Lucy was waiting for me outside Ms. Danos’s classroom. “Hey!” she called when she spotted me at the end of the corridor. She was dressed head-to-toe in different floral patterns. And by head-to-toe, I mean literal head, to literal toe: there was a homemade flower wreath on her head, and little flower buds stuck in her penny loafers, in the slots where the pennies were supposed to go. The only thing that wasn’t flowered was the fanny pack belted around her waist. It was sky blue. “I worried you wouldn’t be here today,” she said.
“Why?”
“You weren’t feeling well, you said.”
Unconsciously I placed a hand on my stomach. My cheeks warmed, and I felt like the lie was written across my face. Like instead of just ordinary blushing, the words I lied to you, Lucy had popped up in bright red.
“I’m okay now,” I said quickly.
“Great!” she said. “Because I have so much to tell you, and Theo said—” At that moment, Anjali came up behind me and put a hand on my shoulder.
“Hey, Chloe,” she said. “What are you guys talking about?”
“Our science project,” I said.
“How’s it going?”
“Fine,” I said.
“That’s good. How was the movie yesterday?”
“Um,” I said, feeling like the worst person in the world for lying to Lucy, feeling like I couldn’t even look at her. “It was okay.”
“Yeah, that’s what Monroe said.”
I could feel Lucy looking at me. I looked back, but not at her face. “We should probably go inside,” I said to her feet. “We don’t want to be late.” There were at least five more minutes before the official start of class, but I was too uncomfortable to stand there any longer.
“Yeah, okay.” The three of us headed in—Lucy to her seat in front, and Anjali and me to the back, where Monroe was waiting. “Theo wants to have a meeting at lunch today, okay?” Lucy called.
I turned, briefly meeting her eye.
“Come on,” Anjali told me.
“So, lunch?” Lucy asked.
At lunchtime I walked down to the cafeteria with Monroe and Anjali. We passed by the hot-lunch line—chili that day, fine with me to miss out on—and made our way to the sandwich counter. I put together the usual. Afterward, I walked Monroe and Anjali to the table in the back to say hi to Rachael, and then said good-bye to all three It Girls. Monroe insisted on teaching me a signal, in case I needed to be rescued. The signal was scratching the back of my head with two fingers. I knew it was silly. Lucy and Theo were just kids, and I wouldn’t need rescuing from them.
Unless Lucy got mad at me about the movie thing and started yelling, then I would want to be rescued. I practiced the signal and headed over.
Lucy patted the seat next to hers. If she was mad about the movie, you couldn’t tell, which made me feel a little bit better, and a little bit worse. “Okay, good, you’re here,” she said. “I have surprises for everyone.”
“Surprises, really?” I asked. “Like presents?”
Lucy grinned. “Yup.”
“Work first,” Theo said. He pulled a notebook out of his backpack. “After the epic experiment failure at Mrs. Gallagher’s house, I went back to the drawing board.”
“Oh, no,” I said. “You didn’t tell me it was a failure.”
“I didn’t get a chance,” Lucy said. “Though I was planning to spare you the gory details.”
“Something gory happened?” I asked, incredulous. I hadn’t really believed that Mrs. Gallagher could possibly be a witch, but for a second I reconsidered it.
“There wasn’t any gore,” Theo said. “There wasn’t much of anything. I met Lucy at her house, and we spent about twenty minutes in her grandmother’s backyard shed, deciding what supplies to pile into the wheelbarrow and wheel over.”
“Mostly rakes and garbage bags,” Lucy said.
“And then we spent about twenty seconds conducting the experiment,” Theo said. “Before we’d even touched a thing, Mrs. Gallagher came running out of her house screaming about trespassing being a criminal offense.”
“Oh, no,” I said, shuddering. I felt bad for not being there with them, but I also felt relieved that I’d missed being yelled at.
“I don’t know how she heard us there,” Theo went on. “She wasn’t watching by the windows, because we checked. The doors were closed, and we’d barely made a sound. Maybe she eats a lot of bananas.”
“I’m sorry, I think I just heard you wrong,” Lucy said. “Did you just say bananas?”
“Yes, they’re rich in potassium,” Theo said. “Our internal potassium levels decrease as we age, and that’s linked to hearing loss. If Mrs. Gallagher has a special affinity for bananas, it’s possible her hearing didn’t decrease. Maybe it was even enhanced. But that’s a hypothesis for another time. The point is, we didn’t get to test things out yesterday.”
“You didn’t get in trouble with the police or anything, though,” I said. “Did you?”
“We ran back to my house too fast,” Lucy said. “I accidentally dropped one of my grandmother’s gardening gloves. I didn’t tell her yet.”
“So our hypothesis is disproved already,” I said.
“Not at all,” Theo told me.
“Huh?” Lucy asked.
“Think about it,” he said. “We hypothesized that if we were kind to Mrs. Gallagher, it would make her happy, and even make her kind back. All we proved is that if we walk onto her property with a wheelbarrow, she’ll scream at us. We didn’t get a chance to be kind to her.”
