“Everyone has a father,” Neally said.
“Not everyone. Her father is in jail.”
“How do you know that?”
“Everyone knows. My dad told my mom.” Matt looked over Neally’s head, his eyes focusing on the wall behind her. His eyes began to glaze over, and he spoke slowly, as if trying to recall lines he’d had to memorize from a play in the third grade. “Teena’s from a single-parent family, which is always bad news for society. Too many kids, and who knows where or who all their fathers are. Her dad’s in jail for selling drugs. Her parents did drugs when Teena’s mom had her, which is why …” Matt circled his finger by the side of his head. He turned toward his desk, motioning for Sam to follow him.
“I owe Josh two buddy lunches. I promised.” Sam looked apologetically at Quinn. “Meet you for some four square at recess?”
Quinn tried to act nonchalant. “Sure.”
“I’ll see about after school,” Sam said to Neally. “I can come over if my homework’s done; that’s the rule. My sisters will be so jealous when they find out I get to see Siamese cats.”
Neally’s eyes resembled those of a stalking lion as she watched Sam join Matt and Tay and Josh. “A Buddha is a devil-idol? It should hurt—it should be painful—to be that stupid. If you say something that brainless, the last word out of your mouth should bite your tongue because it’s embarrassed to come out. Wouldn’t that be awesome?”
Quinn grinned as a vision of Matt Barker’s tongue being shredded by a pack of wiener dogs popped into his head. The fantasy faded, and he felt he needed to stick up for his friend.
“Sam’s in a Boy Scout troop with Matt and Tay, so he has to get along with Matt. He’s doesn’t really like Josh, either, but their moms work in the same …”
“Yes, yes, I get it.” Neally loudly bit off the end of a carrot stick. “How long have you known Tay?”
“Since kindergarten. His house is around the corner from ours, and our moms used to walk us to school together.”
“So, he’s like a habit.”
“A habit?” Quinn sat up very straight in his chair.
“He seems kind of …” The stalking-feline look returned to Neally’s eyes. “I just don’t see you two as friends.”
“Well, we are.”
“But Sam is your best friend?”
“That’s right.” Quinn nodded.
“I don’t like the term, ‘best friend.’ It sounds silly, to rank people that way. But I know that’s how other people feel.”
“Other people?”
The stalking-cat look disappeared. Neally stared blankly at Quinn, who wondered if Neally realized that she sounded stuck-up.
“What did Matt mean about there being too many kids in Teena’s family?” Neally asked.
Quinn looked around the room and leaned closer to Neally. “Like he should talk about other people having too many kids,” he whispered. “Have you seen Matt’s mother?”
“Yep. I saw her drop Matt off this morning.” Neally held her hands out in front of her, as if she were balancing an enormous beach ball on her stomach.
Quinn quickly glanced toward Matt’s desk. “She’s always pregnant, and he already has four or five brothers and sisters.”
“Five?” Neally gasped. “Plus Matt? No way.”
“Way!”
“They’re having another?” Neally shuddered. “Don’t they know about overpopulation?”
Although Quinn wasn’t sure what Neally meant, he assumed it must be wickedly funny. “Yeah, don’t they?” he snickered.
“What do Matt’s parents do? Wait, I already know his mom’s a baby-o-matic. What’s up with his dad?”
“God only knows.” Quinn nearly choked on his apple. He’d made a clever remark, and wanted Neally to realize that. “His dad’s a minister,” Quinn explained.
“I get it—nice one!”
“Actually, it’s kind of a backwards joke. My mom tells it better: it’s not that God knows all about Matt’s dad, but Matt’s dad knows all about God.”
“Oh,” Neally said slowly, “now I really get it.”
“Do you know what Matt said about Lily L’Sotho, after he found out that both her parents are pastors? His dad met Lily’s mom and dad at Back to School night. The next day at recess …” Quinn leaned forward in his chair and lowered his voice. “Matt said his dad told him that Lily’s parents aren’t real pastors, and their church isn’t a real church.” Quinn shook his head. “Matt never even talks to Lily, and then the one time he says something about her family, he’s mean.”
“Matt was mean to someone? Big surprise.” Neally yawned. “But why would Matt’s dad say Lily’s church isn’t a real church?”
