The Mighty Quinn (7 page)

“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
.”

“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.”

“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.

“Doctor-ate,” 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.

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.