The Quirks, Welcome to Normal (2 page)

“Okay, here goes.” Penelope squeezed her eyes closed and bunched up her lips, making her concentration face. She let an image of a blond Molly drift through her mind and momentarily
cracked up. Pen hummed, trying to focus every last bit of attention on Molly’s curls going golden.

Suddenly, a plane roared overhead. Penelope watched as it left a wispy white trail of steam in its wake. Hard as it was for her not to follow the airplane’s path through the sky as it
soared off to wherever, Penelope closed her eyes again before the contrail melted away. “Anything yet?” she squeaked, peeking at her sister, who was still stretched out beside her.

Molly lifted her head and shook her twisty curls in the thick, humid air. Still brown. “Nope. Keep trying.”

“This is useless.” Pen moaned. She sat up and picked absentmindedly at a glop of mustard that had been stuck to her shorts since lunchtime. “Why can’t I make stuff appear
or change when I want it to? Everything just
happens
when I
don’t
want it to,” Pen grumped. Molly couldn’t help but laugh a little at her twin sister’s
sour face.

But Molly stopped laughing when angry steam started to billow out of Penelope’s ears. The steam smelled like cabbage soup, which smelled like stinky feet. It smelled so bad that Molly sat
up straight, tucked her nose inside the top of her shirt, and squeezed. Molly put a comforting hand over her sister’s and gave it a little hand hug. “We’ll figure out how to
control your Quirk one of these days. I promise,” she said from inside her shirt.

“Will I figure it out before we have to move again?” Penelope asked, lifting an eyebrow. (Brow lifting was a trick both girls had been working on for several years, and, unlike her
magic, it was something Penelope had mastered.) Molly didn’t say anything, so Pen answered her own question. “Probably not. Normal seems perfect, so I’m sure we won’t get to
stay. We’re not going to fit in here any better than we have anywhere else.”

Penelope knew that she had really messed things up for the Quirks in quite a few towns—from Springfield to Hackensack to Pawtucket to Sandstone. The Quirks had lived in twelve states and
twenty-six towns in the nine (and three-quarters) years Molly and Penelope had been alive. In that time, far too many people had witnessed the Quirks’ special brand of magic.

As the girls stared up at the clouds, a herd of thundering cloud elephants suddenly came to life in the sky above them and stampeded across the smooth, baby-blue background. Gloomy storm clouds
formed under each elephant stomp and made the sky messy and black.

“Clouds, clouds, regular clouds . . . ,” Penelope said, squeezing her eyes closed tight. Her body tensed with the effort of trying to control her thoughts.

Molly began to whistle a Beatles song. As she did, she wished—not for the first time—that there were something more she could do. But there wasn’t. She was as plain as Penelope
was colorful. Molly was magic-less, like a big bowl of boring vanilla ice cream in a family full of wacky flavors.

Penelope’s face relaxed as she sang along with her sister. Then, as quickly as they’d come, the elephants melted back into puffy-fluffy clouds and drifted calmly across the sky
again.

Next door, the girls could see their unfriendly neighbor, Mrs. DeVille, closing and opening her windows angrily as she watched the storm come, then just as quickly go. Pen and Molly looked at
each other and grinned. Things were looking clear in Normal. For now.

W
h
e
n
M
o
l
l
y skipped into the kitchen the next morning, on
her first day of fourth grade, the table was a mess. It looked like someone’s pockets had thrown up on the speckled green surface. It was covered in papers and wrappers and crumpled dollar
bills from the tip jar at the restaurant where Molly’s mom, Bree, worked as a waitress.

Molly and Penelope had both flung their sweatshirts over the back of a kitchen chair the night before. Their little brother, Finn, had dumped a pile of his clothes—shorts, jeans, and one
super-hero costume—in the corner of the kitchen. And several days earlier, Grandpa Quill had tracked muddy footprints from the back door to the front, with a detour past the fridge on his way
through. None of the Quirks were good at picking up after themselves.

With a family of mostly magical people, the Quirk house really should have been tidier. But since none of the Quirks had normal magic powers, and Molly had none at all, not a single one of them
could just snap their fingers to whip up a clean kitchen.

Nothing was that simple. And no one’s magic was that useful.

Molly squeezed a giant mug into the only empty space on the table and poured herself some cereal. She scattered a pinch of sugar over the flakes. Then she dug a giant wooden mixing spoon into
her mug. As usual, all the cereal spoons were dirty. And the bowls. That’s just the way it was. Eventually, someone would put on some music and wash all the dishes in one afternoon. But until
then, the dirty dishes were piled in the sink and on the counters and at the bottom of the broom closet (a closet that didn’t contain brooms at all but did house a large collection of broken
bagpipe bits).

Molly had only taken a few bites of cereal when Finn slipped one of his dirty LEGO pieces up and over the edge of Molly’s mug. It was a silver ramp piece, one of his favorites. Finn
thought he was very sneaky, but Molly usually caught him making mischief. Usually, she was the
only
one who did.

