Penelope Crumb Never Forgets (5 page)

9.

A
t school the next day, Patsy Cline is covered head to toe in pink, just like Vera Bogg. She looks like a big mound of cotton candy that is so sweet and sugary, it makes the teeth want to drop right out of my mouth.

“What is that?” I ask Patsy, the first chance I get. Which happens to be on the way to recess right after Miss Stunkel makes us take a surprise test on decimal points.

“What?” she says, like she doesn’t even know what she’s wearing or how I feel about pink. Then she says, “Oh. These are Vera’s. We did an outfit switcheroo.”

“Why would you do a thing like that?”

“For fun,” she says, playing with the chain on her
FRIENDS FOREVER
necklace.

“I don’t see what’s so fun about it.”

Patsy Cline says, “Humph,” and then nothing else. We stare at each other for a long time after that. This time, I plant my eyeballs on Marge the caterpillar like there’s nothing else in the world to look at. I stare so long and so hard that Marge starts to wiggle and squirm.

And just when Marge is about to smile at me and turn into a butterfly, Vera Bogg—wearing Patsy’s blue cowgirl shirt!—taps Patsy on the shoulder from behind. Without taking my eyeballs off Patsy, and without blinking, I put on a face that says, Vera Bogg, You’re In for a Very Long Wait. But then Patsy does something she’s never done before: She stops staring.

“What are you doing?” I say. “What about our staring contest?”

She shrugs. “You win, I guess.”

Vera tugs on Patsy’s arm. “Let’s see who can jump off the swings the farthest.”

“Patsy Cline Roberta Watson,” I say, grabbing her other arm. “I
never
win.”

Patsy pulls free from me and yanks at a strand of hair that’s caught in her necklace. “Okay,” she says to Vera and then asks me if I want to come swinging. But I can only shake my head, because Patsy’s been brainwashed.

After recess, all
my
brains can think about is what is happening to Patsy Cline. Even though her desk is in the next row, she seems miles away. Like she’s in Alaska. Because Vera Bogg kidnapped her, wrapped her up in a pink sleeping bag, put her on a pink airplane, and took her there. And I don’t know how to get her back.

That’s what my brains are thinking about when the last bell rings and Miss Stunkel says in front of everybody, “Penelope Crumb, remember you need to stay after today.”

Good gravy. I forgot all about our meeting with Miss Stunkel to talk about me being odd.

Miss Stunkel strokes her Wednesday lizard pin and puts a smile on her face that says You Didn’t Think I’d Forget, Did You?

While Patsy Cline and Vera Bogg pack up their book bags to go home, they whisper and nod and give each other the kind of looks that best friends do. The kind that Patsy and me used to do.

After everybody leaves and it’s just me and Miss Stunkel left alone together, I keep my head real close to my drawing pad and put on a face that says, Do Not Disturb: Very Serious Business in Progress, so Miss Stunkel won’t try to talk to me.

But it doesn’t work, because Miss Stunkel tells me to make myself useful and go outside and bang the chalk dust out of the erasers while we wait for my mom. I take a long time doing this and don’t go back inside until I see my mom in the hallway.

I wait outside the door to Miss Stunkel’s classroom and am real quiet just in case Mom and Miss Stunkel decide they are going to talk about me. But all I can hear is Miss Stunkel saying something nice about my mom’s shirt and then my mom says something I can’t hear and then Miss Stunkel laughs.

That’s when I know I’m in trouble. Because Miss Stunkel does not laugh ever. I mean, never ever. Didn’t know she could, even. “People sure aren’t acting like themselves today,” I whisper to Leonardo, “and I don’t like it.”

Meanwhile, the chalk dust from banging erasers must have drifted into my nose because even though I’m trying to be quiet, my nose has an awful tickle, and I let out a really loud sneeze. The erasers fall to the floor. Miss Stunkel says, “Penelope? Is that you?” I sneeze again and tell her that I’ll be right there.

