Penelope Crumb Finds Her Luck

by Shawn Stout

  “What?” asks Littie.

  “You put your eyelash here,” he says, pointing to the top of his fist, “and then blow it off and make a wish. Haven’t you heard of that before?”

  I look at Littie and we both shake our heads. “So an eyelash is kind of like a good-luck charm?” I say.

  “No,” says the man. “I wouldn’t say that.”

  “But you can make a wish with it,” I say.

  He says, yeah, you can.

  “Then it’s a good-luck charm.”

  “No, not really.”

  “But it is.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Then what is it?” I ask.

  “Um . . .”

  “See, if you don’t know, then it must be a charm.”

  He shakes his head. “That’s not . . .”

  “It is, I’m sure of it.”

  “No.”

  “It has to be.” And before he has a chance to tell me different, I grab Littie.

  “Thank you,” says Littie as I pull her out the door. “Very pretty quartz!”

  Out on the sidewalk I tell Littie to check my face for fallen eyelashes.

  “What?” she says.

  “Do you know how many wishes I’ve missed out on? Come on, I don’t want to miss out on any more.”

  She looks real close. So close I can tell she ate an orange some time ago and also peanut butter. “I don’t see any. Try blinking hard. Maybe one will fall out.”

  I open and shut my eyes as fast as I can, and the lights go on and then off and then on and then off and then on and then I hold on to Littie’s shoulder because I start to feel dizzy.

  Littie shakes her head. “Nothing.”

  “They must be in there good,” I say.

  She tells me to try rubbing my eyes. “That might knock one loose.”

  I do. For a long time, until everything is a little blurry. “How about now?”

  “Nope.”

  I sigh. “Well then, you’ll have to get one.”

  “What do you mean, get one?”

  “You know, yank one out,” I say. “It’s the only way.”

  “Are you sure?” asks Littie.

  I nod.

  Littie brings her fingers close to my eyeball and I go all stiff. “You’re not going to get mad at me if it hurts, are you?” she says

  “No,” I say. “I promise. Just try not to make it hurt.”

  Littie moves her fingers closer, so close it looks like a giant pterodactyl coming in to pluck out my eyeball. Then it flies away. “You sure you’re not going to get mad?”

  “Littie Maple, I already said I promise.”

  “It’s getting dark out here, so it’s getting hard to see,” she says.

  “Then you better hurry.”

  She tells me that I better stop being so bossy and that she’s just trying to help. I tell her less trying more doing, and that’s when the pterodactyl returns and grabs at my eyeball.

  “Yeeoow!”

  “Did you get one?”

  Littie says no and then makes another grab without warning.

  “Oow oww!” I cover my eye with my hand.

  She examines her fingers and holds her hand up in the air. “I got it!”

  With one good eye, I give her a look that says, Littie Maple Saves the Day. I put out my fist to her. “Put it here. Put it here.”

  Littie’s tongue is wagging sideways out of her mouth as she puts the eyelash on my hand. She puts it there real slow, and I think it will never get there and I’ll never get to make my wish, but then it does get there, my eyelash does. And it’s a real beauty.

  Littie says, “There. Make your wish for good luck.”

  And just as I’m about to, wouldn’t you know the Bad Luck sends another bus speeding by, blowing my eyelash to who knows where, and taking my wish right along with it.

  11.

  Here’s one thing I know about trouble: It’s really good at following you places. I know this because as soon as I get home, my mom yells from the laundry room, “If that’s you, Penelope, we have some talking to do!”

  Good gravy.

  I say, “It’s not Penelope. It’s someone else. Someone who doesn’t need to talk about anything unless it has to do with getting more sweets in the cupboards. But thanks very much, anyway, I’ll be across the hall eating some turkey pot pie.” I say this in a tiny voice, in barely a whisper, with cupped hands over my mouth. If Mom doesn’t know it’s me that’s just come inside, then I’m not going to be the one to tell her.

