Penelope Crumb (6 page)

For a second I worry that maybe Terrible has followed us. I look around and I hold my breath, because 1) I’m expecting to see Terrible’s face at any second, and 2) it smells so bad I think I might upchuck. But there’s no sign of Terrible anywhere, thank lucky stars.

Littie holds her nose with one hand and opens the map with the other. I switch to breathing from
my mouth. “Five stops before we get to Simmons,” she says.

I hug my toolbox to my chest and wish that I’d brought my drawing pad. So many people to draw. So many different shapes and sizes of noses. I try to find all of the big ones to compare to mine. I point to a lady sitting across the way from us. “Is my nose bigger than hers?”

Littie looks at us both and whispers, “Yep. And be more quiet about it, would you? I think she heard.”

I give the lady a friendly Sorry about What I Said wave. Then I point to a man in a bow tie. “What about him? Is my nose bigger than his?” I ask softly.

Littie says, “Definitely. Now stop it with all the questions, would you, I need to look at the map.”

While Littie studies the map and rambles on about shortcuts and street names, I turn around to get a load of all the noses behind me. A man in the seat right behind me is leaning his head on the
window. He has wrinkled skin that drapes over his bones like a tablecloth. His eyes are shut and his mouth is open so far that I can count twelve teeth on the bottom and eight up top.

He is very still. And after a while I think maybe too still.

I turn back around and shove my toolbox onto Littie’s lap. “What
are
you doing?” she snaps, folding up the map.

I shush her and then face backward again, sliding up on my knees. I stare at the man for a long time until I’m sure he must be mostly dead. Maybe even all dead. His eyes stay closed during each stop, even when the name of the next station blares from the loudspeaker and the doors fly open and shut like elevators in a mood. The man doesn’t move, not even a twitch. I reach out my finger.

“Penelope, no…,” says Littie.

My finger gets closer and closer to his face. The
whir
of the train is loud in my ears. The windows go black. And I pretend that we are speeding
through time so fast, so far, that we’re chasing the night and leaving the day in the dust. There’s no telling where we will end up. There’s no telling what can happen.

I hold tight to the back of the seat with my free hand as the train rocks and jolts. I can feel Littie’s eyes on me. My eyes, though, are fixed on the space between the dead man and my finger. And the smaller that space gets, the more goose pimples I get on my arms.

The train jolts again, and before I’m ready the space is gone. The tip of my finger hits the tip of the dead man’s nose. Right away, his eyes fly open. Which practically scares the life out of me. But somehow, with him alive and me now almost dead, my finger stays put on his nose.

We both stare at my finger. We’re quiet, watching. Me, scared to take my finger away in case he might go dead again. Him, looking at my finger all cross-eyed like it is a butterfly on a blade of grass that might fly away at any second. As the train
screeches to a stop, my finger slips to the side of his nose, but I manage to slide it back up again. His eyes are fixed on it.

“Come on, Penelope,” says Littie, yanking at my arm and causing my finger to break away. “We need to get off.”

I grab the handle of my toolbox as she pulls me off the metro. Over my shoulder, I look back at the man. He looks at me for a second, not even a second really, and as the doors close, so do his eyes. And then he is gone.

W
hen we get to Highland Street, the street where the only F. Crumb in Simmons lives, my heart is pounding. I pull at the neck of my T-shirt and have a look down at my chest. I imagine the insides heart that my mom drew pumping away inside me. And thinking about all the blood and veins and creepy stuff like that makes it pound even harder.

“Shush,” I tell it, first in a firm voice like how you would tell a dog to stay, and then again much softer like when you find out that dog would rather not be told what to do.

“There it is!” says Littie, pointing. Which just about stops my heart altogether.

We stop in front of a yellow row house with pink shutters and a small garden in the front.

“Well, if your grandpa likes nature walks, he might just live in a place like this,” says Littie. She pulls a leaf off a tall plant that’s sticking up through the fence and brings it to her nose. “Peppermint.”

