Beverly Quarter Chapter 26
One more chapter after this one!
MABA 2025 started Wednesday. There’s still time to 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.
In 2024, 1,200 men, women and children did 3 million burpees. We have a chance to beat those numbers. But we’ll have to get to work—and soon.
Also: You're not going to do 3,100 burpees and not buy a shirt, are you?
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 26
Step after step Sally climbed up the stairs of The Imaginary World’s Real Slide of Death That Could Kill You AND Take Your Life At The Same Time But You Should Ride Anyway Because It’s Fun (The Slide We Mean Not Dying). She had never been so high in her life. The few times she looked down, she thought she was going to pass out. But she kept going, up, up, up. She stopped at about the 800 feet mark, set down her backpack, and pulled out a dog-eared book (Great Parks and the Rules that Govern Them: An Annotated History). She was bored with climbing so she read for a while. She got bored of that book so she pulled out her Sudoku book, and then a crossword puzzle book, then she finished knitting mittens after which she took a short nap. When she woke up, she finished the book she had been reading, then she re-read it again. Then, sufficiently entertained, she was ready to resume the chase.
She started climbing again, and an hour later she reached the top. There, standing in front of the entrance to the Imaginary World’s Real Slide of Death That Could Kill You AND Take Your Life At The Same Time But You Should Ride Anyway Because It’s Fun (The Slide We Mean Not Dying), was Uncle Nailglue. He wore a black mask over his face. He stood upright but had an alligator’s body. He had alligator’s arms but foam hands, like the ones people wave around at football games. He wore enormous red clown shoes on his feet. He was terrifying to behold.
Sally was unimpressed.
“You’re Uncle Nailglue? You look like a little boy’s nightmare!”
He spun around and said in a menacing voice. “How’s this for a nightmare?”
Her dad was strapped across his back like a backpack. Sweat poured out of his forehead. He was shaking and stammering. “He-h-h-h-e w-w-w-w-as my n-n-n-n-ightmare! Every night the summer of Corder Quarter! I never knew he was real. Look at his hands! They’re horrifying!”
“Horrifying and your fault!” Uncle Nailglue bellowed.
“I know. And I’m sorry. I really and truly am.”
Suddenly a sheet came down from the top of the pagoda over the slide and Uncle Nailglue pulled out a movie projector and started playing a film.
It was a grainy black and white movie of kids playing on a slide. Sally recognized her father in it. He appeared to be about 10. He was at the top of the slide. He wavered there. He was talking to someone … someone invisible. “There’s nobody there!” her dad’s young voice shouted. “It’ll be fine!”
Her dad threw himself down the slide, but halfway down, he came to a screeching halt, as if he had hit a brick wall.
Uncle Nailglue paused the movie. “It was you!” her dad yelled. He was talking to Uncle Nailglue. “I ran into you! That wasn’t an accidental shoe stop, like everyone said. I ran into you!”
“SILENCE!” Uncle Nailglue sounded like Darth Vader and Mufasa from the Lion King combined. “You broke my hands, and in Imaginary world, that means I have been forced to have foam hands ever since. You broke my feet and all they had left to replace them with was clown feet. You ruined my life.”
“But it wasn’t my fault,” her dad said. “I couldn’t see you. I didn’t even know until Sally was rescuing Corder Quarter that it was you.”
“My brother tried to stop you. I heard him, and so did you, and you went down anyway.”
Uncle Nailglue turned to face Sally. “You’re just a cowardly little girl,” Uncle Nailglue said. “Just like your dad was a cowardly little boy.”
“What?” her dad said. “No I wasn’t. And how would you even know? You never even met me. Let me off of your back and I’ll show you what a coward I am, Captain Foam Hands.”
“SILENCE AGAIN! Captain Foam Hands? What are you, 10? And shut up anyway. I’m here for Sally to get revenge on you, although since we’re all here together, I suppose I could just get revenge on both of you.”
He paused and stroked his chin, as if he suddenly had an idea.
“Hold on a sec.”
He pulled a battered paperback book out of his pocket. It was called, “101 Steps to Being A Great Invisible Villain.” He had crossed out “Invisible Villain” and wrote “Invisillain” with a smile facey where the dots on the “i”s were supposed to be. He scanned through the table of contents and then the index. “Dang,” he said to himself. “It doesn’t say what to do in this situation.”
He used his big voice again. “I WILL GET REVENGE ON BOTH OF YOU!”
“Um, Uncle Nailglue?” Sally said. “I don’t mean to tell you your business. But you’re not really getting revenge on me. I never did anything to you for which you would get revenge. You’re really just starting something with me.”
