Penelope Crumb Never Forgets (9781101607817)

by Stout, Shawn

  All at once Patsy seems to be over her allergic reaction. And she has a smile on her face like I haven’t seen. And somehow, even without matching necklaces, Patsy is still on her way to being gone.

  15.

  Sitting cross-legged in my Ultra Museum of Forget-Me-Notters, I hold Patsy Cline’s sand dollar necklace in my palm and wonder when Patsy will forget about me. I’ve been trying so hard to make sure I won’t forget about everybody else, but how can I make sure I won’t be forgotten?

  Then I think that maybe what Patsy needs is a necklace to remember me by. To remember that I’m her best friend, to remember so that she won’t want to be gone anymore.

  I choose one of my best teeth from the tin box, and then I grab one hair from the top of my head and yank. Which hurts a lot, so I only do one more. I wrap the two hairs around my tooth and tie the whole thing together with a thin red ribbon I find in my arts and crafts drawer. Then I cut out a big P and a C from a piece of paper in my drawing pad.

  All the paper, glue, and glitter anyone could ever want is in with my arts and crafts supplies, but no string. I search the kitchen drawers and cupboards, but I only come up with a rubber band and a twist tie from a loaf of bread.

  On the way back to my room, I stop at Terrible’s door and lean my ear against the stickers that read KEEP OUT! and DANGER! and IF YOU CAN READ THIS, YOU ARE TOO CLOSE! I knock softly and then push open the door. “Are you in here?” I squint into the dark room, but I don’t see or smell him.

  I feel along the wall for the light switch and flick it on. Unlike my room, Terrible’s room is neat and organized. You can even see the floor. Because here’s something I know about aliens: They don’t like messes. No dirty clothes on the floor, no half-eaten sandwiches on the desk, no dust even. And too bad for me—not one piece of string anywhere.

  While I’m looking, though, I find a stack of spiral notebooks in his top desk drawer. Good gravy, alien diaries. I pull one out and open it. NASA might like to know how an alien thinks. But instead of any “Dear Diary, Today I found two kittens in the sewer and ate them for breakfast” (because that’s what aliens do), there’s a beautiful drawing of a building. It’s got more than twenty levels, and windows in the shape of triangles.

  At first I think this might be a building from Terrible’s home planet, but then at the bottom of the building, he drew cars and a stoplight. And everybody knows that aliens don’t drive, so . . . On the next page, another building. This one is a house with a big garden in the back and a front yard with flowers and green grass. He even drew what each room in the house looks like and labeled them. The regular stuff like a kitchen and bathrooms and bedrooms. But he also drew a proper office for Mom, with a real desk, a big room marked “Terrence” that has its own bathroom, and then . . .

  “Oh me, oh my,” I say. There’s a room with my name on it that says “Penelope’s Art Room.” Oh, wouldn’t I love to live in a place like this with my own artist’s room! Imagine the size of a museum that I could fit in there! I tuck the notebook under my arm, because this is the Terrible I’d like to remember.

  I make a card for my museum that says

  Drawings by Terrible Crumb, pain-in-the-neck space alien, secret artist, and sometimes pretty nice brother to Penelope Crumb.

  I can practically hear Leonardo say, “An artistic mind brings a brother and sister closer than they think.”

  “He’s still an alien,” I say back. “And I still need a string for Patsy’s necklace.” I gently roll the tooth-wrapped hair between my thumb and pointer until I come up with the best idea ever: dental floss, peppermint-flavored and waxed. Which I think will work out fine, because when Patsy wears this necklace, she will also be able to get raisins out of her teeth.

  While I’m stringing up Patsy’s necklace with floss, there’s a racket coming from the laundry room, loud enough that I can hear it in my closet. The shuffling of papers and smacking of books. Then Mom’s voice. “Where in the world did I put that?”

  I keep on stringing. “Patsy Cline won’t soon forget about me once I give her this necklace,” I whisper to Leonardo. “Indeed, you are an original forget-me-notter,” he would surely say. Which makes me smile.

