“Really?” Hazel asked.
“Really.”
“I’m about to tell everyone all about them,” Valerie added. She clapped her hands, and all around the room, the kids stopped what they were doing and turned their attention to her. Even the kid in the plastic car stopped making his vroom vroom noises. He pretended to pull into a parking spot, and looked up at her.
“That’s great listening, kids,” she said. “And I’m glad to have your attention, because I have three very special friends to introduce you to. This is Lucy, Chloe, and Theo. They are in fifth grade at the Braywood Intermediate School.”
She said the words “fifth grade” like she was saying we were in college, and the way the kids looked at us, I could tell they were really impressed. It felt like a big deal, even though I know from Ollie that being in college is much more impressive.
“They are in a club called the Kindness Club.”
“Ooh,” one of the kids said.
“They are surely living up to their name right now,” Valerie went on, “because they have a lot of things they could be doing this afternoon, but they decided to come visit us. Let’s do our best to make them feel welcome.”
“You’re welcome here!” a boy in a Baltimore Orioles T-shirt and matching hat called out.
“Good job being welcoming, Damien,” Leesha said.
So then all the other kids shouted out: “Welcome!” “Welcome” “Welcome!”
Chloe, Theo, and I all said thanks, and how happy we were to be there. Then Valerie went on. “Not only are they here to play with us today, but also they brought along a special project. Do you guys want to hear about it?”
“Yes!” the kids chorused.
Valerie turned to the three of us, plus Leesha. “Sorry,” she said. “It doesn’t sound like they want to hear about it.”
“No!” the kids screamed. “We do! We do!”
Valerie cupped a hand around her right ear. “What was that? You do want to hear about the project?”
“YES!” they screamed, so loudly that the room shook. I was sure everyone else in the building heard, too. Chloe, Theo, and I smiled at one another.
“Okay,” Valerie told me. “I guess they want to hear after all, so take it away.”
The kids were all looking up at the members of the Kindness Club expectantly, like we were sort of celebrities. I explained the idea, and when I finished, everyone started talking at once. Valerie clapped again and instructed the kids to go to the art corner and get protective aprons to wear. In the meantime, Leesha lined the big table with old newspaper, and Chloe, Theo, and I got busy cutting up the ripped sheet into pieces.
“Can I have that piece?” a girl asked as I snipped off something that looked like a rhombus.
“Sure,” I said.
“Can I sit next to you?” asked another.
“I’d like that,” I told her.
“No, I want you to sit next to me!” the boy named Damien cried.
“She has two sides,” the girl informed him. “I’m going to sit with her on my left side, and Chloe on my right.”
“And I’m going to sit next to Chloe, too,” the first girl said. “She’ll be on my left, and Theo can be on my right.”
“That’s not fair for some people to sit next to two big kids, and others to not have any big kids at all,” Hazel said.
“Just sit where you sit, and the big kids, along with Leesha and I, will come around to help,” Valerie told everyone.
By then we had Anabelle’s old sheet all cut up. I did my best to make some interesting shapes, though it was hard with the kids bouncing up and down all around us. They seemed pleased, though, and each claimed pieces. I pulled my fabric markers and paints out of my backpack. The kids settled around the table, all but one. A girl who I would guess was in first or second grade, wearing black leggings and a white shirt with a kitten decal ironed on it. “Come sit with the group, Frances,” Leesha told her.
Frances took a step forward and then stopped. “What if I don’t want to decorate a piece for the quilt? Do I still have to sit there?”
“No, of course you don’t have to,” Leesha said. “But don’t you want to? Valerie and I will hang it on the back wall, so everyone who visits will always get to enjoy it.”
“No, thank you,” Frances said, polite but firm. “I just want to read by myself.”
She wandered over to the corner with the throw rug and settled into a beanbag chair with a book.
I felt a little sad that she didn’t like my idea, but there were eleven other kids to help. We tied aprons, rolled up sleeves, uncapped markers, and got to work. Chloe, Theo, and I, plus Valerie and Leesha, walked around the table oohing and aahing at the works in progress.