She hands the leaf to me, and after I smell it, I slide the leaf carefully into my pocket. Then I open the white iron gate and pull Littie along the stone walkway and up the three steps to the front door.

My heart is beating so fast, I think it might jump right out and flop onto the ground next to my feet. Which wouldn’t be the best way to meet your grandpa for the first time.

I practice what I’m going to say in my head.
Mr. Crumb, my dead dad is your son. Which makes you my grandpa. Can I call you Grandpa? Pappy? Pop?
My, Grandpa, what a big nose you have.

“Are we going to stand out here all day?” asks Littie. “Aren’t you going to knock? Want me to do it? I’m just saying.”

Good gravy. I raise my hand, hold my breath, and tap on the door. Littie takes a tiny step back and gives me a look that says, I Can’t Believe We’re Doing This. My heart is beating faster and I feel sick and woozy. Which makes me afraid because what if I go dead for real. Right now in front of Grandpa Felix. And then he’ll have a dead son and a dead granddaughter. “I can’t,” I say to no one in particular. This was a bad idea. I turn to run.

But before my feet can figure out what they are supposed to do, I hear the door open.

I turn my head just to get a quick look at him, but there’s no grandpa standing in the doorway. A woman in a bathrobe leans down toward us. That’s when I see the cat curled up in her arms.

“Making repairs?” the woman asks.

“Huh?” I say, staring at the cat’s belly to see if it’s breathing.

“Looks like you’ve got your tools,” she says, nodding at my toolbox.

“Oh, right,” Littie says. “Tools.” Then she gives me a look that says, I Hope She Isn’t Counting on Us to Fix Anything.

Unless bologna sandwiches and half-eaten granola bars can fix what she’s got broke, we aren’t going to be much help. “Do you live here all by yourself?” I say.

My heart starts to pound again while I wait for her answer. I try to peer around her and have a look inside the door to see if maybe Grandpa Felix is just past her, there sitting at his desk putting a check mark beside his latest catch in
The National Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Butterflies.

“No,” she says, pushing her thick glasses to the top of her nose and standing up straight. “Not all by myself. It’s me and the mister.”

I knew it. Grandpa lives here. I peer around her again and point inside. “It looks like your table leg
in there is loose.” I push past her, pulling Littie and my toolbox along with me and into the house.

“Now, wait a second,” says the woman.

“What are you doing?” whispers Littie.

But I’m too busy looking for any sign of Grandpa Felix to answer. “Is he here?”

“Is who here?” says the woman.

“Your mister,” I say.

The woman laughs, holds out her cat to me, and says, “Right in front of your nose, dear.” The cat opens one eye, sees Littie’s marshmallowed hat, and meows. “This is Mr. Jiggs.”

“Aww,” says Littie, reaching for the cat. “Can I hold him?”

The woman shakes her head. “I just got him back after he went wandering the city for a few days, so his nerves are shaken, if you don’t mind. My nerves, too. I put up posters around the neighborhood and everything. Lucky he had the sense to find his way back home.”

“Then
you’re
F. Crumb?” I say.

“Francesca,” says the woman. “Now, which table?”

I grab Littie’s hand and pull her toward the door. “Your table leg looks fine then,” I say on the way out. “My mistake.”

Back on the metro, we’re speeding toward Montville. This train doesn’t stink near as bad as the other one, thank lucky stars, but it’s so crowded, we can’t get a seat. “It’s only five stops,” says Littie when I set the toolbox on the floor between my feet and lean my head against the metal pole by the doors.

I don’t so much care about having to stand. My brains are fixed on finding the real F. Crumb: explorer, handyman, insect-lover, long-lost grandpa, and who knows what else. The train rattles and shakes, and we’re so deep underground that my ears close up. The train conductor says something that sounds like “Nah fopp bonkpill” over the loudspeaker. “What did he say?” I ask Littie.

Only I must have said it real loud because two
people standing on the other side of Littie say to me, “Next stop Montville.”