  “Has anybody seen my blue sketch pad?” Mom’s voice again.

  I freeze and stare at the blue sketch pad in front of me. Then, real quick, I close the door to my closet and hide.

  16.

  I wait for Patsy Cline by the coatrack outside of Miss Stunkel’s classroom, holding on tight to her necklace. The smell of the peppermint makes me want to floss something, so I hope Patsy gets here soon.

  My heart jumps in my throat when I see Patsy, and then stops beating when I see that Vera Bogg beside her. As they get closer, I can tell that they’ve switched outfits again—Patsy is in a pink shirt with ruffles down the front. And that’s when I know that Patsy, this new Patsy in her pink Vera Bogg ruffles and big smile, would never wear the necklace I made for her. This Patsy Cline would only wear store-bought.

  I shove the necklace under my arm so they won’t see. Then I try one last thing.

  “I found it,” I say. “I found your necklace.”

  “You did?” says Patsy, giving me a big smile—a smile like she was just given a pony made out of marshmallows. “Honest to goodness?”

  “True blue,” I say.

  “Where?” asks Vera Bogg.

  “Right here by the coatrack.”

  “No, I mean where is it?”

  “Oh,” I say. “It’s at home.” Then I tell a partly true story about how I found the necklace (which is true) yesterday (which is not) after everybody left, and took it home to keep it safe (sort of true) but forgot to bring it with me today (not). “I’ll bring it Monday.”

  Patsy Cline hugs me just then and whispers “Thank you” in my ear. I hug her, too, and it feels like we might be back to being best friends again. And maybe if I just hold on tight to her, I can break Vera Bogg’s spell and Patsy won’t be gone from me again. But while I’m holding on to her, I forget about the necklace stuffed under my arm, and it falls to the floor.

  Of course Vera Bogg would notice. “What’s that?” she says.

  Patsy lets go of me.

  “What?” I say.

  “That,” she says, bending down to pick it up.

  “Oh that,” I say. “That is a necklace.”

  Then that Vera Bogg brings it closer to her face like she hasn’t ever seen a necklace before in her life. “What’s it for?”

  “It was for Patsy Cline,” I say, folding my arms across my chest. Patsy’s eyes get big, and she has a look on her face that says, Really, for Me? And I’m about to say, “Yes, for you, Patsy Cline,” but Vera Bogg’s scream gets in the way.

  “A tooth!” shouts Vera Bogg. “A tooth!” She drops the necklace, and me and Patsy Cline bend down at the same time to get it. Patsy gets there first. She scoops it up.

  The screams are still coming out of Vera’s mouth, murdering screams, and her mouth is open so wide when she’s hollering that I can practically see her tonsils. Which are also pink. And she doesn’t stop until Miss Stunkel comes running. “Mercy! What is happening out here?”

  Vera Bogg points to the necklace in Patsy’s hands and yells, “A tooth!” for the hundredth time.

  Miss Stunkel says, “Let me see, Patsy.” And then she takes the necklace from Patsy, holding it up by the floss. Meanwhile, other kids from my class, including Angus Meeker, are crowding around trying to see who’s being killed. “There’s a P and a C,” says Miss Stunkel. “And, yes, Vera, that appears to be a tooth.” Then she points her chicken-bone finger at me and bends the tip toward her. “Penelope Crumb, follow me.”

  I follow her all the way to her desk. “Is this yours?” she says.

  “The necklace or the tooth?”

  “Thi
s,” she says, holding it away from her, “is a necklace?”

  I nod. “It’s not mine, really, because I made it for Patsy Cline. It belongs to her. We have the same initials.”

  “And the tooth is . . . ?”

  “Mine.”

  She sighs. “Yours.” Then she hands me the necklace and tells me to see her after school because I’ve given her no choice but to send a note home about this one.

  Good gravy.

  “Here,” I say, handing Mom the note from Miss Stunkel as soon as I get home.