“I don’t know. It isn’t his church, I guess. Oh yeah, this is even weirder: Matt’s dad said that both of Lily’s parents can’t be the pastors of their church, only Lily’s dad can lead their church.”
“Wait a second. Matt’s dad says he can decide who can be the pastor of someone else’s church, the same church that he says isn’t a real church? Uh huh.”
Quinn giggled. “Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.”
“Is Lily’s mom a pastor?” Neally asked.
Quinn nodded.
“Well then, if she already is one, than she can be one. There!” Neally assumed a British accent. “I’ve run rings ’round him logically!”
“Okay.” Quinn scratched his head, “Lily’s mom can be a pastor. But not in Matt’s church.”
“As if anyone would want to be a pastor in such a snobby church,” Neally sniffed.
“Yeah.” Quinn took a bite of his sandwich. It was the best peanut butter and strawberry jam sandwich ever. “As if.”
11
HOWDY, NEIGHBOR
“Neally Standwell! Neally Standwell!”
Mickey ran to the tetherball court, where Quinn, Sam, and Neally stood in line behind Kelsey King.
“How are you, Neally Standwell?” Mickey gushed.
“I’m very well, thank you, Mickey Andrews-Lee,” Neally replied.
“Can you come to our house after school? Can she, Quinn? We have Alice and Peppy—my rat and Quinn’s hamster. I have swim practice but not ’til later. We could have snacks and …”
“I’m going to Neally’s house after school,” Quinn said.
Neally saw the gray clouds forming in Mickey’s eyes, and she turned to Quinn. “Maybe Mickey could …”
“No way!” Quinn urgently whispered.
Neally silently mouthed Sorry to Quinn and then spoke aloud. “As I was going to say, maybe Mickey could show me your pets after we stop off at my house?”
“Whoopee!” Mickey raised her arms above her head and pirouetted on one foot, spinning around and around until she staggered backwards, bumping into Sam.
“Perhaps the ballet is not your calling, Mistress Mickey.” Sam gently lowered the still-reeling Mickey to the ground.
“My brain is all whirly inside.” Mickey tapped her fingers against her temple. “I don’t know how dancers can do that without barfing all over their pretty pink tutus.”
“YOU’VE DONE YOUR LIMIT,” Kelsey yelled to the two sixth graders on the tetherball court. “YOU’RE PLAYING EASIES. LET SOMEONE ELSE HAVE A TURN.”
Neally hit the side of her head as if she were trying to dislodge a pebble from her ear.
“She’s not really yelling,” Sam assured Neally.
“She’s not?”
“For anyone else it would be yelling,” Sam said. “But for Kelsey, it’s just her voice. It’s not like she’s mad at anything.”
“So, does she whisper when she’s mad?” Neally asked.
“HOWDY, NEIGHBOR.” Kelsey King’s mother strutted briskly toward the tetherball line. She waved to Neally in passing and slapped her daughter on the back. “I DROPPED OFF A NOTE AT THE OFFICE,” Mrs. King bellowed to Kelsey. “I’M TEACHING A CLASS THIS AFTERNOON, WHICH MEANS YOU’LL BE IN AFTERCARE UNTIL FIVE AND THEN YOUR DAD WILL PICK YOU UP.”
<
br /> “Howdy, neighbor?” Quinn asked Neally. “Does she know you?”
“Our house is across from Kelsey’s,” Neally explained.
Mickey gazed up in awe at Kelsey’s mother and began counting. “One, two, three, four …”
“Don’t point!” Quinn grabbed his sister’s finger.
“SEE YA, BABE!” Mrs. King saluted her daughter and marched toward the parking lot.
“You made me lose track!” Mickey whined to Quinn.
“I got up to seven on the left side,” Neally said. “You were counting her earrings, right?”
Mickey nodded. “Some of them were so teensy.”
“THOSE ARE CALLED POSTS.” Kelsey posed triumphantly on the court, holding the tetherball against her hip. “SHE WEARS THE POSTS ON THE LEFT EAR, AND THE HOOPS ON THE RIGHT EAR.”
“What does your mom teach?” Neally asked.
