“You’ve read A Separate Peace?”
Nick smirked. “You’ll probably love it.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“What makes you say that?”
“I can just tell. You’re the type.”
“What type?”
“The type that would love that stupid book.”
“Huh,” Quinn said.
“That’s right. Huh.”
He was smirking again. Quinn’s brain started yelling, That’s not a real smile! That’s an Ethan Hess smile!
“You don’t know anything about me,” she said.
“Who says I want to?”
For a second Quinn wanted to smack Nick Strout in the face with A Separate Peace. But then she remembered what Ivy had said about his chopped-off personality.
So she decided to let Nick Strout slide. Just this once.
CHAPTER
6
WHILE MO WAS GETTING JULIUS SETTLED at the kitchen counter with his after-school snack and his headphones, Quinn was curled up on the couch with her phone. She entered the username Lissa had scrawled on a napkin during lunch: gulls24qb. Unlike Quinn’s Instagram account, which was set to private, this one wasn’t. One tap, and there he was: Nick Strout, standing on the sand in his navy-blue swim trunks, holding a football.
Quinn wasn’t sure why she was surprised to see him like this. It wasn’t like after her hair fell out she’d suddenly started posting selfies of her bald head. In fact, all the pictures she had posted in the past year had been of inanimate objects. Her basketball. The mountains outside her house in Boulder. Anything but herself. So Quinn got why Nick Strout wasn’t exactly dying to post a picture of himself in a wheelchair. Still, it was hard to reconcile the Nick from study hall with the image on her phone. Instagram Nick looked like a different person, not just in the beach picture but in every one that followed. Nick grinning with two other guys in football jerseys. Nick grinning in front of a bonfire. Nick grinning in a suit and tie, his arm around Ivy, who was wearing a short red dress. Nick’s photos had dozens of comments, hundreds of likes.
Quinn sat there, staring at all those pictures, thinking, What happened to you, Nick Strout?
Well, she knew what had happened to him. It was a snowmobile accident. But she found herself wanting to know more. She found herself googling “Nick Strout Gulls Head Massachusetts.”
And here was what she got:
NORTH SHORE—Gulls Head Middle School quarterback Nicholas Strout was announced Friday morning as the Bay State Junior Sportsman of the Year. Strout was presented with the award in a surprise announcement on WHGH, Channel 5, by former Boston College quarterback Ryan Barker.
“It’s pretty crazy getting a plaque from a guy I idolized when I was little,” Strout said. “I grew up watching Barker play. It’s pretty cool.”
Strout, an eighth grader at GHMS, went 237 of 348 this season for 3,603 yards and 44 touchdowns while throwing just five interceptions. He led the Seagulls to the state D-3 semifinals, where they fell to Tewksbury Middle School, 37–34.
At the presentation Friday, the thirteen-year-old phenom credited his brothers, former Gulls Head High School QBs Gavin and Christopher “Kip” Strout and current JV QB Thomas Strout, and father, Marc Strout, with “teaching me everything I know about football.” Strout said, “[My dad] was my first coach. He put a football in my hands when I was three and I’ve basically been throwing TDs ever since.”
Then Quinn pulled up something else. A GoFundMe page entitled “Nick’s Fight,” dated May 19.
Dear Friends of Nicholas Strout,
We are writing with an update, not only on Nicky’s progress, but also on our campaign to raise funds to support him in his rehabilitation and recovery. As you are aware, Nick suffered a crushing injury while snowmobiling on March 29 and has since undergone a bilateral above-knee amputation. Any amputation is life altering, but those with bilateral above-knee amputations face a host of complicated physical and emotional challenges. With your help, this GoFundMe campaign has raised nearly $8,000. Thank you so much for your support and generosity so far. On behalf of the Strout family, we could not be more grateful.
The post went on to explain everything Nick would need going forward. Short prosthetic legs with training feet. Full-length prostheses with microprocessor-controlled knees, or computerized legs. Then came the costs: $2,000 for the basic components of each prosthesis, followed by prosthetists’ fees of $10,000 to $15,000 per leg just for the basic models. The advanced computerized prostheses, controlled by muscle movements, would cost upward of $70,000 per leg, only a portion of which would be covered by the Strouts’ insurance.