“FINE!” Uncle Nailglue said. “I’ll never understand how you’re so bossy but won’t go down a dang slide. Seriously, you have the guts to stand up to me, a super villain, excuse me, an Invisillain, but you can’t play on the playground? Anyway, where was I? Oh yes. You only went down the Slide of Death because Beverly pushed you. You only stood up to the bully because Beverly told you to. You only took dance lessons—“
“Again,” Sally said, “I’m not trying to pick on you. But her name is Beverly Quarter. Not Beverly. Not Quarter. Beverly Quarter. Almost like it’s one word.”
“You know what?” Uncle Nailglue said. “You are annoying me so much that I think now I can call what I’m going to do to you revenge. Where was I? Oh, yeah. You only went down the Slide of Death because Beverly QUARTER pushed you. You only stood up to the bully because Beverly QUARTER told you to. You only took dance lessons—“
“All right, all right, we get the picture. You talk too much, anybody ever tell you that?” Sally said. She looked at her dad and winked. Oh my gosh, he thought. She is putting her power of backtalk to good use! THAT’S MY GIRL!
“Again with the bossy-bossy! Sally—“
Uncle Nailglue suddenly grew silent as Sally sank to her knees. She was sobbing. “He’s right,” she said to her dad. “He’s right. I’ll never be able …”
Suddenly Beverly Quarter was standing next to her. “It wasn’t me, Sally, it was you! You had the guts to ride the Slide of Death! You had the courage to act like a tiger! You learned to control the laundry basket to make it down the stairs without crashing—“
“WHAT?” her dad said. “REALLY?!”
He couldn’t help himself. He reached out as if to high five her but couldn’t reach. “When did you do that?”
“Last Tuesday, Dad. I made it in 6.8 seconds. Not only did I make it down without crashing, but I never even scraped the wall. I mean, that’s how you don’t know; I left no evidence. BUT YOU HAVE TO FOCUS!”
Beverly Quarter resumed her pep talk. “But Sally, I didn’t make you screw up the dance recital. You made that decision and all the rest, all the good things and the bad things we did together. All I did was show you that you could do it if you wanted. I showed you that you had the freedom to make choices, good or bad.”
Beverly Quarter went on like that for about two hours. She said some choices that seemed bad were actually good and vice versa. She quoted some guy named Augustine and another named Bonhoeffer. Sally slept through most of it. But she woke up and suddenly remembered she was supposed to be rescuing her dad. She looked across the platform. Uncle Nailglue had left it and was running down the slide, whether it was to escape Sally’s wrath or Beverly Quarter’s boring monologue, nobody ever could say for sure. He was getting away—and he still had Sally’s dad strapped across his back like a backpack. A few more steps, and they might be both gone forever. Sally grabbed the bar at the top of the slide.
“I don’t think this is a good idea …” she said and looked over at Beverly Quarter, who smiled so big Sally could see into her mouth, down her throat and into her stomach … which revealed she had eaten nearly as many grapes as Sophie. “I think this is a GREAT idea!”
Sally propelled herself forward. As she zipped down the slide, she made a mental note of how many rules she was breaking. She compiled a list of 72. She was going so fast sparks flew out from her bottom. There was an enormous popping noise as she crossed the speed of sound.
Upon hearing that, Uncle Nailglue stopped his descent and turned around. He ran up the slide toward Sally. He pulled a sword out of his sheath. It kept coming and coming, like a clown pulling handkerchiefs out of his pocket. When it was finally fully out, it was 27 feet long. Somehow he held it over his head as he charged up the slide toward Sally.
Barreling down the slide at top speed, Sally gritted her teeth and said, “up the ladder, down the slide.”
Uncle Nailglue lifted his sword to strike.
“I SAID UP THE LADDER, DOWN THE SLIDE,” Sally yelled. Four feet from impact, she slammed on the brakes. Uncle Nailglue leapt to attack.
She ducked, and he went flying over the side. She screamed in terror, worried her dad had just fallen to his death. Then she saw his fingers, barely gripping the edge. He pulled himself up and sat on the slide. They hugged.
She was in front of him and he was behind her. They were maybe 10 percent of the way down. “Finally, we get to slide together,” she said.
“But Sally,” her dad said, “isn’t that against the rules? ‘One person at a time,’ and all that?”
“Nope,” she said.
“Are you sure?”
“Dad, I’m the only little girl in the world who reads the rules. Trust me. This isn’t on there. It’s an oversight that was later corrected in the Council of Kolitzheim, a meeting of park administra—”
“JUST GO!” her dad yelled.