The Mighty Quinn (4 page)

“Let me guess.” Marion Lee turned to face Quinn, who sat next to her, and her foot playfully nudged
Quinn's shin under the table. “Matt Barker saw the error of his ways and came crawling to you on hands and knees, begging for your understanding and forgiveness.”

“Mo-om!” Although he was in no joking mood, Quinn could not stop the smile that snuck across his face. “Like I'll live long enough to see that.”

“Now let
me
guess,” Mr. Andrews said. “Is there more trouble with Matt?”

“You still think he's trying to get Tay to be his friend, and not yours?” Ms. Lee asked.

“No. Well, sort of. Matt was being ... Matt.” Quinn looked at his father, and then at his mother, and then down at his dinner plate in an attempt to quash a chuckle that caught him by surprise. His parents both had warm, coffee-brown, wide-set eyes and short, dark brown hair, and at that moment, with their softly arched eyebrows and almost identical facial expressions of loving concern, he thought they looked more like fraternal twins than a married couple.

Quinn usually enjoyed talking with his parents when he had a problem. Sometimes they had answers to questions he hadn't even asked yet, and sometimes they just listened and empathized. Either way, their attention always made him feel better. But Quinn had too many feelings stomping around in his brain; he didn't know how to make them line up single file, and he thought that if he let them all out they'd crash
together and trip over his tongue, and he'd sound ridiculous, or worse.

Quinn was not looking forward to winter break. He didn't want to say that out loud and worry his parents;
every
adult thinks
every
kid looks forward to
every
vacation. Quinn was determined to look “on the brighted side,” as Mickey put it. It was Mickey who had pointed out that two weeks of winter break would be a two-week break from Matt Barker. It was also Mickey who'd pointed out that while their family was staying put, all of Mickey's and Quinn's friends would be traveling during vacation. There would be no one to play with, except for Grandma and Grandpa Lee, who always came to stay with Quinn's family during the week between Christmas and New Year's. Grandma Lee was both soft-spoken and high-spirited, and although she claimed to be “allergic to the rain” she was willing to play checkers or cards or any indoor game with you all day long. Slow-moving, fast-talking Grandpa Lee knew more elephant and fart jokes than any kid at Quinn's school, and drew cool pictures of Chinese letters, but the noises he made when he chewed his toast drove Quinn up the wall. Quinn loved his mother's parents and looked forward to their visits; still, a week was a long time.

Quinn looked up from his plate. His parents still wore identical expressions, the one their eyebrows got taller and their eyes puffed up like baby spotted owls. It
was the
You know you can tell me anything
face. It was a good face, Quinn reminded himself.

“We got a new student in class today, and she ...”

“We got
two
new kids last week!” Mickey gestured wildly with her fork, not realizing that she'd flung noodles on the wall behind her. “And we're getting another ...”

“Mickey,” Ms. Lee said, “this isn't a contest. Let Quinn finish his story.”

Mr. Andrews pushed his chair back, went into the kitchen and returned to the table carrying a washcloth. “What's the new girl like?” he asked, wiping sesame oil from the wall behind Mickey's chair.

“I'm not sure,” Quinn said. “She didn't get there until just before lunch. She's ... well ... yeah. Her desk is up front. Ms. Blakeman's going to rearrange the desks after vacation.”

“Something tells me the new girl made an impression,” Ms. Lee said. “What's her name? Is she from around here?”

“She's from Spokane. She's tall, and talks like, I don't know, like she's smart.” Quinn put down his fork. “I only talked with her a couple of times. She seems friendly, and she has these weird eyes. I've never seen eyes that color.”

“Pink?!” Mickey squealed. “Are they pink, like Alice's? I'll get her and you can check.”

“No animals at the table, no exceptions,” Mr. Andrews said.

“Alice has red eyes.” Quinn rolled his own eyes in disgust. “
White
rats have
red
eyes, not pink eyes. Okay, but now that you mention pets, I thought at first the new girl had dark brown eyes, like Peppy's.”

“If I brought Peppy out of his cage, we could check?” Mickey looked hopefully at her father. “Since Alice is my pet and Peppy is Quinn's, maybe ...”

“You little negotiator.” Marion Lee reached across the table and ruffled her daughter's hair.

“Nice try, Mickey,” Mr. Andrews said. “No Peppy at the dinner table and no Alice. No hamsters, no rats, no animals.”

“No fun,” Mickey muttered.

“Her eyes are so dark, and
green
,” Quinn said.

“They're a color like you'd see in old paintings at the museum, or from another galaxy or cosmos, maybe. Neally has the greenest ...”

“Neally?”

Quinn nodded at his mother. “Really, it's Neally.
Neally Ray Standwell. Sam agrees with me: Neally has the coolest name ever. She even thinks so; it's obvious she likes her own name.”

“So, the new kid has cosmic green eyes and the third best name ever,” Ms. Lee said.

“Third best?” Mickey asked.

“It's a tie for first and second.” Marion Lee grinned.