“GYMNASTICS. SHE WAS ON THE AMERICAN OLYMPIC SQUAD.”
“Why does she wear so many earrings?” Mickey asked.
“WHY NOT?”
Quinn frowned at his sister, but Mickey continued. “Does anyone ever tease her about it?”
“WHAT DO YOU THINK?!” Kelsey cocked her arm back and slammed the tetherball against the pole. “WHICH ONE OF YOU IS GOING TO BE THE FIRST TO DIE?”
12
I KNEW THERE WAS A REASON I LIKED HER
“I bet I can make it all the way home without tripping.” Neally turned around and walked backwards, facing Sam and Quinn. “Wasn’t it cool, at lunch? Like mother, like daughter.”
Sam swung his book pack over his head. “YOU MUST MEAN THE DEMURE MRS. KING AND HER MILD-MANNERED OFFSPRING.”
“I didn’t know you lived so close to school,” Quinn said. “And right across from Kelsey’s house; that must be interesting.”
“My parents toured the neighborhood and introduced themselves after we moved in,” Neally said. “They heard dogs barking, and it got louder when they went from house to house. But none of our other neighbors have dogs. Guess where the dogs were? Mom came back in a really funny mood. She said even the pets have to yell to be heard in the King household.”
“You could do a comic strip about them,” Quinn suggested to Sam.
“Shouting dogs, ah, yes,” Sam mused. “Getting their mouths right would be tricky.”
“Dad said it was good to learn that Kelsey was an only child,” Neally said. “He’d assumed the reason she was so loud was that she was the middle child of seven kids and had to holler in order to be heard. He said it was refreshing to have his stereotype busted.”
“What’s a stereotype?” Quinn asked.
“It’s a kind of music system.”
“Miz Neally Ray Standwell the First cracks a good one.” Sam stopped at the corner and jingled a key that hung from a strap around his neck. “This is my street,” he said to Neally. “I have to write my spelling list so my sister can check it, then I’ll be over. Oh, and do my piano practice, but that’s just twenty minutes. You’re on Greenwood, across from Kelsey’s?”
“Yes, the yellow house. See ya later, Sam.”
Neally and Quinn continued down the street. “No homework!” Neally hugged her book pack to her chest. “I finished it during reading groups. I’m sorry for inviting your sister without checking with you first. She really wanted to come over, and I didn’t want to leave her out.”
“It’s okay.”
“I like Mickey. It must be entertaining to have a funny sister, even if she tags along.”
“How come you don’t have a brother or sister?” Quinn regretted the question as soon as it left his mouth, but Neally didn’t act as if she’d been offended.
“I don’t know. How come you don’t take swimming lessons?”
“I used to. The lessons got boring after a while, for me, anyway, but Mickey loves them. She wants to be in the city swim club. Any kid can join, but you have to try out. Mickey tried out last year.” Quinn kicked at a pile of leaves on the sidewalk and grinned with the memory. “She was the youngest kid to try out for the butterfly, which is the most difficult stroke. Mom and Dad and I went to see her. It was so funny; you should have seen it. It took her two minutes—two whole minutes!—to cross the pool after everyone else had finished the race. She just went up and down in the water, staying in the same place, doing that dolphin kick and the big arm circles. I thought she was drowning at first, but every time her head came up for air she had this big smile on her face. All the adults, even my parents, were trying so hard not to laugh.”
“And she still likes to swim?”
“She loves to swim. She’s lousy at it, but she loves it, which I don’t get. The kid who finished first in the butterfly told her she swam like a spastic snail. She told him she was going to practice all year until her snail legs were strong enough to kick his butt.”
“I knew there was a reason I liked her. Right face, march!” Neally turned the corner to Greenwood Circle. “I can’t wait to find out what my dad thinks about our class. Maybe he’ll let you get a preview of your math grade. I wonder how he liked the ESL kids. I wonder why Lily is in ESL. What do you know about her?”
“Not much. I know she doesn’t really understand how to play tag. She and her parents moved from Africa, last summer, I think. She’s kind of shy—she’ll talk a little bit on the playground, mostly with Janos and Arturo, but she almost never speaks in class, even when she’s called on during the oral quizzes and you can tell that she knows the answer. But you know what? I love the way she talks.”
