The Quirks, Welcome to Normal (3 page)

“Molly, have you seen your brother?” Bree Quirk breezed into the kitchen, wearing an apron with dancing chickens on it. She worked as a waitress at Crazy Ed’s, a diner-style
restaurant on Old County Road Six. It was a nifty place with a broken gumball machine and a rusting motorcycle with a
FOR SALE
sign propped up out front.

Molly glanced at the chair right next to her, where Finn was now licking oatmeal remains directly out of his bowl. He looked like a dog. “He’s finishing breakfast, in his own special
way,” she muttered.

“Finnegan Quirk,” Bree scolded, using Finn’s full name. She looked directly at the bowl of oatmeal without seeing her son. “I just hope you’re wearing pants at the
breakfast table?”

Finn stuck his tongue out at Molly, ignoring their mom’s question, and rubbed his face in the oatmeal. The slimy oats smudged across his cheeks. Molly tried really hard to pretend her
brother wasn’t there. She hated that she was the only person who could see him. It made his annoying habits that much harder to ignore.

L
i
k
e
t
h
e
r
est of his family, Finnegan Quirk was born
totally normal. But that quickly changed, and his Quirk appeared. Or, in the case of Finn, something disappeared. When he was six months old, he began to fade. At first, it seemed like his skin was
just getting lighter. But then one day, he went to pick up one of his toys, and Grandpa Quill could actually see the toy through Finn’s hand.

Over the course of his first year, Finn kept fading. He grew more and more see-through, until one day he just disappeared. Penelope had seen him crawling through the kitchen to grab a Cheerio
off the floor, and in the blink of an eye he was gone. She assumed he’d somehow zipped out of the room, until she accidentally kicked him.

The strange thing was, Molly couldn’t understand what everyone was fussing about. She could still see Finn. Bright as ever, solid as ever, ugly as ever. But she was the
only
one
who had seen him—or the clothes that were or weren’t on his back—since.

Which meant that no one else could see Finn plucking flowers from Mrs. DeVille’s perfect pansy bed while the family walked Molly and Penelope to the bus stop later that morning. Molly shot
Finn a look, silently begging him to behave. People would notice if flowers just started popping out of the ground. Especially Mrs. DeVille. (Penelope and Molly had already learned that their
neighbor on the left was cranky and allergic to kids. Also, she smelled like hamster cage shavings, but that was beside the point.) Molly was not moving to Texas because of something as silly and
childish as ruined flowers.

But she knew this morning was harder for Finn than most other days. If things were different, Finn would have been starting kindergarten. Because of the way he looked (invisible, of course), he
wasn’t allowed to go to public school. Like Penelope, Finn had been working on controlling his Quirk, but he hadn’t yet gotten the hang of it. He was still as see-through as ever. Molly
was the only person on earth who could see his sproingy blond hair and his chocolate-colored eyes and his dirt-crusted little legs.

“You girls should let your grandpa join you on the bus ride to school,” Bree Quirk suggested. “I need to get ready for work, but he can come along and help out if anything
happens.” Penelope and Molly’s mom worried about the first day of school almost as much as her girls did. She’d seen so many first days go badly for them.

Molly knew it would make them look even stranger if their grandpa rode the bus with them. That wasn’t normal.

And yet, Penelope agreed immediately. “Okay, Mom!”

“No, Mom,” Molly insisted, shooting her sister a look—the kind of look that told her twin to zip it. “Gramps is not riding the bus with us. No offense.” Grandpa
Quill shrugged.

“You
will
let your grandfather ride with you,” Bree said, staring at each of the girls in turn. Her frizzy brown hair curled around her face, puffing up in some places and
sticking against her scalp in others. That morning’s combination of wild hair, a chicken apron, and staring, watery blue eyes made her mother look a little crazy, Molly thought. She hoped her
mom would run a comb through her curls before her shift, since she looked so pretty when she took a few minutes for herself. Their mom was so scatterbrained that she often forgot about combs and
matching socks and other things that regular moms ought to remember.

“Mom, you know your magic doesn’t work with me.” Molly sighed, reaching up to tuck one of her mother’s curls behind her ear. “You can stop wasting your energy on
us.”

Bree Quirk’s magic was useful for a mother. If she put her mind to it, she could make people do what she told them to do, and could get them to believe whatever she wanted them to believe.
Bree could make just about anyone see things her way. Anyone, that is, except Molly.