But as I bend down to pick up the erasers, something shiny in the corner by the coatrack gets my attention: a white sand dollar necklace, the chain piled in a clump. I scoop it up and examine it in the palm of my hand. The chain has some hair threaded through it, the color of cherry chocolate fudge. And right away I know whose necklace this is. I squeeze it tight in my palm and slip it into my pocket.

“There you are,” says Mom at the door. “Come on in so we don’t waste Miss Stunkel’s time.”

I return the erasers to the chalkboard, and Miss Stunkel tells me to pull up a chair next to her desk beside my mom. Then Miss Stunkel starts talking and talking, every once in a while looking at me with a face that says, Penelope Really Is a Bushel of Moldy Peaches. But that’s okay because I give her a look right back that says, Whatever You Say, Miss Stunkel. Even though I’m really not listening to most anything she says.

Every once in a while I hear her say the words
concerned
and
unruly
and
behavior problem.
And
odd.
And then
special
and
report
and
why museums are important.

But my brains aren’t bothered with those words so much. Instead they are on the necklace in my pocket. I rub my finger over the words
FRIENDS FOREVER
. If anybody is going to be friends forever, it should be me and Patsy. It’s not that I don’t like Vera Bogg or anything, except for maybe all that pink. It’s just that when you start to lose someone, like your best friend, for example, you have to do something.

10.

I
n the car on the way home, Mom pushes the buttons on the radio and asks me what I think.

“About what?” I say.

She finds a station playing music that’s got no words. The fast kind that’s busy with a lot of instruments and noise and makes my head hurt. “About what Miss Stunkel said in there. What we talked about.”

“Oh, that,” I say. “Fine. No problem.”

“Really?” says Mom, tapping her fingers on the steering wheel. “Just like that?”

“Yep,” I say. “Just like that.”

“Okay, then,” says Mom, smiling. “Great.”

Which makes me think that I should not listen to Miss Stunkel more often, because then everybody is happy.

• • •

At home, I lay Patsy’s necklace on a plate and slide it into the middle of the closet. Then I make a card about the necklace that says

And one for the hair:

Before closing the door, I take one more look at the shoehorn and Patsy Cline’s necklace and hair and decide they could use some company. A dark, mostly empty closet can be kind of scary, after all. Patsy Cline is allergic to things with tails, but I’m not so sure about her necklace and hair. I, Penelope Crumb, don’t believe in closet monsters anymore, especially those with tails, but you can never be too sure, I guess.

I scan my bookshelf. Behind my
Max Adventure
action figures, baby-doll heads (Terrible won’t tell me what he did with the rest of them), pet rock collection, and Mistletoe Mouse Woodland Family play set, is a heart-shaped tin that my aunt Renn bought me for my last birthday. I shimmy off the lid and count the number of teeth in my collection: five.

I started collecting my teeth a couple of years ago after the Tooth Fairy forgot to take one from under my pillow. (She left me a dollar anyway, thank lucky stars.) Not too long ago, I got the idea to put the same old tooth under my pillow a couple days in a row just to see what would happen. I didn’t get any more money, and that’s when Terrible told me, “Mom is the Tooth Fairy, stupid.” But I’m not sure I believe him, because if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that aliens can’t be trusted.

Littie gets all grossed out when I show her my teeth collection, especially the ones with blood on them. But you never know when you might need old teeth. Like now, for example.

I set the tin beside the dinner plate. “This will keep away any closet monsters.” Then I curl up in the corner of the museum and close my eyes. Patsy Cline would be so happy to know that I’m taking good care of her necklace. Not that I’m going to tell her or anything.

11.

M
iss Stunkel calls me over to her desk before the first bell. I don’t know how I could be in any trouble when all I’ve done so far is sit at my desk and wait for Patsy Cline. But it doesn’t take much to get into trouble with Miss Stunkel.

“Penelope,” Miss Stunkel says in a low voice, “I wanted to tell you that I like how agreeable you were last evening during our talk.”

