The Mighty Quinn

by Robyn Parnell

  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!”

  8

  A REGULAR VOLUNTEER

  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.

  “I’m Bryan Standers. It’s nice to meet you all.” Mr. Standers clasped his hands behind his back and slowly looked around the room, making eye contact with each student. When his eyes met Neally’s he blew her a kiss.

  “As you may have guessed, I’m Neally’s father. And my class assignment,” he winked at the teacher, “is to tell you about myself. I am married to Ruthanne Maxwell, Neally’s mother. We moved here from Spokane, Washington, so that Ruthanne could take a job at Oregon Health Sciences University, where she heads up the nursing recruitment program. I’m a former teacher, currently a stay-home dad. I’m not a scientist, but I love reading science magazines, probably to catch up on what I didn’t pay attention to when I was in school. I’m sure none of you diligent students will ever have that problem.”

  Several students giggled. Mr. Standers looked at Ms. Blakeman, who circled her hands in a “keep going” gesture.

  “What else should I tell you?” Mr. Standers thoughtfully stroked his beard. “I like to hike and kayak, and I run and do yoga for exercise. I enjoy cooking and give myself special culinary projects every season. My goal this winter is to learn to make pasta from scratch. I paint with watercolors, mostly landscapes and a few abstracts. Someday I’ll get the courage to show my work to …”

  Lily L’Sotho, sitting in the front row between Arturo and Janos, clapped her hands together and squeaked, “Oh!” She covered her mouth and looked down at her desk when she realized her classmates were looking at her.

  Mr. Standers smiled at Lily. “Do you like to paint?”

  Lily cupped her palms around her cheeks and nodded her head.

  “She does indeed,” Ms. Blakeman said. “I’m hardly impartial; still, I’d say Lily, and also Arturo and Janos, happen to be three of our class’s best artists.”

  Matt Barker leaned back in his chair. “The worse you talk, the more you get to paint,” Matt whispered to Josh.

  Josh snorted loudly, then quickly covered his mouth and pretended he was coughing when Ms. Blakeman frowned at him.

  “I’m sure we’d all like to see your paintings,” Ms. Blakeman said to Neally’s father.

  “As I was saying, someday I’ll get the courage to show them to … someone.” Bryan Standers lifted his hands and shrugged his shoulders, and several students laughed in recognition and appreciation. It wasn’t often that grownups admitted to being embarrassed.

  Neally sighed, saying to no one in particular but loud enough for Quinn to hear, “He won’t even show them to me.”

  9

  THE FIRST TIME I CRACKED MY HEAD OPEN

  “I thought he was going to grade papers at lunch.” Sam pointed to a bench by the door to the gym, where Neally’s father and Ms. Blakeman sat. Sam, Quinn, and Tay sat in a corner of the field, checking out the GameBox Tay got for Christmas.

  “I wonder what they’re talking about,” Quinn said.

  “The community service project,” Tay said. “She’ll pass it off on him, that and the ESL kids. You get all the dumb stuff when you volunteer. You don’t see my parents volunteering.”

  “What did he say that Neally’s mom does?” Sam asked.

  “How would I know and why would I care?” Tay tapped the side of the GameBox. “No way the battery could be dead already.”

  “Nursing recruitment,” Quinn said. “My mom works with community groups. I heard her tell my dad that nurses are needed to …”

  “Nursing recruitment programs design ways to get people interested in becoming nurses.”

  The boys looked up to see Neally looking down on them. To Quinn’s surprise, Tay held up his GameBox. Neally turned it over in her hand for a moment, said, “Cool,” and gave it back to Tay. Tay seemed to have a newfound if grudging respect for Neally. She’d played four square doubles with him at recess, and they’d lasted eight rounds before another team got them out.

  “What do your parents do?” Neally asked Quinn. “I know yours,” she said to Sam, “are both history teachers.”

&n
bsp; “Who cares what parents do.” Tay punched the reset button on his GameBox. “A thousand points; yes! Bonus round is mine!”

  “My mom works for CSO, which is the Community Services Organization. They help people find jobs and housing, doctors, all kinds of things—whatever people need.”

  “What a great thing to do,” Neally said.

  “I guess so.” Quinn looked around the circle. It felt good to talk about his family. Tay and Sam weren’t paying any attention, but at least they weren’t interrupting. “Dad’s a financial advisor at a bank downtown, the one in the big gray brick building, I forget its name. He tells people what to do with their money. He says he talks to people all day long, which is weird, ’cause he doesn’t talk a lot at home.”

