Penny Dreadful (8 page)

Penelope took little note of the lovely trees because she was distracted by a girl walking up the road toward them. The girl looked about Penelope’s age. She wore a faded blue dress and a pair of bright red high-top tennis shoes. She was also carrying what appeared to be a dead possum. The girl was swinging the possum by its tail as though it were no big deal at all. As the Greys passed her in their car, the girl smiled and waved her free hand.

Penelope ducked down in her seat. Despite the girl’s friendly smile, she felt suddenly numb. What had she wished upon herself? Did she even have any idea what living in the country would be like? Did she really want to live here? Could she make
a place for herself among the peeling paint and dead possums? She wanted a change, she did, and yet—

Penelope wondered if maybe her old life hadn’t really been so bad. Even if she’d been bored, at least she’d had her beautiful house, and if Jane and Olivia hadn’t been especially exciting, at least they hadn’t played with dead things.

Penelope gave a shiver that was partly about the possum and partly about the sudden realization that she’d have to
make
friends before she could
have
friends. She’d have to get to know a pack of strangers who all knew each other, who’d grown up together and were very different from Penelope. Maybe her clothes were all wrong. Maybe
everyone
played with dead animals. When the Penderwicks had gone to the country, they’d had each other, but Penelope was all alone. Making friends wasn’t something she knew very much about, except what she’d learned from books. Maybe it would be awful here, where everything was so new and strange. For the first time in Penelope’s life, she felt like she might need a sister, or even a brother. Too bad. Not much she could do about that.

Turning around to peer through Dijon’s back window at the girl they’d just passed, Penelope gulped. The girl was off in the distance, but Penelope could still make out the possum swinging beside the girl’s long braid of reddish hair.

Penelope was so preoccupied with staring behind her that she barely noticed when Dijon pulled off onto a little gravel drive and ground to a halt in front of a very strange house. Quickly, she flipped back around in her seat to look out her own window.

“Here we are,” said Delia, turning off the car.

They all stared.

“Is this ours?” Penelope asked. “The whole thing?
All
of them?”

Dirk looked perplexed. “It’s a very
numerous
kind of a house,” he said.

What they were all staring at was the fact that the Whippoorwillows—if that was what they were looking at—didn’t really look like a house. It looked like much more than that.

The main structure was a stately brick house that had seen better days, a tall red rectangle with peeling white trim, a grand old porch that wrapped around the building, and a set of stairs that ran up the right side of the house to the second floor. The house sat in a pleasantly sunny spot at the end of the tree-canopied gravel drive, surrounded by a clump of weeping willow trees. But that was just the beginning, because on either side of the main house were several other houses, tacked on to each other.
Cottages
, thought Penelope.

There were two of these connected cottages on the left side of the main house—one white and one purple. There were three on the right—in hues of orange, pink,
and red. The only thing all the cottages had in common was that they looked homemade, lopsided, different. They were slightly different sizes and shapes. Some were covered in wooden clapboard, and others in shingles. The red house on the far right end actually appeared to have been made out of old doors. Running between the little front yards of the houses were tiny picket fences. In the yard of the white house, a hand-painted wooden sign read
GOOD FENCES MAKE GOOD NEIGHBORS
. The overall effect was that of a mother hen, flanked by her chicks, waiting to cross the road.

Penelope scrambled out of the van and stared. Six houses! She wondered if she could have a whole cottage to herself for a playhouse. She liked the purple one best of all.

Penelope felt the gravel crunching beneath the rubber soles of her shoes. It was a new feeling, unfamiliar but pleasant. She looked at the cracked porch steps and the peeling paint of the main house, and for some reason, she thought again of the girl with the possum. When she did, she felt a twinge of alarm.

But staring up into the green of the willows and down the winding dirt road, Penelope also felt a thrill. Gazing at the mountains beyond the house, she wanted to ramble, to
do
—in a hungry, wandering,
real
way. Looking at all
the tiny cottages, Penelope wanted to explore. She had never felt so excited, or so nervous. Penelope had never felt so
much
.

“Wow,” Dirk said to Delia, opening his door and stepping out of the van beside Penelope. “Our new family estate is … um … interesting. If a little dilapidated.”

Delia climbed out too and walked around Dijon to join the others. “Yes, it’s
different,
” she said, breathing deeply and listening to the birds in the trees above her. “But it’s
ours
, and we can afford to keep it. Why, once we find someone to rent out the house in The City, we’ll have more than enough to pay for our groceries and keep the lights on while you write your book! Maybe we can even rent out these extra little houses as a bed-and-breakfast. That would be fun! Besides, my grandfather said that it was the most special place in the world when
he
was a boy.”

“That might have been the last time they replaced the roof on this place,” laughed Dirk. “But sure, why not? I’m game for adventure.”

He popped open the trunk and reached in for his messy box of papers and a few shoulder bags. “No reason to sit and stare. Might as well open up the house. I wonder how long it’s been since your aunt died.” He walked across the gravel drive and stomped up the rickety steps as though testing them.

Penelope and her mother followed more carefully behind him, and they were all facing the front door of the big brick house when it suddenly flew open.

The Greys jumped!