“It’s her own fault,” Lucy said. “If she’d just stopped yelling and looked around, she could’ve seen we were going to surprise her with a clean yard.”
“Maybe she doesn’t like surprises,” Theo said. “Not every kindness is right for every person. Like if you baked a cherry pie for Anabelle, it’d definitely make her happy, and maybe she’d even be kind back to you. But if you baked one for me, I wouldn’t be able to eat it because I’m allergic.”
“You’d probably still be kind and say thank you,” Lucy said.
“Of course I would,” Theo said. “But Mrs. Gallagher is a harder subject. For that matter, so is my sister. So I conducted some supplemental work.” He was leaning forward and talking in a voice that was not unlike the way Mr. Dibble sounded when he was in front of the classroom. He sounded excited.
“What’s supplemental?” I asked.
“Extra,” Theo said. “Here, I have something to show you.”
He pulled out a sheet of paper and slid it toward us.
A Nonexhaustive List of Ways to Be Kind to Subject #2, Anabelle M. Barnes
By Theodore M. Barnes
1.Smile 0/4
2.Slip her a nice note
3.Give compliments 0/4
4.Ask questions about the other person 0/3
5.Do the dishes (even when it’s not your turn) 1/1
6.Draw a picture as a gift 0/1
7.Tell a joke to make her laugh 0/1
8.Read a book out loud
9.Give flowers
10.Give her a hug 0/1 (disaster!)
“I didn’t get to try them all,” he explained. “But the ones I did try had mixed results.”
“Is that what the numbers are?” I asked.
“Yes. Now, you can see, my subhypothesis to our original hypothesis was right. Not everything worked on Anabelle. Smiling and giving compliments were the biggest failures. For example, I told her I liked the shirt she was wearing, and she ran upstairs to change. And each time I smiled at her, she asked me what the heck was wrong with me. They say the definition of insanity is doing the same thing and expecting a different result. But for the sake of research I tried four times.”
“Maybe you’re smiling the wrong way,” Lucy said.
“What are you talking about? I smiled the way I always smile.”
“Show me,” Lucy said.
“This is ridiculous,” Theo said. But then he did force a smile onto his face.
“Hmm,” Lucy said. “Did you look at Anabelle like that when you were trying to hug her?”
Theo didn’t answer.
“It’s just,” she went on, “you look like you’re in pain. Doesn’t he, Chloe?”
“You don’t exactly look happy,” I admitted.
“I would’ve been concerned, too, if you looked at me like that,” Lucy said. “And if you tried to hug me like that, well.” She shook her head. “I think you should try again. Think of something really special and wonderful, like discovering a trunk full of vintage clothes in the attic, and then smile.”
“Special and wonderful are two more things that are subject-specific,” Theo said. “But that’s not even relevant. Please look at item number five.”
We looked.
“My sister despises dish duty,” Theo said. “The rule my parents have is that we take turns. Originally, my mom suggested that Anabelle and I do the dishes together every night, but Anabelle wouldn’t have it. The only thing she hates more than dishes is the idea of doing them with me. So that’s why we switch off. On her nights, Anabelle is always trying to talk her way out of it. Luckily, my parents are impervious to her complaints.”
I didn’t know what impervious meant, but I had a general idea of what Theo was saying.
“Last night it was her turn,” he went on. “Anabelle said she was too full, she said she was too tired. She said it was unfair because my dad had made two side dishes, and now there were extra plates to wash. I said, ‘I’ll take care of it this time.’”
“Was she so happy?” I asked.
“She was so confused,” Theo said. “My dad told her not to look a gift horse in the mouth, so she said thanks and ran out of the kitchen before I could change my mind. Later that night, Anabelle came into my room with a bar of chocolate. She keeps a bunch of them stashed in her room. She’s never offered to share before.”
“Wow,” I said. “So it definitely worked.”
“It’s too early to draw conclusions,” he said.
“What kind of chocolate bar was it?” Lucy asked
“Milk chocolate with caramel. I didn’t even eat it. I saved it in case we need it for evidence.”
“Evidence?” Lucy said. “What is this? A crime scene?”
“Scientific evidence,” Theo told her. “So, anyway, when we go back to Mrs. Gall—”
“Excuse me,” Lucy said. “Did you say we’re going back there?”
“Of course we are.”
“But didn’t you also say doing the same thing again and expecting a different result is the definition of insanity?” I asked.
“We won’t do the exact same thing,” Theo said. “We’ll find something that works.”
“I doubt she’ll let us into her house to do her dishes,” Lucy said. “She’d probably kill us if we tried!”
“Don’t worry,” Theo said. “We’re not going to do anything like it. We’re going to write a note.”
A nice note was number two on Theo’s list. “What will we write?” I asked. “Some kind of compliment?”
“I honestly can’t think of any to give her,” Lucy said.
