The Mighty Quinn (2 page)

“Running on the field
only
!” Ms. Barnes raised her whistle. “Don't make me use this!”

Quinn slowed to a fast walk and guiltily waved at the playground supervisor.

“Don't make her use that.” Sam pinched his fingers together and blew an imaginary whistle. “Taylor Denton the Third got benched for the entire lunch recess the last time he made Ms. Barnes use her wicked devil whistle.”

“No way!” Tay elbowed Sam.

“Way!” Sam pushed Tay back against one of the parallel bars.

“I can get you in trouble, Samuel Jefferson Washington,” Tay said. “I can get you in giga-billion trouble; in your-Daddy-gotta-call-the-lawyer trouble.”

“How's that?” Quinn asked.

“I could get him expelled for actually playing on the playground.” Tay pretended to bonk his head against one of the parallel bars.

Quinn tapped one of the cold metal bars. “Does anyone ever use these things?”

“Sure,” Sam said. “My sister's sixth-grade class used to do gymnastics on the bars.”

“Let's play wall-ball,” Quinn suggested.

“No one's playing wall-ball,” Tay said. “Not outside.”

“There's a bunch of teams playing inside, in the gym,” Quinn said. “We could be a team, the three of us, or we could join another team.”

“Kelsey's in the gym; I can't be on her team because she doesn't like how I throw the ball.” Sam pinched his nostrils together and spoke like a teacher giving a disparaging book report evaluation. “Mr. Washington, your windup and delivery is totally lacking in substance.”

“That's not it—you can't be on her team 'cause you don't cheat,” Tay snickered. “Besides, there's no way I'm playing in the gym. Ever heard Kelsey's outside voice when she's inside?”

“Ayiiiiiiiii!” Sam slapped his palms against his ears.

“Okay then, what do
you
want to do?” Quinn asked.

Tay scowled and shrugged his shoulders. Sam jammed his hands into his jacket pockets, shuffled his feet from side to side, and grinned halfheartedly at Quinn.

Quinn inspected the sky. The billowing clouds were neither puffy nor gray enough to imply an imminent storm of any significance, and this realization
made him sigh. “It seems like we should get snow in December.”

“Why should it seem that?” Tay asked. “We never get any snow.”

“We did three years ago, in second grade, remember?” Sam said. “My sisters used to get snow days. Dad says we get snow about once every three years.”

“Yeah, we get maybe an inch of snow,” Tay snorted.

“Big deal.”

“It is for here,” Quinn said. “Two more days of school and we're out. It would be so great to have a snowstorm during winter break.”

“My dad grew up ...”

“In Minnesota,” Tay finished Sam's sentence. “The entire planet knows this.”

“Dad loves weather, probably because ...” Sam grinned at Tay, “they got a lot of it in that state where the entire planet knows he grew up. He watches all the weather channels; he says they're predicting a chance of snow if the temperature drops.” Sam kicked the toe of Quinn's sneakers. “What'll we do while we wait for the snowstorm of the century?”

“Well,” Quinn began, “we could ...”

“Yo, Tay!”

Matt Barker rocketed a muddy four square ball at Tay's stomach. Tay deflected it with his hands; the ball hit one of the parallel bars and rebounded toward Quinn, who caught it on the second bounce. Matt ran
behind Quinn and punched the ball, which flew out of Quinn's hands and rolled toward the bark chips surrounding the play structure. Matt ran after the ball, snarling, “Back off!” to a second-grade girl who leaned down to grab the ball.

“How come Ms. Barnes never catches
him
running?” Quinn muttered.

Matt held the ball against his hip, ran his fingers through his spiky blond hair and sauntered back to where Tay and Sam and Quinn stood. “C'mon, Tay. You, me, and Josh can whip Kelsey and her wall-ball whimps. Where's that Whistle Witch?” He looked around for the playground supervisor; Ms. Barnes was standing in front of the swing set, scolding two third graders. Matt whacked Tay's arm and the two boys ran toward the gym.

Sam swept his arm forward, bowed toward the gym and emulated a crisp, upper-crust British accent. “Ever so nice to see you, Master Barker.”

“It's ‘wimps,' not
whimps
,” Quinn said. “What a jerk.”

Click click, click click
.

Ms. Blakeman raised her olive green, metallic frog clicker above her head. “Fifth graders, listen up!”
Click click, click click
. “Six minutes left until lunch. All those doing social studies units, wrap up your report outlines. All of you silent readers, get your bookmarks and find a stopping point.”

Quinn felt a paper wad hit the back of his shirt, and heard Matt and Josh snickering from the row behind him. He placed a bookmark in chapter two of
Sorcerers and Gallantry: Medieval English Mythology
and tried not to sigh out loud at the massive injustice that was the student body makeup of his classroom.

It was, simply and profoundly, unfair. Every September, at the first assembly, Principal Shirkner fingered his signature red and blue polka dot bow tie while he gave the same boring speech about achievement, and how everyone was working to make Turner Creek the finest elementary school in Oregon. And every June,
at the last assembly, with the teachers sitting up front and grinning at his every word, Shirkner fingered yet another one of his bow ties while he gave yet another boring speech about how the teachers had enjoyed their classes and would pick the best groupings of students for next year's classes. And every year since kindergarten Quinn had ended up in the worst class in Turner Creek Elementary: the class with Matt Barker in it.