But there was nothing to be scared of. The person standing before them was only a girl, a girl about Penelope’s age. She had a tangled mess of jet-black hair, enormous brown eyes, skin the color of wet sand, cutoff jeans, and filthy feet that Penelope couldn’t help noticing. She had to wonder where
those
feet had been.

“Hullo!” the girl said. “What took you so long?”

The Greys stared at the girl in shock.

The girl looked patiently amused.

Penelope waited for one of her parents to say something. Neither spoke.

At last the girl laughed and shook out her curls. “Take a picture. It’ll last longer!”

This woke Dirk from his momentary trance. “Hey!” he said. “That’s not very polite.”

“Neither is staring,” said the girl with a shrug.

Penelope was impressed. This girl was like the house itself, a little wild and a little scruffy and a little scary and a little wonderful.

“Hi,” Penelope said softly. She held out a hand awkwardly. “Hi. I’m Penelope. What’s your name?”

“Luella!” said Luella, staring at Penelope’s hand, which dangled in midair, unsure of itself. After a moment Luella wrinkled her nose and added, “Your name is
Penelope
? Really?
Penelope?
You don’t look like a Penelope at
all
! You look like a Kate. Or maybe an Annie. If I were you, I’d change it.”

Penelope didn’t know what to say to that. She withdrew her hand quickly and put it in her pocket. She felt her mother’s arm come around her protectively.

“That’s very rude, Luella,” said Delia, shocked. “Penelope Grey is a
wonderful
name. It’s perfect, and I don’t know why you’d want to hurt my daughter’s feelings.”

Perfect?
thought Penelope. Maybe it
was
a nice name, or a pretty name even, but Luella wasn’t wrong—
Penelope
had never felt like a perfect fit. Of course, she couldn’t say that to her mother.

“I didn’t mean any harm,” explained Luella. “It’s a
fine
name for
someone
. It just isn’t right for a kid like
her.
” She jerked a thumb at Penelope. “But that’s just
my
opinion. I didn’t mean to hurt anyone’s feelings. Really.” She stared at Penelope, eyes wide open, as though she was waiting for something. For all her bluntness, it seemed as if she really was sorry.

“It’s—okay,” said Penelope cautiously, staring back
at Luella, and then, looking up at her mom, she attempted a smile. “Really, Mother. I’m fine.” And she was.

Luella rewarded her with a wide grin. “Oh, good! I’d hate to upset you on your first day. I do that sometimes, upset people. Without meaning to.”

“I suppose …,” Delia said carefully. “I suppose we’ll let it pass. It’s—um—nice to meet you, Luella. But, if you don’t mind my asking, what are you doing here?”

“Well,” said Luella, “right this minute I’m talking to you.”

Penelope stifled a giggle.

Delia found Luella’s answer less clever. “Hmmm. It would seem you are. Does your mother know where you are?” She reached out to push an unruly curl from in front of Luella’s eyes.

Luella laughed as the curl sprang right back. “
That
never works! And yeah, of course she does! Mom’ll be home later if you want to talk to her.”

Now Delia looked completely puzzled. “What do you mean by
home
? Isn’t this the Whippoorwillows?”

“Sure is,” said Luella. “And that’s
home.
”

“It is?” asked Delia.

“Well, they’d hardly let me live here by myself,” said Luella. “I’m only ten, after all.” She darted a look at Penelope, a look that asked,
Is your mom nuts?
Penelope
smiled and shrugged ever so slightly, but inside she warmed.

Penelope wanted to tell the girl that
she
was about to be ten too, but for some reason she was having trouble opening her mouth. It appeared to be stuck.

“Hey!” said Dirk, heading for the front door of the house. “I have an idea. Perhaps we can take this rather confusing conversation inside. My arms are getting tired, and it’s hot. What do you all say? Come on!”

Dirk began to walk past Luella, but as he reached for the screen door at the front of the house, Luella said, “Oh, did you guys want to come over to
our
place? I thought you’d want to go to your own apartment first.” She pointed to the porch roof above their heads. “Mom said to give you the key.” With her other hand she pulled a single key from her pocket, a key on a length of twine.

“Apartment?” asked Dirk. He looked upward. “What
apartment
?”

Luella sighed in an exasperated, impatient way. “
Are
you or
aren’t
you moving into Up-Betty’s place?” she asked.

To Penelope the girl whispered, “She
died
in there, you know!”

“Up-Betty?” Delia looked bewildered. “Do you mean my great-great-aunt Betty? She lived in an
apartment
?”

Luella nodded.

Delia ran a hand through her hair and said, “But I thought I’d inherited the
house
. I’m very confused.”

“Look,” said Luella. “I’m just a kid. All
I
know is that Up-Betty died, and Mom said you were taking over her place and that I should give you this key when you got here.” She held up the key. “And I hope you plan to do that, because it’s spooky having a big empty apartment up there. There are creaks all night long.
Someone
needs to move in up there to scare off the ghosts.”

“Ghosts, huh?” said Dirk. “I wonder—is there an
adult
we could talk to, maybe?” He reached for the key.

“There’s Old Joe in the white house,” said Luella, waving vaguely toward the cottage at the end. “I
guess
he’s an adult. But he’s about a hundred and two, and kind of
past
being an adult. It
is
the middle of the day, you know. Most people are at work.”