Read The Mighty Quinn for Free Online Page A

anyone. Two sentences was her limit, and then she’d start humming to herself and spinning her hair. Teena’s thin, shoulder-length hair was the color of the mud-stained carpet in the school music room. Teena twirled her hair when she wasn’t working, talking, or playing, which was almost all of the time. She’d grab a few strands near her forehead and twirl it around her fingers, and there was a patch on the top of her head where the hair was so thin you could see her scalp, like the spot on a rug at the front of a door where you wipe your shoes before entering the room.
    Tay looked disgusted with Teena whenever he noticed her, though mostly he acted as though she didn’t exist. Quinn, when he had the occasion to think of Teena, was thankful that she wasn’t as obnoxious as a lot of kids. She could even be entertaining, in her own way. She would do her famous apple diver routine at lunch for anyone who’d listen, but if you’d heard it once,you’d heard it all, even if she switched to famous carrot diver or famous potato chip diver. Most of the class thought she was a head case.
    Quinn looked back at Sam’s paper, which was filled with comic strip frames of skiers falling off of cliffs. Sam began sketching a stingray on skis in the last frame. He paused, lifted his pencil, and sniffed the eraser as Ms. Blakeman and her armload of handouts approached their row. “Aren’t you going to write anything?” Sam asked Quinn.
    â€œMy grandparents visited us for a week, like they always do, and we played a lot of board games, like we always do,” Quinn said. “Who wants to read a paper about that? I sure don’t want to write about it.”
    Ms. Blakeman stopped at Neally’s desk. “Your father starts today?”
    â€œYes, after recess,” Neally said. “He can stay until lunchtime, and he says he’d be available to come earlier and correct papers during recess. He’ll volunteer every Tuesday, and also Thursdays, if you need him.”
    â€œMmmm.” Ms. Blakeman smacked her lips together as if Neally had told her that her father would be bringing a triple-layer, double-chocolate fudge cake to class. “No ifs about that. We’ll find plenty of things for him to do. I hope you’ll tell him how much I appreciate this, if I forget to say so ten times myself.” The teacher sauntered up the aisle toward her desk, happily muttering to herself. “A regular volunteer, oh my!”

8
A REGULAR VOLUNTEER

    Stormy-without-rain, dry, gusty days when the tall cedars in his front yard whipped back and forth, their spiky branches crackling against one another, were the days Quinn liked the most. The scrawny oak trees that lined the schoolyard’s perimeter fences made only a few faint whistles when the wind rustled their wilted leaves; still, any kind of wind-through-the-trees noise made Quinn want to build a campfire and sip hot cocoa. He lost track of time during recess as he wandered about the school, listening to the trees and wondering when the Mistress of Malevolence, aka the playground monitor, would decide it was permissible to run on the field.
    Click click, click click .
    â€œDid everyone enjoy recess? Please sit down and listen up!” Ms. Blakeman used her clicker to shoo students to their seats, as if she were herding a flock of lost sheep. “I’d like to introduce someone who’s going to be a regularpart of our class. Mr. Bryan Standers will be with us on Tuesday and Thursday mornings. He’ll be working with our ESL students, and with all of the reading groups on a rotating basis. He’ll also help grade papers, so watch your handwriting! He’s not used to your chicken-scratch scrawls like I am.”
    Several students in the front row pretended to be indignant, which prompted a hearty laugh from Ms. Blakeman.
    Click click, click click .
    â€œWe’ll find many ways to keep him busy,