“They’re so adorable,” Chloe told me as we stood back and looked on. “I love that we’re here doing this.”
“Yeah, but—” I lowered my voice. “I wish Frances liked my idea, too. I wanted a project that was good enough for everyone to enjoy.”
“Eleven out of twelve kids did like your idea,” Chloe said. “Look how much fun they’re having.”
I looked. All the kids except Frances were seated around the table, making a big mess, which I knew meant they were having fun.
“This is a good-enough project,” Chloe went on. “More than good enough. It’s a great one.”
“Hey, you,” the little kid from the plastic car called. “Dark-haired girl. I can’t remember your name, but I need help!”
I gave Chloe a smile. “Thanks for saying all that,” I told her. “Gotta go. Duty calls.”
The little boy, whose name turned out to be Wendell, was making an iguana with green puff paint. I thought it was a pretty grown-up-sounding name for a little kid; but I guess all grown-ups were kids once, and his name would fit him just fine when he got older.
Wendell gave me a handful of smudged fabric markers and began dictating instructions: “Put in green. No, not there, THERE. Now make black eyes. No, his eyes are bigger than that. Yeah, like that. Don’t forget that he’s got scales on his back.”
I didn’t even notice that Chloe had wandered away from the table until she came back a few minutes later, Frances’s hand in hers. “Lucy,” she said. “Can we speak to you for a second?”
“Sure.” I turned to Wendell. “Is it okay if I leave you for a minute?”
“Oh, yes,” he said. “This lizard is going to breathe fire, and I want to draw the fire by myself.”
I patted his shoulder and stepped a couple feet away from the table. Frances was holding tight to Chloe, and I bent down to her level. “Hey,” I said in my softest voice. “Are you coming to decorate a patch?”
Frances shook her head and clutched Chloe tighter.
“My new friend Frances was just telling me she doesn’t think she’s a good artist. I told her that I’m not, either. We were hoping you could help.”
“Oh, of course,” I said. “I was just helping Wendell, like you saw. Come sit.”
I motioned toward the table. Frances dropped Chloe’s hand, but she didn’t budge. “Wendell is a little kid,” she said. “That’s why he needs help. I’m big. Not as big as you guys, but I’m bigger than he is, and I want to draw my cat, Nugget.”
“That’s a great idea,” I said. “We don’t have any cat patches yet.”
“In my head I can picture Nugget like a photograph,” Frances said. “She’s tan all over, except for her green eyes and pink nose. And she has a tiny white spot on her right front paw. I’ve tried drawing her before, but it never comes out looking anything like her.”
“I understand how you feel,” Chloe said. “Whenever I draw anything, it doesn’t come out the way it looks in my head. But I can still have fun with it.”
“I’m sure you’re a better drawer than I am,” Frances told her. “I’m sure it’s closer to real life when you do it.”
“I don’t know about that,” Chloe said.
“Everything okay over here?” Valerie asked.
“We were just talking about drawing,” Chloe said. “How sometimes it doesn’t come out the way it looks in your head.”
“It NEVER comes out that way for me,” Frances said. “I don’t want to make a patch. I’m no good at art things.”
“That’s okay,” Chloe said. “I’ll still be your friend.”
“We all will be,” Valerie told her. “But before you decide for sure, can I tell you a secret?”
Frances gave a tiny nod.
“I’m a poet,” Valerie said. “There have been plenty of times when I’ve liked my poems better in my head than on the page. But I keep writing more anyway, and here’s why—when I write a poem, I’m creating something that wasn’t there before. And that’s the cool thing about your patch, if you decide to make one. It’ll be something you made, your idea and your hard work. Everyone who looks at the quilt will know that part of it wouldn’t be there if you hadn’t been there to make it.”
“It’s true,” I said. “That’s why I design my own clothes. I like making new things.”
Chloe smiled at me. “What do you think?” she asked Frances.
