The Kindness Club: Designed by Lucy

by Courtney Sheinmel

  I pushed my legs back under the covers, but I didn’t lie down. I was loving my idea and thinking out loud. “I’ve got puff paints and fabric markers in practically every color,” I said. “But I don’t think I have enough fabric, so I’ll need to go to Fabric World, or maybe Second Chance.”

  Second Chance was the thrift store in town, which is a kind of store that sells secondhand things. I know some people don’t like buying clothes that used to belong to other people, but it makes them much cheaper and you never know what you’ll find. Sometimes I buy things and turn them into other things. Like I could buy a lightweight blanket, cut it up, and turn it into a patchwork quilt.

  “Can you loan me some money for the fabric?” I asked Dad. “You owe me a lot of back allowance anyway.”

  Technically I was supposed to get allowance every Sunday. Ten dollars for being ten years old. But Dad wasn’t always great about remembering to give it to me, and he hadn’t ever upped it from nine to ten since my birthday.

  “Well,” he started.

  “It shouldn’t even count as my allowance,” I said. “It’s more like you making your own donation to the Community House. It’s a great cause. Just ask Grandma.”

  “I know it’s a good cause, Lucy,” Dad said. “I’ll give you some money in the morning.”

  “Thank you,” I said. “That’s so cool of you.”

  “That’s me, Cool Dad,” he said. “And now it really is time for my cool daughter to go to sleep. I bet you’ll have a better chance of doing so if you actually turn the lights out.”

  The light in my room is controlled by two switches—the one by the bed and the one by the door. Dad flipped the switch by the door right then, and the room fell to darkness. I finally lay back down.

  “Good night, Goose,” Dad said, using an old nickname. Every family has nicknames, I think. Chloe’s parents call her “Chloe-bear.” I don’t know what Theo’s parents call him, but I bet he has a special nickname, too. My family calls me “Goose,” and “Lucy-Goosey,” and a variety of other Lucy-rhyming things. It makes me feel safe. Snug as a bug in a rug.

  “Good night,” I said.

  He shut the door behind him, and just like that the bowling game of thoughts was over, and I was able to fall asleep.

  CHAPTER 5

  My dream-plan worked, because I woke up with the perfect outfit in mind: my splotchy overalls. They hadn’t come splotched. I’d found them at Second Chance and splotched them with bleach myself. If kids at the Community House accidentally spilled paint on my lap, it’d look like I’d planned it that way.

  I pulled my hair back in a ponytail and fastened it with a unicorn clip. I was going to use my clown one, but then thought better of it; sometimes kids are afraid of clowns. But I’d never heard of a kid being afraid of unicorns.

  After school, Chloe, Theo, and I headed over to the Community House, with a brief stop-off at Theo’s. The stop-off was because Dad had left for the bowling alley before I’d even woken up, and he’d forgotten to leave money for me. I asked Grandma, but she didn’t have any cash on her, and there wasn’t time for her to get any before school.

  “Maybe you can improvise,” she suggested.

  As a budding fashion designer, I’m used to improvising. Not enough black buttons for a shirt, alternate button colors. Outgrow my favorite skirt, add a strip of denim to create more room in the waist. But I couldn’t imagine what could possibly take the place of fabric on a quilt. That would be like trying to make a habitat for Poseidon without using any water. Poseidon is a fish! Water is the most essential ingredient!

  “You could make a paper quilt,” Grandma told me. “There’s plenty of paper already at the Community House. Each kid could decorate a square.”

  “A rectangle,” I corrected. “Pieces of paper are usually rectangles.”

  “Fine, then,” she said. “Rectangles will work just as well. You, Chloe, and Theo could collect them and piece them together.”

  “You can’t sew paper.”

  “So use tape,” Grandma said. “Remember this is about improvising. You’re a creative girl. This should be second nature to you.”

  I shrugged. She was right about my creativity, of course. Aside from my uniqueness, it was the quality that usually made me proudest of myself. Still, it’s hard to get excited about a paper quilt when you’ve been envisioning a real one.