  I tiptoe backwards toward the door, but then I see Terrible’s head poking out from the kitchen. He’s biting an orange Popsicle in half.

  “Ah! Where did you get that?” I say.

  “The freezer.”

  “Save me an orange one,” I say.

  He says, “Save me from having to look at you.”

  Aliens. I try to move past him, but he blocks me. I grit my teeth, but that just makes him laugh. Then I give him a sideways look that says, Does That Girl Tildy Know about Your Alien Ways?

  But he doesn’t have a chance to answer because Mom yells my name again. And she says it like she’s talking about one of the gross insides she draws. Kidney stone, for example.

  Terrible shoves the rest of the Popsicle in his mouth and then smiles so I can see all of his orange teeth.

  “I’m coming,” I yell.

  Mom is sitting at her drawing desk. Which is really our broken dryer. She tells me to have a seat, but since it’s the laundry room and there are no other chairs, I sit on the floor next to a pile of dirty socks. She piles her hair into a messy bun on the top of her head and sticks in two drawing pencils to keep it in place. “I got a phone call today,” she says.

  “Was it from a doctor about your brain pictures?” I say. “Because they are very good.” I pick up one of her drawing pads on the floor by her stool and open it. Brains everywhere, and somebody’s back, too, with all of the backbones.

  “Penelope Rae.” (Infected hair follicle.)

  But I keep going, asking her if I have all those tiny bones in my back like her picture does and telling her that Littie’s momma is going to have a baby just in case she sees her in the hall and thinks she’s been eating too many pastries. Because sometimes if you just keep talking about bones and babies and fat bellies and things like that, people will forget that they are mad at you and want to send you to your room without any Popsicles.

  “I want to talk about the phone call I just got from Miss Stunkel.”

  Sometimes this doesn’t work so good.

  “Is there something you want to tell me?” she asks.

  “No,” I say. And that’s the honest truth.

  “Why didn’t you tell me that Miss Stunkel sent another note home?”

  I tell her that I didn’t want to get into trouble. But then she asks me if I don’t think I’m in trouble now.

  Oh.

  Then she tells me no TV for a week, two extra nights of doing dishes, and I’m to come straight home from school and go to my room to do all of my homework. She says I should go ahead there now and think about how I can improve my behavior and stop from getting any more notes sent home. “Go on, now. To your room. Which by the way is still a huge mess. You need to clean it, or I will.”

  Having your mom clean your room sounds like it would be a good thing, but it very much is not. That’s how my Favorite T-shirt ended up in the rag bag.

  Then she sets her eraser on one of her drawings and starts rubbing out the marks. She rubs so hard you can’t even tell the lines were there.

  I stare at her drawing and watch the lines disappear. “I don’t know how I can stop getting any more notes sent home. I’m not Miss Stunkel’s Favorite.”

  Mom looks at me like she doesn’t
know why I’m still standing here talking about Miss Stunkel after she told me to go to my room. “I don’t think you need to be her Favorite to behave in her class,” she says. “I was in fourth grade, too, once.”

  “A very, very, long, long, long time ago,” I tell her. Then I give her a look that says, Notice I Didn’t Say O-L-D. “And your teacher was probably a lot nicer than Miss Stunkel.”

  Mom shakes her head at me and then puts down her eraser. “I don’t understand, Penelope. You seem to be able to follow my rules at home. At least most of the time.” And just as she says this, she gets a look on her face like she’s thinking about all the times I haven’t followed her rules. Which is a lot. “Well, wait . . .”

  I quick change the subject. “But you like me,” I say.

  She nods and then her mouth curls into a smile. “I do.”

  “I’m your Favorite.”

  She stops smiling. “My what?”

  “Your Favorite,” I say. “You know, person.”

  “Oh.”

  That’s what she says: Oh.

  My toes get crampy. “Aren’t I?”

  She doesn’t say, “Oh my darling, oh my heart. Of course you are.” Instead, she pinches my cheek, smoothes my hair, and says, “Well, moms don’t have Favorites. It’s a rule.”

