The Quirks, Welcome to Normal (13 page)

Both Quirk girls knew their first sleepover could have been a lot worse.

N
o
m
a
t
t
e
r
how well things seemed to be going, everyone
knew that trouble would come. For the Quirks, it always did.

Things went downhill during Finn’s second week of kindergarten. No one could blame the bugger for everything that went wrong, but some might call it coincidence . . .

After a few days of gum chewing, Finn began to realize that his brand-new visibility had certain problems. First, he didn’t
like
being seen all the time. He liked to pick his
nose, and when people could see him, he got funny looks. Also, chewing gum was exhausting—and his jaw had begun to click, and hurt.

Finn also found out that school was a lot harder than he’d expected it to be. He’d never mastered the art of “sitting still,” and Mrs. Risdall had no trouble seeing him
when he dashed across the room to feed the class fish an extra pinch of flakes during Group Time.

Finnegan Quirk didn’t like to follow rules, and school—it seemed—was nothing
but
rules. He wasn’t allowed to pull hair, or drop toys in people’s food, or
whisper strange noises and stories into his classmates’ ears. Because someone could always
see
him.

So in his second week at Normal Elementary School, Finn started slipping his gum out of his mouth from time to time, just to keep things interesting. While the class walked down the hall to the
library, Finn would sneak around the corner and stash his gum under a drinking fountain. Then he’d creep around school without being seen.

No one realized this was happening—until one day when Mr. Intihar’s class returned to room six from gym class. As Molly settled into her seat, she looked outside the window of their
classroom.
Surprise!
There was Finn, standing on the other side of the glass, pressing his sticky nose to the window. The other students in room six didn’t see her brother standing
there. Finn wiggled and jiggled, but no one paid him any mind. He opened his mouth and showed Molly that it was empty. That’s when she realized, without a doubt, she was the only person who
could see him.

Finn grinned at his sister, then pointed to the smart board at the front of the girls’ classroom. Molly focused her eyes up front. Everyone around her had begun to giggle.

Molly gasped. Mustard was oozing down the slick surface of their board, and some had pooled in the little tray that held Mr. Intihar’s wipe-off pens. Apparently, Finn had rummaged through
the cafeteria for squeeze bottles of mustard. Then he’d used them to draw all over the slippery board in the fourth-grade classroom.

Molly glanced back at the window, but Finn was gone again.

Meanwhile, Penelope had covered her legs with her sweater and was squirming under her desk. Molly turned around, trying to figure out why her sister was suddenly so uncomfortable. Pen tipped her
head toward her legs, and pushed aside her sweater just enough so Molly could see what she was hiding. Pen’s legs had turned into hot dogs under her skirt! They were that strange color that
was halfway between brown and pink, and Molly was pretty sure they smelled like roasted hot dogs, too.

“They don’t fit in my shoes,” Pen whispered to Molly. “I can’t get them to go back to normal!”

Penelope’s shoes were cast aside, and her hot dog legs hung down under the desk like meaty stumps. Pen’s feet were gone.

“Okay,” Molly said, her mind racing. She tried to think of a song to sing to take Pen’s mind off her magic, but all she could think of under pressure was “Take Me Out to
the Ball Game.” Surely that wasn’t going to help.

At that moment, Nolan Paulson made his way up to the wipe-off board. “This looks like Joey!” Nolan cried, pointing at one of the pictures on the board. He made a funny face, and
everyone laughed. Joey Pahula blushed.

Mr. Intihar wasn’t back in their classroom from his prep hour yet, so everyone was loudly talking about the board, wondering who had colored on it with mustard. Several boys in the class
dared Nolan to lick the mustard off the board. Nolan made funny faces, sticking his tongue out closer and closer to the board. When his mouth was just a few inches away, Nolan’s tongue
stretched out like a lizard’s and lapped up the drawings. Penelope snorted.

The boys who’d been watching him “
whoa
-ed,” and Nolan pressed his hand over his mouth. “I hate mustard!” he cried, his face twisted in disgust. “I
didn’t actually mean to lick it!”

“Your tongue!” Stella shouted. If anyone hadn’t been looking before, they certainly were now. “Why is your tongue so long?”

“My tongue isn’t that long,” Nolan said, spitting out a mouthful of mustard.

“It is,” Stella argued. Molly and Penelope exchanged a look. Nolan’s tongue wasn’t really all that long—Penelope’s imagination had made it stretch out and
grab the mustard off the board. Penelope couldn’t keep herself from giggling.

Nolan was always talking big, but he never actually went through with anything. Penelope must have wanted to see him follow through on a dare. She hated that Nolan always picked on people but
never seemed to get teased himself. “Your tongue is like a lizard tongue,” Stella said. “It has to be at least six inches long. Let me see.”