  “Or you don’t have to make a quilt at all,” Grandma went on. “Valerie will be happy with your assistance if you simply go over and read to the kids. She isn’t expecting any more from you.”

  “Yeah, I know,” I said. I felt a little bit better, but not really. I always like exceeding people’s expectations. Besides, when you have a good idea, the thing you want to do is put it into action.

  It was time to leave for school, so I kissed Grandma good-bye. My house is smack in the middle of Theo’s way to Braywood Intermediate. Not long after we started the club, we began walking to school together. We never talked about it; one day I just happened to walk outside a couple minutes earlier than usual, and there was Theo, passing by. When he saw me he paused to wait. I skipped down the porch steps to the sidewalk and we continued on together.

  Every day since, I’ve tried to time it so I step outside at just about the time he’ll be there. If I’m running late, he walks to the front door and knocks twice, a signal to hurry up. But I walked out of the house that day to no Theo. He had an ophthalmologist appointment. His mom would be driving him to school an hour late. I headed down the porch steps, feeling bummed out, partly because I was alone again, but mostly because the puff paints and fabric markers were bulking up my backpack, and we wouldn’t get to use them.

  At lunch, I filled Chloe and Theo in on the problem: great idea, missing materials. “I’d say we could use my money for fabric,” Chloe said. “But I’m still paying my mom back for the ingredients she bought so I could make gluten-free cookies for Sage.”

  Sage was the daughter of Chloe’s dad’s new girlfriend, Gloria. At first, Chloe hadn’t liked either of them, because she wanted her family back to the way it was before. But she started doing kind things for them, and the serotonin boost in her brain was making things easier.

  I turned to Theo. “Don’t worry,” I told him. “I’m not expecting you to jump in and pay for my idea. That wouldn’t be right.”

  “Being kind doesn’t always come with a financial commitment, but sometimes it does,” Theo said. “In this case, however, I think I have a more economical solution.”

  Theo often spoke as if he were forty instead of ten.

  “What?” Chloe and I asked at the same time. I was going to say “jinx,” but I really wanted to hear Theo’s answer.

  “My sister kicked a hole in one of her bedsheets overnight.”

  “Does Anabelle do karate in her sleep?” Chloe asked.

  “My dad thinks she must’ve been having a dream about a track meet and she ran straight through the sheet,” Theo said. “But my point is—she tore it, so she isn’t going to use it anymore.”

  My mind flashed to the pioneers, with their patched clothing and blankets. No way they’d trash a sheet just because it had a hole. That sheet may have been the only thing they had to cover themselves at night. But I understood what Theo was saying. “You mean we could use the sheet at the Community House,” I said.

  He nodded. “Exactly. It already has one tear, so we’ll tear it more. Into as many pieces as we need for all the kids.”

  “I think we should use scissors so it’s neater,” Chloe said.

  “I was being figurative when I said ‘tear,’ ” Theo said. “I assumed we’d use scissors.”

  “And after the kids decorate them, I’ll stitch the pieces back together to make a quilt!” I exclaimed.

  I was so happy to be able to put my plan into effect after all that I threw my apple up in the air and caught it. For a split second my eyes locked with Monroe Reeser’s. She was sitting at her usual table at the back of the cafeteria,
along with her two best friends, Anjali Sheth and Rachael Padilla. The popular/mean girls. The ones who didn’t change, despite the fact that Chloe was awfully kind to them.

  As soon as Monroe caught me looking, she looked away and started gabbing to the other girls. The It Girls. That’s the name of their club. If our brand is kindness, then their brand is coolness. They’re really exclusive about who is cool enough to be in their club. That’s fine, I suppose; you don’t have to be friends with anyone you don’t want to be friends with. But they also make fun of the kids they don’t let in, and if you ask me, there’s nothing fine about that.

  I know Monroe and the others talk about me, and I try not to let it bother me. My brother Oliver would say, “Don’t give them the satisfaction.” The problem is that when there’s a kid like Monroe in your class who’s being mean, you can’t ignore her completely, because everyone else is listening to what she has to say. So it does matter, and I’m sorry if that gives her satisfaction, but that’s the truth.

