The Quirks, Welcome to Normal Read Online Free Page A

imagination, there was a real tiger in their classroom! It was tiny, but its teeth were terrifying.
    Penelope scrambled forward to stand in a spot where she could block the tiger from the rest of the room. She mouthed “I’m sorry!” to Molly, while her eyes darted to the other
kids in the class. No one was looking her way, but certainly someone would be soon. This was one of those times when the Quirks had to hope people weren’t paying very close attention at
all.
    The tiger stumbled around on top of the desk. Molly stared at her sister, then at the tiger. She was almost sure the tiger winked at her. “Do something,” Molly whispered, leaning
over to speak directly into her sister’s ear. There was a din of activity in the room, making it impossible for Penelope to focus on any one thing. Conversations swirled around her, voices of
strangers making her more and more nervous by the second. “Pen! Focus on something else.”
    Someone across the room dropped a book on the floor. Everyone turned to look. For a single moment, the room went silent. In that instant, Penelope released a huge sigh, and the tiger spun in two
small circles. Then it sat down on the top right corner of the desk and turned into a flattened sticker again. Penelope’s tiger sticker was now stuck to the desk right behind
Molly’s.
    Molly and Penelope exchanged a look. Everyone in the room went back to their conversations, happily unaware of what Penelope had done. Pen smiled, pleased with herself. She had accidentally
switched around their teacher’s desk assignments so she could sit right behind her sister. “No problem,” she said proudly. “And now we can sit together!”
    “Uh, Pen?” Molly said under her breath. “Where’d the mouse sticker go? The one that
was
on this desk?”
    A mouse sticker with the name Norah written on it had been stuck to the desk behind Molly’s. Molly got a sick feeling in her stomach. Penelope squeezed her eyes closed.
    Stella turned her attention back to Molly and Penelope at exactly that moment. She watched as Penelope tucked her legs under the desk right behind Molly, trying to get comfortable. “Oh!
That’s weird,” Stella said. “I was sure I saw your name on the desk in the back, Penelope! But I guess you’re here, right behind Molly. This is going to be so much fun, all
of us sitting together.”

    Penelope grinned at Stella. “I know,” she said happily.
    Molly tried to smile, too, but her lips got stuck and she let out a little squeal instead. Because there was a live mouse with the name Norah written on its back running straight toward
Stella’s leg.

S t e l l a s c reamed and jumped onto her desk chair and
generally freaked out the way almost anyone would if there were a mouse loose in a classroom. Meanwhile, Molly hustled Pen out of room six and squirreled her away in a stall in the empty
girls’ bathroom.
    “You’ve got to get it together!” Molly cried, shaking her sister’s shoulders. Penelope refused to look at her. As Molly tried to get her sister’s attention, a small
submarine started to emerge from inside the toilet in their stall. It popped up above the water, reaching out of the toilet bowl like a big metal sea creature.
    Molly screeched, watching as the submarine grew larger and larger. Thankfully, she and Pen were in the handicapped stall—the extra space made it possible to fit in there with
Penelope’s imagination. “Are you thinking about trying to escape our first day of school in a toilet-bowl submarine?” Molly gasped as she realized what exactly was poking out of
the toilet. “What would even make you think about that? That’s a disgusting idea! And you would never fit through the pipes!”

    Penelope started to cry, and the submarine sunk back down into the toilet bowl again, before eventually disappearing. “Maybe I should have just stayed home with Finn,” she whispered
through slurpy tears. “I can’t do this. I’m ruining