Quinny & Hopper: Partners in Slime

by Adriana Brad Schanen

  “We need to go home. This was a stupid idea.”

  “Let’s take a quick break to have a snack. Then we’ll keep looking.”

  She pulls me into the cafeteria and toward a tall stack of brown trays.

  “Wait, Quinny, we don’t have any money.”

  “Let’s just pick out a few things, and then we’ll go see if Nurse Chuck can loan us some.”

  Quinny stretches up on her toes and reaches for a tray from a tall stack, but she bumps another stack of trays next to it, and they all come crashing down to the floor.

  People around us stop what they’re doing and stare.

  “Oops.” Quinny giggles.

  “Can I help you?” The tall security guard is looking down at us now.

  I look up at that big, serious security guard. She doesn’t look too friendly.

  “No thank you. We’re fine.” I point to Hopper. “He just had an operation.”

  Hopper nods, but I don’t know why that boy looks so nervous.

  “Quinny?”

  It’s someone else’s voice now….Believe it or not, it’s Ms. Yoon’s!

  There she is, by the vending machine, holding a bag of bright orange Cheesy-O’s! She looks shocked to see me, too. I run over and hug that precious teacher. “Ms. Yoon! It’s you, it’s really you! But why are you holding a bag of Cheesy-O’s? Mom never lets me eat those.”

  Ms. Yoon moves the bag of Cheesy-O’s behind her back super quick.

  “Quinny, Hopper, what on earth are you two doing here?”

  “We’re just here to get Hopper’s tonsils back, which he forgot at the hospital last week. By the way, why did you leave school so fast like that—ohhhhhhh…”

  That’s when I realize Ms. Yoon’s big, round beach ball tummy now looks like a deflated beach ball, and all of a sudden I know why she left school last week.

  “Ms. Yoon! Where is that baby? Can we see it? Did you leave it in your hospital room? Congratulations! Is it a boy or a girl? Can we go to your room? We’re free right now!”

  “Quinny, the baby is upstairs in the nursery, and he’s fine—”

  “It’s a he! I love baby boys! Good job, Ms. Yoon! Let’s go see him right now.”

  “Where are your parents? Hopper—how was your tonsillectomy? Shouldn’t you be at home resting? What are you kids doing here by yourselves?”

  Those are all good questions, but I don’t think Ms. Yoon is going to like the answers.

  “Quinny! Hopper! There you are!”

  It’s a cranky voice booming now. Mrs. Porridge is speeding toward us. Steam is practically shooting out of her ears. I’m guessing she saw the note I left for her on the chicken porch. Maybe if I stay calm, she’ll stay calm.

  “Hello, Mrs. Porridge, how are you? This is our teacher from school, Ms. Yoon.”

  “I was about to call the police!” she snaps, then offers her hand to Ms. Yoon. “Myrna Porridge, how do you do? These children claimed to be going to see the chickens, but—”

  “But then we remembered this very important thing we had to do at the hospital, and since Daddy’s bike was just sitting there in the garage—”

  “You biked over here? By yourselves?”

  “No, not by ourselves, there were lots of cars on the road, too.”

  Mrs. Porridge makes a little noise like she can’t get enough air.

  “And then we ran into Ms. Yoon! And we didn’t want to be rude, so we stopped and chatted! Did you know she has a fabulous brand-new baby upstairs in this very hospital? And she just invited us up to come see him, didn’t you, Ms. Yoon?” I clasp my hands together and look up at her, all hopeful.

  And Ms. Yoon gets a confused look on her face. “Well, he is just upstairs….”

  “We couldn’t possibly impose,” says Mrs. Porridge. “My apologies, please excuse us.”

  “Wait…why not? You’re here. You’re all welcome to come see him—”

  “Oh, thank you, Ms. Yoon! Come on. Let’s go right now before you change your mind.”

  Mrs. Porridge grumps and frets and snaps, but I pull her along, too.

  Ms. Yoon takes us in the elevator to the nursery, and we look through a window at all the babies lined up in rows in clear plastic containers, which look kind of like those containers that Mom stores stuff in down in our basement. Only these containers don’t have blue rubber lids like ours do—they’re open on top, so the babies can breathe, I guess.

