The Kindness Club

by Courtney Sheinmel

  “Chloe!” Mom called.

  I scooped my brush and a hair tie off my dresser and headed downstairs. Mom had set a bowl of cornflakes out for me. “Good morning,” I said. “Can you french braid my hair?”

  “We’re already low on time,” Mom said. “I don’t want either of us to be late for our first day.”

  “Please,” I said. “I think it’s how everyone wears it. I want to fit in here.”

  “Oh, Chloe,” Mom said. Her voice was suddenly thick, like she was so sad she might even start crying. “I’m sorry about all the changes. I’m sorry for both of us.”

  “It’s going to be okay,” I quickly assured her. “I met nice kids the other day, and Regan Halliday is already your friend.”

  “That’s right,” she said, and she scooted behind me. “Okay. You eat, I’ll braid.”

  “Thanks, Mom.”

  I dipped my head toward the bowl of cornflakes, but she pulled it back up again. “I’m going to give you a few dollars to keep in your backpack, in case something unexpected comes up.”

  “Like what?”

  “If I knew that, then it wouldn’t be unexpected,” Mom said. “And remember when you get home—”

  “I know, I know,” I said. “When I get home, I call you at the office before I do anything else.”

  “That’s right. Do not pass Go. Do not collect two hundred dollars. And if you need anything, you call Mrs. Wallace.”

  Mrs. Wallace was one of our new down-the-street neighbors. She ran a daycare business out of her house. Mom had agreed with me that I was too old to spend the two hours between the end of the school day and when she got home after work with a bunch of toddlers in Mrs. Wallace’s living room. But she’d arranged it with her to be an emergency contact for me.

  “Her number is on the fridge,” Mom said.

  “I know.”

  “Good,” Mom said. “Hand me the hair tie.”

  “Are you done?”

  “Yeah.”

  I turned to face her. “How does it look?”

  “The braid looks okay. The kid is spectacular.”

  A half hour later, I was at Ms. Danos’s classroom door. Ms. Danos herself was standing in the doorframe when I walked up. I told her my name, she checked it against her list, and then pointed out the seat in the third row that was mine. As I walked past, Lucy Tanaka waved to me from her seat in the first row. I waved back.

  “Hey, Chloe,” Monroe called.

  “Hi!” I said. I dropped my backpack at my seat and unzipped the front pocket. I’d stuck a pocket mirror in there. It was the shape of the sun, and it had been a party favor at Lia’s younger sister’s birthday party the year before. I palmed it and quickly checked my braid to make sure it looked okay. Then I headed over to where Monroe was, sitting at a desk in the back row, another girl standing next to her.

  “Good, you wore a french braid,” Monroe said. She had one herself, too. “This is Anjali,” she went on, pointing toward the other girl, also in a braid.

  “Nice to meet you,” I said. “I’m Chloe.”

  “Obvi,” Anjali said.

  “Well, the gang’s all here now,” Monroe said.

  “Except Rachael. Can you believe she’s in Mr. Goldfarb’s class by herself?” Anjali asked.

  “It’s better than being a hundred miles away like Haley,” Monroe said. She turned to me. “Our friend Haley moved away over the summer.”

  “Like I did,” I said.

  “Yeah, but you’re lucky,” Monroe said. “You met us.”

  Dad had said I was lucky, too. But when Monroe said it, I actually agreed with her.

  “You’ll sit with us at lunch today, okay?” she asked.

  “Okay,” I said, grinning. “Thanks.”

  The bell rang a couple minutes later, and Anjali and I scrambled to our desks. Mine was by the window. On the other side of me was a boy scribbling notes in a spiral notebook. When he caught me looking at him, he shielded his book like we were taking a test and I was trying to copy him.

  “Welcome to the first day of fifth grade!” Ms. Danos said.

  The morning passed by in a blur, and before I knew it, it was lunchtime. I went to check in with Mr. Dibble, like he’d asked me to. He wasn’t there, so I left my name with the receptionist. By the time I got to the lunchroom, there was a long, winding line to get food. I got a plate of ravioli and was about to head to the utensil area when there was a huge SMASH behind me. I turned to see Lucy Tanaka. Her tray of food was on the floor (and partially on her clothes). “Oops, not again!” Lucy said.

