by Shawn Stout
Littie Maple comes in just then and sinks beside me on the couch. She’s got a notepad and a pen in her lap. And she doesn’t turn on the TV like she always does, so I ask her what’s wrong.
“Nothing.” She looks down the hall. “Pretend I’m not here.”
That’s pretty easy to do, especially when I’m trying to get my brains to start working good on a plan. I flip through the bad drawings the rest of the group did while I went to get my paintbrush and bag back from the Fortune Lady.
“What are those?” asks Littie.
“I thought I’m supposed to pretend you aren’t here.”
“Right,” she says. “You are. I’m not.” Then after a while she says, “Is your brother home?”
I put down the drawings. “Littie Maple, for somebody who isn’t here, you sure do ask a lot of questions.”
“Well, is he?”
I tell her that he’s at football practice but should be home soon. “What do you want with him anyway?”
“I want to observe you,” she says. “You know, how you are with each other. Since you’re a sister, and I’m going to be a sister, too, when the baby gets here. I’m just saying.”
“Do I have to talk to him?” I ask.
“Nope. Just act regular.” Littie crisscrosses her legs at end of the couch and has her pen ready. “I’ll be just like Jane Goodall in the Gombe Stream Valley.”
“Who?”
“The woman who lived with the chimps in Africa,” says Littie. “You know, the scientist.” And then she gives me a look that says, Don’t You Know Anything?
I give her a look right back that says, Are You Calling Me a Monkey?
She shakes her head and whispers, “I’m. Not. Here.”
I tell her okay if she wants to do a science experiment, but that being a sister to an alien is a lot different from being a sister to a normal baby. Just so she knows.
She says she knows, she knows, and then tells me to stop talking.
My word. I stare at Patsy Cline’s drawing of the thing that looks like a flea but isn’t, according to her.
After a while Littie says, “Do you think he’ll be much longer? Momma wants me back for supper in an hour.”
“Some scientist you are, Littie Maple. Telling me to be quiet and then asking me questions the whole time. You’re lucky I’m not a monkey or I’d run up a tree to get away from you.”
“Well, I can’t really do much observing if he’s not here, can I!” she says. “And they were chimpanzees, not monkeys. I’m just saying.”
I put my pencil and the drawings on the coffee table. “Since you know so much, here’s a question for you: Do you think there is such a thing as the Bad Luck? Because I do.”
Littie’s eyes get big. Then she puts a finger over her lips and whispers, “Don’t.”
“Don’t what?”
“Don’t say those words,” she says, shaking her head.
“You mean the Bad Luck?”
She squeals and leaps at me, covering my mouth with her hand. “Shhhh. You might as well deliver an engraved invitation on a pillow.”
“So you do believe.” This is a surprise because Littie Maple has never seemed to be a good- or bad-luck kind of thinker. She always sees things just as they are and not how they should be. “Do you know how to get rid of it?” I ask.
“I think it has to decide to go away on its own,” she says softly. “Or maybe you could help it along with a charm.”
Thank lucky stars for Littie Maple. “A good-luck charm,” I say. “Like a horseshoe or something?”
She nods. “Can we talk about something else now? All this talk about You Know What is giving me a nervous stomach. And Momma is making pasta Bolognese for supper.”
I give her a look that says, What Does That Have to Do with the Price of Peas? And she says that her momma’s cooking has gotten a lot better since she’s been taking a cooking class, that’s all.
I tell her fine and I’m about to ask her if she knows where I can get my hands on a horseshoe when the door to our apartment swings open. It’s Terrible. And right behind him, not more than a couple of inches away from him, there’s a girl. A real live one. Littie and me look at each other with our mouths hanging open because we didn’t think Terrible knew any girls. And even if he does, I didn’t think any girl would ever want to know him.
He gives me a sideways look. But it’s so quick I’m not sure I really saw it, because the next thing I know he’s got a big smile on his face, so big I can see most of his pointy, alien teeth. “This is my baby sister, Penelope,” he tells the girl in a voice that’s so full of sugar that my cheeks pucker. “And Leticia Maple. She lives across the hall.”
