How We Roll

by Natasha Friend

  U mad?

  Quinn texted back, He’s ok. I’m not mad. R u and T home now? My parents want to come say thank u for ur help ystrdy.

  Her phone pinged right away.

  Nick: We’re here.

  Quinn: K. C u soon.

  She checked herself in the mirror. Navy-blue shorts (fine). Yellow shirt with white stripes (fine). Rockies cap. Was she really going to do this? Was she actually going to walk onto Nick and Tommy’s front porch wearing this ratty hat with nothing underneath?

  Quinn looked at Guinevere, sitting in a lump on top of her dresser. A few hairs had gotten ripped out by a roof shingle. Quinn picked up her wig comb and tried to smooth Guinevere out the way she’d been taught at Belle’s Wig Botik. Don’t touch the wig cap. Brush from the ends before moving to the roots. A clump of hair came out in Quinn’s hand.

  She froze. “Mom!” she yelled. “Mom!”

  A few seconds later, Mo came running into the room. “Are you okay? What’s wrong?”

  Quinn held out the clump of hair. It felt like that first time, when her real hair started falling out.

  “Honey, it’s fine,” her mom said. “We’ll get it fixed. I still have the warranty.”

  Quinn shook her head. “What am I supposed to wear now?”

  “What about your hat?”

  Quinn shook her head again.

  “Well.” Mo picked up the other Styrofoam head that was sitting on the dresser. “What about this?”

  CHAPTER

  19

  IT WAS OBVIOUSLY PRETTY WEIRD TO SPEND your first six weeks in a new town as a redhead and then suddenly show up as something else. But that’s what Quinn was doing, showing up on the Strouts’ front porch with a head of shiny black hair.

  “Whoa,” Nick said when he opened the door, even though Quinn had texted to tell him to prepare himself.

  “Her name is Sasha.” Quinn reached up to check that Sasha was still straight. “My old one was Guinevere. She got torn up on the roof. It was either this or a hat.”

  “Right.”

  In addition to his legs, Nick was wearing a hat. A blue knitted beanie. Maybe Quinn should have worn a blue knitted beanie. What was she thinking wearing a shiny black wig that made her look like Edna Mode from The Incredibles? That was what Julius had said the minute she came downstairs. “Edna Mode. ‘No capes! No capes!’” Then he’d launched into the Guinness World Record for the longest cape.

  “Do you think I look like Edna Mode from The Incredibles?”

  Nick squinted at Quinn. “I think you look badass.”

  “You do?”

  He made his voice deep. “Basketball player by day. Russian spy by night.”

  Quinn smiled. She knew he was just trying to make her feel better.

  “Do your parents need help?” Nick looked past Quinn at the driveway. Her mom and dad were trying to coax Julius out of the car without touching him.

  “They’ve got it,” Quinn said.

  It took a few minutes, but finally all four McAvoys were up on the Strouts’ porch, and Quinn’s mom was squeezing Nick’s forearm. “Thank you, Nick … so much … for being there for Quinn and Julius yesterday.”

  “We can’t thank you enough,” Quinn’s dad said.

  Nick looked embarrassed. “I really didn’t do anything. I just answered the phone when Quinn called. It was my brother who—”

  “Hi.” Tommy walked through the door and stood next to Nick. “I’m Tom. I don’t usually look like this.”

  Quinn wondered if she should have warned her parents about Tommy’s nose, but the truth was she hadn’t expected him to look this bad. His nose was huge and swollen, like a potato stuck to the middle of his face. His eyes were puffy and bruised.

  Quinn’s mom sucked in a breath. “Julius didn’t—did he punch you?”

  Tommy smiled and shook his head. “No.”

  The air on the porch stood still. Quinn waited for Tommy to throw Nick under the bus. He didn’t. She waited for Nick to take credit for Tommy’s face. He didn’t.

  Quinn took it upon herself to break the silence. “Tommy,” she said, “these are my parents, Maureen and Phil. Mom, Dad, this is Tommy.”

  “Phil McAvoy,” Quinn’s dad said, pumping Tommy’s hand up and down. “We can’t thank you enough for what you did yesterday.”

  “I didn’t do that much. You should have seen Quinn up on the roof. The way she talked to her brother … the way she got him to listen … it was something.”

