Penny Dreadful (16 page)

Duncan looked up at the two girls from his bed in the weeds and said, “Thanks, guys. I’d never have been brave enough to do this without you.”

It made Penny feel very, very good, though it seemed a funny thing to be happy about—not at all like something that would happen in a book. Unless maybe the book was
Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle
.

Back at the Whippoorwillows, they had another stroke of amazing luck. Duncan’s dad was still sound asleep in a dark room, recovering from his anxious headache (or maybe getting ready for the next one).

The next morning Penny and Luella knocked three times on Duncan’s door, but nobody came to answer it.

“Let’s just hope Mr. Weatherall’s head didn’t explode
when he saw that video,” said Luella, shaking her head with worry.

Just as Penny and Luella turned to walk away, the door swung open and Duncan stuck his head out. “I can’t play,” he whispered, “not right now. But I wanted to tell you both—things are okay. I think. I showed Dad the video, and he freaked out at first and called Mom, so then she came home from work in a rush and watched it too. After that they took me to see the doctor, just in case, but it turned out okay. Dr. Sanchez is on our side. She watched the video, laughed at my parents, and gave me a lollipop when we left. Mom and Dad were so relieved, they let me eat it!”

“Oh, good!” cried Penny.

“All
right
!” said Luella.

“Yeah.” Duncan grinned. “And we’re going to try ordering pizza for dinner tonight. My very first pizza ever!” He looked elated but kept his voice low. “It
is
good. Everything’s very good. But right now I have to run. My poor old dad. He’s feeling kind of fragile.”

L
IKE
R
EGULAR
L
IFE

A
fter that Luella and Penny tried to think of something fun to do.

“Maybe we should go see if anyone else wants to play,” said Luella. “There are other kids who live here too, you know.” She thought for a minute. “But Alice is away at camp, so it’s mostly my dopey sister and her friends who come over, plus some little preschool munchkins who hang around.”

“I wouldn’t mind meeting your dopey sister,” said Penny, who didn’t know the first thing about sisters.

Luella shook her head and frowned. “Better to keep our distance. Teenagers are awful. Bea just sits in her room talking on the phone and reading books about kissing with dumb pictures of lipstick girls looking sneaky on their covers. Sometimes the girls have their heads cut off.” Luella made a disgusted face. “Plus, whenever I
do
run into Bea, she asks me to go and get her something—a snack or her flip-flops or something. I’m
never
going to be a teenager.”

Penny wasn’t sure how Luella planned to manage that, but before she could ask, Luella said, “Let’s just play by ourselves today.”

That sounded fine to Penny. “Okay,” she said. “Didn’t you say something about dressing up a dog?”

Unfortunately, they didn’t have a dog handy, so instead they decided to sit on the porch and read books about everything but kissing.

Penny, who’d run up to fetch the copy of
Return to Gone-Away
she had just started reading, was surprised when Luella came out of her apartment with a huge stack of library books about people who were explorers or scientists or magicians.

“I’ve never read a book like this before,” said Penny, leafing through a book about a woman named Amelia who flew planes. “Except really boring ones my tutor made me read for lessons.” She stopped to stare at the pictures. “I usually read books about people who seem magical or different from me.”

Luella, who had been taking a quick peek at Penny’s book, held it up in the air. “You mean like
this
one, about a girl who moves one summer from the city to the country
and ends up in a weird old house hanging out with some oddball characters?” There was a tiny smile at the corner of her mouth as she waved the book at Penny. “Magical or different?”

“Oh,” said Penny. “Hmm. I hadn’t thought about it quite like that.”

“Yeah,” said Luella with a laugh. “You should try reading nonfiction sometime. It’s more interesting. Less like real life!”

Penny laughed back. “Okay, let’s swap!”

They did just that, and for several hours the girls settled into comfortable reading spots. Luella sat on the porch swing and Penny settled down in the big wicker chair, and they didn’t say much to each other. When it got hot, Luella went in for two glasses of lemonade. At lunchtime they went upstairs, where Dirk made them elaborate grilled cheese sandwiches full of mushrooms and grilled onions and spicy mustard. But when they were done eating, they came back down. Oddly, nobody else came or went much. It was as though they had the Whippoorwillows all to themselves.

Penny liked leafing through Luella’s books and stopping on the old photographs. Once in a while the girls would stop reading to chat about nothing in particular, or to ask each other questions or share a joke.

Late in the afternoon Penny stopped reading to gaze up at the cloudless summer sky and listen to the porch swing creak and notice a bee buzzing. She glanced over at her friend, who seemed engrossed in a book called
The Way Things Work
, and wondered how it could be that she was not the least bit bored.

In fact, Penny was so content, and Luella was so content, that for a number of days the two girls kept mostly to themselves and stayed busy, if you could call it busy, doing nothing and everything, the way friends do. They sat in their fort beneath the waving willow fronds, and they swung on the porch swing. They lounged around in a falling-apart hammock behind the house and listened as Old Joe practiced playing the fiddle one morning. They played Uno under a tree and drew pictures of what they thought they might look like when they grew up and were famous actresses and/or fairies and/or vampires and/or rock stars.