Littie rolls her eyes at me like she’s never had plugged-up ears before, and then she squeezes her nose. I sniff the air but can’t smell anything that’s so bad, so I figure it must be coming from those two people beside Littie. I pick up my toolbox, thank the people for being so helpful and not rolling their eyes at me like Littie did, and tell them that I don’t think they stink at all. Then I explain that we’re off to find my grandpa. They say something else that I can’t hear, but is probably something like “good luck” or “I hope you find him.” Because that’s what helpful people on a train would say.

We ride an escalator up and out of the metro station, and when we reach the street my ears finally get unplugged. “You were really loud in there,” says Littie, reaching for my toolbox.

“At least I didn’t make those people feel bad about the way they smelled,” I say, shifting the toolbox to my other side.

“What do you mean?”

“The way you held your nose,” I say.

Littie rolls her eyes at me again. “I was trying to get my ears to open.” She holds her nose again to show me. “You squeeze your nose and then blow.”

“Where’d you learn that?”

“My grandpa, the one who’s a pilot, showed me.”

I don’t know why, but that makes me tighten my grip on the toolbox and say, “Well, Littie Maple, aren’t you just the luckiest girl on the planet to have a grandpa to show you those kinds of things.”

Littie bites her thumbnail for at least two blocks after that. We don’t say anything and I’m not even sure where we’re going because Littie is the one with the map. Finally, she stops biting and walking and says, “There.”

A sign that says
GOOD TO THE LAST CRUMB BAKERY
blinks in the window in front of us. “Here?” I say. “But this can’t be…”

“Come on,” says Littie. “We might as well see. And I could use a cupcake.”

I follow Littie inside right up to the counter. She orders a red cupcake with white frosting from the man at the register, and she lets out a squeal when he puts it in her hand. “Do you use beets in your red velvet?”

“Beets? I don’t think so.”

“Really?” she says. “I guess that’s gone out of fashion. Many bakers used beets during World War Two to color their cakes. You know, because food was in short supply…”

I don’t know why she’s talking about beets when we’re supposed to be detectives on a case, so I elbow her in the side so she’ll remember why we’re here. It works, because then she says, “Excuse me, sir. Can you tell me if a Mr. Felix Crumb is the proprietor of this business?”

Where Littie learned to talk like that I don’t know. The man wipes his hands on his apron and says, “No, Frederick Crumb owns the place. He’s in the back with the croissants. Do you want to chat him up about beets?”

I tell the man, “No, thank you, we definitely do not,” and then we leave.

Once outside, I pull the paper with the F. Crumb addresses on it from my pocket. The peppermint leaf from Francesca’s garden falls to the ground and I just leave it there. I cross off the two F. Crumbs and stare at the address of the only one left on the list: 247 East Montgomery Avenue.

Littie hands me half of her cupcake and says, “Let’s go. Third time’s the charm.”

There’s no charm at 247 East Montgomery Avenue. Which is exactly what I tell Littie when we get to the lobby of the apartment building and see the names of the people who live there posted just inside the door. F. Crumb at 247 East Montgomery Avenue is actually Fern P. Crumb. Fern, like the plant. Not Felix, like the grandpa.

The walk back to the Montville metro station is long, and I wish I had never eaten half of Littie’s red cupcake because, beets or no beets, it’s not agreeing with me. Littie tries her best to cheer
me up on the way, saying things like, “At least we had an adventure” and “Your grandpa will turn up someday.” Which doesn’t make me feel one bit better.

“Look!” says Littie, pointing to a line of trash cans outside the metro station. “Did you see that cat?”

I don’t see anything but garbage. “Mr. Jiggs probably escaped again.”

“No, this one’s gray,” she says. “Aww! I wonder who he belongs to.”

I shrug. “I hope he can find his way back home.” And then I don’t know how it comes into my brains, but that runaway cat makes me think of a way to help Grandpa Felix find his way home to us.