I stare at the wrinkles in her forehead while I wait for the bad part. Miss Stunkel scrunches her eyebrows, which makes even more forehead wrinkles, but the part where she says I’m a disappointment doesn’t come. Then she nods at me real slow, like it’s my turn to talk.

Only, I don’t know what I’m supposed to say. So I just nod real slow right back and say, “I like how agreeable you were last evening, too.”

Miss Stunkel lets out a “wah” that sort of sounds like a laugh, but not really. Then my big nose, which has superpowers, catches a whiff of her breath. And it smells like potato salad, heavy on the mayonnaise. “I’ll be eager to see your report on Monday.”

“My report?” I say.

“Yes, your report, Penelope. The one we talked about last evening.” Then she sticks out her jaw at me like she thinks I’m playing around. Which I very am not doing. “The one about museums? Why they are important? You do remember talking about this, don’t you?” Her finger starts to come out of her pocket.

I nod my head and put a look on my face that says, Oh, That Report. Yes, Indeedy, I Remember That One. Which must work, because Miss Stunkel’s finger goes back inside her pocket.

She says, “All right. You can go back to your seat now.”

Good gravy.

Patsy Cline is at her desk when Miss Stunkel is done with me, and on my way to her, I spot Vera Bogg across the room. She’s about as far away from Patsy as I am, and she’s heading for her, too. I get my legs going, but somehow Vera’s legs are faster. She gets to Patsy’s desk before me. By the time I make it there, Patsy and Vera are already talking.

I squeeze myself between them and the first thing that comes out of my mouth is, “Miss Stunkel eats potato salad for breakfast.”

Nobody knows what to say next, including me. But then to my surprise, after a while, Vera Bogg says, “I like potato salad with hard-boiled eggs.” And also to my surprise, the whole time Patsy is giving me a look that says, Did You Eat Glue Again?

I don’t answer her. But I do notice that Vera Bogg is wearing her sand dollar necklace and Patsy isn’t. Vera notices that, too, because then she says, “Patsy, where’s your necklace?”

I wait for Patsy to say that she lost her necklace, that it’s nowhere to be found, and that it doesn’t matter anyway because it was a dumb idea to get matching necklaces with you, Vera Bogg, if you want to know the truth. But Patsy doesn’t say those things. Instead, she looks down where her necklace would be (if it wasn’t in my museum closet next to my teeth) and tells Vera that she took it off this morning so that it wouldn’t get messed up while she ate her breakfast and then she forgot to put it on.

“What?” I say.

Patsy repeats the part about the breakfast and then starts chewing on her eraser.

My word. Patsy Cline Roberta Watson
never
tells lies. And she’s really bad at it.

But Vera must not think so, because she just smiles and says, “Oh, that’s okay. We can be matching tomorrow.”

Patsy’s face looks like she’s in pain, like maybe telling that big lie hurts inside. She looks so awful that it almost makes me want to give her necklace back. But then the thought of Patsy and Vera being the kind of friends that switch outfits and buy matching stuff makes me hurt inside, too, so I keep quiet.

“Don’t forget again, okay?” says Vera before going to her desk.

“Okay,” says Patsy Cline softly.

I give Patsy a look that says, That Was a Real Whopper.

But Patsy isn’t as good as me at telling what different kinds of faces mean, so when she catches me staring, she says, “What, Penelope?” And her words are spears.

“Nothing,” I say back, all pretendy that I don’t know what is going on and am waiting for her to tell
me,
Penelope Crumb, her supposed-to-be best friend, the truth. But she doesn’t. “Want to come over after school?”

She shakes her head. “No, thanks.”

“Why not?”

“I have some things needing tending,” she says.

“Like what kind of things?”

“Just things.” Then she pulls her math book out of her desk and opens it.

“Patsy Cline, if you don’t want to tell me what things, then just say so.”

She stares at me all serious-like and gives me a look that says she doesn’t.

“Humph,” I say and then nothing else. If Patsy Cline doesn’t know she’s supposed to talk to me about her problems, then I’m not going to be the one to tell her.