The Mighty Quinn (22 page)

Quinn waited for the usual speech adults seemed programmed to spit out when they discovered he wasn't on a soccer or baseball team, or even the swim team like his sister. Didn't he want to play the games? Build character? Learn teamwork? Collect a shelf-full of cheap plastic trophies with fake gold figures on them? Then he reminded himself that Neally's father wasn't the kind of father who went around giving the usual speeches.

“Cross-country!” Neally gasped, with a
gotcha
look in her eyes. “Dad ran cross-country, in college. I looked it up in his yearbook. Quinn would be a natural, wouldn't he, Dad?”

“I know better than to disagree with my wife's daughter,” Mr. Standers said. “Especially when she's got a point. I do think you'd enjoy cross-country, Quinn.”

“That's running, like on a track team, but for long distances, not sprints, right? I can do laps forever, but it gets boring.”

“Longer distances, yes, but you run out in open areas, not around a track,” Mr. Standers explained. “Although you're on a team, cross-country is more of an individual sport. And you don't have people yelling at
you. The other participants are too busy running, and the few spectators who come out to watch would have to run along with you in order to yell at you.”

Mr. Standers removed two spoons from the workbench drawer. “Now, to the task at hand. See those?” He pointed to a stack of paper pots on the top shelf of the workbench. “Add four spoonfuls of our magic soil to the paper pots ...”

Quinn listened to an explanation of the art of seedling transplanting. A wonderful aroma crept into his nostrils: potting soil, decaying magazines, the metallic tang of garden tools, musky tomato sprouts, spicy pepper plants. Individual smells blended, creating a new scent that, even with ground up fish guts, was better than the smell of fresh-cut grass. It was the fragrance of earth, the promise of growing things.

Quinn closed his eyes and inhaled. This, he decided, is what life smells like.

Sam stood at the corner and gazed hopefully at the gray-blue sky. He unzipped his jacket and broadcast encouraging thoughts to the sunlight that lingered behind billowing clouds.

“Should we wait for Neally?”

Quinn shook his head. “I told her yesterday what time we were going to leave, and she seemed to think that was pretty funny. Fifteen minutes earlier than usual, what's the big deal?”

“She is a person of much sense. The big deal is she has fifteen more minutes to sleep in.” Sam blew vapor rings into the air. “These are my dad's favorite kind of days. There's a little sun but it's still cold, so the air in your lungs is warmer than outside. First-rate smoke-ring weather.”

Quinn pursed his lips and puffed out three vapor loops.

“Excellent technique, Master Andrews-Lee.”

“Stick your tongue out and blow around it. That's how you get the edges,” Quinn said. “My uncle Bill taught me, and he uses real smoke. After dinner he smokes cigars that smell like burnt cherries. When he's at our house, Dad makes him do it outside.”

“It's early.” Sam checked his watch. “There's nothing to do.”

“The office will be open.” Quinn hooked his thumbs around the straps of his book pack and the two boys headed to school.

“Righty-o.” Sam pulled a crumpled note and three dollar bills from his jacket pocket. “I can pay up on my account. That sounds most official:
my account
. I owe the cafeteria ...” He unfolded the note. “Two dollars and fifty-five cents.”

“The teachers get there early every day and hang out and drink coffee in the teacher's lounge, but Ms. Blakeman usually has coffee in her classroom. Maybe we could ask her if ...”

“You are transparent, Master Quinn.”

“Huh?”

“That means I can see right through you.”

“I
know
what it means. I just want to ask if she'll show us what she wrote up for the judges, for our service project report. She has to turn it in today—what if she forgets to put in the pictures you drew?”

“I-am-certain-she-has-done-what-needs-to-be-done.” Sam's robot voice was reassuring in its clipped, mechanical way. “And-now-we-must-wait.”

When they'd returned from their field trip to the Noble Woods, Ms. Blakeman informed her class she would write up their community service project report over the weekend. Reports were due Monday, and the winner would be announced later that week. Rumor had it the two sixth-grade classes would be fighting for first and second place. Mr. Danner's sixth graders spent all day Friday at Lil' Angels Preschool, painting an Oregon Trail mural around the school's front door. Ms. Seger's class had conducted a book drive the previous week, walking door-to-door through neighborhoods near the school. On Friday they sorted the books and donated them to the Hillsboro Literacy Program.

Sam checked his watch again as they neared the school. “I predict we get third place.”

“I'm holding out for first,” Quinn said. “Ours has the nature appeal. If Danner's and Seger's classes split some votes, we could sneak in to victory.”

