by Beth Turley
“Where should I put you?” I ask absentmindedly.
“Don’t leave me here!” the penny yells. I almost drop it, but manage to hold on. If it had landed facedown, who knows what could have happened.
I look around. There’s a woman in high heels contemplating ice cream, and an old man on a scooter filling his basket with frozen lima beans. I make sure they aren’t watching me and hold the penny to my face.
“How are you talking to me?” I ask.
“You!” the penny yells. I wish the penny would quiet down, but no one else seems to notice her, or the magic bursting from my heart like a shooting star.
I know what you’re thinking. The penny is coming to life now? This is definitely a story. But the penny is really talking to me! And loudly too, like she’s trying to make herself seem bigger than she is. Bigger than one cent.
“I brought you to life just like I did with Ambrose?”
“Yes! I’m Penny!”
“Nice to meet you, Penny. Can I ask you something? Ambrose lets me ask him things.”
“Yes!”
“Does Courtney really want to be my friend?” I ask.
“I’m cold!” Penny says.
I sigh. My magic might give objects a voice, but it sure doesn’t keep them from getting off topic like a scatterbrained protagonist in a story.
“Okay, I’ll leave you somewhere else.”
“Clean up, aisle seven!” Penny screams.
“You’re funny,” I say, and take Penny to aisle seven. She sings an Oompa-Loompa song while we walk.
“How do you know Willy Wonka, Penny?”
“I saw the movie!”
I laugh out loud at the thought of Penny with an oversize bucket of popcorn, taking up a whole seat in a dark movie theater. Part of me wants to keep Penny in my pocket, but that’s not her purpose. She was made for someone else to find. There’s no one in the aisle, so I bend down and let Penny go.
“Good-bye, and good luck,” I say.
“What are you doing?” a voice sneers from behind me. I know right away it’s not Penny. I stand up and twirl around. Kimmy Dobson is there in a green checkered shirt. Her oily skin gleams in the grocery store lighting. She looks at me like I’ve just beaten her in the spelling bee again. Kimmy might be a super-skilled wordsmith, but she’s never won the spelling bee, and I’m the reason why.
Last year’s bee was soon after Kimmy’s mom died. I remember when it was over, she snuck up behind me and whispered, “I bet you’ve never lost anything in your life.” Her breath felt like angry wildfire in my ear. I couldn’t tell whether she was talking about spelling bees or parents, but I felt those burning words on my skin for a long time after she walked away.
“I’m not doing anything,” I say, and turn away from her. Kimmy grips my shoulder and pulls.
“I see all those pennies in your hand. Are you seriously just throwing them away? Some people actually need money, you know.”
“They’re lucky pennies,” I say, sounding dumb. I wonder if Courtney and I have made a mistake. I look at Penny, alone and abandoned on the ground, all her luck drained away because Kimmy saw me drop her. Maybe Penny would’ve been better off in a register.
“Pennies are money, Han-nah, not a good-luck charm. No wonder no one likes you,” Kimmy barks.
Her words feel heavy, like the rolls of pennies in my hand.
“How did you know what the note said?”
“What are you talking about? Just hand over the pennies.”
I hold out the rest of the rolls, because I don’t know what else to do. See, now you know this isn’t a story, because if it were, I’d be tough enough to stand up to the bully. Or brave enough to tell her that she didn’t need to be so mean, even if she lost her mom.
“Don’t give those to her,” Courtney chimes in. She comes up behind me and closes my hand with hers.
“Of course little rich girl throws the pennies away too. Does your mansion have a garbage can just for coins?” Kimmy asks.
“Does your trailer park have a rule against soap?” Courtney snaps back.
Kimmy takes a step closer to us. She towers over Courtney, but my best friend doesn’t budge.
“Hand them over,” Kimmy says.
“Okay.”
Courtney takes a penny from a roll and whips it at Kimmy. It hits her in the shoulder and bounces to the ground. Before Kimmy can react, Courtney throws another and another. She turns to me.
