Quinny & Hopper

by Adriana Brad Schanen

  “Hopper, you’re such a silly goose. You’re never going to lose me as long as you live.”

  “I’m sorry,” he says.

  “It’s okay, I forgive you.”

  “And I forgive you, for trying to kiss me,” he says.

  “I did not! Gross! I never want to kiss you as long as I live.”

  “Good. Me neither.”

  “Good. It’s a deal.”

  I reach out and flick his ear, which is one of his three most ticklish places. “Did you know that butterfly has the word butt in it?” I ask him.

  Before Hopper can answer, Grandpa Gooley pulls up in his car. Freya’s not too happy that we make her get inside it. That’s because she doesn’t know where we’re taking her.

  “Bockbockbock BOCK BOCK BOCK!”

  “It’s a surprise, Freya. Calm your engine down.”

  “BOCK bockbockbock BOCK bock BOCK!”

  “You’ll thank me later,” I tell her.

  “Everybody bockled up?” asks Grandpa Gooley from behind the wheel.

  Everybody except the chicken.

  We’re about to drive off when Mrs. Porridge opens the car door and slides in.

  “Don’t look so surprised,” she huffs at Grandpa Gooley. “Somebody’s got to make sure you take proper care of these children.”

  We finally get going, and Freya spends the whole car ride glaring at us and crabby-clucking. I try to feed her some cheese doodles, but she’s not interested.

  “Almost there, girl. Almost there.” I calm her ruffled feathers.

  Finally we pull up to Mr. McSoren’s sister’s house. She comes out to welcome us, but Freya is so excited to be out of the car she drags me right past her.

  “I can’t believe you caught that chicken,” she says. “Herbert will be so thrilled. He’s out back.”

  Mr. Herbert McSoren is sitting in a wheelchair, facing the backyard. He looks old. He looks tired. He looks lonely. And that’s just the back of him. Freya bock-bocks and flap-flaps her feathery wings and hops right onto this old guy’s lap.

  In Mr. McSoren’s arms, she’s like a new person. Her beady little eyes are shining and her feathers are all fluffed up. I know a happy chicken when I see one. Mr. McSoren looks happy, too. I think he’s even crying a bit.

  “How can I ever thank you, little girl?” he says to me.

  “You just did. And my name’s not little girl. It’s Quinny Bumble, and I live in your old house, and I’m very, very, extra-very glad to meet you. And this is Hopper. He’s the one who actually caught your chicken with tons of courage and Walter’s cat leash, which is a long story. By the way, here’s a tissue.”

  Mr. McSoren wipes his eyes. Freya tries to eat the tissue. Then Mr. McSoren’s sister cooks everybody some dinner (not chicken). She even puts out a bowl of mealworms for Freya. Then Mr. McSoren gets out his harmonica and plays “Yankee Doodle Dandy,” and everybody dances. Especially me and Freya!

  “Go, Freya, go!” I swing my excited hair around, I wiggle my silly-string arms and giggle my clucky-plucky voice and imitate that zebra-chicken’s bouncy little steps.

  Hopper watches me. I dance extra chickenly to make him laugh.

  Then Grandpa Gooley taps my arm. It’s time to go home.

  But it takes me a long time to stop dancing and start leaving.

  “Hurry on up,” grumps Mrs. Porridge. “I don’t have all night, you know.”

  Finally I finish saying good-bye to Mr. McSoren and that wonderful bird.

  “So long, Freya. Be good.”

  “Bock,” she sighs, all resty and cuddled up on her best friend’s lap.

  Thirty-eight

  The ride home is much quieter without Freya’s clucking. Much darker, too. The sun is going down fast.

  I look over at Quinny sitting next to me in the backseat of Grandpa Gooley’s car. Her face is turned away, and her dimples are hiding. She looks tired.

  “Quinny? Are you asleep?”

  “No more Freya,” she says in a voice that’s smaller and softer than her regular voice.

  “Freya’s happy now,” I tell her. “She’s safe.”

  “I’m going to miss her,” sighs Quinny.

  “Oh, snap out of it,” says Mrs. Porridge. “That chicken didn’t even like you.”

  “We all had a wonderful time today,” says Grandpa Gooley. “I bet Mr. McSoren will invite us back to visit soon.”

  Grandpa Gooley’s right. So why does Quinny seem so sad? She turns to me with a worried look and asks, “Is there a backpack store around here somewhere?”

  “A what?”

  “Cleo scribbled on my backpack. Victoria said it’s ruined and I have to get a new one.”

  “Are you referring to my grand-niece Victoria?” asks Mrs. Porridge.