  I know this is what moms have to say, I know. But when it’s between me and an alien, ME or an ALIEN, I’d like to think that maybe, just maybe, ME, Penelope Crumb, might win out. I give her a smile that says, It’s Okay, I Won’t Tell Anybody. And even if I did, nobody would blame her for not loving an alien very much, I think.

  “Oh, Penelope,” she says. “I love you as much as I love your brother.”

  Well then.

  It’s a long walk down the hall. I can hear Terrible talking to somebody on the phone. He’s sprawled out on the couch with his stinky feet hanging off the end. I tiptoe closer, trying to be quiet like I have slippers made of cotton balls. Terrible does a lot of “ah-huhs” and “okays” and “yeahs.” And I think he must be talking to that Tildy girl again. Then he says, “All right, see you on Saturday, Grandpa Felix,” and hangs up.

  “Grandpa Felix?” I say.

  My cotton ball feet must work real good because Terrible jumps and hollers my name. I guess aliens aren’t the only ones who can be sneaky.

  “What?”

  “Didn’t Grandpa Felix want to talk to me?” I ask.

  “I guess not.”

  This hurts like a knuckle punch in the arm. “Well, what are you doing with him on Saturday?”

  “Nosy, aren’t you?” he says.

  I stick my big nose in the air and give him a look that says, Yes Indeedy, I Am.

  “I’m helping Grandpa with a photo shoot,” says Terrible, “if you need to know.”

  “You can’t do that,” I say. I’m the one that helps Grandpa with his photography jobs. That’s my job. That’s what I do. That’s what we do together.

  “Nosy and bossy.” He shakes his head at me.

  Littie pushes open the door to our apartment then. “Penelope! Oh, good, you’re right here. I brought you something to make up for your eyelash problem.” She shoves a folded paper towel at me.

  I give Littie a look that says, Not in Front of the Alien.

  But she isn’t so good at telling what different faces mean. “You know,” she says, “when we tried to pull one out. For luck.”

  “Littie Maple!”

  “What?” she says.

  Terrible gives us both the Hairy Eyeball and says, “You are so weird.”

  Littie hands me the paper towel. “Open it, and be very careful.”

  I unfold the paper towel and nearly go dead when I see what Littie brought me.

  “It’s a wishbone,” says Littie, “from the turkey my mom made.” She says it like I may not know what a wishbone is or that it comes from inside a turkey.

  I tell her I know, I know, and this is way better than an eyelash especially because there’s no pterodactyl trying to make me go blind. I take one side of the wishbone and hold it out for Littie to take the other.

  Littie shakes her head. “No, not me.” Then she points to Terrible. “You do it.” She grabs her notebook and pen from her back pocket and she’s a scientist again.

  Before I can tell Littie that this is a very bad idea, Terrible is off the couch and has got his alien fingers wrapped around the other side of the wishbone.

  “Wait!” I yell. “I’m not ready.” I think of my wish, putting the words together in my head so that I get it right. And when I do I tell Littie to count to three.

  She nods and then looks at us to see if we’ve got our wishes ready. Terrible smiles at me. I know that smile. It says, Losers Never Win. And that’s just awful, especially after he’s taking my place with Grandpa Felix, after not being Mom’s Favorite, after not being anybody’s Favorite, after all the Bad Luck. So awful that I definitely go dead this time. I’m sure of it, because I don’t hear Littie say, “Three.” But she must’ve, because the next thing I know, Terrible has pulled on the wishbone and my side snaps in half.

  12.

  I’m not talking to Grandpa. I’m not talking to him the whole way to Portwaller’s Blessed Home for the Aging.

  I just look out the car window and squeeze the paper lunch bag in my lap. The orange Popsicle inside is already starting to melt.

  “Are you going to tell me what’s got you miffed, or would you like me to guess?” says Grandpa Felix.

