BooksBarbecue
Back Grace Save as PDF
Chapters (54)
  1. Cover
  2. Colophon
  3. ALSO BY RICHARD PAUL EVANS
  4. Title Page
  5. Copyright
  6. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
  7. Dedication
  8. AUTHOR’S NOTE
  9. Epigraph
  10. Grace
  11. THE LITTLE MATCH GIRL
  12. CHAPTER One
  13. CHAPTER Two
  14. CHAPTER Three
  15. CHAPTER Four
  16. CHAPTER Five
  17. CHAPTER Six
  18. CHAPTER Seven
  19. CHAPTER Eight
  20. CHAPTER Nine
  21. CHAPTER Ten
  22. CHAPTER Eleven
  23. CHAPTER Twelve
  24. CHAPTER Thirteen
  25. CHAPTER Fourteen
  26. CHAPTER Fifteen
  27. CHAPTER Sixteen
  28. CHAPTER Seventeen
  29. CHAPTER Eighteen
  30. CHAPTER Nineteen
  31. CHAPTER Twenty
  32. CHAPTER Twenty-one
  33. CHAPTER Twenty-two
  34. CHAPTER Twenty-three
  35. CHAPTER Twenty-four
  36. CHAPTER Twenty-five
  37. CHAPTER Twenty-six
  38. CHAPTER Twenty-seven
  39. CHAPTER Twenty-eight
  40. CHAPTER Twenty-nine
  41. CHAPTER Thirty
  42. CHAPTER Thirty-one
  43. CHAPTER Thirty-two
  44. CHAPTER Thirty-three
  45. CHAPTER Thirty-four
  46. CHAPTER Thirty-five
  47. CHAPTER Thirty-six
  48. CHAPTER Thirty-seven
  49. CHAPTER Thirty-eight
  50. CHAPTER Thirty-nine
  51. EPILOGUE
  52. A LETTER FROM RICHARD PAUL EVANS
  53. JOIN THE RICHARD PAUL EVANS MAILING LIST, GET A FREE GIFT AND HELP A CHILD
  54. ABOUT THE AUTHOR

For most of her life my mother had struggled with depression, and our situation didn’t help much. People didn’t talk as much about depression in those days; in some religions it was still regarded as a sin. Science made people less sinful with the wonder drug Librium.

My mother worked all day, then came home at night, physically and emotionally spent. My father just kind of moped around the house, dreaming up get-rich-quick schemes while he slowly regained the use of his limbs. Joel and I learned that if we spent much time in the house, Dad would think of errands for us, so mostly we just hid out in the clubhouse. Then summer ended.

Life at Granite Junior High School was dog-eat-dog. Even though I was a ninth grader, and higher up the food chain, it was still miserable. I wasn’t big like the jocks or especially smart like the geeks. I had acne and a bad haircut, which, when my dad got partial use of his hands back, was once again administered with his Ronco electric hair trimmer. The hoods, who gathered outside the north doors after school to smoke, took notice of me and made my life even more miserable. They tripped me, knocked books out of my hands, and generally harassed and humiliated me. And I worked at a burger place that paid sixty cents an hour and made you wear a paper cap. That time in my life nothing was worth remembering. That is, up until the day I found Grace in a Dumpster.

CHAPTER Five

A boy found me tonight as I was looking for food
in a Dumpster. He acted like he didn’t know why I was in there,
which makes me thinks he’s either dumb or good.

GRACE’S DIARY

FRIDAY, OCT. 12

About ten yards behind the Queen, on the other side of the drive-thru lane, were two small structures. One was a sheet metal storage shed where we kept supplies like napkins, cups, industrial-sized cans of tomato sauce, and the five-pound bags of spiced soybean filler we’d mix with the beef to stretch it further; the other was a walk-in freezer. My first night working at the Queen a co-worker named Dean sent me to the freezer for a bag of frozen Tater Tots and locked me inside for nearly a half hour. I think he only let me out because it got busy and he needed my help.