  “Grandpa Gooley, please can we stop?” Quinny begs. “Is there a store that sells backpacks on the way home?”

  Grandpa Gooley gives us a confused look in the rearview mirror. I look back at him and tell him with my eyes: I’ll handle this.

  “Quinny, it’s kind of late,” I say.

  “Please, you don’t understand,” she cries. “I can’t show up at school tomorrow with that ugly, ruined backpack! Victoria’s going to be so mean.”

  “I’ll have a little talk with that young lady,” snaps Mrs. Porridge.

  “No, don’t! She’s already mad I lost her itchy-pink friendship bracelet—”

  “Quinny, you don’t need a new backpack,” I tell her. “Who cares what Victoria thinks?”

  “Everyone! All the friends belong to her. She won’t let me have any unless I do what she says.”

  “Not all the friends belong to her,” I remind her. “I don’t.”

  Quinny’s face calms down a little. “I guess you’re right.”

  She tries to smile at me, but beneath the smile she still looks worried. And tired. “I wish we didn’t have school tomorrow,” she murmurs as her eyes close.

  Pretty soon Quinny starts snoring. Her head droops onto my shoulder and stays there, all big and heavy and noisy. But her hair smells like peaches. It feels soft against my cheek.

  Then her arm flops over onto my side of the seat. The back of her hand brushes against my wrist. Just her knuckles. Just a little.

  This is how we ride the rest of the way home.

  I look down at those two hands, hers and mine. It’s not like I’m holding a girl’s hand or anything. It’s just Quinny, and we’re barely touching. And she’s asleep, so she won’t even remember it.

  But it makes me remember how it felt to hold Mom’s hand when I was little. It felt good. It felt safe. It felt like I was not alone.

  I don’t know exactly what’s going to happen in school tomorrow.

  But I know one thing for sure. I can’t let Quinny down again.

  Thirty-nine

  “Quinny, wake up. Let’s get moving.”

  But I like it here under the covers, all safe and warm and cozy.

  “Quinny, you’re going to miss that school bus.”

  I hope so.

  “Quinny, chop-chop! I mean it. I don’t have time to drive you. Get up!”

  Mom’s voice is an annoying buzzy-bug in my ear, so I finally sit up. But I slept so long that it’s REALLY LATE o’clock now, so I have to rush-brush my teeth and get dressed in a flash and speed-chew my French toast and dodge Piper’s sneaky-spitty fingers and pull on my sneakers and stuff my lunch box into my ugly, ruined backpack. Except I can’t even find that backpack.

  I look all around the kitchen. “Mom, where’s my ugly, ruined backpack?”

  Mom’s in the middle of feeding Cleo her breakfast mush. “Did you look everywhere?”

  I did. I looked everywhere. I look everywhere some more. Just when I’m about to give up and blame Piper for hiding my backpack, I finally spot it.

  It’s sitting right by our front door, where I didn’t even leave it yesterday.

  That’s weird. What’s my backpack doing over there? I walk over to grab it
, and then I notice something shocking.

  Something very, very, extra-very shocking.

  My backpack is not just a backpack anymore. It is now a masterpiece. Cleo’s scribbles have turned into people and trees and houses. There’s my family and our barn-house, there’s Hopper and our soccer-net hammock, there’s Mrs. Porridge in her garden with Walter, plus there’s Freya wearing a leash! And guess who is holding that leash!

  My backpack looks like my neighborhood now. It looks like my life. My real life.

  I pick it up and burst out the front door and run over to the bus stop and throw my arms around Hopper. “Oh, Hopper, thank you, thank you! It’s beautiful!”

  “I can’t breathe,” Hopper mumbles from inside my excited, grateful hug.

  “Sorry.” I let go of him and watch him breathe. “Thanks for saving my backpack.”

  “No big deal,” he says. “I just finished what Cleo started.”

  But it is a big deal. Looking at this fabulous backpack makes me feel good again. It makes me feel strong and special. I smile at Hopper. He almost smiles back at me.

  Then the bus comes and we get on it.

  During the ride to school, I wonder what’s going to happen with Victoria today.

  But I don’t have to wonder for long. As soon as I get off that bus, she comes up to me.

  “Look what I found on the playground,” Victoria says, holding up my broken friendship bracelet. I wait for her to apologize, because now she knows I didn’t take it off on purpose. But instead she says, “You know, Quinny, you shouldn’t be so careless with the presents people give you.”

  For some strange reason, Victoria’s nasty words don’t bother me anymore. I turn away from her and walk over to the playground fence.

  As I walk, I think about all of her third-grade rules.

  I decide I’m going to play tag at recess.

  And then I’m going to sit with Hopper at lunch.

