Penelope Crumb Finds Her Luck

by Shawn Stout

  The nurse laughs and shakes her head as she pushes Nila in her chair down the hall. Before they disappear around a corner, Nila waves her hand and yells something about trouble.

  “Penelope,” calls Mr. Rodriguez from behind me. “Come on, I’ve got some exciting news to share.”

  I’m the last to arrive in the activity room because I have to stop to wash my hands. I can feel everybody’s eyeballs on me, even the half-drawn Mother Goose on the blank wall. She’s giving me a look that says, You Aren’t Going to Leave Me This Way, Are You?

  Mr. Rodriguez says, “Good news, people. We’re going to be in the newspaper.”

  “We are?” says Patsy Cline.

  He nods and explains that he’s been talking to a reporter from The Portwaller Tribune, who is going to come by and interview us in the next week or so and take pictures of the mural. “A headline like ‘Art Brings Kids of All Ages Together.’ Or something like that. Pretty righteous, huh?”

  Everybody agrees that, yes indeedy, it is very righteous.

  “So,” he says, “you all have a lot of work to do, like fast. What have you decided about the mural?” Mr. Rodriguez is looking at me when he asks this. And so is everybody else. “Penelope?”

  “Um,” I say, because when you don’t know what to say, “um” does a pretty good job.

  “Did you decide what you’re going to put in it?” he asks.

  “No, we’re still waiting for her,” says Marcus, scrunching up his face at me. “And I still think Mother Goose could live on another planet.”

  “Yeah,” says Alexander. “She could still fly here. She’s got wings, you know. Besides, they’re nursery rhymes. She should be able have a laser gun to blast meteors and stuff.”

  If Mister Leonardo was here, he would surely say, “Now, it is one thing to have a mural that older ladies and gentlemen can enjoy while frolicking with the whippoorwills, but it is another thing entirely when all of the town will witness it in the papers. Little darling, it is your responsibility to save the mural from disastrous intentions. You know what you have to do.”

  Between Nila Wister, Half-Faced Mother Goose, and a dead famous artist telling me what to do, I wonder if I know how to be any sort of boss at all. Vera Bogg must be wondering the same thing, because she says, “Do you think we should vote for a new leader?”

  Mr. Rodriguez frowns and puts his hand on my shoulder. “Penelope, do you want to come up with another plan?”

  “I do,” says Vera Bogg, before I have a chance to say anything.

  “Me too,” says Marcus.

  Good gravy. I look at my half drawing of Mother Goose on the wall. I can almost hear her squawk, “Hear now, my sweet, I dare you to really take charge. And if you let them put me on an asteroid, I will lose all my feathers and promise never to forgive you.”

  I straighten my back a little. “I don’t think Mother Goose would want to be in outer space or driving a truck,” I say. “For one thing.”

  “How do you know?” asks Marcus.

  “Yeah,” says Alexander, “did you talk to her or something?”

  They laugh, Marcus and Alexander do, and Birgit joins along.

  I pretend to laugh, too. I’m an excellent pretender. “Oh no,” I say. “I never have. Not even one time.” Because when you’re the Boss, it’s not a good idea for other people to know that you might sometimes talk to a half-drawn old bird.

  “Maybe I could be in charge,” Vera Bogg says to Mr. Rodriguez. “If Penelope doesn’t want to do it.”

  I look at Mr. Rodriguez and he is raising his eyebrows at me like he might be thinking it’s an okay idea. But it’s very much not an okay idea, not to me. Because if Vera Bogg is in charge, she will become Mr. Rodriguez’s Favorite. She will, I just know it. And it’s not fair if she does, on account of the fact that she is already the Favorite of Miss Stunkel and Patsy Cline.

  So I say no. And I say it kind of loud while I point my eyeballs in Vera’s direction. Then I open up my drawing pad and hold up my sketches. “This. We’re going to do this. No monster trucks, no space stations, no fleas, and most importantly, NO PINK!”

