The Kindness Club

by Courtney Sheinmel

  Next to me, Theo let out a little sound, so soft. “Whoa.” When I looked over at him, he was smiling. Actually smiling. It made me realize I’d never seen him do that before.

  “Now, I’m going to write down a number between one and a hundred,” Mr. Dibble told us. “You should each pull out a sheet of paper and do the same.”

  I turned a page in my green notebook and wrote the number “4,” for no other reason than my birthday is April fourth. Plus, four people is the perfect amount for a choreographed dance, and if I became an official It Girl, there’d be four people in the club again. Mr. Dibble told us all to hold up our numbers. He went around the room looking at them, and then announced our table would go first. “Mr. Barnes and I had the exact same number,” he said.

  He held opened his own notebook to show us: he and Theo had each written “1.”

  “So Mr. Barnes and his tablemates will go first,” Mr. Dibble said.

  Theo raised his hand and Mr. Dibble called on him. “I don’t mind working alone,” Theo said.

  “No, this is a group exercise,” Mr. Dibble told him. “Imagine how much you can discover if you harness the curiosity of three minds. Since you’re the first group, I’ll give you an extra half week. This will be due the Monday after next. How does that sound?”

  “Great,” Lucy said. She tapped my hand with the same kind of excitement in Mr. Dibble’s voice.

  “Fine,” Theo said.

  Monroe had twisted in her seat to look at me and gave me a shrug of sympathy. I gave her a little shrug back.

  “Fine with me too,” I said.

  CHAPTER 9

  Theo had suggested we get started that day. But Wednesday afternoons Lucy had a piano lesson right after school, and by the time she was done, I had to head to Dad’s. To be perfectly honest, I was a bit relieved that the science project had to wait. I was thinking about that shrug Monroe had given me in science class. It’s not that I minded working with Lucy and Theo, but it made me feel like I was caught in the middle of two sides—Lucy and Theo on one side, and Monroe and the It Girls on the other.

  So being at Dad’s seemed like a good break. At least until I got there. I’d hoped we could have a makeup Father/Daughter Pizza Night, and maybe I’d talk to Dad about everything at school. But Dad had already made other plans, and those plans involved ordering in gluten-free Chinese food with Gloria and Sage.

  Talk about being stuck in the middle—Mom on one side, and Gloria and Sage (and Dad) on the other.

  The Tofskys arrived, and I didn’t have time to sit in my seat or even leave my cup at my place setting to claim it before Sage had plopped herself down, right next to Dad. “Hey, Jim,” she said. “Guess what. I’m going to be in my school play!”

  “Good for you,” Dad told her. “Chloe was in Annie at her school last year. She sang a couple lines in ‘It’s the Hard-Knock Life.’ What part were you again, bear?”

  “Orphan number four,” I said. I’d tried out for Molly, one of the orphans who actually had a name, but Bianca DeLuca had gotten that role. Dad said it was okay, though. He said there were no small parts, just small actors.

  “That’s right,” he said now. “What play are you doing, Sage?”

  “Alice in Wonderland,” she told him. “I’m going to be Alice.”

  “How spectacular!” he exclaimed. “Chloe, isn’t that spectacular?”

  I swallowed a bite of sweet-and-sour chicken. “Sure,” I said.

  “The audition was this morning,” Sage said. “I did a monologue about when Alice chases the White Rabbit and falls down the hole.”

  “I’d love to see you perform it after dinner,” Dad said.

  Which of course meant that I had to see it, too. I have to admit, Sage was pretty good. She only had to glance at the script once, and the show wasn’t even happening for a month.

  But then Dad stood and gave her a standing ovation, and I knew he didn’t really mean it when he said there were no small parts, because he thought it was an awfully big deal that Sage had the title role. I couldn’t wait to get back to Mom’s house.

  I had an It Girls meeting on Thursday, so it wasn’t until Friday that Lucy, Theo, and I got together to talk about our project for Mr. Dibble’s class. We decided to go to Theo’s house, because he practically had a library full of science books in his bedroom. He told us to observe things on our walk, to see if any discoveries popped out at us.