“It doesn’t matter,” Theo said. “Because our note will be our offer to clean her yard up. Instead of taking her by surprise, we’ll let her know our intentions—and that those intentions are kind. Lucy can slip it in her mailbox.”
“If only she had one,” Lucy said. “The houses on my street have slots in the front door.”
“Okay, you’ll slip it in there,” Theo said.
“Oh, no,” Lucy said. “I’ll just mail it.”
“Then we have to wait for it to go all the way to the post office, just to be delivered back to her door, and we don’t have that kind of time.”
“So you expect me to go on her property again.”
“Yes,” Theo said. “Today, if possible.”
Lucy audibly gulped. “Okay.”
“I can go with you,” I offered.
“Well, that’s unexpected,” Theo said.
“Unexpected?” I said. I couldn’t believe it—that Theo thought it was unexpected that I’d help Lucy. Though I guessed I deserved it. “I’ll really go this time. I don’t have an It Girls’ meeting until tomorrow.”
“I wasn’t talking about you,” Theo said. “I was talking about Anabelle. She just waved to me.” He lifted his hand to wave back. “She’s never done that before.”
I breathed a sigh of relief and turned to wave to Anabelle, too. So did Lucy. “Speaking of things that are unexpected,” Lucy said. “I think it’s time for the surprises now.”
She opened up a flap on her fanny pack and pulled out three squares of felt. “I made us club patches,” she said. “You don’t know this, Chloe. But I used to make patches all the time.”
Lucy handed one to Theo and one to me. They were yellow, and the edges weren’t frayed at all. Instead there was blue piping all around, and in the middle green letters stitched in that spelled out The Kindness Club. Underneath the letters, Lucy had stitched some shapes, like a fancy kind of underline.
“You sewed these?” I asked incredulous, and Lucy nodded. “I can’t even mend a hole. Those letters must’ve taken all night.”
“They practically did,” she said.“And I like the pentagons,” I added.“Hexagons,” Theo corrected. “Pentagons have five sides and hexagons have six.”“Okay, hexagons,” I said. There were two of them put together, with lines coming out of either side.“I googled what serotonin looks like,” Lucy explained. “It’s like having a club logo.”
“Wow,” I said. “They look really professional. Like something you could buy in a store.”
“Thanks,” Lucy said. I could tell she was pleased. “You don’t have to wear them. I just wanted you to have them.”
“I’ll wear it,” Theo said.
“Even though it’s not khaki?” Lucy asked. “What if someone sees you wearing it and thinks you’re the kind of person who won’t pay his taxes?”
“You can wear colors and still pay your taxes,” Theo said.
“Did you hear that, Chloe?” Lucy asked. “I think Theo learned something from us for a change!”
We were fist-bumping each other, à la Mr. Dibble, when Monroe walked up. “Hey, guys,” she said. She winked at me, which made me feel like she was there because I’d signaled her. Which I hadn’t done. I hadn’t raised my hand at all, except to wave to Anabelle.
Oh, right, I’d waved to Anabelle. Monroe probably thought I had been signaling her.
“Hey, Chloe,” she said. “How’s the meeting?”
“It’s good,” I said.
“It’s great,” Lucy told her.
Monroe reached in front of me and picked up Lucy’s patch. “What’s this?” she asked.
“Accessories for our club,” Lucy told her.
“Your club?”
“Our science project,” I told her.
“Lucy made you patches for it?”
“Uh-huh,” I said.
“Well,” Monroe said. “That’s . . . interesting.” She dropped my patch back down on the table, the right corner slightly creased from where she’d been pinching it. “So, Chloe, I just came over to tell you that you should come over after school.”
“Well, I . . .”
“Rachael and Anjali are coming,” Monroe said. “My mom will be home, and she really wants to meet you.”
“She does?” I asked.
“Of course.”
I looked at Lucy. I looked back at Monroe. I felt pained. “The only thing is, I just told Lucy I’d help her with something for our project after school.”
“You can do it another day though, right?” Monroe asked. “You know my mom isn’t home every day.”
“It’s okay if you want to go,” Lucy told me.
“That settles it then,” Monroe said. “Is your meeting done? If so, you should come back to our table with me—ours is just getting started.”
“Almost,” I said. “I’ll meet you over there.”
Monroe walked away, and I gathered up my stuff and said good-bye to Lucy and Theo. “I’m really sorry about this afternoon,” I told Lucy.
“It’s no problem,” Lucy said. “I know you want to be kind to Monroe. I figured that’s why you went to the movie when you were sick.”
“Yeah,” I said. My stomach did a somersault. “That was why.”
“Just don’t be so kind that you forget all your scientific obligations,” Theo said.
“Oh, Theo,” Lucy said. “You worry too much. We still have a week left.”
“We need Mrs. Gallagher to respond to the note,” he reminded her. “And we need to time to rethink things if she doesn’t. But it’s okay. I’ll go with you on my way home.”
“Chloe!” Monroe called.
“Go on,” Lucy said. “We’ve got this.”
“Thanks, guys.”