  “Maybe he gets all his words out at work,” Neally said.

  “Your mom recruits nurses?” Sam asked Neally. “What’s up with that?”

  “Blah blah blah,” Tay droned.

  Looking at Sam and Neally, Quinn felt a surge of confidence. “You can leave if we’re boring you,” he suggested to Tay.

  “Maybe he can’t leave,” Neally said. “Maybe his butt is super-glued to the field.”

  Sam guffawed. Tay, looking as if he didn’t know whether to give Neally a thumbs-up or a noogie, scooted over and made room for her to join their circle.

  “Thanks.” Neally sat on the ground between Sam and Quinn. “We moved here because of my mom’s job. She has a doctorate in nursing.”

  “A doctor in nursing?” Sam scratched his head.

  “Doctorate,” Neally said. “That’s a college degree, a much bigger degree than the regular one. She’s designing a plan to get more men to go into nursing programs. She’s always trying to get my dad to sign up, but after the first time I cracked my head open …”

  “The first time?” Tay lowered his GameBox.

  Quinn glared at Tay and shook his head. Tay loved to hear blood and guts stories, but they made Quinn feel woozy.

  “I’ve done it several times.” Neally acted as if she were talking about a no big deal thing, like mixing applesauce with oatmeal. “You get used to the gauze pads. The trick is to use the first-rate kind of gauze to stop the bleeding, not the discount brands with the threads coming off. Cheap gauze sticks to blood when it dries.”

  Quinn began humming to himself.

  “Dad gets dizzy when he sees blood. It’s such a joke, my mom thinking my dad could make it through even one day of the first year of nursing school. He’d have to run out of the room during the first minute of Introduction to Scabs.”

  “Introduction to scabs?!” Tay slapped his thigh. “That’s it; I’m going to nursing school.”

  “You have made a positive impression on Mr. Taylor Denton the Third,” Sam said. “Congratulations, Ms. Standwell.”

  “You’re welcome. Taylor Denton the …?”

  “The Third,” Quinn and Sam chimed in.

  “That means there’s two more Taylor Dentons?” Neally didn’t wait for Tay’s reply. “Any clones in your families?” she asked Sam and Quinn.

  “Nothin’ but clones in mine.” Sam grinned.

  “You mean clowns,” Tay chortled.

  “There are red-headed Washingtons in Sam’s family all the way back to infinity,” Quinn explained.

  “Did you know that the world is full of clones?” Sam asked. “My dad says identical twins are clones. It’s not like cloning is anything new in nature. Now, in the Andrews-Lee family …”

  “Andrews-Lee? I like that name,” Neally said.

  “So does Matt Barker,” Tay snickered.

  “Yeah, he loves my last name.” Quinn looked as if he had swallowed a slug. “Matt likes everything about me.”

  Tay mimicked Matt’s voice. “Quinn Andrews-Leeeeeeeeeeeee!”

  “Let me guess: that’s supposed to be Matt, teasing someone? How original. Remember,” Neally stuck her tongue out, “Thith ith mithier than the thord.”

  “You might want to try that again,” Tay said dryly.

  “‘The tongue is mightier than the sword.’ It’s something mom told me, but I looked it up and found out she’d fudged it. It’s really, ‘The pen is mightier than the sword.’ You still get it, right?”

  “Right.” Quinn smacked his palm to his forehead. “When Matt comes after me with his ninja sword I’ll raise my magic ballpoint pen …”

  “Or stick your tongue out,” Sam offered.

  “And he’ll run away, screaming like a kindergartener.”

  “BRRAAAMP!” Sam mimicked the end-of-recess buzzer. “Mr. Andrews-Lee gets it not.”

  “It means if you practice … if you learn what to say or not say, you won’t have to do the same things Matt does. You won’t even want to. You’ll find a better way to express, to handle …” Neally’s mouth dropped into a tight line, and she jabbed her fingers in the dirt. “Argh! I can’t say it, but I know what I mean.” She stood up and swatted the dirt off of the back of her jeans.

  10

  THE BEST PEANUT BUTTER AND STRAWBERRY JAM SANDWICH EVER

  When Ms. Blakeman’s class returned from the cafeteria she announced that the special privileges for the-first-day-back-from-vacation would continue: it was buddy lunch day. The students immediately began scooting their desks into semicircles and calling across the room to their friends. Neally’s father pulled a chair up to the teacher’s desk, and he and Ms. Blakeman began to grade papers.

  Quinn asked Tay and Sam to buddy up, but Tay said he was joining Matt and Josh. Sam scooted his desk closer to Quinn’s, and invited Neally to do the same.

