The Totally True Story of Gracie Byrne

by Shannon Takaoka

Genres: YA Historical Fiction; YA Literary Fiction; YA Social Themes; YA Coming of Age

Synopsis

Gracie feels like a minor character in her own life story—until a mysterious journal turns her fictional stories into reality.

It’s 1987, and sixteen-year-old Gracie Byrne wishes her life were totally different. Shy and awkward, she has trouble fitting in at her new school, she’s still reeling from her parents’ divorce, and her grandmother Katherine’s Alzheimer’s is getting worse. So when Gracie finds a blank journal in Katherine’s vanity drawer, she begins writing stories about herself—a more popular version of herself, that is. But then the hot guy in her art class describes a dream he had about her—the exact scene she wrote about him in her journal—and Gracie realizes that she can create any reality she wants, from acing tests to winning the attention of her previously indifferent classmates. As her ability to change what is into what she wishes it to be grows stronger, though, Gracie starts to second-guess what’s real—especially when it comes to a budding relationship with her cute neighbor, Tom. This compelling story deftly blends friendship, family, and romance . . . and bends the bounds of reality itself.

 

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Release date: October 31, 2023

Publisher: Candlewick Press

Print pages: 333

Sample

Story Telling

SEPTEMBER 5, 1987

I CLICK MY PEN ONE, TWO, THREE, FOUR, FIVE TIMES. IT’S MY ritual before I write. Click, click. Click, click, click. I run my hand over the blank page of my college-ruled spiral-bound notebook. All that white space. So many possibilities. It makes me feel like I’m on the edge of a diving board, about to launch myself off. Just go. Don’t think. Just write.

Everyone is curious about the new girl. She’s from LA—here only temporarily while her father works on location for a film project. He brought her along to get her out of the Hollywood bubble, where there were too many parties and too much blow . . .

Hmmm. Maybe the blow is a bit much.

The ice in my sweating glass of tea cracks and shifts. I take a sip, set the glass down on the coffee table, and position myself on the sofa so that I’m directly in the path of the box fan. I close my eyes and try to imagine an ocean breeze, but what I’m getting is more of a musty smell. Dust + Western-Pennsylvania-in-late-summer humidity = must. I click my pen and try again:

The whispers around school are that the new girl, along with her entire family, is in the Federal Witness Protection Program.

Now there’s an idea. I wonder what starting over with a new identity would be like. If I had to pick a Witness Protection name for myself, I would choose something more sophisticated and unusual. Like Dallas. Or Brooke. In real life, I guess I could go by Grace, which is at least somewhat grown-up, instead of Gracie, which is what everyone in my family calls me. Now’s my chance, since I won’t know a single soul when I walk into Morewood High on Tuesday, and not one single soul will know me. I’ll be a blank page. Almost like I’m in Witness Protection. Except not.

The new girl spoke multiple languages: English, of course, but also Spanish, Mandarin, and even French, from the years she and her family spent 

living in Burgundy, where they own a vineyard.

I roll my eyes at myself. Why would anyone move to Pittsburgh if they owned a vineyard in the South of France? I scribble over the Burgundy vineyard and glance at Hank, asleep on the scratched-up hardwood floor, his front paws moving in some kind of doggie dream. Even at rest, he’s chasing something.

I flip the page . . .

The new girl is pissed. Pissed to be starting over at the worst possible moment: right in the middle of high school. Pissed at her mom, who doesn’t understand why it’s not so easy for her to just “make friends.” Pissed at her brother, Jack, who, of course, excels so much at making friends that he has a surplus. Pissed at her dad, who left them three years ago for his new life with his new wife, which, as of two weeks ago, also includes a brand-spanking-new baby daughter. Pissed at the universe, for . . . everything.

Actually, she’s worse than pissed. “Pissed” makes her sound kind of tough, like a badass, like a girl who could hold her own in a fight or who plays drums in a punk band. Like a girl people are curious about. But she doesn’t feel like a badass. She feels lost. Lonely. Terrified at the prospect of facing a sea of new faces on Tuesday and not being able to do anything but freeze.

