much. We never went on adventures together or even talked about adventures the way Grandfather and I do. It seems like daddies are the kind of people you are supposed to miss, but I don’t know if I actually miss him or if I miss being able to talk about him. Some days I forget I even have a daddy.

Rowan Frank, from school, says her daddy is a soldier and is saving our country like a superhero. He lives far away and Rowan told me that she gets to call him sometimes on her mom’s phone and that she can see him talking to her on the screen. One time I asked Mama if we could call Daddy like that and see his face, but she just got real quiet and then she said her phone doesn’t work like that.

Mama scoops some of the grit into the bowl, and I stare at it carefully. I don’t trust it yet.

“It doesn’t have a very nice-sounding name, ‘grit,’” I say.

“Well, why don’t you just try it before you write it off?” Mama says, placing a bowl in front of me.

She puts some cheese and butter on top and they melt into the grit. It sure does smell good. Slowly, I dip my Mickey Mouse spoon into the bowl, picking up a few of the grit pieces. I’m a little scared, but I see Mama watching me, so I put the spoon in my mouth because I know it will make her happy. I might have to necessary lie about liking the grit.

It slides in smoothly, and I roll the pieces around on my tongue. The grit is salty and thick, not like the watery mash I was expecting. I pause to swallow.

“Verdict?” Mama asks.

But I’m not ready to give it my approval just yet. I scoop my spoon back into the bowl, getting more grit pieces this time. Now I’m less afraid to put the grit in my mouth, and I open wide. I give Mama a big thumbs up.

“Can I have more grit for my birthday?” I ask her.

She smiles. I know she’s happy I like the grit.

“It’s ‘grits,’ baby girl, and of course you can,” she says, bending down to give me a kiss on the top of my head. I turn seven next week. My birthday is on July 5, the day after America was born. I hope by then I will be old enough.

Mama is always saying I’m not old enough for things. Mama says she’ll take me to Disney World when I’m old enough, and I can’t wait because I have never been on an adventure before and that will surely be an adventure. Every year I ask if we can go, and every year Mama says, “When you’re old enough.” It seems like I’m always getting older, but it’s never old enough.

But that’s okay. I’m about to go on an adventure of my own. Grandfather says it only takes one day to have an adventure, though I think this one will take longer.

The washer beeps, and Mama flings the wet clothes over her shoulder and heads outside to hang them on the clothes line. I can tell it’s already sticky hot outside because Mama lets out a “Jesus!” as she hops down the steps off the back porch.

It’s probably good that it’s so hot outside. That means my dress with the daisies around the collar will dry in time for tomorrow. I need to look my best for my adventure, and the dryer broke a few months ago. But Mama says there’s no use in spending all that money to replace it when you live in Reading.

“Most days it’s hot enough to fry an egg on that side walk, Gracie Lynn,” she says, wiping the sweat bubbles off her forehead. “No idea why I even bother putting on foundation in this town.”

Last week was my last day of first grade. Next year I will go to second grade, which might also be an adventure. My report card is coming soon and Mama says if I get an “exceeds expectations” I can get a bonus ice cream—which means two ice creams this week instead of one. We go to Baskin-Robbins for my one ice cream a week because they have pink chairs and chocolate peanut butter ice cream. All ice cream stores should have pink chairs and chocolate peanut butter ice cream, but they don’t. When we order, Mama always asks the person with the giant spoon to get me extra chunks of peanut butter because she knows that’s my favorite part. Mama knows all of my favorite things.

I think I will get an exceeds expectations on my report card because Mrs. Hoyt says I’m very “advanced” for the first grade. I am already reading chapter books and some of them don’t even have pictures—which I like, because that way I get to use my imagination. Mrs. Hoyt says I have an “overactive imagination,” which sounds like a bad thing, but I know it’s not.

My favorite chapter books are called the Magic Tree House books. They are about Jack and Annie, who are brother and sister and get to go on adventures through time and visit all these different places. I wish I could go with them.

When Grandfather used to live with us, we would do fun projects and he would read me the comics. Now he doesn’t want to do much of anything. He sits in his recliner chair and we talk, and sometimes on good days I ask him to tell me stories of his adventures. Those are my favorite days.

Even though chocolate peanut butter ice cream is my favorite treat, I told Mama that I wanted to go visit Grandfather as my treat for when I get an exceeds expectations instead. We used to visit him every other day when I didn’t have swim practice, but we haven’t been to see him in the home since the incident last week.

That’s what Mama calls what happened—“the incident.”

I tried talking to her about it the other day, but it just made her cry, so now I will call it the incident too because I don’t want to make Mama cry.

Mama makes me to go to Becky’s house to play while she goes to the home and “handles things.” I don’t really know what that means, but I guess I’m not old enough yet.

“The home” is what Mama calls where Grandfather lives now. He used to live with us here in his real home, but then one day the police found him in the street in his underwear and he got in trouble because you’re supposed to wear your clothes in the street. So he had to go to the home.