Duncan joined them for the Uno, but he absolutely refused to draw pictures of himself as a fairy or an actress, and grumbled off, saying, “We
have
to get some more boys around here.”

Four days, seventeen scratches, two bruises, and three mosquito bites later, the two girls were upstairs helping Dirk shuck corn for a salad when Penny suddenly remembered something. “Hey—back before Duncan stopped being fragile, weren’t we supposed to go get penny candy?”

“Oh yeah!” said Luella. “I totally forgot. Yikes! You still haven’t been to the General Store! We should fix that right away, but we’ll need money.” Since Penny’s life savings was now gone and Luella was still saving for a skateboard, the two friends ran directly down to
borrow
some money from Luella’s mother’s change jar. Penny didn’t think it was a good time to ask
her
parents for any money.

By now Penny had been inside Luella’s apartment a few times, briefly, and each time she’d wondered at the odd emptiness of it: the white walls with nothing on them, the stark few bits of furniture, the absent parents. It did not feel to Penny like a place where people lived,
and she had been more than happy to roam outside or to invite Luella to play upstairs.

From time to time, darting in and out downstairs, they
had
run into Bea on her way to the bathroom or getting a snack in the kitchen. One time she yelled bossily from her room, “Hey, Luella! Grab me a soda, will you?” But mostly it seemed like she wasn’t there at all.

Today, when Penny and Luella stepped inside, the place looked different. A huge easel with a giant canvas on it stood in one corner of the front room. On the floor was a tarp covered in splatters of every color imaginable. On the tarp were brushes and tubes of paint. The room smelled funny, in a chemical way.

In front of the easel was a surprise—a person, a woman.

“Hi, Lu!” said the woman, who had her back to the girls. She held a brush in one hand and a palette in the other. She dabbed and daubed at the canvas in front of her. She didn’t turn around. “Painting furiously. Can’t stop. Talk later,” she said.

“Okay, Mom,” said Luella. “But you
said
you wanted to meet Penny someday, and you’re home today, and
this
is Penny, and today
is
someday. Penny, this is my mom.” She added in a whisper to Penny, “I’ll be right back. With
moola.
”

Then she left Penny to stare in wonder at the scene before her.

Although Penny had visited museums on field trips with Joanna, she had never before met an artist, or seen an actual studio, which is what the living room was transformed into today.

Luella’s mom turned around. She wore a pair of old denim overalls, with no shoes, and her wild black curls
stood out from her head in a glorious pouf. Her skin was much darker than Luella’s, and a smear of silver paint on her nose stood out brightly, almost glinting in the sunlight. As Luella’s mom stepped aside, Penny saw that she was working on a picture of a horse that didn’t really look like a horse. Penny wasn’t sure how she knew it was a horse, but she was certain it was.

“Sorry to be rude, Penny. Didn’t know we had a guest!” laughed Luella’s mom.

“It’s okay, Mrs. Gulson,” said Penny a little shyly. “It’s nice to meet you.”

“Nice to meet
you
!” said Luella’s mom. “But I’m not a Mrs. Anybody. I’m just Abbie. Lu has been saying
such
nice things about you.”

“Thanks,” said Penny happily, though still quietly, “Abbie.”

“Now that we’re friends,” said Abbie, “do you mind if I keep working?” She waved her paintbrush in the air. “The light is just right, and it won’t last long. It never does.”

Penny shook her head, and Abbie turned away to dab and daub, smear and splatter. Penny watched, fascinated, until Luella burst back into the room, pockets bulging.

“Ready, Penny?” she asked.

Penny didn’t even have time to reply. Without turning
around, Abbie called out, “Yes, she’s ready. Now go. Go. Get!” in a tone both forceful and friendly.

The girls got.

This time they didn’t run. Slowly, Penny and Luella walked to town, stopping every twenty feet or so, so that Penny could notice a cardinal or remark on how pretty the blue flowers were that grew by the road. Each time Luella responded with something like “Oh, it’s just a bird” or “What,
that
old weed?” But it was all new to Penny.

On Main Street, Penny stopped to peek in the windows of all the funny old storefronts they passed, which she hadn’t had time for when they’d run to town with Duncan. Though there weren’t very many shops, each store was well worth peering into because each was different from the next, and they were all a little strange besides.

Looking in one dusty window, Penny realized she was staring at gigantic vats of dried corn and what looked like different kinds of pellets and seeds. A woman in a cowboy hat sat behind a cash register reading a magazine, but the store was otherwise empty. Penny shifted her gaze toward the ceiling of the room and discovered an iridescent glow caused by a number of stunning wedding dresses, worn by mannequins of every size. The mannequins dangled
from the ceiling so that they seemed to rise from the vats, hanging over them like ghosts in the dim, their silken arms covered with corsages. Penny stepped back so she could read the sign over the shop’s door, and she laughed out loud to discover that it said
FUGATE
’
S FEED SHOP AND BRIDAL STORE
.