“I want to make a Nugget patch,” Frances said. “But now it’s too late. Everyone else is almost finished.”
“I’ll sit with you for as long as it takes,” Chloe said.
“Me too,” I said. “And I can’t wait to see it.”
Frances nodded okay and took the seat next to Damien, who had drawn a patch for his favorite sports team. He’d covered his piece of the sheet in orange puff paint, and outlined a bird in the middle. He kept touching the middle to see if it had dried yet.
“You have to give it a bit longer,” Theo told him. “You have a lot of paint there. The process of evaporation has its work cut out for it. But I have a trick. We can put your patch on the windowsill. The sun will warm it up, and speed up the evaporation process.”
“Cool!” Damien said, moving to grab his patch.
“Careful, you better let me do it,” Theo said. “You don’t want it to smudge. And we should probably put some newspaper down first.”
All the kids wanted to move their patches to the sun, and luckily Leesha had plenty of extra newspaper. Frances was bent over her patch on the table, outlining the shape of Nugget with a brown fabric market. Chloe stayed with her, while the grown-ups, Theo, and I carefully carried the finished patches over to the window.
Watching paint dry is boring, even if you have sunlight to speed it up, so Valerie suggested we read while we waited. A girl named Willow pulled a book off the shelf and handed it to me. “This is my favorite. Let’s read a chapter of this.”
The kids sat around in a circle, and I began to read. After a few minutes, Chloe and Frances were done and came over to join the rest of us. I finished the first chapter, and went on to the second. I was in the middle of the third when parents started showing up. Two and a half hours had gone by since we’d shown up at the Community House. Time had passed quickly, not like we’d been watching paint drying at all.
“Will you be back?” Frances asked Chloe as her mother ushered her to the door.
“You are all welcome to come back and visit anytime,” Leesha told us.
“Of course we will be,” I said. “We’re going to sew the patches together and bring you a finished quilt next week.”
“You see, we’ll definitely be back,” Chloe said.
Frances broke away from her mom to give Chloe a big hug. Then she hugged Theo and me, too. Most of the other kids were gone at that point. Valerie thanked us again and said we should feel free to leave, too.
“I’m just going to stop in the bathroom before we go,” I said. “Can you tell me where it is?”
“Oh, yes, of course,” Valerie said. “Go down the main stairwell, take two rights and a left. It’s a little tricky. We always accompany the kids. Would you like me to take you?”
“No, thanks, I’m sure I’ll find it,” I said. “Be right back,” I told Chloe and Theo.
CHAPTER 7
The problem wasn’t finding the bathroom. The problem was finding my way back to the stairwell when I was done. It was like a maze down there. I couldn’t remember the order of the turns, and since it was the end of the day, there weren’t any other people. I made a few lefts and a few rights. Nothing looked familiar, so I doubled back and made a right, and then another, hoping for the best. But all I found was another completely different hallway.
How big could the basement of the Community House possibly be?
I stopped for a couple seconds to regroup. I needed a new tactic. Since every turn I thought I should make ended up being wrong, maybe I should do the opposite. I could turn left when I thought I should go right, and perhaps that would finally lead me to the stairwell. And if that didn’t work, well, I guess I’d sleep down here and wait for someone to find me in the morning.
Unless no one ever did find me. I wouldn’t have any access to food or drinks. At this point I didn’t even know how to get back to the bathroom, so I couldn’t even use the faucet. I may as well have been lost in the wilderness. My heartbeat picked up its pace. No food plus no water equaled Certain Death.
Calm down, Lucy, I told myself. Chloe and Theo would never let you stay lost in the basement forever. They’d send a search party to find you—or at least they’d send Valerie and Leesha.
I walked to the end of the hall to make a left—no, a right. No, a left. And it was a good choice, because I heard voices. Civilization, up ahead! I was saved!
I made another left, toward the voices, and walked into the open doorway of a smallish room. There were six people there, sitting in chairs arranged in a small circle. Five of them were kids; but not little kids, like upstairs with Valerie and Leesha. These kids looked about my age, and even older. The lone grown-up was a man in black pants and a navy button-down shirt.