  But enough about Monroe and the It Girls. This moment was about the Kindness Club. “That’s great,” I told Theo. “Thank you.”

  “Thank my sister’s violent night of sleep.”

  I looked across the cafeteria, in the direction opposite of Monroe and her friends. Anabelle’s a year younger than we are, in fourth grade. I didn’t see her, but I still sent her a silent thank-you in my head. In a way, she had done a kind thing. I’d forgotten to count my own kind deeds of the day, but I bet I’d have lots at the Community House now—way more than three.

  “Are you sure your mom will still have the sheet?” Chloe asked Theo. “She wouldn’t have thrown it away?”

  “Nah,” he said. “She was going to wash it and bring it over to the office.”

  Theo’s parents have the second coolest jobs in Braywood, right after my dad. And okay, fine: maybe they have the coolest jobs, or at least it’s a tie. His father is a veterinarian, and his mother runs an animal rescue clinic. Anabelle sometimes helps them out, but unfortunately for Theo, he’s allergic to animals so he can’t. He doesn’t seem to mind, though. He mostly spends his time reading textbooks that are WAY above our grade level, and trying to make new discoveries. Oh, and doing things for our club, of course.

  “It’s such a coincidence that we need fabric and you just happen to have some,” I said. “What were the chances of that?”

  “From a statistical perspective, the probability of coincidence is quite high,” Theo said. “A prime example is the so-called ‘birthday problem.’ If you have twenty-three people in the room, the chance of two of them having the same birthday is fifty percent, even though you wouldn’t necessarily think so, with there being three hundred and sixty-five days in a year—or three hundred and sixty-six if it’s a leap year. Some people disagree with the conclusions, though.”

  See what I mean about the kinds of textbooks that Theo reads?

  Chloe gently knocked him in the side. “Oh, you,” she said.

  “What?” he asked.

  “I love all the things I learn from you, that’s all,” she said. “It’s like taking another class. I take math, and science, and Spanish, and also Theo.”

  Theo blushed, but I could tell he was pleased. “You guys will have to be the ones to go in and get the sheet from my mom,” he said. “I can’t get too close to the clinic. You know, my allergies.”

  “We don’t mind at all,” Chloe said.

  “It’s the opposite of minding,” I said. “We actually like going in to see all the animals.”

  Across the table, Chloe was giving me a funny look, and suddenly I realized what she was thinking: don’t rub it in to Theo that he doesn’t get to see the animals, too. That’s what I mean about Chloe being kind all the time. It seems like she doesn’t even try; she’s just automatically kind. I mean to be that way, but sometimes I say something before I’ve thought too hard about it.

  But when you know better, you do better. That’s what my grandmother says. “We won’t have much time with them,” I added, so Theo wouldn’t feel bad. “I doubt we’ll get to pet any of them.”

  By then lunch was nearly over. We cleaned up our stuff and headed back to Ms. Danos’s classroom. The rest of the school day couldn’t pass quickly enough. Finally, the last bell rang, and the three of us booked it over to Theo’s.

  One more coincidence was that the Barnes family lived on Ralston Road, which is almost exactly on the way to the Community House. We could hear dogs barking as we approached. Theo stopped short at the end of the driveway and stood by the mailbox, while Chloe and I ran up the driveway.

  Dr. and Mrs. Barnes’s office is attached to the house, but it has a separate door, and bells jangled as we pushed it open. The waiting room was filled with about a half-dozen adorable furry creatures (plus one bird), and the humans who’d brought them in. Chloe and I looked out of place, two people and no animals. We told the receptionist who we were, and she called for Mrs. Barnes to come up front. Five minutes later, we were headed back down the driveway toward Theo, bedsheets in hand—the ripped one, plus the matching bottom sheet and pillowcases. That was another thing the pioneers never would’ve done—give away the matching pieces just because one was ruined. But it was our good luck. I’d use the extra fabric as backing for the quilt.

  Mrs. Barnes had washed everything. Chloe balled it all up. We went out to Theo, and on to the Community House.

