Buzzardstock opened the box. Inside, lying on a pillow of tissue paper, was the Shard. Next to it was a note written in Penelope’s cursive that simply read Thank you.
Buzzardstock smiled and handed it back. “A splendid gesture. But it’s up to you now.”
“No. I’m not—”
“Yes, you are. I’m not going to live forever, you know.”
The box suddenly felt heavy in Penelope’s hands.
“Buzzardstock!” Miles pulled the old man into a bear hug. “We did it!”
“You did it, my boy. I mostly puttered about in my bathrobe and baked pie.”
Penelope spotted Coral Wanamaker in the crowd, looking for someone to celebrate with. Their eyes met and Penelope gave her an enthusiastic wave. “See you at school,” she called.
“I think we might be on summer vacation now,” Coral mumbled.
“Oh. Yeah. Wow. I hope we don’t have to repeat sixth grade.”
“We only missed a few days. I couldn’t take another year of Stingleberry’s hiccups anyway.”
Once a soaring, open space, the Ice House had melted into a colorless and claustrophobic one. No sculptures, no twisting stairways or balconies or slides. It was now more of an Ice Shack. Buzzardstock had made the most of what remained, carving it to reconfigure the house into its new, modest blueprint.
“Oh, Ore9n,” Penelope said. “I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t be,” he said. “I’m not. It’s still a house made of ice. That’s all I ever wanted.”
As Penelope said her goodbyes in Buzzardstock’s packed home, it felt like the last day of school. Most of the farewells were quick and pleasant (Pooley, Floyd), some more dramatic (Decker, who acted like they were best friends). She looked around for Omar, Martin, and Lucas, but they found her first. Martin was eye to eye with Penelope, which confused her at first, until she saw he was standing on Lucas’s shoulders, who was standing on Omar’s shoulders, who was struggling to hold them both up.
“Give it to ’er, quick,” Omar grunted. “Before I drop you both.”
Martin grinned and handed Penelope a smooth red stone. “I found this on the sea floor. Everything down there was gray and black, and here was this beautiful unexpected burst of color. Made me think of you.”
Penelope flipped the stone over. All three had signed their names.
“Be good to that brother of yours.” Martin kissed her cheek and the three of them tottered off.
“Miss March.”
Penelope turned to find Commander Beardbottom’s beak pointing up at her.
“In all my years in the service—a number higher than I care to mention—I have never seen the kind of courage you and your brother displayed. Not just in battle, but in adjusting to a new way of life. Whatever you went through, and whatever aftermath you may experience, know that you have my respect until the day I die.” In one swift, crisp movement, Beardbottom put his good wing to his forehead and saluted Penelope. “Thank you, sailor,” he said, and walked away.
Just when Penelope thought she had run out of penguins to say goodbye to, she spied Sparks sitting alone in the corner, a big wad of krill tobacco in her cheek.
“Hey,” Penelope said. “Guess this is it.”
“Guess so.” Sparks stood up. “I’m not big on goodbyes, you know? But I gotta say, March, you’re an amazing girl. You did us proud.”
“I’ll see you again, right?”
Sparks smiled and spat into her cup. “Definitely.”
—
As Penelope and Miles walked the streets of Glacier Cove, the town felt smaller.
And it was. Some homes were gone; others were being rebuilt. Roads had cracked and buckled. South Shore Drive had disappeared completely. Everything felt more crammed and cozy, but the people, most of whom were on their way to work, looked happy. One man was so surprised to see Miles and Penelope he gave them each a turnip.
When they turned onto Broken Branch Lane, there was their house in all its ramshackle glory, looking exactly the same. It had survived.
Inside, Russell March was cleaning up from breakfast. He was about to leave for work, but he’d convinced Hank Wimberley to cover for him that afternoon so he could knock off early to search for the kids. Maybe today’s the day, he thought.
When he glanced out the kitchen window and saw his children running full speed toward the house, his first thought was that he was hallucinating.
