I don’t know why, but none of the kids at school really noticed me last year. And Victoria Porridge is the one who didn’t notice me the most.
Once Quinny finds all this out, she won’t be my friend anymore. After all, who wants to be friends with someone who doesn’t have any friends?
I finish my sandwich, by hiding most of it under a napkin. Trevor and Ty are wrestling on the floor now. Mom is talking on her phone. I go upstairs without anyone noticing.
I look out my window. From up here I can see Mrs. Porridge’s house. I can see Quinny and Victoria standing by the front door, talking.
And talking.
Quinny doesn’t look up at me. Not even once.
Finally she and Victoria go inside Mrs. Porridge’s house together.
And I pull my window shade down. For good.
Twenty-seven
The list of things I learn about Victoria during our walk to Mrs. Porridge’s house is very, very, extra-very long.
1) Victoria doesn’t have a nickname. (I do. Quinny is short for Quinston, which is actually my middle name.)
2) Victoria is an only child. (Lucky duck.)
3) Victoria owns twenty-seven dresses in her closet, six of which she made herself at a place called fashion camp. (I only have three dresses, and I don’t know how to sew my own clothes at all—maybe Victoria can teach me!)
4) Victoria carries a purse everywhere…“just in case.” (I have just-in-case pockets.)
5) Victoria’s purse is not made out of chicken feathers. It is made out of marabou, whatever that is, and she made it herself (also at fashion camp), and everyone loves it so much that she is going to start a business selling marabou purses (plus headbands) and become rich and famous. (I don’t know much about purses or headbands, but that last part sounds exciting.)
6) Victoria is going to be in Ms. Yoon’s third-grade class at Whisper Valley Elementary School this fall, along with me and Hopper. (Yippee? I hope so.)
7) Victoria is allergic to everything…dairy, nuts, and nature. (I’m allergic to nothing, not even dust bunnies—I used to have a bunch of them under my bed back in New York, and we got along great.)
8) Victoria loves to talk about Victoria. (I love to talk about anything.)
The list of things Victoria learns about me on the way to Mrs. Porridge’s house is very, very, extra-very short. Because, actually, I don’t get a chance to say much. See #8 on the list.
When we get to Mrs. Porridge’s front door, Victoria says, “Quinny, close your eyes.”
I close them. I hear her opening her purse. I feel her putting something on my wrist.
“Now open your eyes,” says Victoria.
I open them. I look down at a bracelet on my wrist. It’s itchy-pink, just like the one on Victoria’s wrist. “Surprise! It’s a friendship bracelet. You’re my BFF now.”
BFF = best friends forever.
I’m about to say I already have one of those, and he lives right next door to me. But then I remember that maybe I don’t anymore.
“BFFs never ever take their friendship bracelets off,” says Victoria. “And when school starts, we’ll sit together at lunch and play at recess every day. I’ll introduce you to everyone and show you the ropes.”
“The ropes?”
Before I can ask Victoria what the ropes are, or whether you can have two BFFs at the same time, she pulls me inside Mrs. Porridge’s house.
There’s no one in the kitchen and no food on the table. But there’s someone out back in the garden.
“Aunt Myrna, we’re here!” Victoria calls out. Aunt Myrna is the name Victoria calls Mrs. Porridge, since she is her great-aunt. “What’s for lunch?”
“You’re looking at it,” says Mrs. Porridge, working in her garden between the carrots and the peppers. “Well, don’t just stand there, help yourselves.”
I’ve heard of a salad bar, but Mrs. Porridge’s garden bar is different. We pick our lunch from the ground. We pick peppers. We pick zucchini. We pick carrots and eggplant and heart-shaped tomatoes. I do most of the picking because Victoria doesn’t want to get her hands dirty since she is allergic to dirt.
“That’s ridiculous, Victoria,” says Mrs. Porridge. “You are not allergic to topsoil.”