  “Sorry, sorry,” said the boy who sat beside me in Ms. Danos’s class. His tray was also on the floor, but he seemed more concerned with the splashes of spaghetti sauce on his textbook, which he wiped with his sleeve.

  “It’s a bit of a hazard to read while balancing a tray of pasta in your arms,” Lucy said. But she didn’t sound mad.

  I set down my tray by the salad bar and grabbed a fistful of napkins. “Here, let me help,” I said.

  “Chloe to the rescue—for a second time!” Lucy said. “Thank you!”

  “No problem,” I said. “By the way, my mom puts baking soda on stains. I could ask if they have some, if you want.”

  “This sauce comes out in the wash,” Lucy said. She slid her eyes toward the boy. “We know from experience, right, Theo?”

  Theo muttered in agreement—or disagreement, it was hard to tell. Other kids stepped around, while the three of us got things mostly cleaned up. “Do you guys want to sit together for lunch?” Lucy asked.

  Theo tucked his book under his arm. “I have work to do,” he said.

  “And I—” I started, but then I cut myself off, because Monroe was crossing the room toward us.

  “I was beginning to think you got lost,” she told me.

  “There was just a little accident,” I explained.

  “Things look okay now, though. We’ve been saving a seat for you.”

  “Cool, thanks.” I turned to Lucy. “Do you want to sit with us?” “The table’s full,” Monroe cut in. “Except for the seat we saved for you, of course.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry.”

  “It’s okay,” Lucy said. “Maybe we can eat together another time.”

  “Sure,” I said. I grabbed my tray off the countertop.

  “Wait a sec,” Monroe said. “You’re not eating that, are you?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Why?”

  “Oh, Chloe, I have so much to teach you,” she said, shaking her head in a tsk-tsk grown-up kind of way. “Like how no one eats the hot food. It’s practically a law.”

  “I eat the hot food, and I’ve never been arrested,” Lucy said.

  Monroe ignored her. “I’ll take you to get a sandwich,” she told me.

  “Um. Okay.” I turned to Lucy. “Do you want my ravioli? Since yours spilled, and that way it won’t go to waste. I swear I didn’t touch it yet.”

  “Sure, thanks again,” Lucy said.

  Monroe swept a finger through the air and circled in on Lucy. “So, are you dressed as a lizard or something?”

  With the crash and the cleanup I’d barely noticed what Lucy was wearing. But now I looked at her and saw what Monroe was seeing: a black T-shirt underneath a shiny green vest, and pants that matched. To be honest, it did look a bit lizard-y.

  “I found my brother’s old dragon Halloween costume,” Lucy said.

  “I think ‘Halloween’ is the key word,” Monroe said. “Ready to go, Chloe?”

  “Um, sure.”

  She led me to a counter in the back with bread and cold cuts. I made a turkey sandwich, because that’s what Monroe said she had made for herself, and then we headed to a table in the back where Rachael and Anjali were waiting for us.

  “Chloe is so lucky that Dibble assigned me to show her around,” Monroe said, settling into her seat. “I just rescued her from the grips of Theo Barnes and Lucy Tanaka.”

  “Oooh,” Rachael said. “What were you doing wi
th them?”

  “Theo accidentally knocked Lucy’s tray,” I said. “I helped clean it up.”

  “I saw you waving at Lucy this morning,” Anjali said. “Are you friends or something?”

  “I’m not really friends with anyone,” I said. I have the best friends in my new school. “I mean, not yet.”

  “But were you popular at your old school?”

  I thought about Trissa, and Bianca, and Lia, too, and I felt my cheeks start to warm up. “Oh, yeah,” I said quickly. “I was.”

  “Of course she was,” Monroe said. “I told you, Chloe’s cool. She didn’t know any better about Lucy and Theo, because I hadn’t had a chance to tell her everything. But just so you know, Chloe, they’re just about the last people you’d want to be friends with—and for good reason.”

  “Reasons,” Anjali corrected. “Plural. For one thing, Theo is a total know-it-all.”