  I decide I’m going to take a bath with Piper tonight, because I still love baths. Then I’ll read us a picture book (at least until she tries to lick me). And then I’ll paint my nails green. All twenty of them.

  I decide that Victoria Porridge is not my BFF. She might not even be my F. I’ll have to wait and see how it goes.

  On the other side of the playground fence, I find my watermelon barrette on the ground, right where Victoria threw it yesterday. I wipe the dirt off that fabulous thing and snap it back into my hair, where it belongs. Finally my head feels like its normal self again.

  “Whatever,” Victoria says. “That barrette is not even pink.”

  “That’s what I told you before.” I say it nicely. I won’t be mean to her just because she was mean to me. (But maybe I can make her feel guilty for being mean in the first place.)

  Then Victoria finally notices my backpack. She doesn’t say it’s ruined anymore. She doesn’t say it’s ugly.

  Some other girls come over and look at it. Some boys, too.

  One of the girls says, “Wow.”

  One of the boys says, “Cool.”

  I take a deep, happy breath and glance at the kid standing next to me. The one with the careful, quiet mouth and those big, looking-looking eyes.

  I tell everybody, “My friend Hopper is an artist.”

  Forty

  Summer’s over.

  The second day of school is over, and everything has changed.

  Well, almost everything.

  Forty-one

  But wait, there’s more!

  A few weeks later, Hopper and I get home from school one day, and there’s a letter in the mail from Mr. McSoren, and it’s addressed to BOTH of us, and we tear it open, and it says:

  Dear Quinny & Hopper,

  I cannot thank you enough for reuniting me with my beloved Freya. She is so happy here and has even made some new friends. As a token of my gratitude, I’m sending a couple of small gifts, via Mrs. Porridge. Please be on the lookout for

  Just then, Mrs. Porridge shows up, and she’s carrying a big box and inside the box are:

  Two chirping chickens!

  Little, fluffy, beaky mini-chickens…both with stylish black and white zebra stripes!

  “It seems that birdbrained bag of feathers has been busy,” says Mrs. Porridge.

  “You mean these little guys are really Freya’s chicken-kids?” I ask. “And they’re really for us?”

  “No, they’re for the president of the United States,” says Mrs. Porridge.

  I stare at those sweet little zebra-chickens—they’re too beautiful to fit into words.

  “But aren’t they going to miss their mother?” asks Hopper.

  “They’re not babies anymore,” I remind him. “And they have each other.”

  “Where are we going to keep them?” he asks. “How will we take care of them?”

  Hopper and I look at each other. Then we look at Mrs. Porridge.

  “Oh no,” huffs Mrs. Porridge. “Absolutely not! I have no idea how to build a chicken coop, and I certainly don’t have the time. Who needs the pain in the neck of raising smelly, squawky chickens anyway? If you ask me, they’re more trouble than they’re worth.…”

  But Mrs. Porridge is smiling.

  First, the grown-ups: I’m grateful to Quinlan Lee at Adams Literary for believing this heartfelt pile of words was actually a book, and to Laura Schreiber, Tyler Nevins, and Christine Ma at Disney-Hyperion for turning it into such a charming one. Thanks to Daniel Brad, Julie Flanagan Lind, Kirsten Anderson Segal, Sarah Blustain, and Alison Formento for helpful advice on early drafts. I owe my husband, Glen, and mother, Julie, a debt of gratitude for their loving support, and for putting up with my writerly ways.

  Now for the kids: A big thank you to Nic Chang, Aidan Dowell, Zoe Gelsi, Veronica Holtz, Jules & Flora Max, Curran Schestag, and, last but not least, my fiercely opinionated daughters Madeline & Julia Schanen. All your feedback helped me revise, revise, revise (and then revise some more). For the inspiration that sparked this story, I’d also like to thank: Faye’s voice, Christine’s social energy, Julia’s artistry and speed, Spencer’s enormous heart, Luke & Ethan’s bare feet, Eli’s way with silence, Madeline’s interesting hair and exuberant smile, Torger’s deep well of emotion and intelligence, Lily’s chickens, and Lucas O.’s great big looking-looking eyes. I look forward to watching you all grow and soar in the years ahead.

  Adriana Brad Schanen lives in Montclair, New Jersey, with her husband and two very, very, extra-very lively daughters, and a shaggy 60-pound lap dog named Oliver. Quinny & Hopper is her first children’s book. Visit her online at adrianabradschanen.com.

  Greg Swearingen has illustrated over eighty chapter books. His artwork has received awards from Communication Arts, Spectrum: The Best In Contemporary Fantastic Art, and the Society of Illustrators in New York City. Mr. Swearingen resides in California with his wife and sons.