  “Why don’t we ask Teena?” Neally suggested.

  “What—no!” Sam shushed Neally. “She won’t come, anyway. She likes to eat alone.”

  Neally turned to glance at Teena, who was pulling plastic bags out of a crumpled paper sack and humming to herself. “Would you two like to come over to my house after school?” Neally asked Quinn and Sam. “I asked my dad; it’s okay.” Neally reached into her lunch bag and took out a sandwich that looked like a Frisbee cut in half. “I have two Siamese cats, Yin and Yang.”

  Sam’s eyes widened. “My sisters love cats. But we can’t have any; my dad’s allergic.”

  “So’s my mom,” Quinn said. “But her dad used to have a Siamese cat.” Quinn pointed at Neally’s sandwich. “What’s that?”

  “Pita bread. See how it opens, like a pocket? You can stuff anything in it.” Neally held the sandwich up to her nose. “Dad went for tuna salad today. What was your grandpa’s cat named?”

  “Jade. She lived to be eighteen, which is old for a cat. After Jade died, Grandma bought a little statue of a Siamese cat. Grandpa put it up on the mantle, next to the other statues.”

  “What other statues?” Neally asked.

  “My grandpa has this really cool collection.” Quinn fingered his own peanut butter and strawberry jam sandwich, which seemed dull compared to Neally’s. He wondered if she would offer him a bite if he asked to try the pita bread.

  “Swap-o-rama!” Sam put half of his turkey and Swiss cheese sandwich on Quinn’s desk and took half of Quinn’s sandwich. “Tell her about the fat naked guys.” Sam crammed almost the entire half of Quinn’s sandwich into his mouth.

  Neally’s raised her eyebrows. “Yes, do tell.”

  “They’re not naked, they’re Buddhas.” Quinn fake-punched Sam in the shoulder. “Buddhas aren’t naked, they just don’t wear shirts.”

  “Only diapers,” Sam said, “so you can see their fat naked bellies.”

  “Loincloths,” Quinn insisted. “They wear loincloths.”

  “Quinn’s Grandpa Lee is from China,” Sam said to Neally.

  “No, my Grandpa Lee’s parents were from China. I’ve told you a giga-billion times: Grandpa Lee was born in Ohio.”

  “Ohio, China; same diff.” Sam took a sheet of paper and a pencil from his desk and drew a picture of a broadly grinning, bald, fat man sitting cross-legged with a towel around his waist.

  �
�That’s the Laughing Buddha!” Neally exclaimed.

  “Yeah,” Quinn said. “How’d you know that?”

  “My parents hang pictures of the world’s great leaders on our living room wall. We’ve got books about them too. Statues or pictures of the Buddha often show him smiling or laughing. I looked it up, and …”

  “Oooooh, Sam’s drawing evil devil comics.” Matt Barker had crept up behind Sam’s desk. “The devil has many disguises,” he said, sounding like a Halloween goblin.

  “It isn’t a devil,” Neally said coolly. “Haven’t you ever seen a Buddha?”

  “If it’s not God then it’s an idol, or a devil,” Matt insisted. “Not only that, it’s a fat devil. It’s the fattest Satan ever.” Matt grabbed Sam’s pencil and drew horns on the Buddha’s head.

  “Horns should taper at the end, be pointier,” Sam said. “Like this.” Matt gave Sam the pencil, and Sam corrected Matt’s additions to his picture.

  “Yo, Sam.” Matt acted like Quinn and Neally were invisible. “You owe us a buddy lunch. We’re gonna play with Tay’s new GameBox.”

  Matt returned to his desk, passing by Teena Freeman, who was spinning her hair with one hand and dancing a carrot stick across her desk with her other hand.

  “A hush falls over the crowd as Famous Carrot Diver approaches the ten meter board.” Teena spoke barely above a whisper. “Suddenly, in an obvious attempt to influence the judges, Famous Apple Diver insists on going first.” Teena walked an apple slice up her arm to her shoulder and dropped the slice into her open carton of milk.

  “What a pathetic retard,” Matt sneered.

  Neally glared at Matt.

  “’Scuse me,” Matt said. “I mean, what a mentally challenged individual.”

  “Cut it out, Matt,” Quinn mumbled.

  “Yeah, I’ll cut it out. I’ll cut out half my brain and then I’ll be like her.” Matt pointed at Teena, who was swirling her apple slice in her milk carton and muttering to herself. “You need some filling in,” Matt said to Neally. “She’s got no father. And her loser mom …”