  “And he wouldn’t want to be friends with you anyway,” Rachael added. “He prefers books to people.”

  “He bumped into Lucy because he was reading a book,” I said.

  “You see what I mean!” Monroe said. “And you saw what Lucy was wearing.” She turned to the other girls: “a lizard costume!”

  Rachael shook her head, laughing.

  “I think she dresses that way because she doesn’t have a mom at home,” Anjali said.

  “Her mom died,” Rachael filled in for me.

  “That’s so sad,” I said.

  “It is,” Monroe agreed. “But Lucy’s grandmother lives with them now. My grandmother would never let me wear a Halloween costume on a regular school day.”

  “Not that I’d ever want to,” Anjali said.

  “If Lucy had her way, you would,” Monroe said. “She’s so pushy about it. Remember when we were all in Brownies in second grade and we had those patches? She added more to her sash until she had too many to fit, so she sewed them onto a vest that she wore every day.”

  “Like a patch with bells on it?” I asked.

  “Exactly. How’d you know?”

  “I heard you guys talking about it on Book Pickup Day.”

  “I hate to admit it, but I wore the Brownie patches, too,” Anjali said. “We all did.”

  “You wore the official patches,” Monroe said. “So did I. Actually I had the most—because I earned them. But then Lucy started making up her own. A patch for loving macaroni and cheese, a patch for doing jumping jacks. You could tell they were fake because they were completely unprofessional. The edges were all frayed. She practically forced everyone to make their own patches up, too. She always tries to get people to change their style to her weird style.” She paused to take a breath. “My point is, Chloe, if you get too close to her, you might end up in a lizard costume.”

  I squirmed in my seat a bit. It’s not that I’d want to wear a lizard costume. But the patch thing didn’t seem so bad. In fact, it seemed like maybe Lucy was trying to be nice and include people. I certainly didn’t want to make fun of her for it—especially after hearing what had happened to her mom.

  “Is there anything else I need to know about Braywood?” I asked. Please, please, don’t let it be about Lucy.

  “Oh, tons,” Monroe said. “First off, Daniel Carson is the cutest boy in school.”

  “And he’s in my class,” Rachael said.

  I breathed a sigh of relief as Monroe went on—that Jesse Freeman in our class was second cutest, that the only acceptable day to eat the hot food was Taco Day, and that I should never use the bathroom at the end of the hall on the first floor, because the air vent went to the library.

  “You can hear everything!” Anjali exclaimed.

  “Gross,” I said.

  “Plus, there’s Dr. Garcia,” Monroe said. “He teaches science and he’s the oldest teacher in the school by about a hundred years. He sleeps through most of class himself. You don’t learn anything, but you get to sit with your friends—so obviously you’ll sit with us.”

  “And another thing,” said Rachael. “Danos and Goldfarb are secretly dating.”

  “That’s just a rumor,” Anjali said.

  “Rumors can be true,” Rachael said. “This one definitely is. I saw them holding hands in the hall this morning.”

  “You did not,” Monroe said.

  “I did! They passed each other in the hall and they brushed their hands up against each other—like purposefully.”

  Monroe rolled her eyes. “Rachael thinks everything is some kind of love story. She loves romantic things.”

  “Because her parents are divorced,” Anjali added.

  “Mine are, too,” I said.

  “Is that why you switched schools?”

  “Yeah. My mom moved here, to Braywood, and my dad moved to a condo closer to his office.”

  “So you live with your mom?” Monroe asked.

  “Except every other weekend when I’m at my dad’s,” I said. “And also Wednesday nights.”

  “My parents both live in Braywood, and I live with them the exact same amount,” Rachael said. “I do two days with my mom, and two days with my dad, and then back to my mom’s.”

  “It’s totally confusing,” Anjali said.

  “Not really,” Rachael said. “On ‘A’ weeks I’m with my dad Monday, Tuesday, Friday, and Saturday, and on ‘B’ weeks—”

  “Forget it,” Monroe broke in. “We’re never going to remember.”

  “It’s not that hard,” Rachael said, but softly, more to herself than anyone else.

  “Can I ask you a question?” I asked her.

  “You just did,” she said. “But you can ask another.”