“Come on, Hannah. Help me,” she says.
I don’t want to help, but Kimmy has left a coin-shaped hole in my chest. I take a penny and throw it.
“Weeee,” the penny cries as it flies into Kimmy’s forehead.
“You’re going to regret this,” Kimmy says, and turns her back on us.
“Good work, team.” Courtney gives me a high five. I should feel better, but instead I feel slimy.
Did the person who wrote the note feel better when they dropped it onto the floor? If I wrote a note back to them, would that make me a bully too?
How did Kimmy know that the note said no one likes me?
“Maybe that was a bad idea,” I say.
“Are you saying that she gets to be awful to everyone but no one gets to be awful to her?”
“Well . . .”
“She’s all talk and smell, Hannah. We won.”
If this were a story, an X-ray machine would show that Courtney’s bully bones are stronger than all the others. The doctor would diagnose her with Romeo and Juliet disease and write on a prescription pad that everyone around her should just wait until that day doesn’t haunt her anymore. No matter how hard it gets.
I see Mom turn the corner into our aisle. She waves us over. The cart is full of Dad’s favorite soda and my favorite apple cinnamon oatmeal. I think about how Mom has no favorites. There is nothing in the cart just for her.
“Ready to go, girls?” she asks. Courtney stuffs our rolls of pennies into her pink purse. We’ll save them for next time.
When I turn back to look at Penny one more time, I see that she’s disappeared. Someone must have picked her up.
“Bye, Penny,” I whisper to the empty aisle.
We see Kimmy again on our way out through the automatic doors. She sits alone on a bench outside the store with a spelling book in her hands.
Maybe Violet Beauregarde had a hard time at school. Maybe Mike Teevee’s dad was never home. We only see what people want us to see. We are all unreliable narrators.
• • •
Mom’s phone rings through the car speakers on the way home. She clicks a button on the dashboard and starts to say hello.
“Where are you?” Dad’s loud voice fills up the car. Mom rushes to take the call off the speakers and puts the phone to her ear, even though that’s illegal. I squeeze the strap of my seat belt, and my brain fills with permutations of what will happen when we get home. The word “permutations” is usually used for math problems but can be used for Dad problems too.
“What happened?” Mom says softly into the phone. A moment later she says, “Hello?”
Dad must not have answered. She hangs up.
“We’re going to take you home, Courtney, okay?” Mom says.
“But she was supposed to stay for dinner,” I argue.
“Not now.” Mom tugs on her seat belt like it’s strangling her.
“Okay, Mrs. Geller,” Courtney replies.
Courtney stares at me from the other bucket seat, but I don’t turn my head from the window, even when she gets out of the car. The last drops of sun fall behind the orange trees as we drive home. Mom forgets to put the radio back on, so the car is too quiet, a sad-day sound with no sound at all. Her bun is falling apart. We pull into the driveway, and I pray to find Dad in his recliner with a Coke watching a football game where the Packers are winning by one hundred points.
“Get the bags,” Mom says, and rushes into the house.
I walk to the trunk of the car and load up my arms with plastic bags
, before following behind.
“Can’t find a thing in this house. It’s a mess, always,” Dad yells when I open the door. I gently place the bags on the counter and glance into the living room. There’s an empty box for a big-screen TV on the floor and parts lying all over. Dad is kneeling behind the stand with the new TV on it. He has a flashlight in his hand. His face is Coke-can red.
“What were you looking for?” Mom asks.
“Everything! Wrench, batteries . . .” I walk back to the car to pick up more groceries. I gather slivers of the fight each time I go back and forth. In and out.
“. . . out for hours . . . ,” Dad says.
“. . . shopping for food . . . ,” Mom says.
“. . . sick of not being able to do one thing.”
“. . . not my fault.”
There are no more bags. I put away the groceries and try to find a story in the boxes of spaghetti or the frozen pizza, but can’t come up with anything. I walk to the little desk in the kitchen and quietly open the junk drawer. The pack of batteries peaks out from underneath the roll of postage stamps and some pencils. I pull a few batteries from the pack.