“I know, I know.” Although Quinn had never seen any animal's lips form a genuine, human-like smile, he could tell his own mouth was twisting itself into the kind of grin adults said belonged on a sheep. He began to recite in a sing-song voice, “Mom thinks the best names in the world are Quinn Michael Andrews-Lee and Michelle ...”

“Mickey!” Mickey insisted.

“And Michelle ‘
Mickey
' Elizabeth Andrews-Lee.”

Quinn looked past his parents, past the dining nook into the family room, to the framed pictures that cluttered the room's oak fireplace mantle. He loved the story his father told him every year, on Quinn's birthday, of how he was named for a special friend of his father's. The summer after James Andrews graduated from college, he made a bicycle trip across Ireland, where he met a man named Quinn Michael Tiernan. Although he looked nothing like his namesake, who had sapphire eyes and thick, wild hair the color of candied yams, Quinn liked looking at the picture of his father and the Irish Quinn. On a gravel road atop
a moss-green hill, framed against an impossibly blue sky, the two friends straddled their bicycles, held their helmets above their heads, and laughed into the camera lens. “Aye and always,” the Irish Quinn had written across the bottom of the photo. That meant
Friends for life
, Quinn's father said.

It had been the longest day of infinity. Quinn reminded himself that whatever happened on Friday would be the last whatever to happen before vacation. At nine a.m. Quinn took his last spelling test before vacation. The last morning recess before vacation was followed by
the-last-time-Brandon-Morley-needs-a-hall-pass-even-though-he-should-have-gone-to-the-bathroom-at-recess
before vacation. Before long, Quinn was standing in the last lunch line before vacation.

At lunch recess, Quinn decided to play a last game of four square before vacation. Quinn was not the only student who had this idea, and all four courts had long lines of kids waiting to rotate in. Quinn got into the shortest line, behind at least ten other kids, including Tay, Sam, and Josh, and the new girl, who was in front of Josh. All of the kids in line seemed to be focused on Neally and not the four square game; a few circled
around her, seemingly unconcerned about keeping their place in line.

“You've got
great
eyes!” The voice was distressingly familiar to Quinn, but Tay blocked Quinn's view. Quinn leaned to the side to get a better view, and groaned. His sister was near the front of the line, standing—or rather, squirming with a star-struck admiration—between Neally and Matt.

“Ah, foof!” Quinn muttered. He didn't go out of his way to avoid his sister at school, but whenever he did let her join in a game with him and his friends, Matt would tell anyone with ears about how Quinn
liked
to play with whiny, brainless second graders. And here they were, Quinn and his sister, totally, completely, accidentally occupying the same four square line. Quinn briefly considered moving to another court.

No, this will be okay. It'll be the last line-I-wish-I-wasn't-standing-in before vacation
.

“Your eyes are so green!” Mickey gushed. “I bet there's no other green like it in this world. It's another galaxy green!”

Quinn cringed to hear his copycat sister. No one else could know that Mickey was repeating his unique observation; still, it felt like she'd stolen his opinion.

“Thank you,” Neally said. “Both of my parents have green eyes, which is unusual.”

“Whooo-wee,
green
eyes, how unusual,” Matt said.
“Like two green grapes smashed in your face. Hey, that's not a bad idea.” Matt fumbled through his jacket pocket, as if he had something stashed there. “Where's my lunch leftovers?”

Josh slapped Matt on the back and laughed, which was no surprise, but Tay began to laugh too. Quinn bit his lip to keep himself from chastising his friend. How could Tay join in on teasing the new girl?

Matt gave a thumbs-up to Tay and raised his hand in the air. “Ducks rule, Beavers drool!” The boys exchanged a high-five.

“Ducks rule, beavers drool?” Neally repeated.

“It's a dumb sports thing,” Mickey whispered to Neally.

“I suppose,” Neally said thoughtfully, “any sport that involves drooling animals could be considered dumb.”

“No, it's not the animals that drool ...”

“It's the people who watch them?”

Mickey began to laugh, then clapped her hand over her mouth and leaned closer to Neally. “It's the teams' names. Ducks are the team from one college and Beavers are the team from another. If kids' parents went to one school they say that their team rules, and they make fun of the other team ...”

“Which drools?” Neally guessed.

Mickey nodded. “Our parents didn't go to those colleges, so we don't care about silly stuff like that.”
She glanced over her shoulder and lowered her voice.

“Quinn's teacher went to the college that has the Beaver team, so he says he's a Beaver fan. But he's really not. He just says that ‘cause he likes his teacher. Matt's and Josh's and Tay's dads went to the other school, and ...”

“Why are you whispering?” Neally asked.

“'Cause kids who like those teams get mad if they think you're making fun of them.”

“Oh, powers that be, I am so frightened! I certainly don't want a mad duck in pursuit of me.” Neally wriggled her fingers in front of her mouth and knocked her knees together. “Say, have you ever played doubles in four square? It's way fun. Want to try it when we get in?”

“Really?” Mickey gasped. “You'd be on a team with
me
?”