Then we go back inside and wash up, and Mrs. Porridge cooks all the veggies in a big, sizzly pan. And then she stuffs them into chewy-crispy-warm tortillas, which are green—my favorite color! For dessert, Mrs. Porridge slices strawberries on top of peach ice cream. It’s soy ice cream, since Victoria is allergic to dairy, and it actually tastes pretty good.
After lunch, Victoria opens this giant box of stuff she keeps at her great-aunt’s house. It’s full of jewelry and hair accessories and flavored lip glosses and nail polish. Wow. Everything in here is so neat and shiny and perfect. Nothing looks chewed or broken, or sticky with little-sister spit and boogers. Victoria is so lucky.
“I love painting nails,” I tell Victoria. “Do you have any green?”
“Why in the world would I have green nail polish?”
“It’s my favorite color.”
“Quinny, nobody paints their nails green. Here, you’re going to paint mine POPSICLE PINK, and then I’ll paint yours FUSCHIA FOREVER.”
I try. But Victoria’s fingernails are so small and dainty, I keep painting outside the nails.
“Quinny, be careful!”
Victoria stops me and paints the rest of her own nails, all neat and perfect.
Then she starts painting mine. “Don’t move,” she orders me. “Sit perfectly still!”
But when my body has to sit still, my brain moves around a whole lot extra to make up for it. I wonder again what “the ropes” are. I wonder again if a person can have two “best friends forever” at the same time.
Out loud I wonder, “I wonder what Hopper is doing right now.”
“Who?”
“The boy next door. I mean, he lives next door to me…in that gingerbread house.”
I don’t mention that he is the same boy who helped me soak Victoria’s dry-clean-only dress with the freezing water hose. And I don’t mention how rude Hopper was to me earlier today. For some reason, I feel like giving that boy a second chance.
Victoria shrugs and keeps polishing my nails all neat and careful until they are FUSCHIA FOREVER.
“Maybe we should invite him over,” I say.
“Who?”
“Hopper. The boy I was just talking about.”
Victoria stops painting my nails and looks up at me. “Quinny, grow up.”
“I’m working on it.”
“Hopper is a boy.”
“So?”
“So boys are messy and annoying.”
“Not Hopper. And you should see him juggle!”
“Well, I’m sorry. You can’t just go around playing with boys in third grade. It’s not normal.”
“But I played with lots of boys last year.”
“That was last year. Second grade is just for practice. Third grade is when real life begins.”
“It is?”
“In third grade, you get your own real locker and nobody sits on the carpet anymore for stories, and nobody’s allowed to cry anymore, and the girls eat lunch with the girls and the boys eat lunch with the boys, and there’s no more just playing tag with everybody in a big group, and if you play with a boy at recess, it means you want to kiss him on the lips.”
“What?!”
“If you don’t believe me, go ask my cousin Janie.”
I feel wobbly inside my chest. I feel woozy inside my nose. It might be from the stink of all that nail polish. I scratch at my wrist and wonder if I am allergic to itchy-pink.
“Quinny, are you okay?” says Mrs. Porridge from across the room. “You look a little green.”
I wish.
Then the big, shiny black car comes back for Victoria and honks its horn. Whoever is driving that thing doesn’t even come inside the house—Victoria just goes outside all by herself.
<
br /> “Be careful with your nails,” she says as she leaves. “And don’t take that bracelet off or get it dirty. I’ll be at fashion camp all next week, but I’ll come back to play again before school starts, I promise.”
Then Mrs. Porridge walks me home. On the way, she looks at me all suspicious.
“Quinny, are you sure you’re all right?”
I’m fine. Except I didn’t know that my real life hasn’t started yet. I didn’t know you aren’t allowed to cry in third grade and you can’t play with boys unless you want to kiss them on the lips. I don’t even know what “the ropes” are, and it’s too late to ask Victoria.
I wonder if Hopper knows.