She leaned over to whisper, “If that ramp isn’t out of my bowl in four seconds, I’ll tell Mom you’re not wearing pants at the breakfast table.” Finn preferred to
wander around the house in only underwear. Their mom had made a rule that pants must be worn at the table, but Finn believed underpants
were
proper pants.

Finn’s mouth twisted into a toothless grin, and he dangled his little fingers over her cereal. “My LEGO is a tiny lifeboat,” he whispered back. His tongue poked a wad of
oatmeal through the hole where his lower front teeth used to be. “Captain LEGO has arrived to rescue all of the flakes that are drowning in milk. Can’t you hear them screaming,
Molly?”

Molly fixed her brother with a serious stare. “I mean it, Finn. Three, two . . .”

Finn reached out and snatched the LEGO from her cereal. His fingers left a dirty streak in Molly’s fresh white milk. Molly shook her head, trying hard to ignore her brother. She watched as
Finn dumped the LEGO in his own bowl of oatmeal. Then he scooped it back out with his spoon and sucked it clean. Finn was always icky, sticky, and gross.

“Happy first day of school, Miss Molly.” Their grandfather Quilliam Quirk saluted Molly from where he stood at the stove frying eggs. “How do you feel about cowboys,
kid?”

“I guess I’ve never really thought about cowboys, Grandpa.” Molly made a grossed-out face as she scooped a huge spoonful of dirty cereal into her mouth. She hoped Finn
didn’t have fleas. Like everything with Finn, fleas were a real possibility.

Grandpa jiggled the pan. “Well, you’d better start thinking, kid. If things don’t work out here in Michigan, Texas is our next stop.” Penelope ran into the kitchen just
in time to hear that. Her eyes opened wide and she skidded to a stop. Molly gave her sister a reassuring smile, even though she didn’t feel all that great herself.

The Quirks had lived in Normal, Michigan, for less than one week. One sliver of a week, and they were already planning for what they would do when they had to leave. Molly and Penelope never
went to any one school long enough to get invited to parties, they never joined any sports teams, they never even had time to make real friends.

“Why Texas, Gramps?” Molly asked. Penelope leaned against the door frame at the edge of the kitchen, looking worried.

“Why not Texas?” Grandpa Quill said, grinning as he buttered two pieces of toast. “Can you stop calling me ‘old man,’ kid?”

“‘Gramps’ isn’t the same thing as ‘old man.’” Molly giggled. “Besides, I’m not so fond of you calling me ‘kid,’ and you
are
our grandpa.”

“And old,” Finn added quietly.

Grandpa tilted the frying pan. Two overcooked fried eggs slipped off the edge of the pan and onto his plate. “‘Gramps’ just sounds old,” he said. As Molly watched, the
two eggs quivered over the toast on Grandpa’s plate, then slid back up and into the pan again. It was like her grandpa had hit a rewind button. In a way, he had.

Quilliam Quirk’s magic allowed him to have a do-over whenever he wanted it. He could flip time backward, like the button on a DVR remote, and everyone would relive the minutes or hours
again. Grandpa had long ago learned to control his Quirk—most of the time, anyway—so his magic was usually pretty handy.

That morning, Grandpa had rewound twenty seconds, just enough to get his eggs back in the pan so he could take them out before they were overcooked. Grandpa preferred his eggs
over-medium—he always said that whites should be chewy but yolks ought to ooze.

“I want to be a new man here in Michigan. Call me Quilliam. Quill, if you’re feeling casual.” Grandpa slid his eggs onto the plate for a second time and put on a charming smile
under his drooping mustache.

Finn snorted through a mouthful of oatmeal. Molly jabbed him in the side with her elbow. “It feels weird to call my own grandpa by his first name,” Molly said. “It would be
like calling Mom Bree.” She tried that out. “Breeeee. Ick, no. It’s not right.”

“Well, if you’re going to be weird about it, call me Mr. Quirk instead.” Grandpa squirted ketchup onto his eggs and carried his plate to the table. Penelope trailed behind him
and snatched a piece of toast off the edge of his plate.

“It’s not normal to call your grandpa by his first name, and it’s even sillier to call him Mister. That’s a fact.” Molly nodded. She was sure she was right about
this. “We want to fit in here in Normal, so I’m calling you Grandpa. Or I can call you Gramps . . . your choice.”

“You’ve got a point, kid. Gramps it is.” Grandpa Quill grinned, then pushed his plate across the table and sat down on an empty seat. He eagerly pulled the spoon out of
Finn’s empty oatmeal bowl and started to scoop up egg yolk. He muttered, “It’s not normal . . .” Then he chuckled under his breath. “Hey, where’s my other slice
of toast? I was sure—” He harrumphed when he saw Penelope standing by the stove, happily stuffing the last bit of his toast into her mouth.