Nope! I cross out the entire passage with a giant X. Too much realism.

Hank’s explosive bark blasts me back into the present. The one where I’m not a cool / possibly troubled California party girl, the mysterious / possibly dangerous daughter of a mafia hit man, or . . . European. I’m just me. Sweaty, cranky, and still stressing over what I’m going to wear to school next week. Except for the shoes. I found a pair of shiny black oxfords on sale a few days ago, and I think they look sort of cool.

At the window with his paws up on the sill, Hank’s ears are perked and his fur is standing on end all across his back. I follow his stare to the moving truck that just pulled up across the street. It must be the new neighbors, the ones Mom won’t stop talking about in her chipper, hopeful voice. She heard there are three kids, the oldest in high school, like me, and twins around the same age as Jack. “See?” she’d said. “Now you won’t be the only new one at Morewood.”

Hank continues to bark, bark, bark, and I tell him to shush, but instead of taking my advice, he emits a frustrated sound that’s half cry, half yelp before skidding across the floor and hurling all eighty pounds of his canine self at the flimsy screen door, knocking the entire thing off its hinges. He jumps back for a second, startled by the clatter of the screen as it falls onto the porch, barks once at it, and then he’s out the door.

Shit.

Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit.

No time to find shoes—Hank’s still not used to this house, let alone this neighborhood, and we’re on a busy street. When he’s in a protective frenzy, he doesn’t pay attention to cars or anything else. I bolt after him, jamming my bare toe on the corner of the fallen screen as I go.

Holy. Mother. Of. God. A wave of pain takes my breath away.

At the edges of my consciousness, which is currently 99 percent focused on my throbbing toe, there is barking and barking and more barking. Forget your toe, Gracie. Get the dog, before he’s roadkill.

I force myself to look up, and spot Hank on the sidewalk in front of our house, not on the street at least, tangled up with a guy and a girl, both about my age, and a small dog that looks kind of like Toto. The other dog is even more aggressive than Hank—baring its teeth, its wiry hair puffed out all over its body like a porcupine—but in this particular case, I can’t say I blame it. Hank is bigger by about seventy pounds. And he started it.

I run-hop up to them, repeating, “Sorry, sorry, sorry,” while simultaneously doing this ridiculous dance with Hank where I lunge at him to try to catch him

by the collar and he leaps back, just out of reach. The girl is also trying to reel in the terrier, now a full-on ball of blind rage as it tries to bite Hank, who, in response, yelps as if he has actually been bitten and runs into the street.

“HAAANK!” I yell as he darts directly in front of an oncoming Camaro.

It blares its horn and screeches to a stop. Hank pauses—perhaps his dog-life is momentarily flashing before his eyes—and then takes off again. The driver rolls down his window to shout at the three of us, “Control your goddamn dogs!” Nice.

I can’t see where Hank went, but I hear him, barking somewhere behind the moving truck that is parked across the street. Seconds later, I hear a crash.

“Hey,” a gravelly voice, close to me, speaks. For the first time, I get a good look at the guy on the sidewalk. He’s wearing a Ramones T-shirt and is ridiculously hot, with brown-green eyes and the kind of hair that could be categorized as tousled, in the best possible way.

My face heats up in an immediate blush, because of course it does. “Hey,” I reply, trying to sound like I’m not a sweaty, red-faced mess.

He points to my toe. “You’re, uh, bleeding.”

I glance down at my bare feet and oh my God. Total carnage.

“I don’t . . . feel so good,” says the girl, now clutching the terrier in her arms as it continues to thrash and bark. She’s straight from central casting as Hot Guy’s companion—ridiculously pretty, like a teenage Michelle Pfeiffer with smoky eyeliner and glossy, bright pink lips. Her face, however, is paler than pale, with some green undertones. “I think I need to sit down.”

“She has a thing about blood,” the guy tells me. “And, like, maybe you should get a Band-Aid or something . . . ?”

