“Thanks for the bag of muffins.” Quinn waved goodbye to Mr. Standers, who stood on his front porch and blew a kiss to his daughter as Neally and Quinn set off for Quinn’s house.
“Mickey loves muffins. Mickey loves anything she can chew. She’ll be so excited for the treat she might forget about not getting to come to your house and see your cats.”
“She can come over next time,” Neally said. “She can have Sam’s muffin too, if he’s a no-show again. What did he say when you called?”
“He said he can’t find his piano books, and that he’ll meet us later at my house. I didn’t know you lived so close; you’re just three blocks away.” Quinn looked up at the soft, silvery clouds and shifted his book pack to his other shoulder. “Think it’s gonna rain?”
“Yep.” Neally lifted her hands, as if to push up the sky. “Sooner or later, it always does.”
No one responded to Quinn’s I’m home! when he and Neally opened the front door. “Mom’s probably out back. You can leave your jacket here.” Quinn dropped his pack on a wooden bench in the entryway. “I’ll show you Mickey’s room, upstairs. That’s where the rodents are.”
Neally bounded up the stairs. “I’ve always wanted a hamster, or a guinea pig. I’d settle for a mouse, but Mom says Yin and Yang would find a way to break into the cage, and the mouse would soon be mincemeat.”
It was neither Quinn’s hamster nor Mickey’s rat that caught Neally’s attention when she entered Mickey’s room. “Fantabulous!” She pointed to the wall by the closet, where a quilt hung from a wooden rod nailed across the top of the wall. The quilt covered the entire wall, down to the carpet. The quilt’s background was a pink cotton cloth, with an overlay pattern composed of a series of interlocking circles made from patches of multicolored fabrics.
“Grandma Andrews, my dad’s mom, made it for me before I was born,” Quinn said. “See how the circles overlap? That’s called a double wedding ring, which is a famous quilt pattern. We call this the Hamster Patch Quilt. Grandma told dad she knew his first child would be a girl ...”
“Ha! What’d I tell you? Adults think they know everything, even when they’re wrong.”
“... so she made the quilt’s background pink.”
“Why is it the Hamster Patch Quilt? The circles don’t look like hamsters.”
“I used to keep the cage on a table at the end of my bed. One day, Peppy the First ...”
“The First?”
“All of our hamsters have been named Peppy. It’s a tradition. Anyway, I used to have the quilt for a bedspread, and one morning I threw the covers back too far, and Peppy reached through the bars of his cage and got hold of the quilt. When I got home from school, Mom said I had to check out the fanciest hamster nest in the world. A bunch of colored shreds were mixed in with the wood shavings in his cage; Peppy had made his nest from parts of the quilt he’d chewed off! He was so proud of what he’d done. He kept running onto his wheel and then back to his nest, to make sure I saw it.”
“You have to be kidding me.”
“I kid you not.” Quinn pointed to a corner of the quilt where a pink patch of cloth covered a segment where two rings intersected. “Mom made this patch, to fix the part Peppy chewed up.”
“The Hamster Patch Quilt,” Neally murmured. She ran her hand over the small pink patch. “It’s even cooler this way than if it was whole and perfect, because now there’s a story about it.”
“I know.” Quinn grinned so hard his face ached. “I love that story.”
“It’s a fantabulous quilt,” Neally said. “It’s a quilt ... for all infinity.”
Quinn’s eyes widened.
“Infinity is a great word.” Neally smiled saucily. “But if your grandma made the quilt for you, why is it in Mickey’s room?”
“Grandma made quilts for all her grandkids, but she died before Mickey was born.”
“So you gave your quilt to Mickey? That was nice of you.”
“Well, it’s pink.”
“Well, duh. Do you like it?”
“Sure. It’s a great quilt.”
“It’s just a color, you know,” Neally said. “I don’t care for pink, either—I’m more into dark colors, like green and purple. But it’s not like colors can zap your chromosomes. I don’t understand why some boys act like they’re afraid of pink.”
“I’m not afraid of pink. If I was, I’d be afraid of Alice’s eyes.” Quinn pointed at the rat cage.
“Yes!” Neally reached for the cage door. “I can hold her, right?”
