Penny Dreadful (14 page)

“But if I stop getting into trouble, then I won’t be doing
anything,
” explained the boy. “I’ll just be sitting here all sterilized, playing with educational toys and reading approved books, which are usually boring.” He sighed deeply. “Getting into trouble is all I have. I just need to get better at being sneaky.” Then he looked at Penny. “Hey! Who’re you?”

All this time Penny had been standing back, taking in the situation and the conversation. Now she stepped forward and waved hesitantly.

“She’s Penny, the new Dewberry,” explained Luella. “She’s a good egg.” To Penny she said, “
That’s
Duncan.”

“Hi!” said the boy.

“Hi,” said Penny. “I’m not
really
a Dewberry. But my mom is, kind of. My name’s Penny. Why can’t you eat grapes?”

Duncan sighed deeply. “It’s on the list, so that means I
might
be allergic,” he said. “That means it
might
kill me.”

“Oh,” said Penny, thinking that if that were the case, he should probably just listen to his parents. But all she said was, “That’s terrible.”

“It’s no big deal,” said Duncan. “
Really.
”

Penny was puzzled. “Really?” she asked. “Well, it
sounds
like a big deal.”

“It’s not, trust me,” said Duncan.

“What’s on the list besides grapes?” asked Penny. “What else
might
you be allergic to?”

“Just about everything,” Duncan said. “I’m very fragile. You ought to see the pictures from when we went to the beach! I had to wear SPF seventy and a big dumb hat. Mom says I have very sensitive skin.”

Duncan didn’t look especially fragile or sensitive to Penny, no more so than anyone else she’d ever met. But looks could be deceiving. Maybe Duncan was like an upsetting book with an ordinary, happy cover. Maybe he was
Bridge to Terabithia
. “I’ve never heard of a grape allergy,” she said.

“Yes,” said Duncan. “It’s very rare.”

“A
lot
of the allergies Duncan
might
have are rare,” said Luella with a roll of her eyes. “Apples and pears and oranges and sugar and salt. Plus all the usual suspects—milk and wheat and stuff like that!” She looked apologetically at Duncan. “Right, Dunc?”

“Yeah,” said Duncan sorrowfully. “I pretty much live on rice and bananas. Oh, and boiled chicken, and of
course my vitamin supplements. For a treat I get to have sno-cones sometimes. But they’re
plain
-flavored.”

“That’s too bad,” said Penny, who had never herself eaten a sno-cone. She had only seen other children walking down the street with them in The City, their faces stained red and blue and green and purple.

“It is,” agreed Luella. “But to make matters worse, Duncan here is bad about breaking into the refrigerator—which they keep a weird super-childproof latch on—and he always seems to get caught. So he’s also
always
in trouble. He’s
always
grounded.”

“Yeah,” said Duncan. “
For my own good
. I’m a danger to myself!” He looked proud of that part.

Just then Mr. Weatherall appeared in the doorway. “Kids! You forgot to sanitize. Here you go!” He thrust a bottle of clear gel at Penny. “Be sure to clean
between
your fingers. You’ve been outside.”

As Penny rubbed what smelled like floor cleaner onto her hands, Luella made a face. “Hey, Mr. Weatherall. Can Duncan come with us and play? We’ll be extra careful and keep an eye out for him. I promise.”

Mr. Weatherall shook his head. “No, he needs to stay home today and rest up after his ordeal. We wouldn’t want him overexerting. Plus, you never know what might happen to him if he left the house, walking around
in the
outside
. He might walk into a hornet’s nest or something.”

Penny, in her civilized life of sedate walks and supervised playdates, had never been one to get into trouble. But she’d also never been told she couldn’t do things like take a walk. Suddenly she could imagine the appeal of troublemaking.

“Why would he walk into a hornet’s nest?” she asked.

“Because he doesn’t know better,” said Mr. Weatherall. “He’s never spent time outside. He isn’t a tough cookie like you big rough girls. He doesn’t know how to fend for himself. It’s a dangerous place, this world of ours, and Duncan doesn’t know how to do all the things you do.”

Penny was delighted to be lumped into a category with Luella, but she knew that she wasn’t terribly rough or tough, not really. Plus, Duncan was no smaller than she was. In fact, he looked like he had a good few inches on her.

“But how will he ever learn to avoid hornets if you don’t let him go outside and get used to them?” she asked Mr. Weatherall.

“He WON’T!” cried Mr. Weatherall, causing Penny to take a step backward. “It’s an
impossible
dilemma.” With his head in his hands, the poor man dragged his weary self from the room. “Please be good, kids. I’ve just
got to lie down for a minute. I need an aspirin.” He shut the door behind him.

“Quick!” hissed Duncan the minute the door closed. “Now’s my chance. He’s gone!”

Before Penny could even ask what she was supposed to be quick about, Duncan was opening the window. Lickety-split (as though she’d done it before), Luella shoved a chair up under the doorknob to jam it. Before Penny could say “Huh?” Luella and Duncan had jumped through the window and into an azalea bush.

Penny had no choice but to follow behind. Never having crawled through a window before, she was a little clumsier than the others, and she scraped her knee on a drainpipe when she landed.

The three kids made straight for the fort beneath the willows and sat down on the ground, which was only a little damp with dew. “I bet we’ve got a good half hour before he comes to check on me,” said Duncan. “A full thirty minutes of freedom. Ahhhhh!”

Penny was still trying to figure out the events of the last ten minutes. “I just don’t understand,” she said. “Why would you want to risk an allergic reaction? I certainly wouldn’t.”