  “I’m seeing cars and trees and houses,” Lucy said. “And look—Vanessa Medina dropped a gum wrapper and it fell to the ground!”

  I picked the wrapper up and threw it in the trash can on the corner. “Newton already discovered gravity,” Theo told Lucy. “We need a question we don’t know the answer to yet.”

  “O-kay. Have you ever thought about wearing colors besides white and tan?”

  “The answer to that is it’s not relevant,” Theo said. “And besides, I don’t think you’re in the position to mock someone’s clothes.” At that moment, Lucy herself was wearing a cloak of about a thousand colors, which she’d told me was from when her brother had starred in his high school production of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.

  “I’m not mocking them at all,” Lucy said. “Honestly. I was just curious.”

  “Well, I like my clothes,” Theo said. “And we need to concentrate on real questions. Mr. Dibble just gave us a big opportunity. You guys need to take this seriously.”

  “I am taking it seriously,” I told him.

  “Me too,” Lucy said.

  “Good, because can you imagine how good it would look on our college applications if we actually did discover something new?” Theo asked.

  “We have”—Lucy paused to count—“Seven years before we apply to college.”

  “It’s never too early to start thinking about it,” Theo said. “Plus, if we make a new discovery, we can probably skip a few years and go straight to Harvard. Or at least skip into sixth grade. Now I have some thoughts on chaos theory.”

  “What’s chaos theory?” I asked.

  “The study of nonlinear dynamics,” Theo told me.

  “What?”

  “Any-hoo,” Lucy cut in. “That’s where I live. Right over there.” She pointed out a gray clapboard house. “I’d invite you in to meet my grandma, but she’s volunteering today. You guys should hold your breath.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  “Because we’re about to pass Mrs. Gallagher’s house,” Lucy said.

  She’d stopped in her tracks. Her voice had dropped a couple decibels lower, and she nodded toward the house next door to her own. It was also gray; but unlike Lucy’s house, you could tell it hadn’t been painted that color. Instead, it was a very, very dirty white house. Two of the window shutters were hanging crooked, and the windows themselves were caked with dirt. The front yard was littered with sticks and leaves that looked like they’d been there for a few seasons.

  “When I was little,” Lucy said, “I used to think she was a witch, and I made up all sorts of rules. Like if I held my breath when I passed by, then I’d be immune to her spells.”

  “There are about a thousand problems with your logic,” Theo said, stepping forward. “First of all, there’s no such thing as witches. And second, even if there was, when you breathe you’re inhaling molecules of everyone who ever lived. It’s a scientific phenomenon called Caesar’s last breath. So holding yours in front of her house won’t do any good. You’re getting her molecules anyway.”

  Just then, one of the dirt-caked windows was thrown open. “I see you kids on my lawn!” a crackly voice cried out. “You’re a nuisance to the neighborhood! Your parents should know better than to let you wander alone. Get out of here before I—”

  Lucy shrieked and the three of us took off down the block, not stopping until we’d turned the corner. We were panting and took a few seconds to catch our breaths.

  “What’d you ever do to her?” Theo asked.

  “Nothing, I swear,” Lucy said.
“Maybe we just discovered that witches really do exist!”

  “A scientific impossibility,” Theo told her.

  “I’d still feel safer if she wasn’t my next-door neighbor.”

  I patted Lucy’s shoulder, feeling sad for her. “Hey, you know what I just discovered through my power of observation?” I asked.

  “What?”

  “The ice-cream truck,” I said, pointing all the way down the block.

  I still had the five dollars Mom had given me on Monday in my backpack, and I treated each of us to a vanilla cone. I held my ice cream in one hand, and with the other I dropped a penny from my change on the ground.

  “You dropped your money,” Theo told me, bending to pick it up.

  “No, no, leave it,” I said. “I did it on purpose.”

  “Why?”

  “That way someone else can walk by and get lucky pennies,” I explained, and I dropped another.

  “That’s so cool!” Lucy said.

