Smart Cookies

by Adriana Brad Schanen

  I point this out to Coach Zadie and she smiles. “What’s your name again, sweetie?”

  “Quinny.” I point to my sticker, which is covered up a little bit by all my hair.

  “Well, Quinny…learning how to stop safely is one of the fundamentals of skating.”

  If you ask me, stopping is one of the no-fundamentals of skating.

  Still, we spend the whole lesson doing things Coach Zadie’s way.

  We spend more time learning how to stop skating than start skating. Learning how to fall down “the right way” instead of how NOT to fall.

  “Why is she teaching us how to fall down?” I say to Victoria. “I thought the reason for lessons was to learn how NOT to fall.”

  “Shhh,” replies Victoria. “I’m concentrating.”

  “And why bother learning to stop with all these boards around us? They’re perfect for crashing into! Or you could just grab on to someone for a tiny second to slow down.”

  Even though Coach Zadie is obsessed with safety and no-fundamentals, I still like the way she smiles and encourages us. I like the way this rink feels open and big, like there’s enough room for me to use all my energy. And I love the way the rink even has its own special truck, a Zamboni, which gives the ice a little shower to smooth it after we scratch it up with our skates.

  But the best thing about skating is…the giant, twisty hot pretzels at the snack bar!

  We go to that snack bar after class and I say a giant thank-you to Masha for getting me a giant pretzel. But when I sit with Victoria and take a bite, I realize something’s wrong.

  This pretzel is hard as a hockey puck. I bang it against the table. “Bummer.”

  “Hold on.” Victoria grabs my pretzel and goes back to the snack-bar man.

  “Hello. My friend got a stale pretzel that’s too hard to eat. We’d like a fresh one, please.”

  The snack-bar man stares down at Victoria.

  “Thank you in advance for your help,” she adds.

  Since Victoria already thanked him for his help, the man has no choice but to help.

  Wow, I’m going to try this out with Mom. Thank you in advance for that candy bar. Thank you in advance for that awesome new green bike with an orange-polka-dot basket.

  Victoria comes back to our table with a pillowy-fresh, steamy-hot new pretzel.

  “Thank you so much, Victoria!” I rip apart my perfect pretzel and offer her a chunk.

  “No thank you, remember I’m on a gluten-free diet,” she says.

  I don’t understand this exactly, but it has to do with her allergies.

  Victoria eats pear and goat-cheese circles from her bento box while I chomp on my pretzel. I notice a boy at another table eating a big cookie. And that reminds me I’m still upset.

  “Can you believe they’re taking cookies away from us in school? It’s so unfair.”

  “Sweets aren’t healthy,” says Victoria. “We talked about this on student council.”

  “But remember how last week Nidhi brought in red velvet cupcakes for her birthday?”

  “No, because I’m allergic to dairy and didn’t eat one.”

  “Okay, but—”

  “Quinny, lots of kids are allergic to dairy or nuts in cookies—and they have rights, too. Also, some people have diabetes, which makes it dangerous for them to eat sugar.”

  “No one’s forcing anyone to eat sugar, but cookies shouldn’t be against the law—”

  “Having junk food around makes it harder for everyone to make healthy choices. Trust me, even if you don’t have diabetes, you shouldn’t eat sugar. Sugar is poison.”

  “What?”

  “It’s true. I read that in one of Masha’s food magazines.”

  But I don’t believe Victoria. If sugar was poison, then I’d be dead by now, for sure.

  We finish our snack just as the Zamboni finishes giving the rink a shower. The ice is all smooth and shiny now, and so swimming-pool-ish that I could jump right into it. Tons of people burst through the swingy half doors for the next part of skating, which is called Public Session.

  It turns out that Public Sessions are very, very, extra-very different from learn-to-skate classes. There are more kids and fewer rules. There’s loud music, and this excited feeling, like anything is possible, and you can go as fast as you want—it’s like an obstacle course made out of people! As long as you don’t bug the rink guards in the orange jackets, of course. They have really loud whistles and they’re not afraid to use them.