Navy and black together is not my favorite combination. But you can’t tell someone you don’t like their fashion choices, because they may not take it kindly. I’ve learned that lesson the hard way. All I can do is keep practicing my designs, and one day have a line of clothes that I hope everyone buys, because I think they’ll look good on everyone!
Someone in the circle sniffled loudly, and someone else passed a box of tissues. “Go on,” the man said.
“Odessa said it was because it was too hard for my dad to see it all there hanging in the closet,” a girl said. “Like she was just in the other room and she’d be back any minute, looking for her pink silk blouse, or her scarf with the elephants on it. I told my aunt she should’ve given everything to me. I could’ve put everything in my closet. But she said my closet is too full as it is, and besides that, she said it wouldn’t be healthy.”
“Maybe you can keep a couple things,” an older boy told her. “That’s what we did.”
“No,” the girl said. “Odessa already brought it all to the thrift store. She said it’s time to move on, and go back to school, but I really don’t want to. I don’t want to go back and do things I used to do, like nothing happened.” She blew her nose into a tissue. “That’s all I want to say.”
“Thank you for sharing that,” the man said. “Does anyone have something to add?”
“Yeah,” a boy said. “There’s someone here.”
He pointed to the doorway—to me—and the whole circle of people turned to look, including the girl who’d just been talking. I recognized her face as soon as I saw her. It was Serena. Serena Kappas. She was in my grade at school. We’d never been in the same class, even though we’d been going to school together since kindergarten. It seemed improbable that we’d never gotten the same teacher. Like the opposite of Theo’s so-called birthday problem.
But still, I did know Serena a little bit. I’d sat with her at lunch a few times, before Chloe moved to town, and she, Theo, and I all became friends. Serena and her best friend Vanessa Medina always had an extra seat at their table. It’s not like they were close friends of mine or anything, but th
ey didn’t mind when I joined them. At least they never said so.
I raised my hand to wave at Serena. Maybe it was a weird thing to do, since she’d been crying. But what else are you supposed to do when you see someone you’ve sort of known for half of your life? It was weird to wave, but it would’ve been weirder not to. Serena gave me the tiniest of tiny waves back.
“May I help you with something?” the man asked me.
I shook my head, but then remembered I did need help. “I’m a bit lost,” I said.
“It’s confusing down here, isn’t it?” I nodded, and he pointed toward the open door. “Here’s what to do. Go out and make a left. Walk all the way to the end of the corridor and make a right. You’ll see a stairwell then.”
“Thanks,” I said. But I didn’t move right away. I looked at Serena again. She was still turned around, looking at me, and she swiped at her face with a crumpled tissue.
“Do you need anything else?” the man asked.
“Um, I don’t know,” I said. It felt wrong to leave Serena all alone. Or, not all alone. Alone with a group of people I’d never seen before. None of them were in our grade at school. “Serena, are you okay?”
That was a dumb question. Of course she wasn’t okay: she was crying.
“We’re all fine, thank you,” the man told me.
“Okay,” I said.
I took a step back, still feeling unsure. That’s when I heard the shout: “Lucy!”
It was Chloe’s voice, followed by Theo’s: “Lucy! Are you down here?”
“I think your search party has arrived,” the man said.
I didn’t respond. I just backed the whole way out of the room. Chloe and Theo were at the end of the corridor. I ran toward them, and they ran toward me, and we met in the middle.
“We were worried that you got sick,” Chloe said.
“I’m not sick; I was just lost,” I said, and then I whispered the next part: “But I saw a group of people down there.” I pointed to the end of the hall. “Serena Kappas is with them.”
“Who’s Serena Kappas?” Chloe asked.
“A girl in our grade,” Theo said. “In Mr. Goldfarb’s class. I bet she’s here for grief group.”
The Kindness Club: Designed by Lucy Page 4