  There are rows and rows of brand-new baby-doll faces…each of them squishy, round, and reddish…reddish vanilla or reddish caramel or reddish chocolate. Some are quiet, some are howling, some wiggle, some just lay there staring up at life.

  I can’t believe each tiny blob is going to be a whole entire person one day.

  “Ms. Yoon, they’re all so cute! Which one is yours?”

  Ms. Yoon points to him in the middle. He’s super blobby and the color of a peach.

  “Oh, he’s definitely the cutest one! Can I hold him?”

  “Not today, Quinny.”

  “When my friend Owen got a baby brother, I wasn’t allowed to hold him right away,” says Hopper. “You have to be careful about germs.”

  “That’s silly,” I say. “My friend Anu back in New York had a baby sister who was born right in her apartment, and we got to hold her the same day.”

  We stand there looking at all the babies—I really think they’re the best things I’ve ever looked at—and after a while, Mrs. Porridge puts her hand on my shoulder. Then she sniffles and walks down the hall to a bathroom.

  So I follow her in there. “Mrs. Porridge, do you have a cold?”

  She’s blowing her nose into some toilet paper and won’t look at me.

  “Mrs. Porridge, are you okay?” I wait for her to answer. “Oh, your eyes—maybe you’re allergic to babies?”

  Mrs. Porridge splashes her face at the sink and then dries it off. “What if something had happened to you kids?” Her voice sounds all cracked. “What if you’d been hit by a car or…”

  “But we’re fine. Nothing happened. I’m so sorry for worrying you.”

  I can’t stand how upset she looks, so I barge in and hug her, which is the first time I have ever touched that big old grown-up lady. “I’m very, very, extra-very sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you, honest.” She feels so comfy and so sad, and we stay in that hug. She puts her hand on my head, all gentle.

  “This doesn’t mean you’re off the hook,” she says. “You’re still in big trouble.”

  “I know.”

  “Where’s the bike?”

  “Outside, in the bushes.”

  Mrs. Porridge sighs.

  I stand next to Ms. Yoon, watching all the babies through the window.

  “They won’t remember any of this, will they?”

  “Nope.”

  “Why do we start remembering when we get older?”

  Ms. Yoon looks at me. “Well, Hopper, it has to do with how our brains develop.”

  I know that. But there’s so much more to know. I wonder if I’ll ever feel like I understand how it all works: people, the world, everything.

  I wish I could remember all the way back to being a baby.

  What did I know back then, before I could remember what I knew?

  I guess I’ll never know.

  Quinny and Mrs. Porridge come back from the bathroom.

  “Ms. Yoon! Oh good, you’re still here!” says Quinny. “I forgot to ask you something super important. When are you coming back to school? Because that sub they gave us is a giant meanie, and we really miss you.”

  “Guys, I miss you, too. But please try to get along with the sub, for now.”

  “Why don’t you just bring the baby to school, like you did when he was still a beach ball? We could set up a crib in the classroom—”

  “Quinny—”

  “I could help—I have two little sisters, you know. I can even change diapers! Come on, Ms. Yoon. It’d be even better than having a guinea pig in the room.”

>   “Quinny, that’s enough,” says Mrs. Porridge. “It’s time to leave Ms. Yoon in peace.”

  On the way home, Mrs. Porridge is not in a good mood. She says we lied and tricked her, and put ourselves in danger by running off without permission. She says she expects more from us than that kind of unacceptable nonsense.

  “Furthermore, the hospital does not have Hopper’s tonsils,” she says. “What a ridiculous idea. Wait till I tell your parents how you ran off like that.”

  “No, please don’t—it was just one tiny little mistake!” Quinny cries.

  “A big mistake,” huffs Mrs. Porridge.

  “But if you tattle on us, then we’ll be punished and grounded, and we won’t be able to come and take care of the chickens, and those poor chickens will get lonely and hungry and smelly, and your screened-in porch will smell like a GIANT pile of poop, and you don’t want that, do you? Please, Mrs. Porridge, think of those poor, innocent chickens!”