A lot of people live in the home. It smells kind of gross in there, like the cleaning spray Mama uses when I wet the bed, which I only do sometimes when I have my pee dream. I know that can’t be what it is because grown-ups don’t wet the bed, but whatever it is, it doesn’t smell so good.

Grandfather calls it “old people stank.”

Aunt Sarah is mad that Mama and I live in Grandfather’s real home now, but I don’t know why because we take good care of it. I even planted flowers in the back garden and none of them have died even though it’s the middle of summer.

That’s because I have what Mama calls a “green thumb.” That is when you’re good at taking care of flowers even though it is very hot. It doesn’t mean my thumbs are actually green.

Mama says Aunt Sarah is family, but I’m not really sure she is because I thought families are always supposed to be together and we’re never together. But I also know that Daddy is family too, and we’re never together either. So I guess I don’t really know what families are.

I pull my espionage notebook across the counter. It’s where I keep all of my clues. “Espionage” is what spies do. They learn secrets just like I learn lessons at school. The notebook is getting pretty full. I write everything down in there. I write down what I have for breakfast—today I write down the grit—and I write down when Mama pinches her side. To a spy, everything is a clue.

And since I’m not old enough to know things yet, I’ll try to figure them out by putting the clues together. Mama let me watch the Harriet the Spy movie a few weeks ago on Netflix, and ever since then I have been keeping my notebook. I also tried to eat a tomato and mayonnaise sandwich, just like Harriet, but it was really gross, so I’ll just write in my notebook instead of eating those. I’m going to solve all of the great mysteries.

Gracie Lynn and the Mystery of Being “Old Enough.”

Gracie Lynn and the Mystery of Grandfather’s Worm.

Gracie Lynn and the Mystery of the Missing Daddy.

Gracie Lynn and the Mystery of the Hidden Brown Bear.

That last one was made up. I know where Brown Bear is. I gave him to Grandfather in the home so that he might help the worm to sleep. Brown Bear always helps me sleep. But I don’t think that Brown Bear works for the worm, because a few weeks ago Mama got a call in the middle of the night.

Mama wouldn’t tell me what happened, but I have written down the clues in my notebook so that I might be able to solve this case sometime soon.

So far I know that Mama got a phone call when it was very dark outside. I know because it woke me up. She said, “What?” and “Are you serious?” Then she said, “How much blood?” I couldn’t hear the rest, but Mama didn’t come into my room or leave the house, so I don’t think it was that serious.

The next morning I asked her, “Who called you on the phone last night?”

“It was someone from the home, Gracie,” she told me.

She looked very tired and didn’t have any makeup on, so I wrote down that it was a storm cloud day.

“What happened?” I asked.

“Just some grown-up stuff, sweet pea,” Mama said, using her fake happy voice. “Nothing for you to worry about.”

“Ummm hmmm,” I said very wisely, not letting her know that that made me cranky. Then I pulled out my note book to take notes on what she said and gave Mama a very suspicious look, just like Harriet the Spy would.

“What’cha writing in there?” Mama asked.

“Just some kid stuff,” I copied her. “Nothing for you to worry about.”

Mama grinned and kissed the top of my head. “You got me there, baby girl.”

The phone call happened exactly six days before the incident, but I don’t know if they’re connected. Mama said that the incident happened because Grandfather is sick with the worm, but I don’t know if the worm has anything to do with the blood. Mostly I think the worm just makes Grandfather confused.

I still haven’t figured out that mystery and a few other ones, but now I’m using my notebook for a different reason. I’m taking notes about my plan, so that when Grandfather and I go on our adventure, Mama will understand.

I’m sad that Mama can’t go with us, but I know she wouldn’t want to. She never wants to go on adventures, and she probably wouldn’t be too happy about this one because it’s about the worm.

Her flip-flops flap against the wooden floors as she comes back in, taking a long drink of orange juice straight out of the carton. I’m not allowed to drink out of the carton like Mama, but I guess I can when I’m old enough.

“Alright, girlie!” she cries, flinging her arms in the air. “Time to go show that pool who’s boss.”

I slap my espionage notebook shut because I don’t want Mama seeing any of my notes, shove one last spoonful of the grit in my mouth, and grab my yellow backpack.

My back pack is special. It’s covered in patches of my favorite cartoon characters that Mama sewed on even though it was hard and it made blood teardrops on her fingers. She also pinned my swimming ribbon onto it from last week’s meet. Maybe if I do well today, I’ll get another ribbon.

I’m not just an advanced reader—I’m also an advanced swimmer, and Coach Grant said I can be on the Purple Team this summer. Not only is purple my favorite color, but it’s also the team for the best swimmers besides the high school kids, so I really want to be on the Purple Team. But I’m not sure if I’ll be here this summer. I may not even be here for my birthday. I have to save Grandfather, and I have to do it tomorrow.

“Mama?” I say.

“Yes, sweet pea?” she replies, grabbing her keys and tucking a piece of hair out of her face.

“Thank you for my grit.”