Then I realize, of course he does. He has older bully twin brothers, so he must know all about these third-grade rules. (Having older kids in your family is like being able to see into the future.) I think about how Trevor and Ty made those teasing kissy-poo noises when they first saw me and Hopper playing together, and how Hopper suddenly stopped being friendly when the back-to-school letter arrived, and how he yelled at me that everything’s over. It all makes sense now. My heart does a forward roll down into my stomach. I don’t want everything to be over. But now, thanks to Victoria, I know for sure that it is.
Twenty-eight
I decide to go back to my regular life from before I ever met Quinny. I’ve got plenty of things to keep me busy. For example:
I juggle my knives—special juggling knives with dull blades that can’t cut.
I put together a second foot-skeleton model, so now I have a pair of feet on my shelf.
I sharpen my set of charcoal pencils to their sharpest points ever and draw a sketch of Freya the chicken. I haven’t heard her clucking by Quinny’s house lately. I wonder why not.
I ride my bike to the town pool with Grandpa Gooley and swim dozens of laps.
Hundreds, probably.
Two days go by like this.
On the third day of not talking to Quinny, I peek out my window and see her playing Chutes and Ladders on her bed with her little sister Piper. Then I stop peeking in case she notices.
On the fourth day of not talking to Quinny, I watch Quinny get into her car with her whole family. They’re all wearing swimsuits. I know this is the last week that the town pool is open. The last real week of summer. But I’m not going swimming if she’ll be there. Instead I spend the day in my room, playing chess against myself. And putting together a four-hundred-piece puzzle of the human heart. And juggling. I wonder, were Quinny and I ever friends in the first place? Maybe she’s just nice to everyone and I misunderstood. Maybe this summer felt too good to be true because it wasn’t true.
On the fifth day of not talking to Quinny, Mom comes into my room and dumps a big pile of clothes on my dresser. It’s that time again. Every year, before school starts, I try on Trevor’s and Ty’s old clothes to see what finally fits me.
I don’t mind wearing my brothers’ hand-me-downs. In fact I kind of like it. When I try on Trevor’s and Ty’s old clothes, it feels like something new might happen to me, like maybe I’ll turn big and loud and strong and not afraid of anything, just like my brothers.
I pull on one of Trevor’s old shirts. I zip up a pair of Ty’s old shorts.
I look in the mirror. I look the same. My personality feels the same.
I guess they’re just clothes, not magic clothes.
“Hopper, we’re leaving for the mall in fifteen minutes!” calls Mom.
I knew this was coming. Back-to-school shopping. Since I don’t need new stuff, I don’t see why I have to get dragged to the mall just because Trevor and Ty do.
“Can’t I stay home this time?”
“Hopper, you’re not old enough to stay home by yourself. Plus, you need a haircut.”
We drive to the mall. The problem is, Trevor and Ty get as bored shopping for clothes as I do. And when my brothers get bored, they get mean.
In the mall’s parking lot, Trevor walks behind me a little and keeps stepping on my heel. On purpose. But every time I turn around, he makes an innocent smile.
“Stop it,” I tell him.
“Stop what?”
Later we sit at the food court with pizza, and when mom isn’t looking, Ty flicks my ear.
“Stop it,” I tell him.
“Stop what?”
He does it again. And again. Finally I turn around and punch him in the stomach.
Hard.
Mom is shocked. “Hopper, what’s gotten into you?”
I don’t know. I’ve never punched anyone in my life. I didn’t even know that I knew how to punch—it just happened. And it felt good.
I expect Ty to hit me back, but he laughs instead. Trevor looks impressed.
But mom is not impressed.
“Hopper, that is unacceptable behavior. Please apologize to your brother.”
“What for? He never apologizes to me.”
“Hopper, we don’t punch people in this family!”
“Sure we do. Where have you been?”
“Apologize to your brother—”
“He’s not even hurt.”
“—or you’re not getting ice cream!”
“I don’t care!”
“Hopper!”
“Leave me alone!”
I run away from Mom. From everything.