  “Yeah, okay,” Quinn said. She was starting to feel embarrassed—even more embarrassed than she would normally feel, standing on someone’s porch with her family, dressed like Edna Mode.

  “Julius,” Quinn’s mom said. She turned to Quinn’s brother, who was standing over by the porch swing, rocking from side to side. “Could you please thank Nick and Tommy and Q for their help yesterday? For getting you down from the roof so you didn’t fall and hurt yourself?”

  “Thank you for your help yesterday,” Julius said to the porch swing.

  “Could you please turn around and look them in the eye when you say it?”

  “They have six eyes, Mo. I have two.”

  “Yes, well, you can look at Nick first, and then Tommy, and then Q.”

  Julius did one of his spin moves. “Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.”

  “They didn’t want you to get hurt, bud,” Quinn’s mom continued. “That was a dangerous place for you to be, up on the roof. It’s a long way down. The ground is hard.”

  This was what you had to do for Julius. You had to spell it out for him. And then you had to spell it out for everyone else, so they would understand why you were spelling it out for Julius.

  “Julius doesn’t sense danger the same way you and I do,” Quinn’s mom explained to Nick and Tommy. “His brain doesn’t always identify and remember dangerous things. So we have to keep reminding him of what those things are.”

  Nick and Tommy nodded. Julius rocked and snapped. Quinn resisted the urge to list all the dangerous things Julius wasn’t afraid of but should be. Speeding cars. Knives. Hot stoves. He still had scars on his hand from the time he climbed up on the counter and pressed his palm to the burner. Quinn hated thinking about that.

  “Anyway,” Quinn’s mom said. “We just wanted to thank you both in person, for helping to keep Julius safe.”

  “You’re welcome,” Tommy and Nick said, basically in unison.

  “You’re welcome,” Julius said to the side of the house.

  Quinn looked at Julius, his skinny white neck, his tufty blond hair, and felt suddenly, unbearably sad. She wanted to shake her brother until he understood. You can’t jump off a roof! Don’t you get it?! You could have cracked your skull! You could have broken your neck! She wanted to shake him the way you shook an Etch A Sketch, until the screen was clear. But you couldn’t do that with Julius. You couldn’t reset his screen.

  Quinn looked at her brother and, with all her powers of telepathy, she told him, I love you. Then, Stay off the effing roof.

  “Well,” Quinn’s dad said. “We should probably get going.”

  “Hey.” Nick was looking at Quinn. He must have seen something in her face, the tears pressing on the backs of her eyeballs, threatening to fall. “You can stay if you want.”

  “Yeah?”

  Nick gave her a quick smile, the kind you give someone when her parents are watching. “My mom can drop you off later,” he said, “when she gets back from her errands.”

  Quinn looked at Mo. “Is that okay?”

  Mo nodded.

  Quinn said, “I know you just got home, but—”

  “Stay,” Mo said. “Have fun.”

  “Okay. I will.”

  *   *   *

  Quinn followed Nick up the stairs. It was slow going, but not as slow as it had been the last time she saw him go up steps.

  “You’ve been practicing,” Quinn said.

  “Yeah,” Nick said.

  His room was the f
irst doorway on the right. Big bed with a brown-and-white comforter that looked like a giant football. Desk with a football-shaped lamp. Dresser with miniature football drawer pulls. And about a hundred football players tacked up on the walls.

  “I’m sensing a theme here,” Quinn said as she walked in.

  “Ha-ha.”

  Quinn walked over to a coatrack made to look like a goalpost. Four of Nick’s sweatshirts were hanging from the hooks. “This is cool.”

  “I hate it.”

  “This?” Quinn ran her fingers along the coatrack.

  “All of it.”

  Quinn looked at Nick. His cheeks were pink. “My parents want me to move back up here, but I just … all this crap…” He waved his hands through the air. “I can’t stand looking at it.”

  Quinn crossed the room and stood in front of some sweaty football player with eye black running down his face and the word unstoppable printed across his forehead. She pulled four thumbtacks out of the wall and rolled him up into a tube. She handed the tube to Nick. “How’s that?”

  Nick shook his head. He unrolled the tube and ripped the sweaty football player in half.