  I zoom around and around that rink, faster and faster. Victoria stays in the middle of the ice, practicing her one-foot glide. Her skates are wobbly, but her face is determined. Her one-foot glide turns into a one-butt fall, but she gets right back up and keeps going.

  “Go, Victoria!” I wave as I zoom past.

  The faster I go, the less wobbly I am, and I get this wheeee feeling as I turn the corners. Maybe next time I’ll try hockey skates. The kids wearing those are zooming around the fastest.

  The crowd of people skating around the rink is getting bigger and noisier, but I notice that Victoria is still all by herself practicing tricks in the middle of the ice.

  And that’s when it hits me—the most amazing idea! Principal Ramsey may not listen to just one kid all by herself, but if I start a petition signed by ALL the kids at school, then he’ll HAVE to save cookies from being kicked out. (A petition is a letter that you write asking for something unfair to change, and it’s signed by a bunch of people who agree. I know this, because Mom wrote one last month, asking for some workers at her college to get paid more money.)

  “Victoria?!” I zoom over toward the middle of the rink to share my exciting petition idea.

  But just then, someone else comes around the curve fast, a bigger boy, and he’s headed straight for…me? No, of course not. He’ll get out of my way, for sure.

  But he’s too busy joking with his friends to even notice me. Which means I have to get out of his way. Except my skates forget how to do that, and I don’t remember how Coach Zadie taught us to stop. My balance goes backward and my body turns into a floppy noodle and that big boy is getting closer and he’s coming straight at me and aaaaaaaagh no no no—

  Quinny isn’t at the bus stop again on Tuesday. That’s two mornings in a row.

  When I get to school she’s not there, either. By the lockers, I find out why.

  Victoria is whispering in a way that isn’t really a whisper, but a voice she wants everyone around her to hear. “And then she…big crash…couldn’t even make a pizza stop…the guard tried…but the…crying…big bruise on her…broken…you should’ve heard her scream….”

  I move a little closer. But all I can figure out is that there was some kind of accident at the skating rink yesterday. Where is Quinny now? Victoria doesn’t seem to know, either.

  I don’t know what to think. Is Quinny okay? When is she coming back to school? Is she coming back? I try to picture school without Quinny, and I can’t do it—my mind goes blank.

  After morning meeting, I hear Alex repeat Victoria’s story to Caleb, but in his version, a hockey stick hit Quinny in the face and blood gushed out of her nose like a waterfall. Later, on the way to gym, McKayla tells Xander she heard Quinny broke her leg and got taken away in an ambulance with sirens. The way people are talking, Quinny will probably be dead before lunch.

  I don’t know what the truth is. It doesn’t seem like anyone else does, either.

  At recess, I don’t feel like running or kicking or tagging people.

  I’m about to go and sit on the steps with my book, but then I decide to go back to the Friendship Bench instead. It’s more comfortable there, and quieter, and shadier, too.

  Kaitlin doesn’t come by the bench like she did yesterday. She’s on the field jumping rope with Victoria, but she doesn’t look too relaxed. She makes recess look more like work.

  I spend recess reading. And looking around, since I can see the whole field from here.

  Izzy is si
tting behind the sycamore tree.

  Buck is standing by the door to the school, looking straight up at the sky.

  That quiet girl Juniper is walking on the edge of the field, dragging her fingers across the fence. Her eyes are half closed, like she’s watching a private movie inside her eyelids.

  Some people want to be alone at recess. I’m one of them, a lot of the time.

  But I didn’t realize there were so many others.

  After my best friend, Owen, moved away last year, I started spending recess by myself. I didn’t want another friend. I didn’t want to admit I wanted one, at least—not until Quinny moved in next door and forced me to be her friend. Maybe that’s why no one sits on the Friendship Bench. It’s hard to show the world you’re lonely. It’s hard to say you need a friend.

  Even if you need one so badly it hurts to breathe.

  After the recess whistle blows, Kaitlin passes by me on her way to line up. Today she’s wearing a headband with cat ears, and it makes me want to draw whiskers on her cheeks.

  “I know that one.” She gestures to my book. “My mom got it for me, it was sooo boring.”

  The other girls with her laugh. At the book, or maybe at me.