“Here, Dad,” I offer, and hold them out. Maybe if I can give him what he’s looking for, the gathering fight will clear, like a cloud that decides not to rain and lets sunlight through instead. The sound of my heartbeat roars in my ears, and the batteries shake in my hand.
Dad doesn’t listen. He keeps grunting behind the TV stand. It wobbles and wobbles, and before anyone can stop it, the TV falls from the stand. The sound it makes against the hardwood floor is loud and permanent. Dad swears and leans the TV back upright. One single crack cuts across the screen from corner to corner like a fault line, a place where the earth splits in half like a broken heart.
I wish I were in a story. Then I could rewrite things to end the way I want them to and erase all the bad parts.
I run upstairs. My door can’t seal out the screaming. I put my head under my comforter. There’s a feeling in my chest like a leaky sailboat, and I would give anything, anything, anything to make the sinking stop.
From Hannah’s Pages of “Lost in the Funhouse”
In a perfect funhouse you’d be able to go only one way . . . getting lost would be impossible.
Date Stamps
The two fifth-grade classes meet in the library for the preliminary spelling bee.
“ ‘Monumental.’ M-o-n-u-m-e-n-t-a-l,” I say to the librarian, Mrs. Raymond, our moderator.
“Congratulations, Hannah. You’ll be our last finalist.” The fifth-grade classes clap for me. Kimmy, another finalist, crosses her arms like a defense against more flying pennies.
I manage a weak smile about the victory, but yesterday is still taking up all the space inside my head. It’s hard to notice the thick library carpet under my feet or the smell of books in the air when last night’s fight is like a song left on repeat. I’m still watching it like a movie on a cracked TV screen.
“Maybe it’s time,” Dad yelled.
“I couldn’t agree more,” Mom answered.
I shake my head hard to make the memories go quiet. Courtney and Ryan stand in front of me, watching.
“Surprise, you won a spelling bee,” Courtney says.
“I almost messed up ‘artificial.’ ”
“But you didn’t.” Ryan pulls from his back pocket a looped piece of yarn with a soda can tab attached, and drapes it around my neck. “Your medal.”
“Ryan, you were supposed to find a gold tab.” Courtney puts her hands on her hips.
“It’s okay. I love it.” I grip the makeshift medal so tight, it leaves a mark in the shape of a figure eight.
“Was everything okay last night?” Courtney asks.
The medal starts to feel hot in my hand.
“What do you mean?”
“You know, with your parents. Your mom wouldn’t let me come over.”
Ryan looks at me. I hope there aren’t secrets on my face like swollen zits.
“I’ll tell you later. We only have a few minutes to get books.”
I turn away from my friends and head for the fiction section. I run my hand over the laminated book bindings and pretend not to see Courtney and Ryan whispering where I left them. Being close to the books quiets my mind for a second. I pull one from the shelf and open to the very back.
My favorite part of a library book is the card with the date stamps in the back that tell you when the book is due. Some libraries don’t use them anymore, but ours still does. I like the way the due dates stack up on top of each other in different colors of ink. I like the feeling that no matter what year it is or whatever else changes, this book will always be the same. The world will keep turning as long as this story exists.
“Time’s up,” Mrs. Bloom announces. I close the book and quickly check it out at the counter. Mrs. Raymond stamps the due date, November 6, into the back with blue ink. I hug the book to my chest and take in a huge lungful of library book air when we line up at the door.
Kimmy pushes Courtney aside to stand behind me. She smells like wet dirt.
“I’ll end this when we get to the finals,” Kimmy whispers into my ear.
Maybe it’s time.
I squeeze my eyes shut until the voices from the past and the present stop colliding like a car crash that I can’t make sense of.
• • •
Later my class grabs our lunches from the shelves. My area is next to Courtney’s—Geller beside Gilmore, like always. I see her bend down to pick something up near her backpack. A scrunched-up piece of white paper. Before I can say a word, she opens the note. Her eyes follow whatever is written on the paper, and then spring up to my face.