  “Yeah?” Quinn said.

  He nodded.

  They started tearing posters off the walls. Nick did the low ones. Quinn did the high ones. They tore and ripped until there was nothing left but blue paint and a million tack holes.

  “Better?” Quinn said. She was hot from all the tearing. She could feel her scalp, damp and prickly under her wig. She hated that feeling. But it was worth it to see the look on Nick’s face.

  “Better,” he said, grinning. He took a few hobbles through the mess of torn-up paper and over to the bed, where he yanked off the football comforter and dropped it onto the floor in a big lump.

  Quinn looked at the white sheets. “Tabula rasa,” she said.

  “What?”

  “Clean slate.”

  “Yeah.” Nick scooted back on the bed, his legs sticking straight out in front of him.

  Quinn lowered herself to the floor, on top of the football comforter.

  They were both quiet for a minute. Then he said, “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  Quinn knew without having to ask. She shook her head, feeling Sasha brush against her cheeks. “I’m not sure.”

  “I don’t care, you know.”

  Quinn looked at him.

  “You don’t have to wear that thing if you don’t want. Not in front of me.”

  Quinn’s hand went reflexively to her head.

  “I mean, not that it looks bad. It doesn’t. The other one didn’t, either. Just … you don’t have to be embarrassed.”

  Quinn nodded slowly. “Okay.”

  “Does it itch?”

  Quinn raised her eyebrows.

  “I did some googling.”

  “Sometimes,” she said. “Yeah.” Then, “Do your legs hurt? I mean, where they used to be?”

  Nick looked surprised.

  “I did some googling, too.”

  “Sometimes,” he said. “Especially at night.”

  “That sucks.”

  Nick shrugged. “I’m used to it … My hand hurts more, actually.”

  “Your hand?”

  “From punching Tommy.”

  “Right.” Quinn nodded. “I’ll bet his nose hurts more than your hand.”

  “His nose is nothing.”

  “It doesn’t look like nothing.”

  “He’ll be fine in three weeks.”

  Quinn looked at Nick. He looked at her. The blue walls all around them made it feel like they were underwater.

  After a minute, Quinn said, “I want to tell you something. As your friend.”

  “Okay.”

  “You might not want to hear this, but I’m going to say it anyway … I think you need to let it go.”

  “What?”

  “Tommy. You need to forgive him.”

  Nick frowned. “Easy for you to say.”

  “Actually, it’s not. I’ve been thinking it for a while. I just didn’t think it was any of my business.”

  Quinn waited for Nick to say that she was right; it wasn’t her business. But he stayed quiet. So she kept going. “I know I wasn’t there that night. And I can’t imagine what it was like for you. But … it was an accident, just a horrible accident.”

  “He was drinking.”

  “I know.”

  “What you don’t know is that I knew he was drunk. I knew, and I got on anyway.”

  Quinn looked at Nick’s very serious face and said, “It’s not your fault.” She pictured him hopping on the back of the snowmobile. She pictured herself, Snapchatting away while Julius climbed up onto the roof. “Sometimes bad stuff just happens.”

  Nick made a sound. Not a snort, exactly, more like air leaking out of a balloon. Phhhhhht. He flopped back on the bed.

  Quinn waited.

  Nothing.

  “Tommy’s a good guy,” she continued. “He just did a stupid thing. And from what I can tell … he’s trying really hard to make it up to you.”

  Silence.

  Quinn stopped talking. Maybe she’d said too much. Should she have just kept her mouth shut? It was none of her business. It really wasn’t.

  Nick sat up suddenly. “Are you hot for Tommy?”

  “What?”

  “You heard me,” Nick said. Then, “Forget it. I don’t want to know.”

  Quinn hesitated. She really thought about it. “No,” she said finally. “I am not hot for Tommy.”

  “You’re not?”

  “No.”

  “Good,” Nick said.

  They were quiet again. After a minute, Quinn said, “What made you think I was?”

  “I don’t know. All the girls are.”

  “In case you haven’t noticed,” Quinn said, “I’m not like all the girls.”