“I know exactly what you mean.” Neally ran her fingers over a withered rose bush branch that snaked over a split-rail fence at the front lawn of the King’s house. “Her words are fine, I mean, she uses them correctly, even though sometimes it’s hard to understand her. When she talks it sounds like she’s singing, even if she’s just asking for the bathroom pass. I wonder what country she came from. We could look it up, and—uh oh!” A sharp, raucous yowling started up from the direction of the King’s house. “Kelsey’s Killer Coyotes sound the alarm,” Neally said. “It must be time to cross the street.”
13
MUFFINS OF INFINITY
Although Neally had considerately suggested that they save some food for Sam, Quinn was having second thoughts. He had just eaten the best muffin in his life, possibly the best muffin on the planet. He took a sip of milk and eyed the chocolate chip banana muffin Mr. Standers had set aside for Sam.
“Seconds, Quinn?” Mr. Standers held out a plate of still-steaming, fragrant muffins.
“Sure, thanks.”
“You’re welcome. I’m glad you like them.”
“These are …” Quinn licked chocolate off his finger. “These are the muffins of infinity.”
“Infinity?” Neally said. “I don’t think you’re using that correctly. We could look it up.”
“I love that word,” Quinn said.
“I’m sure infinity means something that never ends, so you wouldn’t use it for a …”
Neally’s father shook his head.
“Sorry.” Neally looked down at her plate, trying to hide her guilty smile.
“Muffins were my culinary adventure project last winter,” Mr. Standers said. “My New Year’s resolution was to make a different batch every week. Neally started calling me the Muffin Man.”
“My mom refuses to make New Year’s resolutions,” Quinn said. “Dad says that’s because the one time she made a resolution she later changed her mind, but she’d already told people what she was going to do and so of course they bugged her about it. I don’t know why someone would promise to give up something they love that isn’t bad for them, like chocolate.”
“So, your mom couldn’t swear off the candy bars?” Mr. Standers chuckled. “I don’t blame her. But resolutions don’t have to be about giving things up. They can be things you vow to start doing, or things you decide to do better. For example, you might resolve to eat healthier or get more exercise.”
“Tho
se are typical, boring, adult resolutions,” Neally sniffed. “And then there’s my New Year’s resolution. You know what that is, Dad.”
“No, can’t say I do. Care to refresh my memory?”
“It’s to figure out how to stop bone density loss in astronauts.”
Mr. Standers placed his hands on his stomach and laughed heartily. “During Christmas break we watched a lot of videos,” he said to Quinn. “The first one was a documentary on the Apollo program. Ruthanne, Neally’s mother, decided our holiday video theme should be space travel. We rented everything we could about the subject, and had some interesting discussions about the problems humans face in long-term weightless environments.”
“Yeah, I get it,” Quinn said nonchalantly. What he got was that Neally’s resolution wasn’t a wacko statement out of the blue, and that his own halfhearted promise to help his sister clean out her rat’s cage every Saturday seemed insignificant by comparison.
“Quinn, eh?” Mr. Standers turned his chair backwards and sat facing the kitchen table, his legs straddling either side of the chair’s back. “That’s a great name. The Mighty Quinn.”
Quinn stared blankly at Neally’s father.
“You’ve never heard that?” Mr. Standers hummed a tune that was unfamiliar to Quinn.
Neally groaned, burying her face in her hands. “All oldies, all the time … you’ve got to find another radio station, Dad.”
Mr. Standers grinned at his daughter and continued to hum.
“Oh, that one,” Neally said. “I recognize the tune, but what’s it about?”
Mr. Standers shrugged his shoulders. “It’s a song from the sixties, so who knows?”
“The Mighty Quinn,” Neally said slowly. “That’s way cool.”
“That’s way not true,” Quinn muttered. “Could you please not say it in class or anything?”
“So, Neally” Mr. Standers said, “you wanted to know about the Three Musketeers?”
“Who?”
“The ESL students in our class: Arturo, Janos, and Lily,” Quinn said. “The kids started calling them that because the three of them are always together, but no one ever says it in front of the teachers.” He grinned at Neally’s father. “How’d you know that name?”
The Mighty Quinn Page 5