“I checked out the competition; we'll get second if we're lucky. Seger's will get first,” Sam said. “The city librarian is one of the judges. I think Danner's class should be disqualified.”

“Why?”

“My sister drove us by the preschool. ‘Lil' Angels'
is a majorly geek name. Have your seen the mural Danner's class painted? The oxen pulling the covered wagon look like yaks.”

“So?”

“Yaks are from Asia, not North America. Danner's class could be disqualified on technical grounds.” Sam stopped at the school's front entrance. “I must resolve my massive cafeteria underpayment. We could play some four square before the first buzzer.”

“I'll meet you at the courts,” Quinn said. “I'm gonna check out our classroom first.”

Quinn headed for the portable building that housed the two fifth-grade classes. Both classrooms were dark. He decided to hang around for a few minutes, in case Ms. Blakeman showed up. He paced in front of the ramp to the portable, occasionally batting the leaves of a scraggly rhododendron that grew in a patch of dirt along the side of the ramp.

“He's looking for you.”

Although Teena's voice was faint, it still startled Quinn. He whirled around so quickly his book pack slid off his shoulders. “Ah, foof! Don't sneak up on people like that!”

Teena held her raggedy paper lunch bag in one hand and spun her hair with the other. She did not make eye contact with Quinn. “I said, he's looking for you.”

“Who's looking for me?”

Teena pointed her spindly finger toward the bicycle
racks by the parking lot. “He needs you.” She still would not look at Quinn. “Cold helps the swelling go down,” she said to the ground. “You tell him to hold a bag of frozen peas on it.”

“What are you talking about? Hey, Teena!?”

Teena drifted off toward the playground, like fluff from a dandelion carried away by a soft summer breeze. Compelled by curiosity, Quinn walked to the bicycle racks, but there was no one there, and no one nearby. He looked back toward the playground, shading his eyes against the sunlight that poked through the clouds, and saw Kelsey King and a group of students milling around on the blacktop by the main building.

“Pssst!”

Someone
was
there, skulking in the hedges behind the bike racks. The someone moved into a gap between the hedges.

“Matt?”

Matt kept his chin down and had a baseball cap pulled low across his forehead, which did little to hide the dark, angry, purple bruise around Matt's right eye.

“What happened? Are you all right?”

Matt stepped toward Quinn and pushed him in the chest.

“Looks like someone finally pushed you back.” Quinn stood his ground. He was somewhat surprised by his own voice, which was level and unafraid. “Who hit you?”

“Not a whimp like you, right?” Matt pushed Quinn again, this time harder. “You don't have the guts to hit
anything
.”

Matt began to push harder, thumping on Quinn's chest with his palms. Quinn raised his hands to shove Matt away. Matt ducked and butted Quinn's hands with his face.

“YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAW!” Matt fell to the ground, his hands covering his face. “Help!” he yelled.

SSSSSSSSQQQQQQQQQUUUUUUURRRRRRK!

“FIGHT!”

Kelsey made a mad dash for the bicycle racks, followed by several other students, who were followed in turn by Ms. Barnes.

“What the ...” Quinn gawked at the approaching mob as Matt writhed on the ground.

“FIGHT! FIGHT!
FI—QUINN
?!” Kelsey yelped with confusion when she saw the boys.

SSSSSSSSQQQQQQQQQUUUUUUURRRRRRK!

“Not one word!” Ms. Barnes pushed past Kelsey and the other spectators. Matt whimpered as the playground supervisor's muscular forearms reached down and yanked him off the ground. “You'll live,” she growled. She grabbed Matt's wrist with her left hand and Quinn's upper arm with her right. “You two can get your stories straight in Mr. Shirkner's office.”

This is not happening
.

Quinn slumped in the plastic orange chair beside the door to Mr. Shirkner's office. The principal's office was a windowless room inside the school's main office. The school secretary looked up from her desk, and Quinn's knees began to twitch.

I'm sitting in the orange chair
.

The secretary was frowning at her computer monitor and mumbling to herself. Quinn looked past the secretary, through the office window, and saw a pair of seriously green eyes staring back at him.

“What happened?” Neally mouthed.

Quinn shook his head and pointed at the secretary. The intercom buzzed. The secretary picked up her phone, listened for a moment, said, “Right away,” and hung up the phone. “Don't move a muscle,” she said to Quinn. She rapped her knuckles against the opaque
glass window of Mr. Shirkner's door, entered his office, and shut the door behind her.