The Quirks, Welcome to Normal (15 page)

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ugh the haze of her continuing bad mood, Molly
Quirk marveled at how magical and perfect their town looked on Normal Night. The entire village had been turned into a kind of fairyland at twilight.

As the Quirk family walked through the neighborhood toward the town’s center, strings of lights dripped from the trees along the sidewalks, sprinkling twinkling colors all around them.
Even Gran was curious, so the kids’ fairy grandmother flitted behind the rest of the family, tucking up into trees where her wings glowed and glinted in the reflection from the lights.

The center streets had all been closed to car and truck traffic, and the roadways were open for walking. So the Quirks meandered from their house toward the town’s square, trotting up the
center of the street. Everything was quiet and still around them, though they could hear the buzz and hum of the huge party ahead. They admired the identical houses that were lined up like soldiers
on either side of them. And they marveled at the trees that all bowed and swayed from exactly the same height over their heads.

A
WELCOME TO NORMAL
banner hung between two streetlamps and stretched through the air above them as they approached the center square. “It’s like a
door,” Finn observed, chomping and smacking at the gum in his mouth. “A doorway to Normal.”

Grandpa snickered. “Or a magic portal! You walk under that banner and—
zap!
—you become normal. Wouldn’t that be something?”

“I wish it worked that way,” Molly muttered. Her mother gave her a warning look.

Grandpa Quill lifted his feet and danced merrily along, his mustache leaping and swaying with each hop. “Eh,” he said happily. “Normal’s overrated. Being just like
everyone else is boring.”

Molly wasn’t sure she agreed.

Finn pulled his gum out of his mouth like it was a long, wiggly tightrope and then pushed it back in again. “Now you see me,” he chanted, before he spit the rope of gum into his
filthy palm. “Now you don’t!” Finn giggled and skipped along, moving the gum between his mouth and his palm, seemingly unconcerned that they were in public and that he was weaving
in and out of focus.

“Finnegan Quirk, is that a pair of underwear on your head?” their mother demanded as Finn swerved into view for the fourth time. Molly had stopped watching him, preferring instead to
admire the sameness that surrounded them on their walk through the town’s streets. Penelope was humming softly beside her twin, lost in her own thoughts. “Tell me the truth! It’s
underwear, isn’t it?”

Molly groaned. Underwear on Finn’s head was the least of their worries. “Can’t you all, please, just try to keep your Quirks quiet tonight?” she begged them. “No
disappearing; no rewinding—or, for that matter, dancing; and no tricking people into thinking things they should not be thinking. No Quirkiness, period.” Out of the corner of her eye,
Molly spotted Gran zipping away, back toward their house. The others all nodded somberly, but their promises didn’t make Molly feel any less anxious.

No one said anything more as they walked the rest of the way toward the festival. Molly could feel the tension in the air. Penelope’s nerves swirled around them like bees—buzzing
just close enough that it was disturbing.

The center square was even more festive than the streets that surrounded it. Lights hung from every available surface, and carnival games were squeezed into the tiniest spaces between the shops.
The smell of food wafted from grills and portable ovens and deep fryers, and the sweet sugariness of cotton candy mingled with the saltiness of roasted nuts in the most perfect way. There were
people everywhere, eating, talking, laughing—and they were all chewing gum.

As the Quirks zagged through the crowds toward the town’s true center, Molly spotted a giant golden platter sitting on top of a pedestal, right in the middle of everything. Finn dashed off
to explore the carnival, and Bree and Grandpa headed toward one of the food booths. Molly pulled Penelope toward the golden platter, and they both peered at it curiously. There was a sticky-looking
multicolored lump in the center. “Is that the ball of gum?” Molly wondered aloud.

“Yeah! That’s the start of the ABC ball!” Stella’s voice rang out behind them, and both girls turned to see some of their friends from school standing right beside them,
chewing rapidly. “It’s already a decent size, isn’t it?” Stella asked. She spit the gum out of her mouth and pressed it onto the top of the pile in the center of the
platter. Then she popped another gumball out of her pocket and got back to work. “But it needs to be, like, a hundred times bigger than that to beat the record.”

“Hey,” Amelia blurted out, looking closely at Molly and Penelope. “You better get some gum and start chewing. When it’s nice and sticky, add your piece to the pile and
start on another one.”

Molly and Penelope followed their friends to a huge gumball machine sitting in the center of the square. It was the very same one that had been sitting, broken, outside Crazy Ed’s until
the night Penelope made it explode. Now it seemed to work just fine. Boxes of gumballs and packages of gum were stacked up beside the gumball machine, waiting for their turn to be chewed.