Quinn was so intent on pondering his bad luck that he missed the distinctive squeak of the classroom door. He lifted his desktop, stashed his book, and retrieved his lunch bag, only then realizing that the whispering had risen to a level that usually summoned Ms. Blakeman's frog clicker.

Teena Freeman's desk was directly in front of Quinn's. She turned around and whispered, “I'm glad it's not me.”

“What's not you?” Quinn asked.

Teena pointed to the front of the class. Ms. Blakeman was speaking softly to the three people who had entered her classroom: a man, a woman, and a girl. The man had his arm draped around the girl's shoulders, and the woman lightly touched the girl's hair. Ms. Blakeman shook hands with the girl.

“It's hard enough being a new kid in September.” Teena wiped her nose against the sleeve of her dingy, once-white shirt. “But two days before winter break, and right before lunch?”

“We're getting a new student?” Quinn asked.

“Duh. Oh, no!” Teena groaned. “They kissed her goodbye, in front of everyone!”

“I do so look forward to getting to know you.” Ms. Blakeman beamed her Open House smile at the two adults as they exited her classroom.

Click click, click click
.

“Fifth graders, listen up! Please give your best Turner Creek welcome to our new class member.” Ms. Blakeman looked down at the folder she held and her eyeglasses slid down her nose. She adjusted her glasses and opened the folder. “Nelly Standwell comes to us from Spokane, Washington. Oh, fantastic! It says that Mr. Standers, Nelly's father, will volunteer ...”

“It's
Neally
, not Nelly,” the new girl interrupted.

“Excuse me; Neally?” Ms. Blakeman took a pen from her pocket and wrote in the folder.

“That's all right.” The girl looked around the room, right to left and front to back, as if she were memorizing every face in the class. “Most people get it wrong at first. Neally; it rhymes with
really. My name is Neally Ray Standwell, and it's nice to meet all of you.”

Matt covered his mouth with his hands. “It's nice to meet y'all,” he said, in a muffled, high-pitched whine. Josh let loose with the snorting noises he made when he was supposedly laughing, but which Quinn had always thought sounded like pigs choking on their slop.

Click click, click click
.

“Fifth graders!” Ms. Blakeman glared in the direction of the laughter. Matt pulled himself up in his chair and sat as straight as a number two pencil. He jerked his chin in Josh's direction, his blue eyes twinkling at Ms. Blakeman as if to say, “Can you believe that clown?”

“I'm sorry to rush the introduction,” Ms. Blakeman said. “We'll do more after lunch, but we need to get going. Fifth graders, you know the drill; let's help Neally figure it out. Hot-lunchers and milk-onlys in front, cold-lunchers in the back. Arturo, you are line leader today.”

Neally Ray Standwell. That has to be the coolest name ever
, Quinn thought. He got in step with the other milk-onlys, so lost in thought that he neglected to see that that the Coolest Name Ever was right behind him.

“Hotters? Colders? Milk-only-ers? Are these some kind of tag team names?”

The new girl's voice gave no clue as to whether she was teasing. Quinn turned to answer her, and felt his
cheeks begin to flush. He spun back around and faced the door.

“Hello there,” Neally said to Quinn's back.

“Hi,” Quinn said to his shoes. The line began to move toward the cafeteria.

“So, what is the deal and which one are you? I mean, about this lunch-line march.”

“Hot-lunchers get lunch at the cafeteria,” Quinn replied without turning to look at her. “Cold-lunchers bring their lunch from home. Milk-onlys bring their lunch but get milk at the cafeteria. We all go to the cafeteria, then come back and eat at our desks, then it's lunch recess.”

“You have to eat lunch in the classroom?”

“We get fifteen minutes to eat at our desks,” Quinn explained. “Sometimes only ten, if we don't ... ah, foof!” The line stopped at the cafeteria door. “We're supposed to be ahead of Mrs. Franklin's class. If you're not here exactly at your time they let the next class in ahead of you.”

“My fault, I suppose, that your class is late. The introduction and all. So sorry.”

Quinn didn't think Neally sounded so sorry, or any sorry at all.

“Anyway, you have to eat lunch at your desk?”

Quinn nodded. “I guess because it rains so much.”

“Well, it rains in Spokane too,” Neally said. “It
snows, even. But most days we still got to eat outside, on the picnic tables under the shelters.”

“We have shelters,” Quinn said. “Half of the blacktop is under shelters. But no picnic tables. Those are ...”

“No picnic tables under the shelters? That's what shelters are
for
. Anyway, what's so big about a little rain?”

“Yeah! It's not like ...” Quinn took a deep breath and decided not to finish agreeing with the new girl. He'd always thought the eat-at-your-desk rule was unreasonable, but hearing it criticized from this stranger who had been at Turner Creek Elementary for a whole ten minutes suddenly made him feel like putting his arm around his school.