  “Is your dad dating anyone?”

  She shook her head. “I’m pretty sure he’s still in love with my mom, and she’s still in love with him. I think maybe they just needed a little break, but lately when they look at each other, they give each other . . . I don’t know how to explain it . . . like googly-eyed looks.”

  I knew what she meant, because I’d seen Dad give that kind of look to Gloria. It made me jealous that Rachael’s parents looked that way at each other, even if they were divorced, too.

  “If they get remarried, I mean to each other, I’ll be a junior bridesmaid,” Rachael went on.

  “You could be one even if they got remarried to other people,” Monroe said.

  “I don’t think that’s possible,” Rachael told her. “Anyway, Chloe, do you have more questions about school?”

  “Umm . . . ,” I started. I’d had so many questions for Captain Carrot that morning. But now that there were three people in front of me ready and able to answer them, they seemed to have all flown out of my head. “What about summer reading? Did you write up book reports?”

  “Oh, you don’t have to do that,” Monroe said. “I didn’t even read anything. The teachers assign summer reading as a way to trick you into doing work. They never actually check to see if you did. Another reason why you’re really lucky Dibble paired us up, for me to tell you these things.” She paused, then added, “There’s one more thing I have to tell you.” Her eyes flicked quickly to the two other girls. Anjali and Rachael each gave little nods of their heads. “We have a club called the It Girls. I’m the president, because it was my idea. It’s a really exclusive club—the most exclusive in the fifth grade, and maybe in the whole school. We always have lunch together, and we have meetings after school twice a week.”

  The It Girls sounded a lot like the A-Team. Except I wouldn’t be excluded from it. That’s why she was telling me about it, I was sure: because she wanted me to be in it. My heart started to beat faster in excitement.

  “We’ve always had four members,” Monroe went on. “Then Haley moved away. We’ve had a bunch of meetings to discuss who could replace her. Would you be interested?”

  “Oh, definitely!” I practically shouted. “Count me in!”

  “Hang on,” Rachael said. “It’s not that easy.”

  “Lots of people are interested,” Anjali
said. “We can’t let them all in.”

  “Right,” Monroe said. “You seem like the kind of person who would fit in our club, but it’s a big decision that we need to make carefully. Since you’re interested in joining, we’ll have a trial period. That’s a club rule, when we’re considering a new member. You can eat lunch with us, and come to our meetings, and we’ll decide if you’re the right fit.”

  “How long does the trial last?” I asked.

  “However long we decide it to be.”

  “And then I’m in?”

  “Keep being cool,” Monroe told me. “And you will be.”

  CHAPTER 6

  According to the schedule I’d gotten on Book Pickup Day, we were supposed to have science with Dr. Garcia three times a week—the last two periods of the day on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays.

  At one thirty-five on the dot, Ms. Danos walked us down to the science lab for seventh period. I’d pictured Dr. Garcia as an old man with a long white beard and the wrinkly kind of eyes, but when we got there, it was Mr. Dibble behind the teacher’s desk. “Come in! Come in!” he called to us. “Your names are at your seats!”

  Instead of desks arranged around the room, there were eight tables with black countertops. Two side-by-side, going back four rows. Each had room for three students. Someone—probably Mr. Dibble himself—had placed a small square of paper at each seat, like the place cards my aunt Louise had at her wedding.

  My name was in the back row. Anjali and Monroe were two rows in front of me, with a boy named Huck sitting in between them. My seat was between Lucy Tanaka and Theo Barnes.

  “Hi, Chloe!” Lucy said, plopping into the seat next to mine.

  “Hey,” I said. “How was the ravioli?”

  “Delicious,” she said. “Thanks.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  Lucy leaned across me. “Hi, Theo,” she said. “Look at us—it’s like a lunchtime reunion!”

  “We didn’t sit together at lunch,” Theo mumbled. He put his arms protectively over the books he’d placed in front of him.

  “Huck, trade seats with Chloe,” Monroe said. She’d twisted around in her seat to look at me, and I stood and picked up my place card right away.

  “Sorry,” I told Lucy. “I guess I have to go.” A couple rows in front of me, I saw Huck standing and picking his place card up, too.