Just as Molly was the only person who could see her invisible younger brother, she was also the only one who couldn’t be mind-charmed by her mom. Molly was immune to her whole
family’s magic. Immunity was Molly’s Quirk, and she knew better than anyone just how lame that was.

“Are you girls sure you’re ready for this?” Bree asked. She sounded sort of funny—like her voice was skipping. She was probably going to cry. That happened sometimes.
Especially when she’d been doing her mind-control stuff. That day, though, Bree’s tears were probably just regular-mom tears. She got all weird about first days.

“Yes, Mom,” Penelope and Molly answered together.

“They’ll be fine,” Grandpa agreed. “The girls are in fourth grade now. And with all our moving, they should be regular pros at this whole first-day-of-school business.
Quit your blubbering, Bree.” Molly squeezed her eyes closed when she realized Grandpa Quill’s crazy-long white mustache had bits of yellow egg yolk dripping from the tips. “And if
it goes terribly, we’ll rodeo right on down to Texas. No big deal.”

But it was a big deal. Each one of the Quirks knew it. When they’d left Ohio after that summer’s cat incident, they had all decided—as a family—that they were going to
try to live life like a regular family. That’s why they’d moved to a town called Normal. Because none of the Quirks wanted to move every few months. It was time to live a normal life.
It was time to find a home.

Molly knew the family wanted to support her and Pen on their first day of school, but she wished they could all just butt out sometimes. There had been more than a handful of times that she was
pretty sure she was the only Quirk really trying to fit in.

“I know you girls are going to do great,” Bree said, her voice wiggling and wobbling. “This is the place,” she whispered. “We’re going to make Normal our
home, and that’s all there is to it.” She smiled weakly. Molly could tell she was just barely holding herself together. Her hair stuck out at odd angles, like tangled bits of a
bird’s nest.

“What if we don’t?” Penelope whispered, her eyes huge.

“We have to,” their mother said. “It’s time for us to settle down. We need to figure out how to fit in somewhere, someday. Our new, normal life starts today!” Bree
said this as confidently as she could, pounding her fist into her palm to make her point, but no one looked convinced.

The thing is, the Quirks only knew how to live the life they’d always had—a life of moving around. They’d always hit the road when something went wrong. They had never fit in
anywhere, and they’d never stayed anywhere long enough to truly try.

“Go get ’em, girls!” Grandpa cried as the bus arrived. Both girls hesitated. The bus would take them closer and closer to school. Closer and closer to the chance for
failure.

As Molly looked at the driver, her stomach rumbled with nerves. Could they do it? Was her sister capable of blending in? Molly also wondered, selfishly, the same thing she wondered at every new
school: Would
she
make friends this year? Would she finally find a way to fit in, to be part of her class?

There was only one way to find out: the Quirks absolutely had to make it work in Normal. How hard could it be?

P
e
n
e
l
o
p
e
Quirk often wished she were more like her twin
sister, Molly. One reason was because Molly didn’t have an extra-long second toe (Penelope did). Also, Molly didn’t make a hissing sound when she laughed (Penelope’s laugh
sometimes sounded like an attacking snake). She was also jealous that Molly always spotted Finn before he drizzled syrup down her neck (Pen never saw him coming). But mostly, Penelope was envious
that Molly didn’t have to try so hard to be normal.

Growing up Quirky, Penelope had always thought she was the normal twin—and Molly was the strange one. While every Quirk had a charm, Molly was the kid with no special talents. It
wasn’t really until kindergarten, when Penelope’s magic earned the girls a hall pass right out of school, that she finally realized
she
was the one who didn’t fit in
outside the house.

Penelope tried. Really, she did. But she just couldn’t control her imagination.

Molly was constantly chasing after her sister, trying to distract her enough that she wouldn’t spread magic everywhere she went. Sometimes, that worked. Other times, Penelope’s magic
wasn’t very obvious. But most of the time, it was just that people weren’t looking closely enough.

When the girls’ bus pulled up in front of Normal Elementary School on that first day of fourth grade, Penelope gazed out the window at the school yard full of kids. She took a deep breath
and stood, following Molly as she plodded toward the front door. Molly twisted at the curl directly behind her left ear, a nervous habit she had picked up in first grade.

No one seemed to notice that Penelope was now wearing a skirt with yellow stripes. The skirt was identical to one that another girl on their bus had been wearing. When they’d left home
that morning at half past seven, Penelope had been wearing shorts.

As Molly and Penelope followed the other kids across the playground, Molly was pretty sure she was the only one who saw a tiny white rabbit in a waistcoat running up a tree in front of them.