  Quinny elbows me and makes a face. “Think of the chickens,” I say.

  Mrs. Porridge gives Quinny a sharp look in the mirror. She pretends to scoff, but I can tell it is really more of a laugh.

  Luckily, we beat my parents home, so nobody has to find out about this trip at all. Mom would freak out if she knew Mrs. Porridge let her priSONer escape.

  “Screeee-creeee-creeeee-screee!”

  Disco wakes me up way too early again on Tuesday. So I have a little talk with her while doing my chicken chores.

  “Disco, do you really want Mrs. Porridge to send you away?”

  “Scree-SCREEEE,” screeches Disco with an attitude.

  “Shhh! You better cut this out before she turns you into chicken pot pie.”

  “SCREEEEEEEEEEEE!” Disco turns and shrieks extra huge at the porch window that looks into Mrs. Porridge’s house.

  “Sssssssssss,” hisses Walter, whose furry face fills up the other side of that window.

  “Calm your engines down, both of you! You’re better than this!”

  I check the nest box in the mini-henhouse for eggs—nope. I set out fresh feed. Cha-Cha comes over and bumps into my legs, which is her way of hugging.

  “Good morning, beautiful. When are you going to grow up and make me an egg?”

  “Brrr bip,” replies Cha-Cha.

  Hopper shows up and I hand him the watering dish. “Fill ’er up. And guess what, I think Disco and Walter are now officially enemies.”

  “Roosters don’t have a lot of friends,” says Hopper.

  “Disco could just be a very loud, very bossy hen,” I say. “With a very large comb.”

  “Wake up, Quinny, and smell the coffee,” says Mrs. Porridge, walking onto the porch with a cup of hers.

  “I only like hot chocolate,” I point out.

  “A rooster is a rooster is a rooster,” she says.

  “An egg is an egg is an egg,” I say to Cha-Cha. “But no rush.”

  After the chicken chores, it’s time for school, but Hopper still has to stay home. He invites me over that afternoon to work some more on the tonsils book.

  “Absolutely,” I say. “You can work on the drawings while I’m in school. And then we can work on the words and ideas together later, deal?”

  “Deal,” he says. “Bye.”

  “Hopper, wait—can you come hang out with me at the bus stop, at least?”

  “I doubt it. Mom barely lets me out for the chickens.”

  Phooey. I wish I could stay home with him.

  But after I get on the school bus, I look out as we pass Hopper’s house. I look for him in all the windows of his house that face the street—and he is right there in one of them, in his living room window! And he waves, like he was looking for me, too. It makes me feel like we’re still together, even though we’re really not.

  It makes me think today is going to be a good day.

  In school, I can’t help it—I tell people all about how I got invited to see Ms. Yoon’s brand-new baby and how Hopper and I are working together on an amazing book that his doctor is going to publish. Victoria’s eyes are stuck right on me as I talk.

  I talk and talk and talk. I feel very special that my life is so exciting.

  Then Victoria starts talking about the pet she’s getting from the animal shelter and how she hasn’t made up her mind yet if she wants a puppy, a kitten, or an Angora rabbit.

  “Or maybe I’ll just get one of each. My daddy said I can have whatever I want, and my house has plenty of space. I could probably start a whole petting zoo if I wanted.”

  Now my eyes are on her, hard. I bet she can feel my stare. My daddy hasn’t even taken me to that animal shelter once yet.

  The day gets worse when Mrs. Flavio keeps me inside for recess again. She gives me my Minute Math sheet from yesterday (which I didn’t finish in a minute) and says, “This is a perfect opportunity to improve our arithmetic. Let’s make the most of it.”

  And I’m so glum that I slump there at my desk, for the second day in a row.

  After I get home from school, I go straight into Daddy’s office (which is really just a closet in the upstairs hallway), and I sit and wait forever for him to get off the phone.

  “Daddy, can you take me to the animal shelter? I’m free right now!”

  “Quinny, please.”

  “Please what? You promised last week.”

  “I’m in the middle of something important.”