As if things couldn’t get any worse, right then my mom pulls the car into the driveway with Katherine in the passenger seat. I want to cry. Hank is somewhere across the street, on a nervous, freaked-out rampage, possibly about to get us sued. Meanwhile I’m bleeding out in front of two complete strangers, one of whom is close to fainting on the sidewalk.

Mom gets out of the car and takes in the scene: me, Hot Guy, teenage Michelle Pfeiffer,

one angry terrier, and a severely bleeding toe.

“Gracie, what’s going on?” She glances toward the house across the street. “Is that Hank barking?”

“He knocked down the screen door and took off,” I answer.

Nurse that she is, Mom begins to triage. Taking one look at Michelle Pfeiffer’s greenish pallor, she says, “Oh honey, we need to find you a spot to sit down.” To her hot boyfriend (he must be her boyfriend, right?), she says, “Here, you hold the dog, okay? Let’s get your friend up on the porch.” And then she looks at me. “Your toe is bleeding.”

“I KNOW!” I didn’t mean it to come out like that, but yeah, I know.

Mom leads the girl by the arm to one of the wicker chairs with the floral cushions on the front porch. “Put your head down, like this.” She demonstrates. “I’ll get you some water in a minute. I need to help my mother out of the car first.”

But Katherine has already unbuckled herself from the passenger seat and is standing in the driveway. I’m nearest, so I hop over to catch her by the hand. We can’t leave her alone this close to the street. She’ll walk right out without even looking.

Mom, still on the porch, takes a deep breath. “Gracie, can you get her to come in? I’ll find you a hand towel and some bandages, and then we can deal with Hank.”

She pushes the fallen screen door to the side and disappears into the house. Michelle Pfeiffer keeps her head down, as Mom directed, and Hot Guy sits awkwardly next to her with the terrier, who is now trembling all over in his lap, which is an improvement over fury, I guess.

“C’mon Katherine,” I say to my grandma. (It’s no use calling her Grandma—she doesn’t remember she’s a grandma, and she definitely doesn’t remember she’s my grandma. She doesn’t remember almost anybody she’s related to, including Mom. Alzheimer’s sucks.) “Let’s get you inside.” I gently pull her in the direction of the porch. Please, I telepath to her. Just be quiet and cooperative. Just this once

No such luck. She gives me the worst stink eye, yanks her hand out of my grasp, and yells at full volume, “WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU’RE DOING? WHO THE HELL DO YOU THINK YOU ARE?”

The mail carrier dropping a package at the house next door stops in his tracks and looks our way. Michelle Pfeiffer lifts her head up. Hot Guy’s eyes go wide.

Attention is focused on me from every direction, and not in a Whoa, who’s that girl? kind of way. It’s more like: What the fuck is up with that girl? I can feel the heat wafting off me as I break out all over in a fresh layer of sweat. After what seems like a lifetime, but in reality is probably about ten seconds, Mom emerges from the house with a glass of ice water and a hand towel. She gives the water to the girl and then hurries over to me and Katherine, passing me the towel. “Katherine, it’s all right,” she says. “Gracie isn’t going to hurt you. How about you come up to the porch and I’ll get you some lemonade?”

“Who’s Gracie?” Katherine asks. But she seems to have already forgotten that a moment ago she didn’t want to budge from the driveway. “Lemonade would be nice.”

I follow them up the walkway that leads to the porch, sit on the bottom step, and wrap the towel around my foot, being careful to pull it tight around the bleeding toe. “Put some pressure on it,” my mom says.

“I know.” I raise my head and look toward the street, hoping that Hank might appear without us having to chase him down.

Instead, another guy around my age is standing at the end of our walk. His sandy-brown hair—somewhere between wavy and curly—is damp and his face is flushed. He looks like someone who has been carrying boxes into a house on a very hot day. Cool. Maybe the whole neighborhood can come by to see what’s going on with my grandmother and my toe.

“Hi,” he says, with the

biggest sort-of-askew grin I’ve ever seen. Seriously. His mouth seems almost too big for his face.

