The Mighty Quinn (6 page)

Neally ran to her father. “I know, I know; no running in the snow,” she said as she passed Ms. Barnes.

“C'mon.” Neally's father enveloped his daughter in a bear hug and then took her hand in his. “Let's go out and make some rocky razor snowballs.”

Although Quinn's back was wet, he didn't feel cold. He watched Neally walk hand in hand with her father, and for the first time in a long time Quinn felt that
Something Else
could happen, if you paid attention. Maybe, just possibly, life could actually change. Even if he'd have to wait a whole two weeks to find out.

Click click, click click
.

Ms. Blakeman looked out over a sea of students fidgeting at their desks. She pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose and raised her clicker over her head. “My first click of the new year. How exciting that must be for you all! Seriously,” Ms. Blakeman continued, amidst her students' groans and giggles, “it's good to see you. I'd love to hear your stories from winter break. Oh yes, I've got it.” Ms. Blakeman lowered her chin, and her glasses slithered down her nose. “We'll get those back-to-school jitters
out
by putting them
down
. Fifth graders, pencils and paper! While I'm passing out spelling lists and going over your monthly planners, please give me two paragraphs on ...” She raised her head, as if listening for a barely audible bird call. “Anyone care to guess?”

“What I did on my winter vacation,” several students grumbled.

“Ah, the incomparable joy that comes from teaching the gifted!” Ms. Blakeman smiled so hard her eyes disappeared into the tops of her puffy pink cheeks.

Quinn wrote his name at the top of his paper, chewed the end of his pencil eraser, and looked around the classroom. The new seating arrangement wasn't a drastic change; Ms. Blakeman had kept the reading groups together. Matt Barker was still too close for comfort—in the row ahead of him, where Teena used to sit—but Sam was next to Quinn, on the left. Tay sat behind Sam, next to Neally. Yes, the girl with the coolest name ever was now seated directly in back of him, and Quinn suddenly wondered what he looked like from behind. What if his underwear tag was sticking out?

Quinn peeked at Sam's paper. Other than his name, the date, and the title, “The Glorious Holiday Escapades of Samuel Jefferson Washington,” Sam had written nothing. It seemed to Quinn that most of the students were doing what he was doing: staring at the papers of the students nearby, trying to pass the time until morning recess.

“There's nothing there.”

Quinn quickly covered his paper with his hands, but Neally was speaking to Sam, not him.

“Your page is blank,” Neally persisted.

“Kinda like his brain,” Tay said.

“Insult alert, insult alert.” Sam sounded like a robot with a sinus infection. “Must hold on to self-esteem.”

“Didn't you and your family go on a ski trip over the break?” Neally asked. “That should give you a lot to write about.”

“My mom and dad and sisters like to ski, but I'm not into it,” Sam said. “I can't think of what to write. Anyway, it's just busywork. It's more fun to draw it.”

“You're gonna draw your vacation?” Tay yawned. “Another comic strip, how original.”

Ms. Blakeman was at the front row, leaning over Arturo's desk. She raised her arm.
Click click, click click
. “Fifth graders! I'll allow some leeway on the first day back, but keep the chatter level down to a quiet roar.”

“Samuel Jefferson Washington?” Neally tapped her pencil on Sam's paper.

“He signs all his papers that way,” Teena murmured.

“It's his name,” added Tay.

“But everyone calls you Sam,” Neally said to Sam. “Even the teacher.”

“Righty-o,” said Sam.

“Then, why not just write, ‘Sam Washington?'”

“My parents are history teachers,” Sam said. “Both of them.” He drew the outline of a comic strip on his paper.

“Your parents are history teachers.” Neally's voice indicated she did not consider that to be a satisfactory explanation. “And your point would be?”

“It's a mystery.” Sam drew a picture of a stick man on skis.

“They want his full name on all his papers,” Tay said. “Every year on Back to School Night they have to explain it to the new teacher. I'm so glad my folks aren't teachers.”

“I'd never sign my middle name,” Teena declared. “I don't know why I even have to write my last name; I'm the only Teena in class. How do you sign your name, Neally?”

“First and last. But I am considering changing that. New year, new arrangements.” Neally wrote
Neally Ray Standwell
at the top of her paper.

“I wish my middle name were shorter,” Teena sighed. “What's ‘Ray' for?”

“For me.”

“No, I mean ...”

“I know what you mean.”

Neally smiled. “It's just my middle name. My mom says it was for a stingray she saw when she was snorkeling in the Caribbean. Dad says it's for a beam of light, like a ray of sunshine. I like the story about the stingray best. Have you ever seen one?”

