Read Online Grace by Richard Paul Evans - Free Book Online Page B

silly. We learned it in Spanish.”
    â€œOh. Yeah.”
    I walked back to the house with dread in the pit of my stomach. If my parents ever found out I had played hooky, I was dead and buried.

CHAPTER Ten
    I met Eric’s mother at the grocery store. I think
it’s peculiar that she rang up my groceries and
had no idea that I was taking them to her home.
    GRACE’S DIARY
    TUESDAY, OCT. 16
    The next morning I got ready as if I were going to school. Mom made us Cream of Wheat for breakfast and, as usual, Joel put so much raspberry jam in his bowl that his cereal was crimson.
    â€œLike a little Cream of Wheat with your jam?” I asked.
    He took a mouthful, reading the back of a cereal box. “I like it this way.”
    â€œI’m going to work early,” my mom said. “We’re counting inventory. Want a ride to school, Eric?”
    Not once since school started had my mother asked if I wanted a ride. It’s like she knew I was up to something. “Uh, no. Thanks. I’m meeting someone on the bus.”
    She looked at me with pleasant surprise. “You have a new friend?”
    My mother was always concerned over my lack of friends.
    â€œYeah.”
    â€œWhat’s his name?”
    â€œWho?”
    â€œYour friend.”
    â€œOh. Gra…ck.”
    Her eyebrows rose. “Grack?”
    I nodded.
    â€œThat’s an odd name. Where’s he from?”
    â€œUh, here.”
    â€œHmm. Sounds Hungarian. What nationality is he?”
    â€œAmerican,” I said. “I think.”
    â€œWell.” She looked at the clock. “You’d better get going. Maybe Grack would like to come over sometime.”
    â€œYeah. Sure. I’ll ask.”
    She walked over and kissed me. “Have a good day,” she said and left the room.
    â€œWho’s Grack?” Joel asked.
    â€œWho do you think?”
    He put another spoonful of jam in his cereal. “I have no idea.”
    â€œThat’s just gross,” I said.
    I don’t know how many lies I had told in my life but I was sure that I’d soundly trounced my record in the few days since Grace had arrived. Now I was playing hooky. I wasn’t sure what power Grace had over me, but I hoped she wouldn’t make me do anything worse.
    I grabbed my school bag and started walking for the bus stop. My mother drove past me halfway down the street, waving as she went by. As soon as she had turned the corner I looked back down the street to see if anyone was watching (as if my neighbors suddenly had nothing better to do than to make sure I was going to school). I didn’t see anyone so I turned back. I ducked into our next-door neighbor’s backyard, then crawled through the hole in the fence that separated our yards. (Joel and I hadn’t made the hole, but we’d enhanced it a bit.) I crossed into our backyard and knocked on the clubhouse door. “It’s me.”
    I crawled inside. Grace watched me enter. “I wasn’t sure if you were going to come or not.”
    I dropped my school bag on the floor. “Why?”
    â€œYou just seemed a little…nervous.”
    I was glad she hadn’t said “afraid.” “Where are we going?” I asked.
    â€œThe mall.”
    The mall? I thought. The place was probably teeming with truant officers. We might as well play hooky in front of the school.
    The mall was a forty-five-minute walk from my house. We probably could have reached it sooner except I insisted we keep to the back roads, which Grace didn’t seem to mind. If there were truant officers at the mall, they didn’t see us. This made me wonder if they were just boogeymen that school administrators and parents made up to keep us in line.
    We walked, unstopped, into store after store as Grace looked at clothes. For me we made a stop at a bookstore and a model shop. On the way back, we ate lunch at a diner. “Ain’t you a cute couple. You two