  “Lucky pennies are a scientific impossibility,” Theo said.

  “Hey!” a voice squealed from behind. The three of us turned to see a little boy. He looked about four years old. “Look! Mom! I’m finding treasure!”

  “One man’s scientific impossibility, another man’s treasure,” I whispered to Theo.

  CHAPTER 10

  Theo lived a block over from Main Street, on Ralston Road. There was a white wooden sign staked into the front yard. In bright red letters, it said:

  THE BARNES CLINIC

  STEPHEN BARNES, DVM

  A big red arrow pointed to the left, where the house jutted out past the driveway. In the distance, I could hear faint sounds of a few dogs barking.

  Theo walked straight up the path toward the front door. “Can’t we go in the other way?” Lucy asked.

  “That’s my parents’ office,” Theo said.

  “Your parents work together?” I asked, feeling a pang since mine no longer did.

  “Yeah.”

  “They’re veterinarians,” Lucy supplied.

  “Just my dad,” Theo said. “My mom runs an animal rescue clinic.”

  “She rescues animals?” I asked incredulously. “That’s the best job I’ve ever heard of a parent having.”

  “She doesn’t personally rescue them,” Theo said. “Not all of them at least. People find them, and drop them off. Sometimes the phone rings in the middle of the night because someone found some baby possums on the side of the road.”

  “Baby possums!” Lucy squealed. “That’s so cute!”

  “They’re not cute at all,” Theo said. “They’re completely bald and they can’t open their eyes.”

  “Did you get to hold them?”

  “No, it was the middle of the night, like I said. I looked it up on the Internet.”

  “I love animals,” I said, following Theo up the porch stairs. “I have a pet rabbit.”

  “Rabbits have a third eyelid,” Theo said. “So they don’t blink as often as humans.”

  “I thought I knew everything about rabbits, but I didn’t know that,” I said. “Do your parents have rabbits, too?”

  “Possibly,” Theo said. “I never go over there, since I’m allergic to just about every animal. But I read about them.” He held the door open for us. “Come inside. We’ve wasted enough time already and we have so much work to do.”

  I called Mom so she’d know where I was. Theo brought down a stack of textbooks from his room, and we sat around the kitchen researching different laws of science, to try and get inspired. The problem was, Lucy and I didn’t understand them, and Theo was getting impatient explaining them to us.

  “It’s not our fault,” Lucy said, closing the text in front of her. “This book is like something my brother Oliver would read in college.”

  “It’s an eleventh-grade book,” Theo said.

  “Same difference.”

  “Not the same at all,” he told her. “At least a two-year difference.” He paused and flipped a page. “Do you guys know Newton’s first law of motion?” Lucy and I shook our heads, and Theo went on: “An object at rest will remain at rest, and an object in motion will maintain its specific line of motion, unless compelled to change by the application of an external force.”

  “I don’t really understand,” I admitted.

  “Me, either,” Lucy said. “But so what? You think we should invent—sorry, discover—a second law of motion?”

  “There already is a second,” Theo told her. “How velocities change when force is applied.”

  “I guess I’m just not a genius like you,” Lucy said.

  “I’m not a genius,” Theo said. “I work hard, but it’s not like I’m in Mensa or anything.”

  “What’s Mensa?”

  “It’s a genius society,” he said. “You need to score in the ninety-eighth percentile or higher on an IQ test to qualify. I’m three points away.”

  “Three points is pretty close,” I told him. “You’re still way above average. But I don’t think Mr. Dibble expects us to be in Mensa or even close to it to do the assignment. He just wants us to, you know, be curious. So maybe we should think about that instead of the motion laws.”

  “I tried to tell you about chaos theory before,” Theo said. “There’s a piece of it called the butterfly effect, which demonstrates that everything matters. Even the small things—even something as seemingly insignificant as a butterfly flapping its wings could change the course of the universe forever. That butterfly could set the wind in motion in such a way that a hurricane is caused on the other side of the world.”