“Well, hello,” my mom responds in this the more the merrier voice that instantly irritates me.

He walks closer, to the foot of the porch stairs, and I look up. He’s tall, kind of lean and wiry, and wears white tube socks with green stripes around the top. Basketball player? Shorts. T-shirt. Running shoes. Maybe a long-distance runner. Definitely a jock of some kind.

“Hi. I’m Tom Broder, from across the street.” He gestures with his thumb behind him. “We’re just moving in, and I think we have your dog? He’s in our backyard. I was going to try and bring him here, but he doesn’t seem to want to leave, which is fine for now, there’s a fence and a gate, but you might want to come get him when you . . .” His voice trails off and he glances around at all of us, registering Michelle Pfeiffer’s ashen face, the towel around my foot, drops of my blood splattered all over the walk. “Oh, wow. Maybe he’s not your dog? Did he bite you?”

“No, no,” says my mom. “You definitely have our dog. Hank. He’s . . .”

An asshole, I think.

“. . . got a lot of energy,” Mom says, before turning to Michelle Pfeiffer, who probably has come to the same conclusion about Hank that I have. “Are you feeling better, hon?” She pauses. “I’m sorry, what’s your name?” Ugh, I guess we’re doing this? Right now? Shouldn’t my mom go get Hank? Like, NOW?

“Lisa,” she says. “I am feeling better, thanks.”

“And you are?” Mom asks Hot Guy.

Oh my God.

“Luke,” he says.

I immediately store that one in my memory bank, though.

“And this is my daughter, Gracie.” My mom gestures to me.

I lift my hand in a half-hearted wave. There goes my plan to start going by the more mature Grace. Like Grace Kelly. Or Grace Jones.

“I hope Hank didn’t break anything over there,” Mom adds, turning back to

Tom-Broder-from-across-the-street.

“Ahhhh . . . you know, not much.” Tom has a terrible poker face. “He followed our dog into the house and they both got a little rowdy.”

“Oh, no,” says my mom.

“And it turns out one of the movers does not like dogs. He dropped one end of a wardrobe. But I think it’s salvageable.”

Yikes.

“Anything else?” my mom asks.

Tom looks uncomfortable, like he doesn’t want to lie but also doesn’t want be the bearer of any more bad news. “Just . . . a vase. But it was one my brothers broke and glued back together months ago. So no loss there.”

Mom sighs. “We’ll replace it. I’m sorry.”

“HEY!” Katherine, who has up until now been quietly rummaging through her purse, is now looking directly at Tom. “Who do you think YOU ARE?” (I don’t know why, but this is one of her favorite phrases. At least this time she didn’t add a curse. She swears a lot more now than she used to, although I can’t say I blame her. I’d swear a lot too if I couldn’t remember anything.)

“Uh . . . I’m Tom?” He’s obviously confused. “We’re moving in across the street . . .”

“This is my mom, Katherine,” says Mom, who is now back to introductions.

“She has memory problems,” I add, by way of explanation.

Katherine looks offended. “Who has problems?” One thing that hasn’t been affected by Alzheimer’s: Katherine’s hearing. She goes back to searching the

contents of her purse, giving Mom the opportunity to return to her embarrassingly obvious effort to jump-start my social life.

After five minutes of chitchat—five minutes that feel like five lifetimes—Mom has ascertained that Tom is an incoming junior at Morewood, like me; that Luke also goes to Morewood and is a senior; and that Lisa graduated in June and has just started at the University of Pittsburgh, where coincidentally, Tom’s dad will be working as a therapist in student health services. Tom’s mom, a professor, will be teaching calculus at Carnegie Mellon, and his younger brothers will be going to the same school as Jack. Oh, and Lisa plans to study nursing.

At the end of her lightning round of questions, Mom promises to go across the street to pick up Hank as soon as she “takes a look at Gracie’s toe.” And then, finally, everyone disperses. Tom jogs back across the street, waving to us all as he goes, and Luke, Lisa, and Lisa’s terrier, Coco (another detail gleaned by my mom), continue on their walk.