  “Penelope,” she says. “Not again.”

  I save her from the pain of having to read it and tell her what happened. “I brought a tooth to school for Patsy Cline.”

  “What kind of tooth?”

  “The kind that came from my mouth.”

  She says, “Don’t be smart.” Which I really wasn’t being.

  “Not one with blood on it,” I say.

  “Penelope Rae.” (Dislocated knee.) She stuffs the note inside her purse. “We’ll talk about this later. I’ve got to go see Felix. He had some people in his apartment to paint, and he thinks they took some things.”

  My cheeks start to burn. “Took some things?”

  Mom grabs her keys from the hall table and then shakes her head. “I don’t know how he can tell anything’s missing, with the way he keeps that place.”

  “Something’s missing? What’s he missing?” Then I cup my hands over my ears because I’m afraid what she’s going to say. But somehow her voice still gets through my fingers because I can still hear Mom say, “Probably nothing. You know Felix.” And just when I think it’s safe to take my hands away from my ears, she says, “I’m not sure—something about a camera.”

  That’s when I practically go dead.

  Mom doesn’t seem to notice, though, because she is halfway out the door when she turns and says, “Anyway, your brother is in charge. Which reminds me. Terrence!” she hollers.

  He yells back from his room. “What?”

  “It’s your turn to do dishes. And please be more careful with our dinner plates. They aren’t expensive, but we’re down to two now, and if you keep breaking them, we’ll be eating right off the table.”

  Terrible sticks his head out of his door. “I didn’t break any dishes. Ask her.” He means me. And the way he says it, I wonder if he knows about my museum. If he knows it was me that took the plates. And the other things, too.

  I get sweaty nervous all of a sudden. I shake my head at my mom and say, “Wasn’t me.” And then I don’t know what makes me do this next thing, because I could have just stopped right then and there, but I guess I’m scared of having my museum discovered and also about taking Alfred, so I jab my thumb down the hall toward Terrible’s room and whisper, “He probably didn’t do it on purpose. You know, he is kind of clumsy.”

  Mom winks at me and smiles, like she knows that Terrible can’t help breaking things. Then she asks me if I feel okay because I’m looking kind of pale in the face, and I tell her that I think I need to go lie down.

  She touches the end of my nose with her finger and says, “Good idea. And tell Littie she can stay for supper if she wants, if it’s okay with her momma.”

  “Huh?” is the only thing I can say, because when you’re practically dead, it’s hard to talk much.

  “Littie’s over,” Mom says before leaving. “She’s in your room.”

  The thought of Littie in my room BY HERSELF gets me alive again, so I race down the hall and shove open the door. “Littie Maple!”

  She doesn’t answer right away. And then a small bird voice squeaks from inside my closet. “I’m. In. Here.” Before I can say anything else, she appears in the doorway with her fists on her hips and a look on her face that says, You’ve Got Trouble.

  “You’re not supposed to be in there,” I tell her. No one is supposed to know about my museum, or about the things I took.

  She shakes her head at me, and I wait for her to say how I am going to be in big trouble if anybody finds out what I’ve done. But then I see a silver chain peeking out from her closed fist.

  17.

  What are you doing with that?” I say.

  Littie opens her hand and says, “What are YOU doing with it?”

  “Nothing.” And then I remember what I told Patsy. “I’m giving it back. To Patsy Cline.”

  “You made a museum,” she says.

  I nod and then hold out my hand for the necklace. But Littie puts her hand behind her back.

  “You could have told me what you were up to,” she says. “I’m just saying.”

  “I didn’t want anybody to know. You aren’t going to tell, are you, Littie?” I wiggle my eyebrows at her so she knows I mean business.

  Littie puckers her lip like she’s not so sure. “Why do you call it the Ultra Museum of Forget-Me-Notters?”

  “So that I won’t forget about people. And because they are important enough to be in a museum.”