  “But what if Victoria gets the very last puppy—”

  “I have a big deadline. I can’t just drop everything because you’re whining.”

  “I don’t want you to drop things. I just want to see the shelter, like you promised.”

  Daddy’s hair is messy and his eyes are extra saggy, and there’s something about the tired, angry way they look at me that makes a lump bump up in my throat.

  “Keep it up, Quinny. Just keep it up.” It’s like a warning, the way he says it.

  A snack makes everything better. At least while I’m chewing it.

  Then I go see what Hopper is doing, since I just remembered we’re supposed to be working on the tonsils book this afternoon.

  And it turns out he is on the phone, talking to Dr. Merkle about tonsillectomies. I wait for them to finish, and then Hopper tells me that Dr. Merkle is excited to see the tonsils book at his checkup on Friday. Which means we need to get to work right away so there is actually a tonsils book for that doctor to see!

  Hopper and I work the whole afternoon.

  Even though his mom tries to distract us.

  Even though his brothers try to annoy us.

  We ignore them all, and we work, work, work.

  We think and we draw and we write. We think some more and argue. We erase and cross things out and tear stuff up. We change our minds and change them back. We laugh.

  Daddy isn’t the only one with a big deadline.

  The way to make two hours feel like five minutes is to work on a project with Quinny. We don’t agree on everything—she thinks the panels I’m drawing about the tonsillectomy are too scary; I think her tonsils True or False is too silly—but somehow she never hurts my feelings. Somehow we get a lot done.

  I sleep really well that night and wake up Wednesday morning full of energy.

  I’m feeling so much better it’s like that operation never even happened. I ask Mom if I can go to school today. She makes a shocked smile and says, “Sorry, not yet.” But at least she lets me out to help with the chicken chores again.

  I meet Quinny at the porch coop. Disco and Walter are still at each other’s throats and have to be separated. Cha-Cha is still pooping in her feed bowl. No eggs. We clean and refill the feeder, pour fresh water, and let the chickens outside for a bit. They scratch around while Quinny and I come up with a schedule.

  First, we’ll finish making the tonsils book today after she gets home from school. Then, tomorrow afternoon, we’ll edit it, read it over for mistakes, and fix everything.

  Then, on Friday, we’ll show it to Dr. Mer
kle at my appointment, which Mom switched to three forty-five so Quinny can come, too.

  “Sounds like a plan,” says Quinny. “I can’t wait!”

  Then we hear Quinny’s dad yelling that it’s time to leave for school. Her face turns sour.

  “Well, good-bye,” she says. “Now I have to go spend my life with a sub who hates me.”

  “The sub doesn’t hate you.” I don’t understand how anyone could hate Quinny.

  “She hates my whole personality. She hates everything I do and say and think.”

  “Quinny, she’s not a mind reader—she can’t hate what you think.”

  “She stole my recess for two whole days.”

  “What? Why?”

  “Because I chatted just a tiny bit. She said she’ll take it away again if I talk. She looks at me like I’m a pest every time I raise my hand, so I just stopped raising it. I’m not going to talk at all anymore. Maybe then she’ll like me.”

  I don’t know what to say. That doesn’t sound right.

  “Did you tell anyone this?”

  “Daddy would be mad if he knew I got in trouble. And Principal Ramsey said I have to get along with the sub. Ms. Yoon did, too.”

  Quinny waves a small limp wave as she walks away.

  “Bye.” I wave back.

  I think about her sad, droopy face as I walk home.

  In the kitchen, I ask Mom, “Can I borrow your phone?”

  “My phone? Hopper, what’s going on?”

  “Nothing. Just an idea.”

  Mom looks at me, a little too interested. “What’s this idea about?”

  But if I tell her, she might stop me from trying to do the idea. She might say things like, It’s none of your business; it’s not appropriate; it’s a waste of time.

  Then I realize I don’t need Mom’s phone. Because I know how to use the computer.

  “Hopper?” She looks at me, waiting for an answer.

  “Nothing. Never mind. I’m going to rest in my room.”

  I do go up to my room, but I don’t rest. I think. I plan.

  And I listen carefully for where Mom is in the house.