I want to roll my eyeballs at him for the baby remark, but there’s no time because Littie’s face is scrunched up small and she’s turning red all over. Littie doesn’t let anybody call her by her real name, and with a name like Leticia, I don’t blame her one bit. I quick grab her arm because I know she wants to jump up and bend Terrible’s fingers back until he says sorry. I could let her, but it’s never a good idea to get in a finger fight with an alien. Especially when the Bad Luck is floating around.
Littie shakes me off and then grabs her pen and starts stabbing at her notebook. I can only imagine what she’s writing.
Terrible doesn’t seem to notice Littie’s new red color or her murdering scribbles. He points his thumb at the girl standing next to him and says, “This is Tildy.”
Littie’s scribbles get louder, and I worry that there are tears filling up her eyeballs. So I say, “Hey, scientist lady, you’re going to scare away all of the monkeys making that racket.” Then I swing my arms over my head, bend my legs, and circle the coffee table howling like a monkey. Then I monkey-wave at the Tildy girl and announce that I’m not a baby and Littie’s name is Littie. And that Terrible is just showing off for her.
This works because Littie stops with the stabbing and almost smiles. Then she starts writing regular in her notebook, probably about how good I am at being both a monkey and a sister at the same time.
Tildy looks at my alien brother and says, “Did she just call you Terrible?”
Now Terrible gives me a sideways look for sure. But before he has a chance to clobber me, I grab up the drawings and pull Littie into my room.
7.
Littie and me make horseshoes out of construction paper. Hers looks more like a V, truth be told, but when I tell her so, she shrugs and says, “Not every horse has a perfectly round foot. I’m just saying.”
“Do you want me to make a horseshoe that actually looks like a horseshoe for you instead?” I ask. Because that V has an awful big corner in it, and corners are just where the Bad Luck likes to hide.
She tells me no, and then she says she just remembered she has to go home to help her mom pick out colors for the new baby’s room.
“I’ll help,” I say, seeing how I’m the one who’s the artist. And it’s an artist’s job to know about colors.
“That’s okay,” says Littie.
“At May’s Hardware, you can get little pieces of paper with paint colors on them for free. And you don’t even have to ask, you can just take them,” I tell her. “For free. Only you have to leave one or two of each, because if you take them all and don’t leave any for paying customers, Mr. May will yell at you and tell you to never step foot in his store again, you blasted thief. But I know for a fact that Mr. May doesn’t work on Thursday nights. I’ll get some good colors for you.”
“That’s okay,” she says again. “My momma probably already has some.”
“But are they good ones?” I ask. “Because you don’t want bright oranges or reds, you know. Num-Num shouldn’t wake up every day thinking he’s being grilled like a kabob.”
Littie shakes her head at me. “I think I know enough about colors to know we aren’t goin
g to have room that looks like it’s on fire.”
“Okay, Littie Maple,” is all I say because if she thinks she knows as much about colors as she does about horseshoes, which isn’t much at all, I’m not going to be the one to tell her any different.
After Littie leaves, I string my horseshoe around my neck and get back to the drawings. Being the Boss sure is hard. Especially when you want the mural you’re in charge of to be not-bad-looking. But now that I have my horseshoe, all I have to do is wait for the Good Luck to find me and give me an idea.
I look at Patsy Cline’s drawing of something that isn’t a flea one more time. Whatever it is, at least it’s small enough to go anywhere that nobody would even notice.
“Brilliant thinking,” Mister Leonardo would certainly say. “The flea could ride under a goose feather, or perhaps even in Mother Goose’s fine bonnet, and no one would be the wiser.”
“But what about the rest of the drawings?” I say. “A monster truck can’t be flea-size.” And there’s Vera Bogg’s pink Little Bo Peep and matching sheep. “Who ever heard of a pink sheep anyhow?” And Marcus’s spaceship, and everything else that doesn’t belong in Mother Goose.