Luella laughed and said to Duncan, “We’d better explain.”

Duncan nodded. “Go right ahead.”

Luella turned to Penny. “He’s
not
allergic, or fragile either. His parents are just very, very nervous. Beyond nervous. Nutso. All the time. Both of them.”

“It’s the truth,” agreed Duncan. “On account of the fact that I was born very early, and the doctors had to put me in an incubator and everything. They told my parents I might develop serious allergies and be smaller than the other kids. So now Mom and Dad think I
am
smaller, and that I
do
have allergies. It’s ridiculous.”

“Oh,” said Penny. “That sounds hard.”

“It’s just plain silly, is what it is,” said Luella. “Since really Duncan’s fine.”

“I totally am,” said Duncan, nodding. “Or I
feel
fine, anyway. I can run and climb and do all the normal kid stuff. But all those years of being careful must have done something to my parents.” He shook his head. “I’m not sure
they’re
so fine. They’re afraid of
everything
—absolutely
everything
. Mom is always doing research on the Internet about diseases hardly anybody ever gets. Dad only allows toys made of wood because he doesn’t want me touching plastic. But I’m
ten
! I don’t want a wooden sailboat, and wooden LEGOS are just plain crappy.”

“Why no plastic?” asked Penny.

“Toxins,” said Duncan wisely. “Plastic is just
full
of toxins.”

“Poor guy,” said Luella, patting her friend on the back. “He doesn’t even get to go to Thrush Junction Elementary with us because of all the bad influences and the peanuts in other people’s lunches. His dad is home-schooling him instead, which might be neat if it were
your
dad, or
my
dad, but—”

“But you’ve
met
my dad,” cut in Duncan, rolling his eyes at the leafy branch ceiling of the fort.

At the memory of her own lonely days sitting with boring Joanna, Penny’s heart went out to Duncan. “Oh,” she said. “
Oh
, I see what you mean.”

“If only there were a way to prove to them that I’m not so fragile,” said Duncan with a frown.

“If only,” added Luella, “you could shake them out of it. Show them that
you’re
a tough cookie too. But how …?”

Penny was quiet, thinking for a bit. Then she said, “I suppose—I
suppose
you could run off somewhere else and eat everything on the list all at once, in one sitting. Then they’d
have
to admit you’re okay, right?”

Duncan and Luella stared at Penny in surprise.

“It’s a good idea,” said Duncan. “But I don’t think it would work. They’d just give me Benadryl like always
and then say how fortunate I was that they discovered me so quickly.”

Penny pondered this. Then she said, “Don’t
let
them discover you. You just have to
wait
to announce that you’ve done it. If you wait for a few hours and you’re still okay—then your folks won’t have any reason to give you medicine at all. It will be too late by then. You won’t be dying, so they’ll
have
to admit you aren’t allergic.”

“Say,” said Duncan. “That’s actually a pretty stupendous idea!”

Luella patted Penny on the back proudly and grinned a little wickedly. “I
told
you she was a good egg.”

Penny glowed. “It’s no big deal,” she said.

Luella had a thought. “But what if you
are
allergic?” she asked. “I’d hate to lose you, buddy.”

Duncan shook his head, decided on this matter. “I’m not,” he said. “I just
know
I’m not. Look at all the things I’ve managed to sneak over the years. If I were really so allergic,
something
would have affected me by now.”

“
Everything
, huh? That’s a lot of food,” said Luella. “I don’t know if I could eat that much in one sitting.”

“Oh, I could eat
anything,
” said Duncan, sounding confident. “I’ve been saving up room for years. But where will we get it?” he asked. “All the food, I mean?”

“My dad just went to the store,” offered Penny.
“We’ve got soup and bread and jam, I know. But I don’t think he got
everything.
”

“They have
everything
at the Junction Lunch!” said Luella. “But it’ll cost a lot. Do you have any money?”

“Not enough,” said Duncan, pouting. “I spend my allowance on candy bars when kids come by the house selling for school fund-raisers. Then I hide them in my closet. Do you have any I can borrow?”

“I have six dollars and twelve cents,” said Luella. “I was saving up to buy a skateboard. But you can have it. And we could go raid my mom’s change jar. That’s not
really
stealing. Maybe if we put all our money together—”

“Oh!” said Penny, thinking of something and sitting up. “Wait! I have some money!”

For years Penny had been storing any change she found or was given in a piggy bank she’d had since she was a baby. It was pink and ugly and ceramic. Since Penny had never needed money or gone anywhere on her own, she’d never had any reason to break the bank and spend the money inside it.

“Hang on,” she said as she sprinted off toward her apartment.

It took Penny a few minutes to find the bank in one of the unpacked boxes. Then she ran back, holding the
bank under one arm and a video camera under the other, and trying not to drop either.

“Why the camera?” asked Duncan.

“For proof!” she replied, handing it to Luella. “If we record the whole thing, your parents will
have
to believe you!”

Duncan patted the shiny pink bank. “What’s the pig’s name?”

Penny stared at the ceramic pig in her arms, shining in the sun. “I never thought to give her one.”

“Too late now,” said Luella, who was eager to get on with it. “Do you want me to do it?”

“No,” said Penny. “I think I want to do it myself.”

“Okay. Hop to it!” said Luella impatiently. “Smash it good!”

Penny let go of the pig, simply letting it fall from under her arm. It dropped meekly to the ground and rolled over.