Nolan pressed his tongue out of his mouth. It was a normal-size tongue, tinted faintly yellow from all the mustard. “Tee?” he said, his tongue still out.

Stella pushed him away. “I see,” she said, rolling her eyes. “You don’t have to lick me or anything. I can see it from here.”

Nolan laughed, waggling his tongue out toward Stella’s face. The other guys in the class were laughing now, chanting his name. As they did, something crazy happened. Suddenly,
Nolan’s mouth contorted and his tongue lolled out of his mouth like a panting dog’s. His tongue stretched several inches and licked Stella’s cheek with a big, slobbery, flat
slurp
. He left a long wet streak behind.

“Ew!” Stella cried. “Nolan Paulson, that is disgusting. You just licked me like a dog!”

Nolan covered his mouth again, unsure of what exactly was happening. “I—” he started. “I didn’t—”

Penelope’s head dropped down on her desk. Molly rubbed her sister’s back. She noticed that Penelope’s legs had gone back to normal. But now she’d made the class punk lick
one of her only friends, just because she’d imagined it happening in her own mind.

Mr. Intihar came bustling into the classroom at that moment, his hair going this way and that. He always looked a little like he’d just rolled out of bed, even though Molly was pretty sure
he hadn’t.

“You okay?” Molly asked Pen as Mr. Intihar tried to calm an icked-out Stella.

“I’m okay,” Penelope muttered, her head still down. She peeked up at Molly just in time to see Stella rushing out of the classroom to wash her face in the bathroom. Nolan was
holding out his tongue for some of the other guys in the class to look at . . . It was back to normal size, but people were still impressed and shocked by what he’d done. Penelope narrowed
her eyes and whispered to Molly, “He licked her because of me.” She moaned quietly. “That was disgusting—Stella’s my friend.”

“You can’t control all your thoughts.” Molly shrugged. “I’m sure half the class was thinking about how funny it would be if something like that happened. Your brain
must have really wanted to see Nolan do something silly.” She grinned.

Penelope giggled, then flopped her head back on her desk. “Imagination stinks.”

“Class!” Mr. Intihar barked, startling everyone. “Now that the show is over, let’s move along with our day.” Pen peeked up from her desk, and Molly saw her reach
inside her sweatshirt pocket for their mom’s iPod.

Molly shook her head and held out her hand, demanding that her sister hand over the headphones. She couldn’t avoid listening to the lessons at school forever.

Pen shook her head back.

Molly shook harder, until finally, Mr. Intihar noticed and galloped down the aisle to their desks. “Ladies?”

They both jumped. “Yes?” Molly said sweetly.

“I’ll take that,” Mr. Intihar said, holding out his hand and holding up his eyebrows. “I think we’ve had enough nonsense for today. You know the rules—no
music in class.” He fluttered his hand in front of Penelope’s face. She reluctantly dropped the iPod into his open palm. “Thank you. And I’ll kindly ask that you return your
shoes to your feet, Miss Quirk.” He winked at Penelope, then returned to the front of the classroom.

A few people snickered, including Nolan. Penelope shot him a look, and Molly noticed that Nolan’s tongue had swelled up inside his mouth again. His eyes grew wide and panic crossed his
face. Penelope giggled, and within seconds, Nolan was back to normal. But once again, he reached his fingers into his mouth to touch his tongue. Penelope overheard Raade Gears ask Nolan what
he’d had for breakfast that morning. “Or maybe you’re allergic to mustard?” Raade suggested helpfully.

Nolan closed his lips up tight. His tongue may have gone back to normal, but he was nicknamed Dog Breath for the rest of the school year.

W
i
t
h
o
u
t
a
n iPod to drown out the booming
clickity-clack
of her inner voice, Penelope Quirk’s magic continued to flare up. To make matters worse, Pen’s problems overlapped with Finn’s shenanigans at school. Finn
kept getting naughtier, then a little naughtier than that, until the worst day of all.

On that worst day,
everything
went wrong. And all because of Finn.

Molly went to the restroom before lunch, and found all the sinks clogged with paper towels. The basins had been filled with water, right up to the edge, and plastic goldfish were floating in
each of the little ponds. The janitor was even more frustrated when he discovered that several real goldfish had been scooped out of classroom aquariums and mingled with the plastic ones in the
sinks.

At recess, Finn popped his gum out just long enough to sneak into the gym and cover all of the balls with liquid hand soap.

After kindergarten rest time, he also managed to ring the recess bell nine times, pushed all of the desks in the third-grade classroom into the hall while the class was in the art room, and dug
up a big chunk of grass on the front lawn. The digging wouldn’t have been much of an issue, but he finished up by flooding the dirt-filled patch with water from the hose. The whole thing
quickly became a mud hole, and several kids had the good idea to use it as a slip-and-slide after school.