Beverly Quarter Chapter 6
On Tuesdays, I’m using this newsletter to publish a book called Beverly Quarter: Invisible Frenemy. I have been unsuccessful in trying to sell it to a traditional publisher. But I’m proud of it, and I don’t want it to just sit in my computer forever.
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.
The Accidental Adventurer: Make America Burpee Again is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
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.
Chapter 6
“WHAT ARE YOU DOING?” Sally’s dad thundered, as he arrived at the bottom of the stairs. This was one of those questions grownups ask but don’t need to. He didn’t expect an answer. Because while he hadn’t seen what Sally was doing, he didn’t need to see it. He already knew what she was doing. All the evidence was readily available:
1. An incredible racket, like somebody dropped a tool box off of a high shelf, had just happened.
2. Sally was sprawled across a laundry basket, half in it, and half out of it.
3. The laundry basket was at the bottom of the stairs.
Ergo, Sally had just ridden the laundry basket down the stairs. Back to her dad’s question. He asked it again: “What are you doing?”
“Nothing!” Sally said.
Technically, at that very second, this was, true. But given the evidence, this was a ridiculous answer.
“You could have seriously hurt yourself! What were you thinking?”
This was another question for which he expected no answer. So Sally did not give one. She ran back upstairs. Beverly Quarter was there. She had made Sally promise not to tell her parents she was there. She said she wasn’t ready to meet them yet, and that it wasn’t lying for Sally not to tell them that she was there.
“I told you I shouldn’t have done that!” Sally said to her.
“So?” Beverly Quarter said.
That’s what she always said when Sally yelled at her.
“Well now I’m in trouble!”
“So?”
Her dad stood at the bottom of the stairs. He hadn’t heard any of that. He picked up the laundry basket and pushed in the sides, as if he was testing its durability. He thought, but did not say, that the sides needed to be reinforced if Sally was ever going to figure out how to steer it better and not crash at the end. He yelled up to her.
“You need to go outside before you hurt yourself in here. It stopped raining so there’s no reason for you to be indoors.”
He went back into the kitchen to “read the newspaper.” Sally and Beverly Quarter went out the front door unseen. They walked over to the park and sat at the top of the Slide of Death. Sally had gone down that slide so many times by now that its novelty had worn off.
She was bored.
What she really wanted was another ride down the stairs. It had taken Beverly Quarter two hours to talk her into trying it. And once she did try, she wanted to go again and again.
She felt like she handled the turn poorly, and that if she navigated it properly—waited longer to lean into it, and kept her balance better when she did—she could set a new personal best time. She thought maybe the sides were a little bit flimsy, and that was why it didn’t steer properly. But she also knew that now that she had been caught, she should probably never ride a laundry basket down the stairs again.
At least not until her parents let her stay home alone.
“I know what we can do,” Sally said suddenly. “Let’s go on The Adventure.”
“What’s that?” Beverly Quarter asked.
“Come on. I’ll show you.”
Sally slid down the slide, turned left, and walked across the sidewalk that forms a loop around the park. She crossed a patch of grass and entered a small band of trees that covered a mound. The mound was maybe 150 yards long and 25 yards wide. It was really just a strip of trees in a common area separating the backyards of two rows of houses. But it was the closest thing to a forest in Whistlers Chase, and over the years the kids had explored that area so much it got its own nickname – hence The Adventure.
The people who lived on either side probably didn’t love the fact that kids were traipsing through their backyards. But nobody ever complained.
Sally ran to the top of the mound before she realized she was alone. She looked back. Beverly Quarter had gotten only as far as the sidewalk. She looked like she was walking across a beam and trying to keep her balance or she’d fall into molten lava. She wouldn’t take another step. “What’s the matter?” Sally asked.
“Oh, nothing,” Beverly Quarter said. “I didn’t know that was The Adventure.”
She bounced nervously from foot to foot. Sally thought, does she have to go to the bathroom?
“I just remembered something. I have to go.”
As Beverly Quarter ran off, Sally heard her talking, apparently to herself. “You never said anything about that. I’m not taking her anywhere near there and you can’t make me!”