His second was that he would not be going to work that day.
He dropped the bowl in the sink and stumbled outside, where he met Penelope on the front lawn and threw his arms around her. Neither said a word. They hugged and hugged and cried and cried.
Russell pulled Miles into a muscular embrace; then the two of them pulled Penelope back in and all three wept in joy and shock and relief and for about a million other reasons. No one wanted to let go. Russell had thought about this moment so many times—rehearsed it in his mind, even—but the monologue changed every day. Now that he had his children back, he was so emotional he couldn’t remember how to feel. So he cried.
And just like that, they were a family again.
That night, as Penelope was putting the box that held the Shard on a high shelf in her bedroom closet, behind a dusty stack of books and puzzles she hadn’t touched for years, her father wandered in.
“Where’s your brother?”
“Taking a shower. He really needed one.”
“Looks like you could use some new boots.”
Penelope looked at her feet. She’d barely noticed, but her toes were poking from her shoes. “Dad,” she said. “I’m sorry for the way I left.”
Russell closed his eyes, and when he opened them again, he seemed relieved his daughter was still there. “You know, I’ve gone round and round in the past week. I was angry. I was scared. I was sad. I was worried. I was hopeful. I wanted to find you more than anything; then I was afraid of what I might find. But no matter how I felt, I never gave up. Never.”
“I love you, Dad.”
“I love you.” He stroked his beard. “I won’t ask about the bandage on your hand or that gash on your chin. Or Miles’s shoulder. You don’t have to tell me where you’ve been. Not yet. I just need to know that you’re okay.”
Penelope looked around her bedroom. The two hammocks, the desk, the little window. The sound of her brother yelping in the cold shower in the next room. She could still smell dinner, for which her father had tried something new and sautéed a turnip, then sliced it into crisp-looking discs with caramelized edges. No meal had ever tasted better to Penelope. Nothing had changed, but everything had.
“I’m okay,” she said.
For two weeks, a heavy snow pelted Glacier Cove. Temperatures dropped back to respectable iceberg levels, solidifying the ice once again. Kids bundled up. Snowplows rumbled. Dogs ran outside to pee, then scampered back into the relative warmth of their homes. The town had no idea how close it had come to annihilation.
Buzzardstock never spoke a word about what had transpired, and now that everything was back to normal, people seemed to have forgotten him once again.
Despite missing her final exams, Penelope March was permitted to advance to seventh grade in the fall. A pleading phone call from Mr. Stingleberry to the principal didn’t hurt. He didn’t want Penelope in his class again any more than she wanted him.
Over the summer, Penelope spent a lot of hours under thick blankets, reading in her hammock. She didn’t go outside much. Her boots had worn through on the bottom, so she could feel the ice on her toes. In darker moments, she imagined various strangers to be Makara Nyx in disguise. Other times, she expected to find Stella Wanamaker waiting for her in the shadows with her eyes rolled back.
Penelope tried to explain the submarine to her father. Russell listened patiently, maybe amused, maybe alarmed. After a few minutes, though, he held up his hand. “You know what? That’s enough. I’m happy that you trusted me enough to tell me, but…well, let’s just leave it at tha
t. My wallet’s in the kitchen. Go buy a pair of boots, would you?”
Sometimes Penelope would think about something funny Omar had said or how good Dupree’s pancakes were, but she had no one to tell.
As Miles’s shoulder healed, she saw less and less of him. He lost interest in escapology and traded his handcuffs and straitjacket to a kid down the block for a bike. Most mornings, a gaggle of kids would come by and he would leave with them. No one cared where he had been; his smile was back and he seemed eager to get on with normal life. Normal didn’t include submarines or magical cookies or Makara Nyx.
Every now and then, though, Miles dropped hints that he had not entirely moved on. One day Penelope found a note in her brother’s handwriting stuck in her book:
What’s black and white, black and white, black and white, and black and white?
She turned it over to find the answer:
A penguin rolling down a hill.