Seventy thousand dollars per leg? Quinn’s wigs were nothing compared to this. She wondered what Nick’s parents did for work. Most of the houses in Gulls Head were pretty small. Did they have savings? Would they need to take out a second mortgage? This was what Quinn’s parents had done when Julius was accepted at the Cove. They’d remortgaged their house in Boulder and rented it out to pay for his school. Quinn wasn’t supposed to know, but she’d overheard them talking one night, maybe a week before they moved. “What about Quinn’s college?” her mom had said, and her dad had said, “We’ll figure it out,” and her mom had said, “I don’t want her to have to pay back student loans like I did,” and her dad had offered up one of his gems: Improvidus, apto, quod victum. Improvise, adapt, overcome.
Looking at Nick Strout’s GoFundMe page, Quinn wondered how he was “improvising, adapting, and overcoming” with the whole I-no-longer-have-legs situation. There had to be an online support group for amputees, right? If there was alopeciasucks.com, maybe there was amputationsucks.com. She tapped on Google again.
Wait—was it creepy what she was doing? Was she being a total freak show? Ivy and Lissa had cheer practice after school. Carmen had field hockey. What did Quinn have? Her extracurricular activity was googling a boy she barely knew and searching for imaginary websites. She needed to get a life.
But first, real quick, she’d hop back on Instagram and follow Nick Strout. She’d send follow requests to Ivy and Carmen and Lissa, too. This wasn’t being a stalker. This was being a normal person.
Also normal: completing her geometry worksheet, reading three chapters of realistic fiction, and putting away her laundry.
* * *
When Quinn walked into the kitchen at five-thirty, her father was standing at the counter, slicing tomatoes, which confused her. “Dad?”
He looked up and smiled. “Salve, filia.” Greetings, daughter.
“Salve,” Quinn said. “Why are you home so early?”
“No one signed up for office hours. I caught the four-twenty train. Thought I’d help your mom with dinner.”
“Oh.”
He held up a slice of tomato. “Cupis?”
“Yeah, okay.”
Julius was sitting at the kitchen table with his headphones on, humming to himself and holding a bunless hot dog.
Now Quinn was doubly confused. “It is Thursday, right?”
“Last I checked,” her dad said, arranging tomato slices on a plate.
“Is he planning to put that hot dog in a thermos?”
Julius ate only out of a thermos on Thursdays. Thursday, thermos. It was an alliteration thing. Quinn had no clue how his brain came up with this stuff. Normally he chose foods that made sense in a thermos, like oatmeal.
“Shhh,” Quinn’s dad said, sprinkling salt on the tomatoes. “I’m trying something new.”
That was when Quinn’s mom marched into the kitchen, holding one of her clay busts. “Look at this,” she said.
Quinn looked. The head appeared to have been scribbled on with blue marker.
“Every single one,” her mom said. “Every. Single. One.” She turned to Quinn’s brother. “Julius?”
Of course, he couldn’t hear her because he had his headphones on. Another mom might have raised her voice or yanked the headphones off
her child’s head to get his attention. Not Mo. She knew that if she startled Quinn’s brother, or touched him the slightest bit, he would flip out.
“Buddy.” Quinn’s mom knocked gently on the table. She motioned for Julius to remove his headphones.
“I’m listening, Mo. Indigo Dreams.”
Indigo Dreams was this CD Quinn’s parents had bought that was supposed to help her brother stay calm during transitions. It was not the weirdest thing they’d ever done. Back in Boulder, they had tried all sorts of alternative therapies. They’d taken Julius to this woman who claimed to remove toxic metals from autistic kids’ bodies by playing different wavelengths of sound while they were sleeping. The first time Quinn’s parents had tried it on Julius, he’d immediately started wetting the bed. So they’d moved on to Chinese medicine—acupuncture, acupressure, aligning the hemispheres of Julius’s brain—which didn’t seem to do anything. Next came the naturopath, who told Quinn’s parents to eliminate casein and soy and gluten and all red foods from Julius’s diet. If you asked Quinn, that was the reason he was so hung up on food. Right now, he was clutching his naked hot dog and looking around the kitchen. “Where’s my thermos, Mo?”
Quinn snuck a glance at her dad, who said casually, “We’ll talk about your thermos in a second, kiddo. Right now, look at Mo.”