  CHAPTER 6

  Valerie Locklin came to the lobby of the Community House to greet us. She was a tall woman with a broad smile. Her dark hair was styled in about a half-dozen uneven braids, each tied with a different-colored ribbon. It was an interesting look; not that I was judging or anything. I’ve been known for sporting some interesting looks of my own.

  She held her hand out to shake each of ours—Theo’s, Chloe’s, then mine.

  Back when Oliver was going on his college interviews, he told me it was important for him to look people in the eye and have a firm handshake. It was the first impression the interviewers would have of him. He’d read about it in one of his applying-to-college books. The best handshakes were strong, but not too strong as to break the other person’s fingers. You had to strike a balance between not bone-crushing and not weak. If you mastered the perfect handshake, Ollie said, you’d inspire confidence and trust from the other person, and maybe, just maybe, get into your first-choice school.

  We practiced together, even though my own college interviews were nearly a decade away. But it came in handy with Valerie Locklin. (Ooh, hand-y, get it?!)

  “Wow, impressive handshake,” she said as she released my hand. “Welcome to the Community Salon.”

  “Did you just say ‘salon’?” Theo asked.

  “I did indeed. A few of our premier hairstylists worked me over while we were waiting for you.” Ah. That explained all the braids. “They’re very excited to have a few big kids visiting today.”

  “We’re so happy to be here, Ms. Locklin,” I said. She’d started walking down a brightly lit corridor, and the three of us followed. The carpeting was orange, the walls were yellow, and as we walked, I silently read the signs that had been hung up: “Chess Club Every Monday Night!” “You’re Invited to the Senior Mixer!” “Third Annual Talent Show THIS FRIDAY!” “Fundraiser: Let’s Bring Racquetball to Braywood!”

  “Oh, please, call me Valerie,” she said. “We’re going to be part of the same team. You can certainly use my first name.”

  I had been using her first name, in my head. But it was nice of her to tell us to do so out loud. It made me feel older, like she was taking the Kindness Club seriously. I wondered if my handshake had helped.

  We’d reached a pair of double doors. Valerie had a hand out to push one open. “Ready?” she said.

  “Almost,” I said. “There’s just one thing I wanted to tell you. I know my grandmother didn’t have time to come up with a group project, but we did.”

  “Well, Lucy did,” Chloe broke in. “Theo and I can’t t
ake credit.”

  “We’re the Kindness Club,” I said. “The ideas of one are the ideas of us all—which is one of the best parts of having a club. And besides, Theo provided the most important material. See the sheets that Chloe’s holding?” Valerie nodded. “I brought paint and fabric markers. We thought we could cut the sheet up into pieces, and the kids could each decorate a square. Then I’ll bring them home and sew them back together to make a patchwork quilt. What do you think?”

  Valerie smiled her broad smile. “I think it’s brilliant,” she told us. “The kids will absolutely love it.” And with that, she pushed open the door into a large, L-shaped room, decorated in bright colors—even brighter than the orange and yellow out in the hall. The bigger part of the L had a long wooden table, which would be the perfect place for the kids to decorate their fabric patches. There were also shelves of books and board games, a couple yoga mats unrolled on the floor, an easel, a bunch of big foam blocks that were stacked almost all the way up to the ceiling, and one of those red-and-yellow plastic cars that little kids can sit in and move around with their feet. The smaller part of the L was a cozy corner with a dark blue throw rug and a couple beanbag chairs.

  There were—I counted quickly—twelve kids doing various things. Two kids who looked about six or seven years old were sitting on the beanbag chairs; a much smaller kid was in the car, rolling around and narrowly missing rolling over another little kid’s feet. The others were scattered around, at the table, on the floor, in the middle of various games and projects.

  Valerie signaled to the other adult in the room to come over and meet us. Her name was Leesha Fox, and she gave us each a hug like we’d known one another for a while, and thanked us for coming in.

  A girl who looked to be about five years old, wearing a light pink sweater, pulled on Leesha’s hand. “Leesha! Leesha! Who are you talking to?” she asked.

  “These are my new friends,” Leesha said. “And I think they’ll be your friends, too, Hazel.”