  My words are heavy and thick, and they hang in the room for an awful long time. And while they do, I pretend that I don’t see the wide eyes, that I don’t see Patsy Cline wince when I say “flea,” and that I don’t see Mr. Rodriguez give me a look that says, Maybe This Isn’t So Righteous.

  But it’s too late to go back and say never mind, so I keep going. Because when you can’t go back, the only thing you can do is go frontways. I hand out my sketches and point to the blank wall. “Go,” I say. “This is what we’re drawing.”

  Somehow it works. Because the next thing I know, they’ve all got pencils in their drawing hands pressed up against the wall. Art is happening, my art. And everything would be all right, it would, if I didn’t know the Bad Luck was somewhere lurking around a corner.

  9.

  Miss Stunkel tells us we’re going to watch a short video on watercolors. “But before we do,” she says, “let’s hear a report on how the mural is going at Portwaller’s Blessed Home for the Aging.” Then she looks right at Vera Bogg, Miss Stunkel does, because I guess she doesn’t know I’ve been voted the Boss. “Vera?” she says.

  Right away Vera Bogg says, “Oh, it’s going fine, I guess. Mr. Rodriguez isn’t really telling us what to do much. He wants us kids to work as a group.” She looks over at me when she says this last part.

  “Isn’t that something,” says Miss Stunkel, rubbing her Monday lizard pin.

  “But we needed somebody to be the decider since we only have two more weekends to work on the mural,” Vera says. “So we voted, um, for a person, one of us, to be a decider. And um, um, so that’s how it’s going.”

  My word.

  “Very nice,” says Miss Stunkel with a smile in Vera’s direction. Then she turns to the TV to start the video and I’m left out of the whole thing.

  “I’m the decider,” I announce. “Everyone voted for me to be the Boss of the mural. I decide.”

  Even Angus Meeker, who is back from the stomach bug but still looking a little gray in the face, raises his eyebrows at me.

  Miss Stunkel turns around and says, “Really?” like she’s surprised I’m the Boss and not Vera Bogg, who wears pink and never forgets to raise her hand before speaking and has a last name that could be Boss if the g’s one day got together and decided to try something new. Then she looks at Vera like she wants to know if it’s true. If I, Penelope Crumb, really am in charge. Vera’s cheeks turn pinker and she nods.

  So there.

  Then Miss Stunkel turns back to the TV again, but before she does, she tells me I should have raised my hand before I said what I said. Not “Way to go, Penelope” or “Congratulations on your super fine achievement.” But “Raise your hand before you talk. You know the rule.” I tell her sorry, but I have more to say, so I raise my hand and just keep going. “We’re going to be interviewed by a reporter from The Portwaller Tribune. So, we’re going to be in the newspaper.”

  “That’s something,” says Miss Stunkel, adjusting the buttons on the TV. But she doesn’t say that I’m something like Vera Bogg. “Thank you, Penelope. Now, let’s turn our attention to the TV screen.”

  “The mural is about Mother Goose,” I say. “Who is an actual goose that wears eyeglasses and mittens. Vera forgot to say that part.”

  When Miss Stunkel turns around this time, she’s got a look on her face that says, How Would You Like to Keep Talking After School? Then she says, “Which reminds me, Penelope. See me after school.”

  Well then.

  Patsy Cline hardly talks to me all day. Even though we’re not best friends anymore, and I’m the Boss and not her, it’s still a good idea to talk to people once in a while. This is what I tell her as she packs up her books to go home.

  Her mouth pr
esses into a straight line, and she says, “That’s mighty good advice. You should remember that yourself sometime.”

  Honest to goodness, that’s what she says. I tell her I will try but I have a lot of things to remember these days seeing how I am the Boss and everything. Plus there’s remembering to watch out for the Bad Luck, but I don’t get to tell her that because by the time I think of it she’s heading out the door.

  Miss Stunkel must be having trouble remembering things, too, because when she calls me over to her desk, she says, “Penelope, on Friday I sent a note home with you.”

  This is something I’d like to forget. But what would be even better is if Miss Stunkel would forget, too. I do my best to help that along. “I don’t think so,” I say, shaking my head. “Nope, you didn’t. Must have been someone else.”