“A stiffened spine. That’s what it takes,” Mister Leonardo would say. “No matter how much she may have begged, I could have never painted my dear Mona Lisa in an Ornithopter Flying Machine. I would have been laughed out of Italy had I agreed.”
My word. If I’m ever going to be a non-dead famous artist, I can’t be laughed out of Portwaller’s Blessed Home for the Aging. Or anyplace else. Mr. Rodriguez would take back all those nice things he said about me, and Patsy Cline wouldn’t take me back ever.
I stare at Alexander’s monster truck for a long time, so long that I imagine loading it with Marcus’s spaceship, Patsy Cline’s tiny non-flea, Birgit’s sparkly rainbow unicorns, and all of Vera Bogg’s pink and then driving them to the moon, where they can be in their own bad-looking mural that I’m not the Boss of. And that only the Man on the Moon has to see.
I lay the drawings on the floor next to my bed and before I go to sleep, I pat my horseshoe and ask for the Good Luck to come.
I’m up early the next morning looking for sweets for the Fortune Lady. I check all the cupboards, but I guess the Good Luck must be busy hanging around somebody else’s horseshoe and didn’t hear me invite it over because, like always, there are no sweets in the house. No candies, no cookies, no jelly doughnuts even.
I leave a note for my mom on the refrigerator because maybe Mom will pay attention more than the Good Luck:
Missing:
ORANGE POPSICLES! and other tasty treats.
Last seen: Hardly ever.
If you know how to get some, tell Penelope.
In the meantime, the best I can do is make my own sweets, so I grab the honey jar from the cupboard and pour some into a bowl. I spoon in a bunch of sugar, all that we have, stirring it up real good. Then I load it onto a celery stalk. Which is the only thing I can think of to put it on and also because I, Penelope Crumb, like sweet things when they have a nice crunch. I stuff the celery into a paper lunch bag and wrap the end with a thick rubber band.
“What have you got there?” asks Grandpa Felix when he picks me up.
“Crispy Sticky,” I tell him, holding up the paper bag. Because all sweets taste better if they have a name.
“Well, it’s leaking all over my seat,” he says.
“Oh, sorry.” I wipe the spill with my finger and stick it in my mouth. Then I cup my other hand around the bottom of the paper bag, which is now pooling with honey.
Grandpa Felix gives me a sideways look that says, You Better Do Something with That Mess, Pronto. So I put down my window and let Crispy Sticky leak onto the road. Grandpa sighs but he doesn’t say he’s pulling over to a gas station for me to dump that mess in the garbage where it belongs, so I change the subject.
“Do you like my horseshoe?” I say, looking down at the paper charm hanging around my neck. “Littie and me made them last night.”
He nods. “I do. But it’s upside down, you know.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s bad luck that way,” he says. “The open part should be facing up to the sky so that you can catch all the good luck that comes down.” He holds up his fingers in a U-shape. “Like this. The way you have it now, the good luck will spill right over.”
“Good gravy!” Still holding Crispy Sticky out the window, I pull at the string around my neck. But the honey on my hand sticks in my hair at the back of my neck, and I can’t get the knot untied.
Grandpa says, “Wait until we get there and I’ll help you.”
But I can’t take a chance on the Bad Luck seeing my upside-down horseshoe. If it does, it will probably think I want it to hang around me, that it’s my new Favorite thing. So I flip the horseshoe right side up so that it will catch the Good Luck in its belly. But when I try to pull my hand away, the honey sticks and so do my fingers.
I holler.
“What’s the matter now?” says Grandpa, trying to keep his eyeballs on the road so he doesn’t crash into a parked car and kill us dead.
I can’t get any words out because my brains can only think about my sticky fingers on the paper horseshoe and what to do about that. My brains don’t have to think about that too long, though, because there’s a bump in the road and Grandpa Felix drives right over it. And if there’s one thing I’m sure of, it’s that the Bad Luck put that bump there because as soon as we hit that bump 1) I drop Crispy Sticky, and 2) my honey fingers come unstuck, taking half of the horseshoe with them.