Each of the Quirk girls turned the crank to release a gumball. They began to chew, and joined their friends as they wandered around the square—stopping periodically to place their
chewed-up gum in the pile at the center of the golden platter.

After only a few minutes of wandering, Penelope’s mind began to race. She discovered she couldn’t even be near the dunk tank, because the ball seemed to always hit its target and
send people screaming into the icy water below. She also found it was hard to blend in when she
played
carnival games, since her balls or darts or beanbags always landed exactly where they
were supposed to land to win prizes. After just an hour of playing, Penelope had won a stuffed shark, a dancing monkey, and a broken plastic gumball machine (which she gave to Finn).

About half past seven, a band began to play on the big stage that had been set up outside the post office. They played strange songs, the kind of twangy, goopy love junk that Bree Quirk always
listened to. Molly and Penelope watched as their mother joined Mr. Intihar in the big open area that had been roped off for dancing. Bree looked like she was having a great time, despite her
embarrassing flopping and hopping that was supposed to be dancing. She seemed to have charmed the people around her, even though she looked a little bit like a hooked fish.

“Attention!” someone squawked into a microphone just a few minutes after eight. “May I have your attention, please?”

Everyone turned to the stage. The mayor of Normal, Michelle Normal, was chomping her gum so loudly that each
snap
and
pop
echoed through the loud speakers. “Good evening,
everyone!” Mayor Normal cried, and everyone cheered. “It’s the big night, the night we wait for all year! Normal Night is here again!” She clapped and chewed, then spit her
gum into her palm and started in on a new piece.

“As you all know, this night is a celebration of who we are! Let’s hear it for Normal and our not-so-normal record-breaking!” Everyone clapped and whooped, and Molly
couldn’t keep herself from smiling as she blended into the crowd of cheering people. She looked around at the people who surrounded her—new friends, and her family, and all the people
in the community. Finn and Mr. Intihar’s son, Charlie, were goofing off near the dunk tank. Bree was laughing quietly with the girls’ teacher nearby on the dance floor. And Grandpa had
made his way up onstage, where he’d joined the band as an unofficial accordion player.

Stella caught Molly’s eye and smiled at her. Molly smiled back, and Molly felt—for a fleeting moment—exactly what it would be like to fit in somewhere. To be a part of
something.

Mayor Normal cleared her throat and continued. “Now, we’re not even halfway to our goal . . . so we’ve got a lot of chewing to do. Make sure you get your gum nice and sticky,
and plop it on the pile. Every piece needs to stick, or this isn’t going to happen, people!” She paused and spit her second piece of gum into her palm—then started on yet another.
“Like every year, we have until ten o’clock to reach our goal. I have faith that we can build the largest ball of ABC gum ever!”

Everyone cheered again, and Mayor Normal gave the band a signal to resume playing. Molly watched as the mayor stepped off the stage and made her way to the giant golden platter to drop the gum
she’d put in her hand on the growing pile. She pulled and tugged, but the gum seemed to be stuck to her skin. Molly turned to her sister and saw that Penelope had narrowed her eyes and was
trying hard to distract herself.

“It’s stuck, isn’t it?” Molly asked her quietly. She noticed that her own gum had grown extra-sticky in her mouth. “Is the gum stuck to the mayor’s
hand?”

“I’m sorry,” Penelope whispered. “I was just a little worried that the gum wouldn’t be sticky enough to make the ball work! I couldn’t stop myself from
thinking about it.” Pen could hardly open her mouth, since the piece of gum she’d been chewing was sticking to her teeth, her tongue, and the roof of her mouth. Molly looked around and
saw that every mouth around her was working extra-hard to chew. Everyone’s gum had grown stickier and stickier as the mayor spoke. Penelope looked terrified. “Distract me, or I’m
going to ruin the challenge for everyone!”

Molly rubbed her sister’s hand. “Come on,” she urged. “Let’s go add our gum to the ball and get your mind on something else.”

She led her sister toward the golden platter. Both girls reached toward the pile to drop their chewed-up gum onto the disgusting, sticky mess. Several other people came over at the same time,
and they all pressed their pieces of gum into place . . . and then got stuck.

“My hand is stuck!” cried a woman with bright-red hair and giant spectacles. Molly recognized her as someone who worked at the post office. The woman looked around desperately,
pulling and tugging at her hand, but it obviously wasn’t going anywhere. The golden bangles that Post Office Lady was wearing around her arm slipped down her wrist and stuck to the gum, too.
“My hand! My bracelets!”