  I felt myself shiver at the thought. “So if I, like, blow my nose or something, I could cause a tornado?” I asked.

  “Technically speaking,” Theo said. “But there’s no way to know for sure. Unless we discover a way to measure it. Then we could really go global.”

  “Yeah, sure,” Lucy said. “But how?”

  “My first thought was to make a terrarium for butterflies, and record their wing flaps, and then monitor the weather in China. But of course there’d be no way of knowing if whatever storms happen over there would’ve occurred without our butterflies.”

  “Or maybe it’ll be because of someone else’s butterflies,” I said. “On another continent, even.”

  “I know,” Theo said, closing his textbook. “It’s not a good idea.”

  “It is a good idea,” I told him. “Really. It just may not be possible.”

  “The problem is, I haven’t thought of anything better yet,” Theo said.

  “Well, you’ll just keep thinking,” Lucy said. “I will, too.” She folded her hands and closed her eyes. “I’m thinking . . . I’m thinking . . .”

  I opened my notebook to take notes when and if the ideas came. What was I curious about? At that moment, mostly if I’d get to be an It Girl. If I ate turkey sandwiches every day, would it be enough? What else did I have to do to keep being cool?

  “This is hard,” Lucy said, her eyes popping open.

  “I know,” I told her.

  “I have a question,” she said. “Why’d you join the It Girls?”

  I felt my face redden. “You’re talking to me?”

  “Well, I’m not talking to Theo,” she said. “So why did you?”

  “How did you know I did?”

  “You wrote it on the page.”

  I looked down. Apparently, without even thinking about it, I’d written an affirmation: I am an official member of the It Girls Club.

  “I haven’t exactly,” I said. “I’m in a trial period first, to see if I’m actually It Girls material.”

  “Hmm,” Lucy said. “I don’t think you are.” I must’ve looked upset, because she went on quickly. “I’m not saying it to be mean. Honest I’m not. It’s just that you’re so different from Monroe and the rest of them. You’re nice. I don’t get why you’d want to be around her. I don’t get why everyone does. It’s like those moths you see flying into lights for no apparent reason.”
/>   “There is a reason moths do that,” Theo said. “It’s called transverse orientation, and it’s when insects navigate by flying at a constant angle to a distant light source. Man-made lights confuse them.”

  “Fine, there’s a reason for the moths,” Lucy said. “But there’s not a reason for Chloe to want to be in the It Girls.”

  “I like them,” I said. “We actually have a bunch of things in common.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like . . . Monroe and I both like mushrooms on pizza, and we like the same music and making up dances.” I paused. “And I didn’t get a chance to be in a club in my old school with my best friend. Now I can be in one here.”

  “You had a best friend?” Lucy asked.

  I nodded. “Her name is Lia,” I said. “She’s still my best friend. But, I moved away, and she joined a club called the A-Team.”

  “My brother is my best friend and he just moved to college,” Lucy said. “So I understand how you feel. But what about if we make a club with each other, and Theo, too. Like maybe we could have a fashion club. We could all pledge to take more risks with our clothes, and we could even host a fashion show.”

  “No way,” Theo said.

  “Okay fine, a different kind of club then. What do you think?”

  I shrugged. “The thing is, I’m still hoping to be in the It Girls’ club,” I said.

  The kitchen door banged open. “Hey, nerd!” a girl called.

  I saw Theo grit his teeth and tighten his grip on his pencil. “We’re working in here,” he said.

  “Hi, I’m Anabelle,” the girl said, paying him no mind. “I’m Theo’s sister—you probably couldn’t tell since we don’t look anything alike.”

  She had to be kidding, since she and Theo looked almost completely alike: same deep red hair, same freckled skin, same eyes. They even each had one eyebrow that was slightly longer than the other.

  “I’m nine and I’m in fourth grade,” Anabelle continued. “I’m in Mrs. Linvill’s class.”

  “I’m Chloe,” I said.

  “I’m Lucy,” Lucy told her. “I had Mrs. Linvill last year.”

  “We have to get back to our science project now,” Theo said loudly.