  “That wasn’t a question,” she says, leaning in a little closer to me. “I did indeed send a note home with you on Friday.”

  “Oh.” I eye her finger, the one that looks like a chicken bone, but she’s got it tucked under a book called The Wicked Ways of Fourth-Grade Teachers: A How-To Guide. I’m pretty sure.

  “Did the note make it to your mother?” Miss Stunkel asks.

  “She’s very busy.” Which isn’t a lie.

  “So you gave her the note?”

  “She has a job and she goes to school,” I say, and then I explain how she’s an insides artist and is drawing pictures of people’s brains and internal organs for a book. “It’s very important to get people’s insides looking right.”

  “If she has read the note, she will know that I asked her to sign it and for you to return it to me today.”

  “Doctors read those books,” I say, “and you wouldn’t want a doctor to mix up a brain with the thing that looks like sausage links all piled together.”

  “Intestine?”

  “Right, intestine.”

  Miss Stunkel’s finger twitches. “Is the note in her possession or not?”

  “Not yet.”

  “I would like you to give it to her and then bring it back to me tomorrow,” she says. “And maybe I will just give her a phone call to catch her up on things.”

  Just then, from somewhere around a corner, I’m pretty sure, I smell fried onions.

  10.

  Littie watches me dig into the Heap. “What are you looking for?”

  At the bottom of the pile, I find my sneakers with the hole in the heel, the ones with my drawings of a big fish eating a little fish eating a worm on a hook on the sole. I toss them out. And shove my T-shirts off to the side. “A note.”

  “What kind of note?”

  “The one from Miss Stunkel.”

  “Oh, Penelope.”

  I tell her to stop being a monkey scientist for a minute and help me look.

  She tells me she will if I stop being so bossy about everything.

  “But that’s how I’m supposed to be,” I tell her. “Because I. Am. The. Boss.”

  Then Littie Maple says with her hands on her hips, “Not of me, you’re not.”

  “Don’t help me look then,” I say. “Fine.” But then I hear the door to our apartment open and close, and so I peek out of my room and hold my breath. It’s just Terrible, thank lucky stars.

  Littie’s eyes perk right up and she’s ready with her notebook and pen. I dive back into the Heap and am buried somewhere in the middle part when I think I hear the phone ring. “Did you hear that?” I say, scrambling to the top. I pull a T-shirt off my head.

  “You mean besides the phone ringing?”

  “I got it!” I holler as I jump out of the Heap and race down the hall to the kitchen. Two rings, three rings, four. “I got it! I got it! I got it!” I’m almost there when from out of nowhere, Terrible picks up the phone and sticks his arm out to block me. Aliens are sneaky and fast. And sneaky.

  “Hello?” he says, keeping me away with his elbow. I swipe at him, but he’s covered in football padding, so nothing gets through. Then he turns his back on me and says something into the phone so quiet that I can’t hear.

  “Who is it?” I whisper. “Is it Miss Stunkel?”

  He bats his hand at me and says a lot of “ah-huhs” and “okays.” And then he’s off down the hall toward the laundry room. I follow close behind, trying to listen, but I can’t hear anything. “Who is it?” I ask again.

  He turns around and covers the phone with his hand. He’s got a look in his alien eyes that says, Stand By for Laser Beams, so I back up. And I knock right into Littie, who is behind me scribbling on her notepad.

  “Go away,” he whispers at us. “Now.” And I think he means it.

  “Just tell me if it’s Miss Stunkel,” I say.

  Then his mouth gets so straight and thin that his lips disappear all together.

  “I don’t think it’s Miss Stunkel,” says Littie, pulling at the back of my shirt. Then she whispers in my ear, “I think it’s that girl.”

  Terrible’s face turns red and he takes the phone into his room and closes the door.

  “I don’t like her,” I say.

  Littie is still writing like a mad scientist. “Who?”

  “That Tildy girl. She calls all the time.”

