Beverly Quarter Chapter 22
MABA 2025 starts soon. Sign up here! MABA is Make America Burpee Again, the annual challenge in which participants do 100 burpees a day every day in January. The theme is Fall down. Get back up. Together. Watch: The point is to end loneliness because you can’t be lonely if you’re doing burpees outside with your friends.
Last year, 1,200 men, women and children on seven continents did 3 million burpees. We will beat those totals (well, except the continents) this year, right?
On Tuesdays, I’m using this newsletter to publish a book called Beverly Quarter: Invisible Frenemy. It’s got nothing to do with the rest of the content of this newsletter. I mean, for real: It doesn’t even contain the word burpee. But I think you’ll like it.
I wrote it to make my kids laugh, their friends laugh, and their parents laugh. I’m guessing most of you have kids, or know kids, or were kids, so you’re my target audience. I explain the book’s backstory here.
Give this chapter a read. If you like it, read it to your kids, their friends, their friends’ parents, random strangers on the street, etc.
I’ll keep publishing the newsletter as usual on Thursdays. This will just be bonus content. Links to previous chapters are below.
Chapter 22
Nobody said anything in the car. Sally’s dad’s phone made about 1,126 noises for 1,126 texts. Sally was dying to know what each and every one said but she was smart enough, for once, not to ask. He finally picked it up, shut it off and slammed it down. Sally hated being yelled at. She hated not being yelled at even more. Even Beverly Quarter, sitting next to her, was quiet. For the first time. EVER.
They pulled into the garage and walked inside. Her dad spoke for the first time. “Go upstairs. Brush your teeth. Put on your PJs. Then come right back down here. I don’t want to hear a single word out of you between now and then.”
She ran upstairs to do all of that. She heard snippets of a conversation.
“What was all of that on your phone?” her mom said.
“I don’t know, I’m checking now. … Holy cow. I got a million texts. All some variation of hilarious or LOL or OMG.”
He threw it across the room onto the couch.
“I need better friends.”
Sally did not hear him laugh after that because he stifled it as best he could.
Sally tried not to stall but she wasn’t in a hurry, either. She knew she was in big trouble. She wanted to get it over with and avoid it in equal measure. Finally she trudged downstairs and sat on the couch. Her dad was already there. Her mom was in a chair on the other side of the room. It was worse than the pasta incident and the chocolate chip cookie dough debacle combined.
“I have had enough of you blaming Beverly Quarter for everything,” her dad said. “It’s time for you to take responsibility for your own actions. It’s time for you to stop blaming other people, especially invisible people …”
Suddenly there was a noise that sounded like a whoosh and a pop at the same time, sort of like when you open a soda can only louder and more distinct. And there, sitting on the couch, between Sally and her dad, was Beverly Quarter. Which was utterly normal from Sally’s point of view and utterly shocking from everybody else’s because now, for the first time ever, her mom and dad could see her.
Sally’s mom screamed. Her dad said one of those words he wouldn’t let Sally say. And then everybody was deathly quiet, except for Beverly Quarter. She was sobbing uncontrollably.
Whether Beverly Quarter made herself visible on purpose or it happened by some mysterious magic, nobody ever knew for sure, not even Beverly Quarter.
Sally’s dad stopped swearing long enough to look long and hard at Beverly Quarter. As he did so, he absentmindedly rubbed his hand over the scar on his leg. She looked, he thought, strangely familiar. Like he had seen her before.
The scene almost became normal, but normal probably isn’t the right word. If you didn’t know what was going on, yes, it looked ordinary. It looked like not one but two little girls being chastised by their parents. But this was far from ordinary. For an invisible little girl had suddenly appeared, and now she was talking out loud, and everybody could hear her as well as see her.
“I’m sorry I ruined the dance recital,” Beverly Quarter said. “I’m sorry, Sally, that I made you be mean to everybody.”
Sally’s mom interjected. “You didn’t make her do anything. She is in control of her own—“
Beverly Quarter acted like she didn’t hear her. She kept apologizing. “I’m sorry about what happened to your dad’s CD coll—
“WHAT?”
Beverly Quarter kept going.
“I’m sorry I talked you into putting cream cheese in the DVD player …”
“WHAT?” her dad yelled.
“I’m sorry I—“
“WHAT!! Why is this the first I—“
“Focus, Dad, focus!”
“It’s not my fault, I promise, it’s not my fault. Uncle Nailglue kidnapped my father and he said the only way he would let him out is if I ruined the recital.”
She paused for a second and looked at Sally’s dad. “He said he wanted to humiliate both of you. But now he wants me to trick you into going to Imaginary Land. I told him I won’t do that. I can’t do that.”
She looked around nervously, like she was looking for someone. Sally had never seen her like this. “He’s probably going to do try to get you there without me. Whatever you do, don’t go near The Adventure.”
“What?” Sally said. “What’s wrong with The Adventure? And what’s Imaginary World?”
“It’s where I live when I’m not with you. The Adventure has a portal—no, STOP, DON’T TOUCH ME LEAVE ME AL—“
She never finished that sentence.
No sooner had those last words left her lips than she disappeared. Now, to be sure, Beverly Quarter came and went from Sally’s life all the time. But this was different. Usually Beverly Quarter faded away, like when a song ends. Usually (but not always) she said good-bye, in some form or fashion. Usually she left. But this was like she was yanked away. This time she just blipped out of existence, like an overhead light when the power goes out.
Her disappearance was somehow even more shocking than her appearance.
She left behind a living room in chaos. Sally’s mom screamed again. Sally’s dad said not just one but all of those words he won’t let Sally say, in succession, over and over again. When he finally stopped swearing, he started muttering to himself, “I know that face,” he said. “How do I know that face?”
“WAIT A SECOND!” he said suddenly.
“What did you say her dad’s name was?”
“What?” Sally said.
“That time we went to the park. You asked me to text him. What was his first name?”
“I don’t remember.”
Her dad looked through his phone.
“I knew it. His name was Corder Quarter. Why didn’t I realize this before?’
“Realize what?”
“Corder Quarter. I knew him. He was my invisible friend. I haven’t thought about him in 30 years. He must be Beverly Quarter’s dad. She looks exactly like him. And what did she say—that he’s been kidnapped?”
Tears were still wet on Sally’s cheeks. She somehow was now the only calm one in the room. She wiped her face.
“Beverly Quarter is in trouble,” she said. “We have to save her.”
Love this story twist!!