by Stout, Shawn
I can feel my ears start to sweat. “What’s the matter with you all? We didn’t finish looking at all the stuff in there!” I yell, pointing to the museum room.
Everybody stops. My words are a heavy blanket, one that has been kept in the corner of a basement and smells of mold. It covers the room and ruins everybody’s good fun.
Miss Stunkel grips the umbrella and then peers at me out of the corners of her eyeballs. She’s got a look on her face that says, Ready, Aim, Fire! But instead of hurling the umbrella at me, she just holds her chicken-bone finger in the air.
I nod to let her know I don’t want any trouble. After a long moment, she tucks her finger back inside her jumper pocket and slides the umbrella into the wooden barrel with all the others. Then she turns away from me to keep from having murdering thoughts.
I turn away, too, and that’s when I see Patsy Cline and Vera Bogg side by side at the jewelry counter, with their shoulders touching and their heads entirely too close together.
I wriggle between them, pushing them apart. “Everybody left me behind in there.” I point to the museum room. “There’s more to see, you know. Things that are more important than a gift shop.”
“Sorry,” says Patsy Cline.
But she doesn’t look sorry. And I’m about to tell her so when Vera dangles a small white sand dollar swinging from a chain in front of my nose. Engraved on it in deep letters are the words FRIENDS FOREVER. “Look what we got,” Vera says.
“We who?” And then I see the same necklace peeking out from underneath Patsy Cline’s frizzy hair.
Good gravy.
Before I can help myself, right then and there in the museum gift shop, I open my mouth as wide as it will go. And then I yell loud enough for even one-eared, Mangy Teddy to hear. “Doesn’t anybody care about dead people? Dead people are people, too!” And then I reach into my pockets, pull out all the money that I had emptied from my piggy bank that morning—fifteen dollars and fourteen cents, plus a Canadian penny—and find the museum’s donation box. “This,” I announce as I stuff the money into the slot, “is for dead people everywhere!”
3.
Mr. Drather swings open the door to the bus and says, “Back so soon?”
I climb inside and slide into my seat. He’s got the radio on a country-western music station, and there’s a man singing some sad song about good love gone bad.
He turns around in his seat. “Didn’t learn anything from the Fort McHenry incident, did you, kid?”
“No.”
“Guess not.” He unwraps a candy bar and breaks it in half before eating it. “Mary hurt again this time?”
“Mary who?” I say.
He picks at the corners of his mouth with his thumbnail. “Sorry. Miss Stunkel, I mean.”
My word. I didn’t even know that Miss Stunkel had a first name. “Miss Stunkel’s name is Mary? She doesn’t really look like a Mary.”
“What does a Mary look like?” he says.
“First of all,” I say, “a Mary doesn’t have a mean face, like she’s sucking on lemon seeds all the time. And she has nice eyes. The kind that when they look at you don’t wish you were dead.”
He must not know what to say to that, because he turns around in his seat and taps his fingers on the steering wheel.
I take out my drawing pad from my toolbox and draw a Mary who is not Miss Stunkel. When I finish, I take it to the front of the bus and show Mr. Drather.
“You draw pretty good,” he says.
“Want me to draw you?”
He shrugs. “Do I have to do anything more than what I’m doing right now?”
I say, “What are you doing right now?”
“Nothing,” he says.
And I tell him that’s just fine. I sit cross-legged on the floor by his seat and start drawing his wavy brown hair that’s real short on top and on the sides and real long in the back. “How much longer do you think they are going to be?”
“Who?” he says.
“You know, Mary. And the rest of my class.”
“Now, don’t you go calling her Mary,” he says. “She’s Miss Stunkel to you.”
“Okay, fine. When do you think Miss Stunkel and everybody else will be done in there?”
“Don’t know. A while more, I’d say.”
I get back to my drawing. “You’ve got a real nice round nose.”
“Think so?” He sniffs the air. “It’s been working all right for me so far.”
“That’s good.” I get to his chin, which has a big pucker in it. Like someone finger-poked a mound of wet clay and let it dry. I’m about to tell him this, but a song I know starts playing on the radio. “Patsy Cline!”
Mr. Drather gets a smile on his face that says, Thank You, Lord Above. And his chin pucker almost disappears. He turns up the volume to the radio. “How do you know Patsy Cline?”
I tell him how my best friend, Patsy Cline Roberta Watson, is named after Patsy Cline the dead country-western singer. And how Patsy Cline, my best friend, is also a singer who knows how to sing songs by Patsy Cline, the dead one. “Did you know she is dead?”
He nods. “I did.” Then he tells me that if I could be quiet for a minute, we might actually be able to hear her sing.
I keep on drawing while the song plays, and Mr. Drather even sings along in a couple of parts.
I’ve got your picture that you gave to me,
And it’s signed “with love,” just like it used to be.
The only thing different, the only thing new,
I’ve got your picture, she’s got you.
He’s not as good of a singer as Patsy Cline (either one), but he’s not the worst I’ve ever heard. One time I sat outside our bathroom listening to my brother, Terrible, sing in the shower. Do all aliens sound like roosters that have just had their tonsils taken out? Which is what I asked Terrible when he caught me listening. But he just punched me in the arm and I never heard him sing again.