I breathe a sigh of relief as soon as the porch is clear, and watch them go. Luke’s lean, muscular arm is casually draped across Lisa’s shoulders. (Is that a tattoo peeking out of his Ramones tee?) She leans into him and he whispers something in her ear, making her laugh. Then he slips his hand into the back pocket of her jean shorts.

Why, I wonder, isn’t my life like that? Hot pink lips. Shorts that make my ass look amazing. A boyfriend with cool clothes, great hair, and perfect cheekbones. His mouth whispering in my ear. His fingers stroking my back.

Instead, I have a feral dog, sweaty armpits, and an injury that, if it happened in a movie, would be 100 percent comedic.

“I don’t think she’s going to make it as a nurse,” my mom says as they disappear around the corner. “Not with that reaction to blood. Now, let me see your toe.”

I unwrap the towel. It’s still bleeding, although not as badly as before.

“How’d Katherine’s appointment go?” I ask as she inspects the cut.

She shrugs. “Oh, you know, fine. Her cholesterol is not great, so they’re giving her new meds for that, and I got a referral for a senior day care just a few blocks away.”

My “summer job” has been keeping an eye on Katherine while Mom is at work. Keeping an eye on her is why we moved here in the first place. My grandfather used to be the one to do that, but he died suddenly this spring

 of a heart attack. And two weeks after the funeral, Katherine nearly set the house on fire when she left a pie baking in the oven overnight. She couldn’t be alone anymore, so Mom decided to sell our old place and move in here. My grandparents’ house is bigger, in a good school district, and it’s where Katherine is most comfortable. Plus Mom doesn’t have to worry about a mortgage. It just makes sense. But that doesn’t mean that I have to like the fact that I have to completely turn my life upside down right in the middle of high school.

Mom sighs. She’s been sighing a lot lately.

“I think I’m going to have to take you to urgent care. This is going to need a few stitches.”

“What are we going to do with Katherine?”

“Jack can watch her.” She looks back toward the house. “Where is he, anyway?”

“At the park,” I answer. Even though we’ve only lived here with Katherine since the beginning of the summer, my little brother is already like the kid mayor of the neighborhood. He’s been running around with a pack of kids for weeks now, walking to the pool at the Y, disappearing for hours into the park.

As if our conversation had summoned him, he appears on the front walk, kickball in hand, face flushed and dirty, hair sticking up at all angles.

“What the hell happened to the door?”

When he reaches us at the porch stairs, he looks at my toe. “Oh, man, that’s disgusting! What did you do?”

“Language,” Mom says. “Gracie cut her toe.” Even she is done explaining the chain of events at this point. “Jack. I need you to go across the street to the new neighbors’ and get Hank. And then I need you to stay with Katherine while I take Gracie to get this checked out. You can put I Love Lucy on the VCR.” I Love Lucy is Katherine’s favorite. It usually keeps her occupied for a little while.

“Hank is at the new neighbors’?”

“Long story,” I say.

He shrugs, but says, “Sure.” Even if Hank weren’t corralled in their backyard, Jack would find some other reason to go over, introduce himself, and

probably get invited to dinner before the moving truck was even empty.

“That dog is a real son of a bitch,” says Katherine, as if she’d been joining in the conversation all along. Alzheimer’s is weird like this. Most of the time, Katherine seems lost in some other place—only vaguely aware of what’s going on at any given moment. And then she’ll say something perfectly lucid. Like a radio station that’s all static picking up a brief signal.

“He is, Katherine. He really is,” my mom says. “C’mon, let’s get you inside.”

Katherine and Jack are not watching I Love Lucy when we get home. He’s watching a rerun of Magnum, P.I., and she’s snoring softly in her armchair, fast asleep. Which means she’s probably going to be up half the night, pacing the upstairs hallway, keeping everyone else awake, asking the same questions over and over and over again. It’s called sundowning—when Alzheimer’s patients get restless after the sun goes down and are unable to fall asleep.

Mom sets a pizza box down on the coffee table. “Sorry. ...