“My mom hates rats,” Neally said gleefully. “She says their tails look like freeze-dried snakes. Hey Alice, your whiskers tickle my hands!” Alice crawled up Neally’s arm and perched on her shoulder. “Yin and Yang would really go for her. For a midnight snack, I mean. I’m sorry my dad wouldn’t let me wake them when we were at my place. Afternoon is their nap time.”
“That’s okay. They were awesome just to look at.” Quinn let Alice sniff his finger. “Siamese are the best cats.”
“They’re not pure Siamese, which is a good thing, because they don’t have those creepy meows that sound like someone’s pinching a howler monkey,” Neally said. “Mom says they’ve got just enough Siamese in them to make them too smart for their own good. They can open drawers, and even the front door screen. Sometimes Yin drags the newspaper to the back porch in the morning, and then Yang shreds it.”
“If you want a pet to fetch the paper, you need a dog.” Quinn put Alice back in her cage.
“Who wants to teach anything to fetch?” Neally asked.
Quinn turned his attention to the hamster cage. “I wish we had a dog. I’d like a big one, an Irish setter or an Alaskan husky, not a little yippy dog.” He stuck his finger through the bars and spun the wheel. “Have you ever had a dog?”
“We had a chocolate Lab puppy. He was cute, but dumb as a box of crayons. He’d get loose and run out into the street and chase passing cars.” The muscles in Neally’s face curved as if she was telling a joke, but her voice was small and serious. “Then, one day, he caught one.”
“Oh.”
“I think Dad would like for us to have another dog. He loves all kinds of animals. But Mom doesn’t care for dogs. They grovel, you know.”
“Grovel?”
“It’s like begging. Dogs do whatever you want, because they want you to be nice to them. It’s so ... desperate. Kind of like Tay. Mom says she doesn’t respect people who grovel, so why would she want that in an animal? Hey, is Mickey outside with your mom?”
“Probably.” Quinn looked out the window, and indeed, Mickey and his mother were weeding the ground by the azalea plants. “What do you mean, ‘like Tay?’ About the groveling stuff.”
“Sorry.” Neally sounded anything but sorry. “I’ve noticed how Tay acts tough with you and Sam, then he’s all loose and wiggly when Matt is around. It’s obvious he wants Matt to like him.”
“So?” Quinn turned from the window. “Let’s go downstairs.”
“So ...” Neally paused. “I guess it would make anyone’s life easier, to have Matt like them.”
“Tay’s having a sleepover at his house on Friday. Sam’s going too.” Quinn stopped at the top of the stairway, and Neally almost bumped into his back. “Last year Sam’s dad said that Tay was a ‘fair-weather friend.’ Sam’s dad likes the weather, but I don’t think that was a compliment.”
“Will Matt be at the sleepover?”
“Tay had to invite Matt. His parents made him invite his entire Scout troop.” Quinn lowered his eyes, as if speaking to his shoes. “I’m invited, but I don’t know if I’ll go. I’ve never done a sleepover all the way. I tried a few times at Sam’s, but I had to call my dad to come get me. I can’t sleep at sleepovers. There’s too much noise, and ...”
And Quinn missed sleeping in his own bed, but he wasn’t going to tell Neally that. He missed the way his blankets smelled, like the flowers his mother planted by the back fence. He missed the sound of the hamster wheel spinning in Mickey’s room. He missed knowing his parents were down the hall and would wake up if the house caught on fire. He even missed his sister’s snoring—a wheezy, chuckling sound, as if she were giggling in her sleep.
“Sleepovers are over, all right,” Neally declared. “Over-rated, if you ask me. I’ll show you a yoga breathing trick my dad taught me. I use it whenever I need to calm down or have trouble sleeping. Did I tell you the idea my dad has for the community service project?”
“Only about ten times while your dad was bagging the leftover muffins for us.”
“We’ll get to spend a day outside, digging in the mud. I’ll wait until Sam gets here to tell the details—oh, hold on, idea alert! Let’s put the muffins out with glasses of milk and act like we don’t know where they came from. We’ll tell Mickey that the muffin fairy visited your house.”