I run and run. I feel angry and angrier and angriest. I hide behind a big display of suitcases. Maybe if I squeeze myself into one of these suitcases someone will buy it and take me home to a different family without Trevor and Ty and without a mother who treats them better than she treats me.
Mom finds me before that can happen. She marches me back to the car. But we don’t go home yet. “You can’t go back to school without a haircut,” she reminds me.
Great.
She takes us all to Kidz Cutz, where I have to sit in a tall chair with a scratchy black cape strangling my neck. I like my head just the way it is, but a happy haircutter-lady picks up a loud electric razor and starts buzzing my hair off.
All of it.
That buzzy razor scares my skin. It makes the back of my neck itchy.
“So, Hopper, how do you like your new haircut?” the happy haircutter-lady asks.
My ears feel windy now and my forehead feels too bare. I look at myself in the mirror. It’s like a whole layer of me is gone.
“I hate it,” I tell her.
At home, I’m still not sorry for punching my brother and running off and being rude to the happy haircutter-lady at Kidz Cutz, so Mom grounds me to my room.
“Fine with me!” I run upstairs and slam the door behind me.
“Hopper, is this really how you want to end the summer?” Mom calls out.
Actually, yes, it is. I’d rather be up in my room by myself than anywhere else. I wish everyone would just leave me alone forever. Mom and Dad have each other to bug. Trevor and Ty have each other to pound on. And Quinny has Victoria.
Just in case Mom tries to come in and talk to me, I hide under my bed. But then I notice that sketch of Quinny is still under here, the one I drew of her in the middle of the night right after we met. I barely remember drawing it. It was a stupid thing to do.
I reach out and rip that sketch of Quinny.
I rip it right down the middle of her smile.
Twenty-nine
Hopper’s window shade has been closed tight all week, and it’s hard for me to pretend I don’t care. But the more you practice something, the better you get at it, so after a few days I become very, very, extra-very talented at ignoring that boy who is ignoring me. I don’t even bother peeking out at his house anymore. I pretend that window is a wall.
Victoria is busy with her last week of fashion camp before school starts, so I spend my time playing with Piper. On Wednesday we play Candy Land until Piper cheats, on Thursday we play Chutes and Ladders until Piper cheats, and on Friday we play Crazy Eights until Piper cheats.
On Saturday, because I’m totally bored of Piper cheating, I off
er to babysit Cleo, even while she isn’t napping. That baby drools and bites and pulls my hair. But then I make her do this fun trick where she burps and farts at the same time. All you have to do is feed her a broccoli smoothie, wait five minutes, then squeeze her right below her belly button. Not every baby can do it, but Cleo’s special.
Mom sees me playing with Cleo and looks at me all funny. “Quinny, what’s going on?”
“Nothing.”
“Why are you suddenly being so nice to your sisters?”
“I thought you wanted me to be nice to them.”
“What I mean is, why aren’t you playing with Hopper these days?”
“He’s got other plans.” It must be true, since he and I don’t have any plans together.
I hear a noise coming from Hopper’s driveway and glance outside. There he is, getting out of his car with his mom. I haven’t seen Hopper all week. His hair is much shorter now and his head looks so different—like it shrank in the dryer or something. He doesn’t even look like Hopper anymore. He looks like a stranger. A very scowly stranger.
“Did you guys have a fight or something?” Mom asks.
Or something.
“Well, things have certainly been a lot calmer without the two of you running around trying to catch that chicken. Freya’s been pretty quiet lately, hasn’t she?”
Freya has been quiet. Too quiet. My heart hurts when I think about her. So I try not to.
The day before school starts, Victoria comes back to visit me, just like she threatened—I mean, promised. From upstairs I see her knock on my front door. Then I look down at my hands. My FUSCHIA FOREVER nails are chipped and my BFF bracelet is dirty. I run into my room and shut my door tight.
“I think I have a cold,” I tell Mom when she comes upstairs to say I have a guest.
“You don’t sound sick,” she says.
Quinny & Hopper Page 7