  Littie’s face turns bright red at that. “Well, that’s really a fly in a bowl of corn chowder, isn’t it? I guess I’m not important enough to be in your museum. Just like I wasn’t important enough to know about the museum in the first place. If we’re not friends anymore, then just say so.”

  “Littie . . .”

  “I mean I know I’m homeschooled and everything, and I may not have as many friends as you, and sometimes I am a little bit too nosy, I know, but—”

  “Littie—”

  “That doesn’t mean you should leave me behind . . .”

  My word. I tell Littie that we are friends, and she says, “Friends forever?”

  “Yes, Littie.”

  “Whew!” She puts her hand to her forehead and falls into the Heap.

  “And you can be in my museum, too,” I say. “If you want.”

  “I want,” she says. “But do you have to keep your teeth in there?” Then she holds out Patsy’s necklace to me. I wrap my fingers around the sand dollar and pull, but Littie doesn’t let go right away, like she wants me to pull her up out of the Heap. I keep pulling on the necklace, because I’m not letting go of it, and then there’s a loud snap under our fingers.

  Littie starts to shake all over when she sees what happened. I stare at the part of the sand dollar I’m holding. It says ENDS EVER. And I think that this is the end of me and Patsy Cline ever being best friends.

  “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” Littie brings her FRI FOR part to match up with mine, but when we try to fit them back together, the pieces of the sand dollar break even more. Until all that’s left is a little pile of sand.

  This time I know I will die, and I fall into the Heap, burying my head under my hang-up clothes. I don’t know how long I’m dead for, but Littie shakes me alive and says, “How are we going to fix this?”

  That’s the thing about Littie: She never gives up. There’s a fix for everything, that’s how her brain works. “I guess glue is out of the question,” she says, letting the bits of sand fall through her fingers.

  I give her a look that says, I Don’t Think This Can Be Fixed.

  She says, “All we need is a little brainpower. Let’s think.”

  I squeeze my eyes shut and try to think, but all I can think of is Patsy Cline’s face when she sees what’s left of her necklace.

  “If only we knew where she got it,” says Littie.

  “I know where. The Portwaller History Museum. What difference does that make?”

  Littie rolls her eyeballs at me. “Well, why didn’t you say so before? All we have to do is go to the museum and buy a new one.”

  “That necklace costs money. Fifteen dollars, I think. Do you have fifteen dollars? Because I don’t. I left all of my money . . .”

  “Wha
t?”

  I pull myself up from the Heap and grab Littie’s hand. “Come on, let’s go.”

  “Where?” she says, her eyes bright.

  “Littie Maple, we’re going on another adventure.”

  18.

  I tell Littie I’ll meet her in front of our building. Then I grab my toolbox and metro card and tiptoe down the hall to Terrible’s room. His door is closed, like always, and his music is turned way up, but since he’s in charge, I do what I’m supposed to and ask him if it’s okay if I go to the museum with Littie. I do this from the hallway in the quietest whisper there is, with my hand over my mouth. If he doesn’t know he can’t hear what I said, then I’m not going to be the one to tell him.

  Littie is waiting for me by the telephone pole, sliding a moldy hamburger bun with her foot over to a hungry pigeon.

  “Where did you get that?” I say.

  She points toward our building. “I found it over there by the trash can.”

  “What did you tell your momma?”

  “The truth,” she says, flashing the alarm around her neck. “What did you tell your mom?”

  “I didn’t. She’s at my grandpa Felix’s helping him look for something.” I wince as those words spill out of my mouth. “Something that isn’t there.”

  “What isn’t there?” she asks.

  “Alfred.” I shake my head to try to get that thought out of my brains. “Never mind. Let’s just get a new necklace for Patsy Cline.”

  The metro is crowded, so Littie and I find a place to stand near the back of the train. I set my toolbox by my feet and hold on to the metal pole. A boy with long hair pulled away from his face by a pair of knitted headphones grabs on to the pole above my hand. He reminds me of Terrible, except for the long hair and headphones and the fact that this boy doesn’t smell like fishing worms mixed with orange sherbet and furniture polish.