“It’s already been a second, Phil,” Julius said, looking at his hot dog. “A second has passed. Two seconds have passed.”
“Julius,” Quinn’s mom said.
“Thermos Thursday, Mo.”
“Yes, I know it’s thermos Thursday, but I need to ask you a question.” She lowered the clay bust to the table. It was one of her better works. Strong Roman nose. Full lips. Delicate ears. “Did you draw on this head with a marker?”
“Limited Edition Sharpie brand Color Burst Fine Point Permanent Marker, Mo. Jetset Jade.”
“You drew on this head with Sharpie?” Quinn’s mom said. “You drew on all my heads with Sharpie?”
“Not your head, Mo. You have hair.” Julius was rocking in his chair, forward and backward, forward and backward, eyes on the hot dog.
“I see.”
“No, you don’t, Mo. You don’t see your hair unless you look in a mirror. Your hair is above your eyes.”
It was hard to argue with Quinn’s brother’s logic.
“Julius.” Quinn’s mom took an audible breath, let it out slow. “What is the rule about Mo’s studio?”
“I don’t go in Mo’s studio.”
“Did you go in Mo’s studio?”
Quinn’s brother didn’t answer, just rocked.
“Julius,” her mom said softly. “You drew on my art. That I worked very hard on. You drew on it with permanent marker.”
“Limited Edition Sharpie brand Color Burst Fine Point Permanent Marker, Mo. Jetset Jade.”
Oh, dear God.
“Where’s my thermos, Mo?” His body was picking up speed.
“Julius,” Quinn’s mom said, “you’re rocking. I would like you to stop rocking and look at me.”
Quinn didn’t know how her mother stayed so calm. Her art had been vandalized by her nine-year-old. It was crazy. Quinn would laugh if the situation were not, at least partially, her own fault. If she hadn’t gone bald before his very eyes, she doubted that her brother would have done what he had. His heightened awareness of hair was the reason he’d defaced Mo’s sculptures by giving them all Sharpie wigs. Quinn was sure of it.
“If you look at me, Julius, I will give you a sticker for eye contact. See? I have your chart right here.”
Now Quinn had to laugh. She really did. Her mom was holding up a piece of poster board, pointing to a box with a pair of eyeballs in it.
“Thermos Thursday, Mo.”
“How about this, Jules?” Quinn’s dad said. He walked over to the table with one of their blue ceramic bowls. “Why don’t you put your hot dog in here?”
“That’s not a thermos, Phil. That’s a bowl.”
Quinn didn’t know how her brother could see the bowl, between the rocking and the hot dog squeezing. His peripheral vision was impressive.
“It’s like a thermos,” Quinn’s dad said. “See? You can put food in it. Your hot dog will fit nicely. Fit perfectum.”
“Phil,” Mo said. She gave Quinn’s dad a look.
If there was anything Quinn’s father prided himself on more than spouting random Latin phrases, it was reading Mo’s cues.
“Gotcha,” he said. He grabbed two tomato slices, handed one to Quinn, and gestured with his head for her to follow him out of the kitchen.
“Good luck, Mom,” she said.
Mo gave Quinn a tired smile. “Thanks.”
“Bye, Julius.”
Just once, Quinn would like for her brother to look her in the eye and say something that made sense. Like See ya, or Later alligator. But all she got was “Thermos Thursday, Mo,” directed at a hot dog.
Quinn followed her dad into the living room. When he sat on the couch and patted the space beside him, she sat.
“Quomodo erat dies tuus?”
Quinn looked at her dad. Phil’s eyes were the blue of a swimming pool. His beard had a chunk of tomato in it. “Can we please speak English?”
He nodded. “Sure. How was your day?”
“Fine.”
Quinn’s phone pinged from the pocket of her shorts. When she reached for it, her dad said, “Can we please hold off on devices?”
“Sure,” Quinn said.
Back in the kitchen, Julius was really revving up. “Thermos Thursday, Mo! Thermos Thursday!”
“The new plan’s really working, huh?” Quinn said.
“These things take time,” her dad said.
Quinn’s phone pinged again.
“Let me just check this real quick,” she said. “It might be about homework.”
“Go ahead.”
Quinn glanced at her phone.
Instagram now
Nick Strout (gulls24qb) accepted your follow request.