  “Hey, I saw the movie they made of that book,” says Caleb, in line behind me.

  “Me, too,” says Juniper, behind him.

  Caleb and I both turn to look at her, because Juniper barely ever says a thing.

  “The book was better,” she murmurs.

  My Tuesday morning is full of tragedy, and then Daddy drops me at school just in time to miss recess and sit still for math. Oh, yay.

  Mrs. Flavio is up at the whiteboard again putting numbers into bunk beds (that’s called fractions) and then mixing them up with a bunch of decimal dot numbers. My brain has to squint to figure out what she is talking about. Plus, Hopper isn’t in class today, which makes me even less happy to be here.

  “Mrs. Flavio, can I go to the bathroom?” I call out.

  Then I remember to raise my hand. You’re supposed to do that before you ask your question, but maybe she won’t notice I did it in the wrong order.

  Mrs. Flavio leans down and looks me in the eye. It’s terrifying stuff.

  “I find it interesting, Quinny, that every time I mention decimals, you feel the sudden urge to use the restroom.”

  “I’m not sure it’s that interesting, Mrs. Flavio. When you gotta go, you gotta go.”

  She finally says okay-but-come-right-back-no-dawdling, and I get a hall pass and go to the bathroom and I sit there in the stall and wait until I’m pretty sure decimals is almost over.

  (If Mom knew I did this, she’d be super upset. That’s why I’m never going to tell her.)

  When I go back out to the hall, there is a giant surprise waiting for me.

  “Hopper Hopper Hopper! It’s you.”

  “It’s me,” he says.

  “What are you doing out here in the hall? And why weren’t you in class?”

  “Mrs. Flavio needed a responsible person to take a note to the main office.”

  “Oh, Hopper, we have so much to catch up on. I’m sorry I was crabby at you yesterday, I thought you and Kaitlin were keeping a secret from me—”

  “I was just trying to tie my shoe, not keep secrets. Honest.”

  “I know that.”

  “You do?”

  “I figured it out last night. It was the cookie flyer, right? Kaitlin showed it to you….”

  Hopper looks confused now.

  “You knew it’d ruin my recess—plus my whole life—so you hid it behind your back.”

  “Quinny, what happened at the rink? Everybody was saying you got hurt—”

  “Oh, nothing, I just crashed into a kid who was ten feet tall. But I was fine and went home and everything, but this morning my arm really hurt, so Daddy took me to Urgent Care for an X-ray, but the meanie doctor wouldn’t even give me a cast, he said it was just a sprain.”

  “Well, I’m glad you’re okay.”

  “I’d be even better if they gave me a cast, because then people could write on it. Hey, speaking of writing, Hopper, can you sign my petition to save the cookies?”

  “Your what?”

  “It’s a petition to ask Principal Ramsey to change his mind and let us have classroom sweets for birthdays and holidays still. Remember how Nidhi brought in red velvet cupcakes for her birthday? And for Christmas did you know Daddy and I always bake coconut snowballs—”

  “Uh, sure. I’ll sign it.”

  “Great. And by the way, before you sign that petition, could you also help me write it?”

  Writing a petition sounds a lot more complicated than signing a petition.

  “Quinny, I don’t know anything about making a petition.”

  “That’s okay, neither do I!”

  “I’m not even on student council—”

  “You don’t have to be on student council to do a petition. And Victoria has decided to be enemies with my petition, so I need your help big-time—”

  “Quinny, Hopper—what are you guys doing out here?”

  We get interrupted by Nurse Mira.

  “Sorry, Nurse Mira, top-secret official business.” Quinny holds up her hall pass like it’s a police badge, and pulls me into a run, giggling.

  On the bus ride home we get to work on the petition. Quinny says words out loud and I write them down. But right away, there’s a problem.