After the song is over, Mr. Drather turns down the volume and sings the last verse again real loud. Then he stares out the front window of the bus for a long while.
I whisper, “Mr. Drather?”
Then he jumps a little like he’s forgotten he’s sitting inside a school bus. And that I’m here with him. His face turns red, all except for his chin pucker. “Right. Sorry.”
“That’s okay.” I decide to put a stage and a curtain and a microphone in my drawing, along with lots of musical notes. When I’m finished, I show him the drawing.
He doesn’t say anything at first, only takes in a deep breath and holds it. Then he touches one of the music notes with his fingertip.
“Well?” I say. “Do you like it? I put you on a stage. You know, because it seems to me that you like to sing.”
“I see that.” He clears his throat. “And I do.”
I tear off the page and hand it to him. “Here. You can have it, if you want.”
He nods at me and smiles. Then he rolls up the drawing, pulls a rubber band from around his wrist, and slides it over the drawing. With both hands, he tucks it into a bag by his seat. “So you never did say why you’re here.”
“What do you mean?” I say.
He jabs his thumb in the direction of the museum. “I mean, what did you do this time to get into trouble?”
“Oh, that,” I say. “I yelled and caused a disruption that interfered with our learning.” Which is how Miss Stunkel put it before she told me I’d earned an afternoon on the bus.
Mr. Drather raises his eyebrows at me.
So I tell him that all everybody was doing was fooling around in the gift shop anyway, which doesn’t involve any learning, so my yelling couldn’t have gotten in the way of that.
“What did you go and yell for in the firs
t place?”
“Because there was stuff in the museum that we skipped over,” I say. “Don’t you think we should remember those people?”
He shrugs. “I’ve never been much for museums myself. But I think there are plenty of people we should remember, even if their stuff doesn’t make it into a museum.” He pulls at his long hair. “But that’s why you yelled for real?”
I nod. “And also Patsy and Vera and their matching necklaces.”
Mr. Drather folds his arms across his chest. “Sounds to me like maybe you’re the one that was skipped over.”
And when I think about Patsy Cline, I think maybe he’s right.
4.
Miss Stunkel sends a note home. It’s the fifth one this year, but I’m hoping my mom isn’t keeping track.
I don’t have to read the note in order to know what it says.
Dear Mrs. Crumb,
Penelope just can’t seem to be able to keep her mouth shut. Especially when it comes to talking about dead things. Please see what you can do to keep her quiet in my class. Or else I may have to kill her with an umbrella.
Sincerely,
Miss Stunkel, who is a mean Mary
When I pull the envelope from my toolbox, my mom shakes her head and gives me a look that says, What Am I Going to Do With You? So I answer, “Get me a new fourth-grade teacher.”
She must not know what to say about that, because she puts her feet in our broken dryer, which she uses as a desk, and then stares off at the new drawing she’s working on. Mom draws pictures of people’s insides for books that doctors read. And this one is on brains.
I prop myself up against our washing machine next to her. “Is that what my brains look like? They have a lot of wrinkles.”
“Penelope Rae.” She has a way of saying my name like it’s one of the gross insides she draws. (Brain wrinkles, for example.)
I change the subject. “Did you know that the Portwaller History Museum caught on fire and some of the stuff in it burned all up?”
Mom is still reading Miss Stunkel’s note, so all she says is “humph” and then nothing else.
“Can I borrow fifteen dollars?”
That gets her attention. She stops reading and says, “Not on your life.”
“Why not?”
She says, “There are so many reasons why I shouldn’t give you fifteen dollars, I want to hear a reason why I should.”
“Because I want to buy something at the Portwaller History Museum. A necklace.”
She waves the note at me. “According to this, you were there today. Why didn’t you just buy it then? Too busy getting into trouble, I guess.” She folds up the note and sticks it back into the envelope. “Where’s all your money?”
But before I can tell her I gave it all to the museum, an alien attack is launched against me. From behind, Terrible flicks my ears, and when I lift up my hands to cover them, he gets me in my armpits. “Yeeow!”
Soon after my brother, Terrence, turned fourteen, he was snatched by aliens. The aliens returned him, but when they did, he wasn’t the same. He was Terrible. I’ve already written a letter to NASA about his alien ways, but until they write back, all I can do is keep a close watch on him.
Mom says, “Leave your sister alone.”
This is impossible for aliens to do.
“Have you seen my gray jacket?” he asks, flicking me again.
“I washed it,” says Mom. “It’s drying on the balcony.”
“You washed it! What for?” (Here’s a fact: Aliens like to smell bad.) Terrible gives my ears another flick and then steps over the piles of Mom’s schoolbooks and onto our tiny porch.
Mom slides a drawing pencil behind her ear and fingers Miss Stunkel’s note. “We’ll talk about this more after we meet with your teacher.”
“What do you mean? Why do we have to meet with her?” I take the note out of her hand and read it. The note doesn’t say anything about killing me with an umbrella, but it does say she wants to talk about my behavior. I keep reading.