“Only in a video,” Teena said. “But I'm going to see a live one someday. I'm going to go to Hawaii and go snorkeling. Jeff said he'd teach me.”

“Who's Jeff? Your older brother?”

“My mom's boyfriend.” Teena's cheeks turned scarlet, and she got a thinking-hard look on her face. “The last one, I mean. Not the one she has now.”

Quinn was bewildered by the Neally and Teena conversation. Pasty-faced, toothpick-thin, timid Teena was not normally a talker, with anyone. Two sentences was her limit, and then she'd start humming to herself and spinning her hair. Teena's thin, shoulder-length hair was the color of the mud-stained carpet in the school music room. Teena twirled her hair when she wasn't working, talking, or playing, which was almost all of the time. She'd grab a few strands near her forehead and twirl it around her fingers, and there was a patch on the top of her head where the hair was so thin you could see her scalp, like the spot on a rug at the front of a door where you wipe your shoes before entering the room.

Tay looked disgusted with Teena whenever he noticed her, though mostly he acted as though she didn't exist. Quinn, when he had the occasion to think of Teena, was thankful that she wasn't as obnoxious as a lot of kids. She could even be entertaining, in her own way. She would do her famous apple diver routine at lunch for anyone who'd listen, but if you'd heard it once,
you'd heard it all, even if she switched to famous carrot diver or famous potato chip diver. Most of the class thought she was a head case.

Quinn looked back at Sam's paper, which was filled with comic strip frames of skiers falling off of cliffs. Sam began sketching a stingray on skis in the last frame. He paused, lifted his pencil, and sniffed the eraser as Ms. Blakeman and her armload of handouts approached their row. “Aren't you going to write anything?” Sam asked Quinn.

“My grandparents visited us for a week, like they always do, and we played a lot of board games, like we always do,” Quinn said. “Who wants to read a paper about that? I sure don't want to write about it.”

Ms. Blakeman stopped at Neally's desk. “Your father starts today?”

“Yes, after recess,” Neally said. “He can stay until lunchtime, and he says he'd be available to come earlier and correct papers during recess. He'll volunteer every Tuesday, and also Thursdays, if you need him.”

“Mmmm.” Ms. Blakeman smacked her lips together as if Neally had told her that her father would be bringing a triple-layer, double-chocolate fudge cake to class. “No ifs about that. We'll find plenty of things for him to do. I hope you'll tell him how much I appreciate this, if I forget to say so ten times myself.” The teacher sauntered up the aisle toward her desk, happily muttering to herself. “A regular volunteer, oh my!”

Stormy-without-rain, dry, gusty days when the tall cedars in his front yard whipped back and forth, their spiky branches crackling against one another, were the days Quinn liked the most. The scrawny oak trees that lined the schoolyard's perimeter fences made only a few faint whistles when the wind rustled their wilted leaves; still, any kind of wind-through-the-trees noise made Quinn want to build a campfire and sip hot cocoa. He lost track of time during recess as he wandered about the school, listening to the trees and wondering when the Mistress of Malevolence, aka the playground monitor, would decide it was permissible to run on the field.

Click click, click click
.

“Did everyone enjoy recess? Please sit down and listen up!” Ms. Blakeman used her clicker to shoo students to their seats, as if she were herding a flock of lost sheep. “I'd like to introduce someone who's going to be a regular
part of our class. Mr. Bryan Standers will be with us on Tuesday and Thursday mornings. He'll be working with our ESL students, and with all of the reading groups on a rotating basis. He'll also help grade papers, so watch your handwriting! He's not used to your chicken-scratch scrawls like I am.”

Several students in the front row pretended to be indignant, which prompted a hearty laugh from Ms. Blakeman.

Click click, click click
.

“We'll find many ways to keep him busy, won't we?!” Ms. Blakeman's eyes narrowed into slits of delight, and she turned to Mr. Standers. “Remind me to tell you about our community service project. Now, fifth graders, I'm going to ask Mr. Standers to tell you a little about himself before we get started.”

Ms. Blakeman took a step backward, and Bryan Standers took two steps forward. Neally's father was thin and tall. His reddish-brown hair curled around his ears and down the side of his face, blending in with his neatly trimmed beard and moustache.
He looks like Abraham Lincoln
, Quinn thought. Quinn snuck his history book out of his desk and flipped through the pages until he found Lincoln's picture. Mr. Standers' eyes were as twinkly as Lincoln's but were lighter in color; also, Mr. Standers didn't have Lincoln's distinctive, warty knob on his cheek. He didn't really look like Lincoln at all, Quinn decided, except for being tall, skinny, and bearded.