  CHAPTER

  20

  WHAT WAS SHE GOING TO SAY TO EVERYONE? What, oh, what was she going to say? Quinn had spent the past seventy-two hours fielding texts from Ivy and Carmen and Lissa. Whr r u? Y wrnt u in school? U ok? R u sick? When she’d texted back that she was taking a few mental health days, she received a flurry of heart and flower and smiley emojis, and a bunch of we miss u and get btr soon texts, which obviously made her feel good. But also kind of crappy. Just like on the first day of school, when she’d debated and debated in front of the mirror about what to wear on her head, she did the same thing this morning. Except now she actually had friends. Now she had something to lose.

  Walking down the freshman hall, Quinn took a deep breath. Sasha might not look like her natural hair, but she was better than a hat. By far. A hat was just a Band-Aid, waiting to get ripped off.

  Ivy and Carmen and Lissa were standing at Quinn’s locker.

  “Hey,” Carmen said, when Quinn stepped in to spin her lock. 38-17-5. “What are you doing?”

  “Hi,” Quinn said, jerking open the door.

  “That’s not your lockah.”

  “Uh, yeah, it is,” Quinn said.

  “Oh my gawd.” Ivy clapped a hand to her mouth. “I totally didn’t recognize you.”

  “Is it my new lip gloss?” Quinn deadpanned.

  “You changed your hair,” Lissa said. “Like, completely.”

  “Yeah.” Quinn reached up, tucked Sasha behind one ear. “It was time for a change.”

  “You look…” Ivy hesitated.

  “Like Edna Mode from The Incredibles?”

  “No. Did you evah see that show Alias?”

  Quinn shook her head. Sasha brushed against her cheeks.

  “Is that the one with those freaky space dudes?” Lissa said.

  “Alias,” Carmen said. “Not Aliens.”

  “My mom’s been binge-watching it on Hulu,” Ivy said. “She’s obsessed. It’s about this … whaddaya call it…”

  “Alien?” Lissa said.

  Carmen snorted.

  “No”—Ivy snapped her fingers—“double agent. Who works for the C
IA and is always changing her hair so she can carry out her secret missions.” Ivy turned to Quinn. “You made me think of her because she’s really tall and pretty and one of her hairdos looks just like that. What’s her name?… starts with an S…” Ivy snapped her fingers again. “Sydney Bristow. Nailed it.”

  “Huh,” Quinn said. That was all she could get out. Huh.

  *   *   *

  At lunch, Lissa asked the question Quinn had been waiting for. “It’s a wig, right?” she said, dipping french fries in ketchup and shoving them into her mouth.

  Quinn was midbite. She finished chewing her apple and set it down. “Yeah,” she said. Because what was she going to do, lie? “It’s a wig.”

  “Thank gawd,” Carmen said, clutching her hand to her chest like a really bad actress. “If you’d told me that you’d dyed that beautiful red hair black … that would be a tragedy.”

  Quinn picked up her apple again.

  “So, wait,” Ivy said. “There is no way you stuffed all your hair under there. Did you cut it?”

  “Oh my gawd,” Lissa said. “Did you get a really bad haircut? That happened to me once when I asked for bangs. It looked so bad. Remembah, you guys? Sixth grade? I cried for like a week.”

  “You did look pretty bad,” Ivy said. “No offense.”

  “None taken,” Lissa said. “A wig is actually a really good idea for bad hair days. I wish I’d thought of that when I got bangs…”

  “Where’d you buy it, Quinn?” Carmen asked, going in for some of Lissa’s fries. “Amazon?”

  “Um. Back in Colorado.”

  “What did it run ya?” Ivy said. “Twenty bucks? Thirty?”

  “A little more than that,” Quinn murmured.

  “Well,” Carmen said, “I have to say you’re pulling it off. Not many natural redheads would look good with black hair, but your skin has a little olive to it, which is very uncommon for redheads.”

  “I’m not a redhead,” Quinn said.

  “Fine. Strawberry blond, whatevah.”

  Quinn stared at her apple, swallowed hard. “I used to be sort of dirty blond. A little lighter in the summers. But not red at all, really.”

  “So you color it?”

  Quinn shook her head, trying to find the courage to look up from her apple. If she didn’t say it now, she’d still have to say it sometime. Maybe in a month. Maybe in a year. She was just delaying the inevitable. “It all fell out. Last summer.”