  “Dear Principal Ramsey,” Quinny says. “Weren’t Nidhi’s birthday cupcakes just so yummy? And wait till you try my coconut snowballs at the winter holiday party! I promise to bring you some extras if you could just let us still have sweets and cookies in class, so please change the rules back, or school will turn into such a frowny, miserable place—”

  “Quinny—”

  “—full of gloomy kids who don’t want to come, and then you’ll have no customers—”

  “Quinny, I think we have to convince him with facts and ideas, not just whining—”

  “Fine—Dear Principal Ramsey, it’s a fact that cookies are an important part of school, and cookies make kids happy, and happy kids get good grades, so please don’t make us all flunk out by stealing all the cookies, because we want our cookies back and we want them back now!”

  I don’t even bother writing any of this down. “Quinny, slow down, that’s a lot of words.”

  “Oh, Hopper, you’re right. People look at stuff more than they actually read words, so let’s illustrate that petition with lots of yummy cookies!”

  “Illustrate it?”

  “Yeah, you know, like you could draw cookies and treats on it, because we’ll get more people to sign it if it looks delicious. And also, we should make signs and walk around the playground. Save the cookies! A sign is much bigger than a petition.”

  I look at Quinny. She’s serious. Then she gets this startled look on her face and her eyes zoom toward the bus window. “Hopper!!! Look!” She bounces and points.

  Our bus passes Grandpa Gooley’s pickup truck, parked by Mrs. Porridge’s house. He’s got something big in the back, covered by a tarp cloth.

  “Hopper, is that…are those…feathers!?!”

  The bus pulls up to our stop and Quinny rushes off and runs over to Grandpa Gooley’s truck like her hair is on fire. Her dad doesn’t even look shocked as she zooms past him, he just starts walking after her. Catching up to Quinny is something we all have to do.

  “Grandpa Gooley!” she cries out. “Is that what I think it is in your truck?”

  Brrrp. Bup.

  “Take it easy, Quinny. I’m just dropping something off for Mrs. Porridge.”

  “But Grandpa Gooley, I saw feathers! And I heard clucking!”

  “Feathers? What would I be doing with feathers?”

  Bipp. Brrrp. Bock.

  “Chickens! Hopper, listen, those feathers belong to real live chickens!”

  Mrs. Porridge comes over to us. She doesn’t look too excited. “These hens weren’t supposed
to arrive until tomorrow,” she snaps.

  “My apologies,” says Grandpa Gooley.

  “I’m not even set up for them yet. And I was hoping to surprise the children.”

  “Oh, Mrs. Porridge, we’re totally surprised,” says Quinny. “You said no more chickens ever, and Grandpa Gooley said it’s impossible to make you change your mind about anything—”

  “Did he, now?”

  “But don’t worry, we’re here to help,” says Quinny. “Hopper and I can get that chicken coop cleaned out and ready for these new birds in no time. I’m free right now!”

  “Fantastic,” says Mrs. Porridge. “Just the nice, calm afternoon I was hoping for.”

  “Me, too,” says Piper. “I’m free right now.”

  “Mmmptt,” says Cleo through her Binky.

  “Cleo—spit that thing out. You’re a big girl,” says Mrs. Porridge.

  “We’re trying to convince her, believe me,” says Quinny’s dad.

  Brrr bup brrrrripp says something under the tarp in Grandpa Gooley’s truck.

  “Grandpa Gooley, let us see—come on, come on,” cries Quinny. “We need to see those beautiful, brilliant chickens from head to toe right this very minute!”

  “Okay, let’s do it.” Grandpa Gooley grabs the tarp. “Ready to meet your new neighbors?”

  Grandpa Gooley pulls back the tarp, and poof, it’s a paradise of feathers! Those chickens flutter and flap their wings, and bip and buup and bock their beaks, and stare out at me from their cages.

  “Let them out, Grandpa Gooley, look how excited they are to see me—I need to hug those adorable chickens right this very minute! How many of them are there?”

  “Hold your horses, Quinny,” says Mrs. Porridge. “We have to be careful they don’t run off like what’s-her-name…that other chicken…starts with an F?”

  Oh, she means Freya, who used to be our fast, ferocious, zebra-striped neighborhood chicken, but over the summer we caught her and brought her back to live with her one true love, Mr. McSoren, in a different town. But then, in a surprise twist, Freya sent us two baby chickens, Disco and Cha-Cha, to adopt—only Disco decided he was a rooster, so he couldn’t stay.