At dinner one night, Miles asked Penelope, out of nowhere, if she’d gone to see Coral.
“No,” Penelope said. For reasons she didn’t understand, she had not made any effort. Nor had Coral. “Why are you asking?”
“She seems like she’d be a good friend.”
Penelope wrinkled her nose. “What makes you say that?”
“I don’t know.” Miles smiled. “Maybe I saw the future.”
—
The trek to Edinburgh Discount Footwear was not a pleasant one. To avoid getting slush-bombed by a car speeding down Watermill Boulevard, Penelope dove into a ditch. For her trouble, she got a faceful of snowdrift.
Next to the shoe store, a For Rent sign hung in Wanamaker’s Fortune-Telling Emporium window. With a twinge of fear bubbling in her gut, Penelope pressed her face against the cold glass. The space inside was dusty and empty.
“Penelope March? Is that you?”
Penelope spun around. There, under six layers and lugging a bag of groceries, was Teddy Bronconato. “Hey! I thought it was you.”
“Hi, Teddy!”
“I heard you were back,” said her classmate. “Man, we thought you were gone, gone.” Teddy whistled. “We had a candlelight vigil and everything.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. The class really missed you. They even missed Coral. I know a lot of kids weren’t so nice last year, but when I heard you were okay…well, welcome back.”
Penelope smiled. It was the longest exchange they’d ever had, and she had no idea what to say.
He smiled back. “I’ll see you in seventh grade.”
“See you in seventh.”
Twenty-five minutes later, Penelope’s numb toes thanked her for the new pair of insulated high-topped boots made with waterproof suede. To break them in, she began to walk, with no real destination. But as her feet thawed, they knew exactly where they would end up.
—
Somehow, it was Wolfknuckle who opened the door when Penelope knocked. The dog yowled enthusiastically. When she stroked his fur, he ran in excited circles until he was so dizzy he crashed into a wall.
“Anybody else home?” Penelope walked into the foyer. “Hello?”
She tried the kitchen: nothing. Living room: no one. In and out of rooms, she found only dead silence.
Penelope wandered into the gallery that was once home to the Ice House’s most ambitious sculptures—but as of her last visit, home to nothing at all—and stopped in her tracks. In the far corner stood the entire crew of the AF Delphia. Her heart boomed. “Hey, guys!” she called out.
No one moved. Every single penguin stood motionless.
Puzzled, she edged closer. They appeared to be posing for a photo, but she didn’t see anyone with a camera. Some had wings around each other or were caught in a laugh; others were grinning or saluting, doing their best to look tough in their crisp uniforms—a proud, tight team of brothers and sisters. Omar had one powerful wing on Martin’s shoulder and the other on Lucas’s. His twinkly-eyed grin looked so genuine that Penelope put her hand on his belly.
But Omar did not laugh, and he did not move. He was ice. They all were.
—
Penelope finally found Buzzardstock in the Cold Room. “Penelope March!” he crowed, and jogged over to greet her. The submarine was gone, as was the water. The room had gone back to the same cavernous workspace where Penelope had spent so much time.
There in the middle of the room, chiseling the corner of an enormous ice slab, was Coral Wanamaker. She looked totally different: Happy, well fed. Healthy, even.
Coral’s face lit up. “Penelope!”
“What are you doing— Why…?”
“The day we got back to Glacier Cove, I went straight to my room and packed a suitcase.” Coral swallowed and made a face. “Stella tried to stop me, of course. She put every curse on me she could think of. Said that if I left, I would never set foot in her home again. I told her that was the whole idea. That I didn’t believe what she believed. And that if she tried to hurt you, I would end her. Then I walked over here.”
Penelope was flattered. And impressed. She didn’t know Coral had it in her.
“Coral is staying on indefinitely,” Buzzardstock said. “The girl is quite a rousing houseguest. All she has to do in return is learn the art.”
“Ore9n calls me the Ice Princess,” Coral said. “I kept asking when I could go see you. He said you needed time.”