Well then.
Grandpa parks the car in front of Portwaller’s Blessed Home for the Aging and turns to me. “You couldn’t wait?”
I shake my head. Because if I could’ve, I would still have a sweet for the Fortune Lady plus a good-luck charm.
He says, “Whatever you do, don’t you touch anything. I’m coming around to let you out.” He gets out of the car and opens my door for me. Then he tells me to go straight inside to the bathroom and wash my sticky hands. He doesn’t tell me good-bye, or to have a good day, and his words have rocks in them. And when I say, “Grandpa, I’ll remember not to call anybody old today,” hoping for a smile or maybe a laugh, he just sighs at me and gives me a look that says, Your Antics Are Aging Me Fast.
8.
Nila Wister is waiting for me just inside the door. “Give me some candy,” she says.
I hold up my honeyed hands and tell her that I tried but Crispy Sticky is lying along the side of the road somewhere between here and our apartment. This is the kind of Bad Luck day I’m having.
She flaps her lips and says, “Big mistake.” Then she stares at me again, looking for I-don’t-know-what deep inside. I worry that she’s going to tell me something I don’t want to know, something bad, something about losing someone or being all alone as nobody’s Favorite. But after a long time of looking, she blinks her eyes and says, “What’s that around your neck?”
I tell her it’s a broken horseshoe, and she says, “Like I said, trouble all around you, girl.”
This isn’t so good to hear from a Fortune Lady. She fidgets, and the trinkets on her wheelchair swing.
“What do I do?” I ask. “About the trouble.”
“Not much you can do about trouble except stand up to it,” she says. “Look it in the eye and show it who’s boss.”
“I am the Boss,” I tell her. “I mean, of the mural, anyway.”
Nila says, “Humph.” And then, “If you’re really the boss, then you shouldn’t have any trouble.” It comes out like she doesn’t believe I’m the Boss. And maybe I don’t believe it much either.
I point to the trinkets tied to her wheelchair with strands of yarn. “What about those?”
“What about them?” she says.
“Are they for luck?”
/>
She nods.
“Where did you get them?”
Nila Wister brushes her tiny fingers against each one. An acorn, a set of keys, a glass figurine in the shape of a butterfly, a horseshoe. “My father.”
Oh. Then I tell her that my father is Graveyard Dead and that the only thing I have of his is a shoehorn.
She nods like maybe she knew that already, seeing how she is a Fortune Lady and all. And then she tells me something else. “I’m here because my sister lived in Portwaller, and she was taking care of me.”
“I don’t have a sister,” I say. “I have a brother. And he’s an alien.”
“I had one of those, too,” she says, shaking her head.
I don’t know if she means a brother or an alien, but by the look on her face I figure probably both. “Where is she now?” I say. “Your sister, I mean.”
Nila Wister points to the ceiling, and because there’s no upstairs in Portwaller’s Blessed Home for the Aging, I know she means she’s Graveyard Dead.
I tell her I’m sorry, and she says that it’s neither here nor there. But it must be somewhere close by, because her eyes get watery. And then all of a sudden she clears her throat and says, “That’s the sorriest horseshoe I’ve ever laid eyes on.”
“I made it last night, but it didn’t live very long,” I say, eyeing the honeyed, half-torn paper strip.
“You can’t make a charm out of just any old thing like paper,” she tells me. “The only thing you get is paper cuts.” Nila fingers her keys. Then she leans in close. “I suppose you want to borrow one of mine.”
My eyes get big. “Could I?”
“No.”
Well then.
“Charms are particular,” she says. “No guarantee they’ll work for you. You might have to just find your own.”
“What about a four-leaf clover? Maybe I could find one of those.”
Nila Wister bats her hand in the air. “Never did find them to be very lucky.”
A nurse comes down the hall and tells Nila that it’s time to get her hair washed. Nila groans. “I don’t want it cut,” she says to the nurse. “The last time, that girl used hedge trimmers on me. I looked like some kind of juniper.”