Brave Warrior Read Free

unruly, tangly, not-quite-blond hair, and slowly moved downward: a faded black T-shirt from the play
A Chorus Line
with cracked gold foil letters and silhouettes of dancers holding top hats; jeans, also faded; lime-green Jack Purcells with yellow shoelaces on one sneaker and white shoelaces with tiny rainbows on the other.
    “
I
look weird?” he said.
    Maisie followed his gaze down to her shoes.
    “The rainbows,” she said, “are meant to be ironic.”
    Felix shrugged and went back to inspecting the bananas.
    Just yesterday during lunch, Avery Mason, who was famous for her hair, had leaned over and whispered, “Felix, how could you be twins with someone so strange?”
    And Felix’s heart had done a strange, confused tumble. He knew he should stick up for his sister. He should tell Avery Mason that Maisie wasn’t strange, just eccentric. He should defend her unique character, explain that once you got to know her, you would be impressed by how smart she was and excited by her adventurous spirit.
    But instead, he had said, “Maybe they mixed up the babies at the hospital.” After he said it, his mouth tasted like chalk.
    Now Felix sighed and rejected both bananas.
    “I mean,” Maisie was saying, “you have a shirt with a pony on it.”
    Felix chose to ignore her. He began to examine the oranges in the bowl on the counter. A perfect orange was more soft than hard, but not too soft.
    “And it’s purple,” she said.
    “Uh-huh,” Felix said, because why argue about clothes of all things? Especially when he understood that Maisie wasn’t really mad about his shirt. She was jealous that he had friends. Lots of them. And that he won the student council election. And that he liked living in Newport. A lot. Maisie had chosen to keep one foot in the past, but Felix had decided tolive very much in the present.
    “You look,” she said slowly, “ridiculous.”
    “Duly noted,” Felix said. He squeezed an orange. This might be the right one.
    Their mother appeared in one of her rumpled business suits. She looked, Maisie thought, determined.
    “Good morning,” she said brightly. “How about a ride to school?”
    “What are you up to?” Maisie said.
    “Can’t I give you a ride to school without being up to something?” she said, rolling her eyes. “So cynical, my daughter is.”
    “As usual, everyone is picking on me,” Maisie said loudly. “Relentlessly.”
    In language arts yesterday, Mrs. Witherspoon had told them that adverbs were a sign of weak writing, so Maisie had decided to use as many adverbs as possible.
    Her mother narrowed her eyes. “Where in the world did you dig out that old thing?” she said, pointing to the T-shirt Maisie wore.
    “In the giveaway box,” Maisie said. “I can’t believe all the great stuff you were thoughtlesslyplanning on sending off to Goodwill.”
    Her mother waved her hand as if she were sweeping things away. “Be my guest,” she said.
    She glanced at her watch and announced if they wanted a ride, they had to leave.
    “I accept,” Maisie said. “Gratefully.”
    Felix groaned. Why couldn’t Maisie be even a little bit normal?

    “So,” their mother said as she drove down Bellevue Avenue, “I’m having dinner with Bruce Fishbaum tonight. And I will be very late.”
    Her eyes darted nervously to the rearview mirror, then back to the road.
    She cleared her throat.
    “This dinner,” she said, then she cleared her throat again.
    Maisie elbowed Felix hard in the ribs. He was looking over his math homework and hardly paying attention.
    “Ow!” he said, and elbowed her back.
    “Can you two please pay attention to what I’m about to say?” their mother said.
    “Oh, I’m paying attention,” Maisie said. Shesearched for the perfect adverb. “Attentively,” she said finally.
    “Paying attention attentively?” Felix repeated. “That’s redundant. And besides, Miss Landers says that adverbs are the weakest part of speech. You don’t whisper softly.