“I guess I did.”
“We began to worry that you had returned to the sea,” said Buzzardstock. “Or that maybe your father forbade you to leave the house again.”
“No, I’ve just been taking it easy. I’m—”
“No need to explain.” Buzzardstock cracked his old knuckles. “You know, Penelope, you’re welcome back at any time to continue your education. You’re far from finished.”
“Thanks. I will.” Penelope motioned to the ice. “So, Coral, what are you working on?”
“I don’t know.” Coral looked at the ice and smiled. “But I can’t wait to find out.”
—
That night, Penelope lay in her hammock, trying to finish a book. She always concentrated better when Miles was there, but he had zonked out on the living room couch. Her busy mind kept wandering. She decided she would go to the Ice House tomorrow. Just to help out.
She was about to turn out the light when she heard a knock on her bedroom door.
“I wanted to say good night,” said her father from the doorway.
“Come on in,” she said.
As he kissed Penelope on the head, she saw the small wooden crate in his hands. He thrust it at her in his awkward gruff way.
Penelope threw her legs over the side of the hammock and slid the lid off the crate.
Inside she found wedding pictures and love letters, earrings and necklaces. There were ticket stubs and birthday cards and papers and some sketches. And photos. So many photos. Penelope found a document from the mayor of Glacier Cove declaring May 9 to be Angela March Day. A birth certificate and a death certificate. Her mother’s whole life, crammed into one little crate.
Penelope could barely see through the tears, but when she hugged her father, she could feel his wet face against hers. Overwhelmed, she lay down in her hammock.
Her father wiped his face and plucked a picture from the crate. It was a washed-out snapshot of Penelope’s mother, young and beautiful, head thrown back in laughter, holding a baby girl on her hip while trying to play Ping-Pong. Then he pulled the blanket up to Penelope’s chin and said, “Let me tell you a story.”
Like every writer, I’ve got my people—the ones who did the heavy lifting of real life while I was writing—and I owe them endless thanks. That means Wendy Loggia, an editor of unlimited grace and enthusiasm; Matthew Elblonk, who saw potential where others saw junk mail; Alexandria Neonakis and Katrina Damkoehler, who brought their twisted magic to the striking cover; and Carrie Andrews for the copyediting heroics. But gratitude also goes to Kenn and Julie, David and Devora, and Ben and Ursina for infin
ite kindness and devotion; Jon Eig, Mark Caro, Jim Garner, and the rest of the Hunger Dungers for their beautiful brains and beers; Brad Sweeney and Anne-Marie Guarnieri for their hospitality; Jeff Johns and Diana Bump for the porch with a birdhouse view; Dan Saxe for the air mattress in Brooklyn; Jason Saldanha for making the connection; Robert Baker for unlocking the door; Fang Island for the godlike noise; and Penny Pollack for taking a zillion chances on me. Hearty cheers to Charlotte Ostrow, Jocelyn, and Lee Ann, who picked up the eternal slack; CD Collins and Camilla and John Mendenhall, who provided sanctuary; and Joy Tutela, Melissa Walker, Beth Davey, Katie Alender, and Renee Zuckerbrot, who lent smart guidance. To Bud Ruby, Helene Catz, Eva Mumm, Philip Fox, and Mary Ann and Isaac Abella, whose blessed memories stir up color and sound. Special love to Hannah, who read it first and best; Max, who always demands a bedtime story; and Avi, who melts me every day; to Mom and Dad, who have always believed—and, of course, to Sarah, who never stops offering her hand and heart.
Jeffrey Michael Ruby is the chief dining critic of Chicago magazine. He is the coauthor of Everybody Loves Pizza: The Deep Dish on America’s Favorite Food and has played college basketball in Ireland, assisted in an autopsy, and sumo wrestled for twenty thousand people in New Jersey. He lives in Chicago with his wife and three children. Penelope March Is Melting is his first work of fiction.
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Penelope March Is Melting Page 17