The Quirks, Welcome to Normal (4 page)

“Did you see that?” Penelope whispered, a smile tugging at the corners of her mouth. She instantly stopped grinning when she saw the look on her sister’s face. “I
promise, Molly, I’m trying really hard. I was thinking I feel a lot like Alice did when she got to Wonderland, and then . . .”

“
Poof
, right?” Molly chewed on her lower lip. “Are you really that nervous, Pen?” She could sense people watching them. It was like this on their first day at
every new school. Everyone always stared.

Even though Molly knew it wasn’t because of the Quirk family magic, she still felt uneasy. But
of course
people stared at them—they were not only new, they were also pretty
noticeable. Adults
and
kids often did a double take when they saw a pair of matching girls with super-long brown hair. Big, crinkly spirals sprouted out of their heads like curly parsley.
Both twins were as thin as stretched taffy and taller than anyone else in their grade. Their feet were as large as their mother’s feet, which embarrassed both girls to no end.

Molly and Penelope walked quickly toward the front doors of the school, trying hard to look like they fit in.

“You must be the new girls. The Quirks, right?” Penelope jumped as a short girl with suntanned skin and a neat bob with tidy bangs reached out and took her arm. “I’m
Stella! I’m in fourth grade, too. Welcome to Normal.” Stella smiled warmly at both Penelope and Molly as she repeated the message that had been on all the shiny balloons.

“I’m Molly, and this is my Penelope sister.” Molly jumbled her introduction. Not because Stella made her nervous or shy, but because she’d just noticed that their
grandfather was crouched, hidden, in the leafy tree above them. He looked like a giant, hulking squirrel.

Molly tried hard not to look at Grandpa Quill. She didn’t want to call any attention his way. Their mother had obviously told him to come and keep an eye on them, and he always followed
Bree’s instructions—he didn’t have a choice. Molly found it almost impossible not to stare straight at him, perched as he was on the skinny limb of an oak tree. She didn’t
know why he’d picked a tree, of all things, to hide in. He wasn’t exactly nimble. Or slim.

“I mean, I’m Molly, and this is my sister, Penelope.” She shot Grandpa Quill a quick evil look, and he grinned sheepishly back at her. Busted.

Stella laughed loudly and said, “You’re twins, right? You’re exactly the same.”

Molly and Penelope exchanged a funny look—they really weren’t at all the same, but you couldn’t tell that by looking at them. “We’re in Mr. Intihar’s class.
Are you?” Molly asked, glancing up just in time to see Grandpa Quill lose his footing and slip—
crack!
—to a lower branch. Penelope gasped when she spotted their
grandfather hidden in the leafy canopy above them.

Just as Stella tilted her head to look up, Molly felt Grandpa Quill rewind time. He turned time back just long enough that he could readjust his position in the tree so neither Penelope nor
Stella would catch him hiding.

“You’re twins, right?” Stella asked again. “You’re exactly the same.”

Molly sighed. This was one of the problems with her grandfather’s Quirk—sometimes, the same conversation would happen over and over again. “Yes, we’re twins,” Molly
answered. As she spoke, she quickly led Penelope and Stella away from the tree. “But we’re not identical. Almost, but not quite.” She and Penelope shared a secret smile.
“We’re in Mr. Intihar’s class,” Molly said, again. “Are you?”

“Yeah,” Stella said, waving to some kids getting off another school bus. “There’s only one fourth-grade classroom. Normal isn’t that big, you know. That’s why
we were all excited when we heard you’d moved to town. Everyone has been waiting to meet you!”

Penelope and Molly followed as Stella ushered them through the front doors and toward room six. Normal Elementary School was built in a circle, with the library and lunchroom in the center of
the building. The classrooms were lined up side by side, and you could walk all the way around the circle to get back to where you started.

Stella told them about some of the other kids in their class as she led them past the library and the school office and the bathrooms. But Molly barely heard a word—she couldn’t stop
thinking about Penelope’s white rabbit and their grandfather in the tree and how, when she looked down, she saw that Penelope’s shoes had turned into ruby slippers.

They were doomed.

When Molly, Penelope, and Stella walked through the door to room six, their teacher, Mr. Intihar, was nowhere to be seen. There were a few other kids milling around who smiled at the Quirks, but
none were as friendly or chatty as Stella. Most people just sort of stared, then went back to what they were doing.

Twenty-four desks were lined up in the classroom, organized in six rows of four. Each desk had a different animal sticker stuck to the top right corner. On each sticker was a name. Penelope ran
her hand across the desk closest to the door as they walked into the classroom. The name Raade was printed across the top of a snake sticker that had been neatly affixed to the desk.