“Hold the phone,” I say when I get to the part where Miss Stunkel says I often “exhibit odd behavior.” Odd? It’s not like I eat paste or dip my food in applesauce. “I don’t even like applesauce!” I announce. “And, cross my heart and hope to die, I haven’t eaten any glue since the time Angus Meeker bet me two dollars I didn’t have the guts!”
Mom tells me to hold it together and that she’s sure Miss Stunkel doesn’t think of me that way—as truly odd.
I say, “You don’t know Miss Stunkel.”
She says, “I guess I will have to get to know her, then.”
Which is not the best thing to hear your mom say.
On the way to my room, I’m wondering how I’m going to get out of this one when Littie Maple almost hits me with the door to our apartment. “Can I watch TV?” she says, barreling past me toward our couch. “Oh, yeah, and my momma wants me to ask if she can borrow an egg. She’s making a frittata for World Egg Day and needs six eggs but only has five. And take your time getting it, because Max Adventure is on.”
“For someone who doesn’t have a TV, you sure are an expert about what’s on.”
Littie smiles at me like I just gave her a kitten-shaped lollipop. I put my toolbox on the counter and grab an egg from the refrigerator. I cup it with both hands and take it to her.
“I said go slow,” she says. “Max hasn’t seen the Great Serpent of Hootcheekoo Creek yet!”
“What’s that around your neck?”
Littie holds out a black box hung on a strap. “It’s an alarm. Momma is letting me have more adventures now, but I have to wear this.”
“How does it work?”
“I just pull this thing,” she says, grabbing the black box. She pulls, and WONK!! WONK!! WONK!! WONK!! WONK!! WONK!!
“Littie!”
She plugs the black box back into the strap and the WONK! stops. “It’s a little loud.”
“A little.”
From out of nowhere, Terrible pops me on the back of my head. “Where’s the fire?”
“That was just Littie’s neck alarm,” I say.
He puts on his jacket while making a face at me and then says, “Later, wombat.” Then he pulls on Littie’s ponytail and heads out the door.
Littie’s eyeballs are now stuck in his direction. “Where do you think he’s going?”
“Don’t know,” I say, holding out the egg to her. “Don’t care.” But she doesn’t see me.
“He didn’t even say good-bye.”
“What are you even talking about, Littie Maple?” But her brains are someplace else.
I get tired of holding the egg and decide to see if it can fit in my mouth. It can. I tap Littie on the head to get her attention.
Littie finally looks at me. She shakes her head. “You wouldn’t do that if you knew where eggs came from. I’m just saying.”
I pull the egg out of my mouth and wipe it with my shirtsleeve. “For your information, I do know where eggs come from.”
Littie gives me a look that says, Then You Are One Weird Tomato.
Which makes me wonder. “Do you think I’m odd?”
“Sure thing.” Littie’s eyes are back on the TV.
“No, I mean weird odd.”
“Definitely.”
“Littie!”
“You just put an egg in your mouth, even when you knew it came out of a chicken’s backside.”
“I was trying to get your attention,” I say. “Besides, they wash the eggs before they get to the grocery store.”
“Who does?”
“You know, the egg people,” I say. “The people in charge of the eggs.”
Littie laughs and shakes her head. Then she says, “Don’t worry, Penelope, wei
rd doesn’t bother me. I’m just saying.”
Which makes me wonder if maybe weird bothers Patsy Cline.
5.
Grandpa Felix hollers at me to keep up. “Get the lead out!” His camera bags strung across my back are heavy, and my feet keep slipping on the wet grass. Piney Hill is steep and good for sledding, but I can’t figure why anybody would want to have a wedding on top of it.
“Why do you need so many?” I ask, taking bigger steps to catch up.
He turns his head to the side. “So many what?”
I grunt out, “Cameras.”
“You might as well ask me why I need so many friends,” he says. “No such thing as too many.”
The strap of one bag slides off my shoulder and down my arm. I sling it back up, but I can tell it’s not going to stay put. I shift my toolbox to my other hand. “Well, your friends sure are heavy.”
“You’re young,” he says. “Hard work makes your cheeks rosy. You want rosy cheeks, don’t you?”
“Not really,” I say.
“Well, you should.” He slows for a second and looks at me over his shoulder. “And you should have left that toolbox in the truck like I told you.”
I tighten my grip. “You couldn’t leave any of your friends behind.”
He laughs and says, “I guess not,” and then speeds ahead.
By the time I catch up, Grandpa is at the top of the hill under a big white tent. I let the camera bags fall from my shoulders, and I sink to the ground. The wet grass is soaking through my skirt, but I’m too out of breath from the climb to care.
“Up and at ’em,” Grandpa says. “I can’t have an assistant with wet drawers. Unpack my cameras while I have a talk with the people in charge.”
“Aren’t you tired?” I say. “Don’t you want to take a rest?”
“I am not,” he says, pulling me to my feet. “There’s plenty of time to rest when I’m dead.”
I unzip the bags, carefully pull out Grandpa’s cameras by the straps, and hang all three of them around my neck. Then I pull at the back of my wet pants to unstick them.