“Hannah?” she says.
“What’s wrong?” I ask.
She hands me the note with a look like she wishes her last name was Zoo, so she could be miles of cubbies away from me. I don’t know what’s worse, that look or the note.
WHY WOULD ANYONE BE FRIENDS WITH HANNAH?
As Told by Ambrose
Ambrose?” Hannah asks.
“Hannah,” I answer. She lets out a heavy sigh. I know she still thinks I’ll leave at any minute.
She looks to her bedspread. Her skin is as white as a paper ghost. Black hair hides her face like a shield made of velvet.
“There was another note today.” Hannah pulls me into her chest, where I can’t see her eyes.
“What’s going to happen?”
Hannah pauses before she answers.
“I can feel the notes hurting me, Ambrose. I know I want them to stop. But is it weird to think that they might help?”
“How could they possibly help?” I wonder.
“People are starting to see me.”
“People already see you, Hannah. Lots of people.”
Hannah puts me back down on the bed and goes to sit at her desk. I watch her stare out the foggy window. It’s hard to see Hannah observe her memories until they turn into a scary movie. Not even I can turn it off.
I’ve heard the fights too. The voices slip into Hannah’s bedroom like a thief in the middle of the night. I’ve seen Hannah sit with her ear to the door and wait for them to pass. I’ve seen her run to hide her head under the pillow. The fights dig holes in her mind, I know it, but she won’t tell anyone how to fill them back up.
The first time she brought me downstairs with her, the heaviness in that room almost crushed me.
Sneakers
The next day Mrs. Bloom writes up a bulletin and tells us to give it to our parents. It invites them to the meeting we are having tomorrow with Ms. Meghan about the notes. I fold the bulletin, and the edge slips across my finger. A cut appears and turns red. Maybe paper cuts hurt as much as being run over by a minivan. Pain is pain.
Before recess we have time to read new letters from our pen pals and respond. When I hold Ashley’s letter, my heart becomes an overstuffed envelope, all full of excitement on the inside but calm and collected on the outs
ide. I tear open the seal and read.
Dear Hannah,
I like your random questions. They make me feel useful somehow, ha-ha. There’s no school newspaper here at the middle school. I’m not sure anyone would read it if there was. Everyone’s kind of in their own world. We could probably all write our own newspapers about ourselves, fill it up with news and gossip and advice columns. Mine would be called The Ashley Report. What would you call yours?
See you in a few weeks!
XOXO, Ashley
In my head Ashley becomes a newspaper reporter with a pencil tucked behind her ear and ink stains on her fingers and the prettiest smile the world has ever seen. I take out a clean sheet of paper and write a new letter.
Dear Ashley,
I shouldn’t be telling you this, but I drop heads-up pennies all over town. Well, the parts of town I can get to. If you’ve ever looked down at the ground and found a lucky penny, it’s possible that I’m the one who put it there. I like the thought of that. It’s like in some way we’ve already met.
I have another random question for you. I hope it makes you feel useful. What do you think is the purpose of a penny? Is it to be something magical, or something practical? I’m just wondering whether you would rather find a heads-up penny and keep it for luck, or use it to buy a Slurpee if the total comes to $1.01.
Maybe you can answer this question for me when I visit you at the middle school. Maybe it’s a stupid question, but I like to think that you would understand.
P.S. My newspaper would be called Story Time.
Love, Hannah
When we’ve all put our letters into envelopes, Mrs. Bloom lets us go outside. I walk to the swings where Courtney and Ryan and I usually meet up, but Courtney doesn’t follow me. She goes to sit on the hill with Rebecca, who wears flower crowns and owns forty-six lip glosses. It’s like the words on the note have really made Courtney wonder why she should be friends with me.
The October air feels more like December air today—but the December air after the holidays, when the world seems a little deflated, when the lights on the houses shine less than they did before.