Molly glanced back at her sister and her eyes widened. The snake sticker on Raade’s desk flicked its tongue. It had come to life! The tiny snake slithered and wrapped around the corner of
the desk, heading for the floor. Usually Penelope wasn’t this bad. But her imagination was running wild!

Penelope curled her fingers closed and squeezed her eyes shut. She and Molly had only recently discovered that closing her eyes helped keep Pen’s imagination in check. She sometimes wished
she could keep her eyes closed all the time—but that was sure to attract too much extra attention. After a few seconds, the snake curled up on the corner of the desk again and settled back
into its sticker form. No one had seen what had happened. Molly sighed as another one of their classmates walked through the door into room six just moments later.

“Here’s your desk, Molly,” Stella cried, her loud, raspy voice booming across the classroom. “Right next to mine!” Stella stood beside a desk in the front row,
pressed up against the window. A lion sticker had Molly’s name printed on it in neat navy-blue letters. “And there’s yours, Penelope.” Stella pointed to a desk in the back
row, three desks behind Molly’s. Pen’s desk had a tiger sticker with her name written in swirly black letters.

Stella turned away to talk with another girl sitting in the front row. At the exact moment Stella shifted her attention, Penelope’s tiger sticker turned into a very small, very real tiger
and jumped off Pen’s desk! It leaped over Pen’s chair and scratched its way onto the desk right behind Molly. The tiger yawned, letting out a big, belching roar. Both Molly and Penelope
coughed loudly to try to cover up the sound of a miniature beast in their classroom.

Molly’s eyes grew wide and scared. Thanks to her sister’s imagination, there was a real tiger in their classroom! It was tiny, but its teeth were terrifying.

Penelope scrambled forward to stand in a spot where she could block the tiger from the rest of the room. She mouthed “I’m sorry!” to Molly, while her eyes darted to the other
kids in the class. No one was looking her way, but certainly someone would be soon. This was one of those times when the Quirks had to hope people weren’t paying very close attention at
all.

The tiger stumbled around on top of the desk. Molly stared at her sister, then at the tiger. She was almost sure the tiger winked at her. “Do something,” Molly whispered, leaning
over to speak directly into her sister’s ear. There was a din of activity in the room, making it impossible for Penelope to focus on any one thing. Conversations swirled around her, voices of
strangers making her more and more nervous by the second. “Pen! Focus on something else.”

Someone across the room dropped a book on the floor. Everyone turned to look. For a single moment, the room went silent. In that instant, Penelope released a huge sigh, and the tiger spun in two
small circles. Then it sat down on the top right corner of the desk and turned into a flattened sticker again. Penelope’s tiger sticker was now stuck to the desk right behind
Molly’s.

Molly and Penelope exchanged a look. Everyone in the room went back to their conversations, happily unaware of what Penelope had done. Pen smiled, pleased with herself. She had accidentally
switched around their teacher’s desk assignments so she could sit right behind her sister. “No problem,” she said proudly. “And now we can sit together!”

“Uh, Pen?” Molly said under her breath. “Where’d the mouse sticker go? The one that
was
on this desk?”

A mouse sticker with the name Norah written on it had been stuck to the desk behind Molly’s. Molly got a sick feeling in her stomach. Penelope squeezed her eyes closed.

Stella turned her attention back to Molly and Penelope at exactly that moment. She watched as Penelope tucked her legs under the desk right behind Molly, trying to get comfortable. “Oh!
That’s weird,” Stella said. “I was sure I saw your name on the desk in the back, Penelope! But I guess you’re here, right behind Molly. This is going to be so much fun, all
of us sitting together.”

Penelope grinned at Stella. “I know,” she said happily.

Molly tried to smile, too, but her lips got stuck and she let out a little squeal instead. Because there was a live mouse with the name Norah written on its back running straight toward
Stella’s leg.

S
t
e
l
l
a
s
c
reamed and jumped onto her desk chair and
generally freaked out the way almost anyone would if there were a mouse loose in a classroom. Meanwhile, Molly hustled Pen out of room six and squirreled her away in a stall in the empty
girls’ bathroom.

“You’ve got to get it together!” Molly cried, shaking her sister’s shoulders. Penelope refused to look at her. As Molly tried to get her sister’s attention, a small
submarine started to emerge from inside the toilet in their stall. It popped up above the water, reaching out of the toilet bowl like a big metal sea creature.

Molly screeched, watching as the submarine grew larger and larger. Thankfully, she and Pen were in the handicapped stall—the extra space made it possible to fit in there with
Penelope’s imagination. “Are you thinking about trying to escape our first day of school in a toilet-bowl submarine?” Molly gasped as she realized what exactly was poking out of
the toilet. “What would even make you think about that? That’s a disgusting idea! And you would never fit through the pipes!”