  I say, “Humph,” and then nothing else. If Grandpa Felix doesn’t know that I’m his Favorite, and that it should always be me as his photographer’s assistant, not Terrible, then I’m not going to be the one to tell him.

  “Suit yourself,” he says. And we go along for the rest of the drive without saying anything.

  As I get out of the car, Grandpa says that Mom will be picking me up this afternoon, and not him. “I’ve got a wedding to photograph this afternoon,” he says. “Your brother is going to help me.”

  “Is that so?” I say. Even though I already know it is so, I pretend that I don’t, and I don’t know why.

  Grandpa Felix says, “I asked your brother to help me because I knew you were busy today with your mural project.”

  “I could have left early,” I say.

  He sighs. “So this is what your grump is about.”

  “I just wanted to be the one to help you,” I say.

  “There will be other shoots,” he says. “And I don’t spend near as much time with Terrence as I do with you.”

  That’s because he’s Terrible the Alien. But I decide to keep that to myself for now.

  “I’ll be by to bring you here tomorrow morning same as usual.” Then he waves at me, the kind of wave a grandpa might give to some girl who he likes okay but is certainly not his Favorite, and drives away.

  Before my Popsicle puddles, I bring it to Nila Wister. The door to her room is open, so I go right on in. “I brought you some sweets today,” I say. “I hope you like orange.”

  Nila sits in her wheelchair, facing the window. She doesn’t say a word, not even “Big mistake,” and I worry that she’s gone dead from not enough sugary sweets. That would be just like the Bad Luck.

  Slowly I walk toward her, whispering her name. Because you don’t ever want to sneak up on an old person. They could go dead just from the scare. I stick out my finger and when I get close enough to touch her, I can already feel her cold Graveyard Dead skin on my fingertip. I poke her anyway, right in her cheek, and she screams, “I’m going!”

  I drop my Popsicle. Because when somebody who is Graveyard Dead comes back to life, it can make you forget you’ve got something in your hands.

  Nila Wister turns her old eyeballs on me and says, “Did you just poke me in the face?”

  I nod and say, “Congratulations, yo
u’re alive!”

  “Of course I’m alive,” she growls. “What did you think?”

  “That you weren’t.”

  “Well, I am. At least for this moment,” she says. Then she looks me over. “So, give me some candies.”

  I pick up the Popsicle and hand it to her. She gives it a squeeze. “A little squishy, isn’t it?”

  I tell her sorry about the melting.

  She turns it over in her hands. “What flavor?”

  “Orange.”

  She nods. “My Favorite.”

  I smile and tell her I have to work on the mural now but will stop by after. “I need to ask you about the trouble. It hasn’t gone away.”

  Nila Wister nods and says, “I know. And there’s something I need to ask you.”

  “What?”

  “Just go on now,” she says. “Let me drink my Popsicle in peace.”

  Mr. Rodriguez looks a little worried. Patsy Cline, Vera, and Marcus are huddled around him, and they all have looks on their faces that say, This Is Very Not Good. They all look at me when I come into the activity room, but only for a second.

  “Penelope,” says Mr. Rodriguez, “we were just going over the game plan.”

  “Oh,” I say, and drag a chair over to the table beside Patsy Cline. Because I should know the game plan, too, seeing how I’m the Boss and everything.

  “Birgit is sick,” says Mr. Rodriguez, “so she’s not coming today.”

  I look around at the others and notice that Alexander isn’t here either. “I hope it’s not the stomach bug.”

  Patsy Cline groans just then. And I can tell she’s worried that she’s going to get the stomach bug, too, because she asks if maybe one of the nurses has masks we could all wear to keep out the germs. “And some hand sanitizer,” she says. “I can make a list.”

  “Poor Birgit,” says Vera Bogg.

  “And Alexander,” I say, nodding.

  Then Mr. Rodriguez says, “Well, Alexander isn’t sick.” He clears his throat. “He’s had a change of heart about the mural and decided to spend his weekends doing something else.”

  Marcus says, “Humph,” and then nothing else. And he’s looking at me when he says it.