Instagram now
Nick Strout (gulls24qb) requested to follow you.
“Huh,” Quinn said.
“Homework?”
“No.” She slid her phone back in her pocket. “It’s just this boy.”
Her dad cocked an eyebrow. “There’s a boy?”
“It’s not like that,” Quinn said. “He just wants to follow me.”
“Follow you?”
“On Instagram.”
“Ah.”
As if Quinn’s dad had a clue what following someone on Instagram meant. Phil had yet to enter the twenty-first century. He still had a flip phone. Half the time he forgot to charge it.
“What’s this boy’s name?”
“Nick.”
“Nick,” Quinn’s dad repeated. “Tell me about Nick.”
“He’s just this kid in my study hall.”
“And?”
“And…,” Quinn said. “There’s tomato in your beard.”
She said this because it was true. Also because she wasn’t sure how much she wanted to tell her father about Nick Strout. He doesn’t have legs. He’s kind of a jerk.
“Right you are,” her dad said, plucking the chunk of tomato from his beard and popping it into his mouth. Classic Phil.
“I don’t want a sticker, Mo!” Julius hollered from the kitchen. “I want a thermos!”
“So much for the sticker system,” Quinn said.
Her dad smiled. He reached out a long, thin hand and squeezed Quinn’s elbow.
“What?” she said.
“Tell me more.”
“More what?”
“More anything.”
“I’ve only been in school for two days. There’s not much to tell.”
“Fair enough,” her dad said. He shifted his gaze, not very subtly, from Quinn’s eyes to her head. She knew he wanted to ask about Guinevere but he didn’t know what to say.
“I’m fine, Dad. The wig’s fine. I’m just not wearing it ri
ght now because it itches. I have to take breaks.”
“Breaks.”
“I have to let my skin breathe.”
“Right.” He nodded. “That makes sense.”
Quinn’s phone pinged again. Then again. “Um … Dad?”
“Go on.” He waved his hand through the air. “Go be a teenager. Grab yourself a hot dog.”
Instagram 7m ago
Nick Strout (gulls24qb) accepted your follow request.
Instagram 7m ago
Nick Strout (gulls24qb) requested to follow you.
Instagram 3m ago
Ivy D’Arcy (poisonivy710) accepted your follow request.
Instagram 3m ago
Ivy D’Arcy (poisonivy710) requested to follow you.
Quinn didn’t respond to Nick’s request right away. She accepted Ivy’s follow and browsed through Ivy’s photos. Ivy in a cheerleading skirt on top of a pyramid. Ivy in a cheerleading skirt, leaping through the air. Ivy smiling cheek to cheek with Lissa. Ivy smiling cheek to cheek with Carmen. Ivy smiling cheek to cheek with Lissa and Carmen. And then—Quinn was surprised to see this—about fifty pictures of Ivy and Nick. Ivy and Nick in front of a fountain. Ivy and Nick making monkey faces. Ivy and Nick kissing.
It was weird to see. Because, well, wasn’t there some kind of post-breakup protocol? Weren’t you supposed to erase all evidence of your ex-boyfriend after you dumped him? Maybe, deep down, Ivy still had feelings for Nick. Maybe she wanted to make future boyfriends jealous. Whatever the reason, Quinn couldn’t look away. She scrolled through every photo of Ivy and Nick. When she got to the end, she tapped out of Ivy’s page. A second later she got:
Instagram now
gulls24qb sent you a direct message.
Quinn tapped the mail icon.
gulls24qb Y r u following me on IG?
Quinn tapped out her reply. Y not?
Right away, another ping.
gulls24qb IDK. B/c I’m a jerk?
Quinn let this answer sink in. When she didn’t respond right away, she got this:
gulls24qb I haven’t been very nice to u. I’m sorry.
Quinn thought about all the people in Boulder she would love to hear these words from. Like John Kugler, who once ripped the baseball cap off her head in the middle of all-school assembly and started a game of keep-away. And Mr. Davy, who saw her scalp shining in the light and everyone laughing and did nothing. And Sammy Albee, who posted the picture of Quinn on that One Stupid Night with the caption gives new meaning to the word head. Not one of them had ever apologized. But here was this guy Quinn had known for two days, already telling her he was sorry.
How We Roll Page 5