  “She seemed nice enough to me,” says Littie.

  “What do you think she wants with my brother?”

  “She must like him, I guess,” she says.

  “Why?”

  Littie shrugs. “Probably because he likes her.”

  And that makes me wonder: How did Terrible get to be somebody’s Favorite?

  “Littie Maple,” I say, “don’t you ever say that.”

  She stops her scribbling and looks at me. “What?”

  “He just doesn’t, okay?” Because there isn’t room for any more Favorites around here. There just isn’t.

  Littie stares at me for a long time and then writes something in her notebook. But when I ask what she wrote, she changes the subject and says, “Aren’t you supposed to be looking for your note?”

  I shake my head. “No, Littie. Forget the note. We need to find me a charm.”

  I lead Littie down the steps of our building to the street.

  “Where are we going?” she says.

  “To find a charm. Haven’t you been paying attention?”

  Littie tells me there I go being bossy again. Then she asks, “What kind of charm?”

  “The kind that will get rid of the Bad Luck.” Then I tell her about Nila Wister’s charms like her butterfly and keys.

  “Who’s Nila Wister?” says Littie.

  “Never mind,” I say. “Let’s just go.”

  Littie says she’ll come but she has to be back in time for supper because her mom is fixing turkey pot pie. I tell her fine but I don’t know how she can think about food when the Bad Luck is all around, and then we head down the street.

  I keep my eyeballs on the sidewalk and the storefront windows, watching for I-don’t-know-what to say “Here I am, little darling, the charm you’ve been looking for, the one that will make all your troubles go away.”

  After three blocks, I don’t see any. And I know the Bad Luck is to blame.

  Littie says, “If a good-luck charm can be a butterfly figurine or some keys, then it could be anything, right?”

  “Right.”

  “Then how do we know what we’re looking for?” she says. “I mean, couldn’t that tree over there be a good-luck charm?”

  I tell her that I’ll know a charm when I see it, at least I think I will, and that a tree can’t be a good-luck charm because everybody knows that a good-luck charm has to fit in your pocket. My word.

  As we’re walking along in the next block, a commuter bus speeds by, and the wind blows my ponytail the whole way around my head, tickling my nose. A sign hanging from a nearby storefront swings and cre
aks. It reads ROCK OF AGES, and in the front window are baskets of colored stones and crystals. “Let’s go in here.”

  Inside, the store stinks. Not like fried onions, thank lucky stars, but like heavy perfume on dusty curtains. And it makes my nose burn. “Looking for something?” says a man behind the counter. He has a big nose, like a flower bulb, and I wonder how he can stand the smell of this place. When I ask him, he says, “I don’t know what you mean.”

  I give him a look that says, You Should Be Able to Smell Roses on the Moon, but if he doesn’t know he has a big nose in the middle of his face, then I’m not going to be the one to tell him.

  “We’re looking for good-luck charms,” says Littie.

  “You don’t say,” says the man.

  I tell him that we do say and ask if there are any in the store. He says that he can’t guarantee any luck with a purchase but that we’re welcome to look around and see if anything strikes us as lucky. And also, all sales are final.

  “If something strikes us,” I whisper to Littie, “I don’t think we’d be very lucky.”

  She rolls her eyes at me and then we start looking. After a few minutes of it, I decide that rocks aren’t very exciting. And they don’t feel very lucky. Littie asks about a shiny rock in the display case, for who knows why, and the man tells her that it is quartz crystal. From the mountains just north of Portwaller.

  When Littie asks whether it’s rose quartz or smoky quartz, I say, “Are these supposed to be good luck or something?”

  Littie says, no, but aren’t they pretty?

  “Littie Maple,” I say, “if you have to get home for turkey pot pie, I don’t think we have time to look at rocks that don’t do anything but sit there and look pretty.”

  The man tells Littie they are rose quartz in case she still wants to know, and then after he puts them back into the display case, he points to Littie’s cheek and tells her she’s got an eyelash there. She brushes off her cheek with her fingers, and the man says, “Oh, you should have made a wish.”