Penelope Crumb Never Forgets (8 page)

18.

I
tell Littie I’ll meet her in front of our building. Then I grab my toolbox and metro card and tiptoe down the hall to Terrible’s room. His door is closed, like always, and his music is turned way up, but since he’s in charge, I do what I’m supposed to and ask him if it’s okay if I go to the museum with Littie. I do this from the hallway in the quietest whisper there is, with my hand over my mouth. If he doesn’t know he can’t hear what I said, then I’m not going to be the one to tell him.

Littie is waiting for me by the telephone pole, sliding a moldy hamburger bun with her foot over to a hungry pigeon.

“Where did you get that?” I say.

She points toward our building. “I found it over there by the trash can.”

“What did you tell your momma?”

“The truth,” she says, flashing the alarm around her neck. “What did you tell your mom?”

“I didn’t. She’s at my grandpa Felix’s helping him look for something.” I wince as those words spill out of my mouth. “Something that isn’t there.”

“What isn’t there?” she asks.

“Alfred.” I shake my head to try to get that thought out of my brains. “Never mind. Let’s just get a new necklace for Patsy Cline.”

The metro is crowded, so Littie and I find a place to stand near the back of the train. I set my toolbox by my feet and hold on to the metal pole. A boy with long hair pulled away from his face by a pair of knitted headphones grabs on to the pole above my hand. He reminds me of Terrible, except for the long hair and headphones and the fact that this boy doesn’t smell like fishing worms mixed with orange sherbet and furniture polish.

“Littie,” I whisper, nudging her with my elbow, “here’s a boy that’s probably not an alien. Maybe you should like him instead of Terrible.”

Littie’s eyes get big and she gives me a look that says, I’m Going to Kill You.

And then I say, “If you had an umbrella in your hand, you’d look just like Miss Stunkel.”

Littie pretends she doesn’t know me after that. The train lurches to a stop at the Seventh Street station, and the boy gets off. Once he’s gone, I swing around the pole, holding on with both hands, and knock against Littie until she stops pretending. It works after a while, because finally she turns to me like she knows me and says, “The next stop is us.”

I pick up my toolbox, and we head out of the metro station and up the long escalator toward the signs that say
PORTWALLER HISTORY MUSEUM.

“You never did say how you are going to buy another necklace without any money,” she says as we climb the brick steps of the museum.

“I have money.” I pull open the door and lead the way to the donation box. “Here,” I say, pointing to the box. “I put in fifteen dollars and fourteen cents plus a Canadian penny during our field trip with Miss Stunkel.” I stick two fingers through the slot in the top of the box and feel around.

“What are you doing?” Littie yells, pulling on my arm. “You can’t take your money back.”

I shove my fingers in deeper. “I don’t need all of it back. They can have the fourteen cents and the Canadian penny.”

“But it belongs to the museum now!”

“I’ll put it back whenever I get some more money,” I tell her. “How else am I going to get a new necklace for Patsy Cline?”

Littie keeps pulling my fingers out of the box while I keep trying to stick them in. Littie has bird fingers, which aren’t very strong, thank lucky stars, so she has a hard time prying mine away. But she tries and tries until one time it’s not Littie’s hands that stop me. These hands have lots of hair on them, and they’re big and rough, like they could juice an apple with just one squeeze.

“What’s going on here?” says a man in a gray suit with a red bow tie. He’s got a face like a lumberjack, with wooly gray whiskers and a flat nose that wouldn’t get in the way of tree climbing.

“Umm,” says Littie.

I pull out my fingers from the slot and tell him how I put money in this box the other day to help dead people everywhere, and how now I need to get it back to buy a necklace.

When I’m done talking, he nods and strokes his whiskers, and I give Littie a look that says, It’s Going to Be Okay. But she must not think so, because she’s backing away from me very slowly toward the door.

“Where are your parents?” says the man.

“My mom is at my grandpa Felix’s, looking for a camera that I have in my closet at home,” I say. “And my dad is Graveyard Dead.”

Then he says, “Come with me.” Here’s one more person that doesn’t like me talking about dead things.

Littie says, “We aren’t allowed to go anywhere with strangers.”

He points to his name tag. “The name is Jack. I work here at the museum.”

“He’s a lumberjack,” I whisper to Littie.

“Nice to meet you, Jack,” she tells him. “But you’re still a stranger.”

Jack grabs my arm at the elbow. “And you two are thieves. Trying to steal from the donation box.”

“We weren’t stealing,” I say, pulling away from him. “Honest.”

“I know what I saw.” He points to my toolbox. “I suppose you just bring that with you for no reason.”

I don’t know what that has to do with the price of baloney, but I say, “It belonged to my Graveyard Dead dad.”

“We’ll let the police sort it out,” he says. And then he grabs my arm again.

“Littie!” I point to the black box around her neck.

“Oh! Good thinking,” she says. And then she pulls the alarm.
WONK!! WONK!! WONK!! WONK!! WONK!! WONK!! WONK!!
WONK!! WONK!! WONK!! WONK!! WONK!! WONK!! WONK!! WONK!! WONK!! WONK!! WONK!! WONK!!

Over the noise of the alarm, Lumberjack Jack says a word I’m not supposed to hear and then lets go of my arm. That’s when I grab Littie’s hand and we run out of the museum all the way to the metro station. We take turns looking back to make sure he’s not chasing us. And every now and then, I check the trees, too, because that’s how lumberjacks travel.

Just outside the metro station, we stop to catch our breath. A man in green sunglasses and a red baseball cap is selling pocketbooks spread out on a table. “We’ve got the real thing here. Real thing right here. Can’t beat these prices. I’ll make you a deal. Which one do you like?” He holds up a purple one with a big gold buckle on the front. “Hey, girls. You like this one? Come here a minute. How much you pay?”

Littie wraps her fingers around her alarm, but I stop her and say, “It’s okay, Littie. I know how we can get money for Patsy’s necklace.”

19.

I
pull out my sketch pad from my toolbox and start tearing off drawings. I line each one up against the concrete wall near the entrance to the metro station. First an egg, a mason jar of Mom’s charcoal pencils, a tube of ultramarine paint, the sandal that Littie tried on, Terrible’s
ENTER AT YOUR OWN RISK
sticker, Patsy Cline’s hand, and then Grandpa Felix asleep on his couch. And lastly Alfred.

“What are you up to?” says Littie.

“How much do you think I should charge?”

“Two dollars apiece?” she says. “There are eight drawings here, so if you sold all of them, you’d have enough for the necklace. Of course, it would be a better business model if you could make a profit, so you could charge three dollars each and have some money left over. But what if three dollars is too much, and you don’t sell them all?”

I give Littie a look that says, How Do You Know All of This Stuff?

“Just say two dollars or best offer,” she says.

I say okay and then watch the people that go by. Some don’t even look at the drawings, like they aren’t even there, and others give them sideways looks and then keep going. Which is almost worse.

“You have to get out there and talk to people,” Littie says. “You can’t wait for them to come to you. That’s what Morgan Trunk always says.” Then she steps into a crowd of people about to go onto the escalator and says, “Watch me, Penelope.”

“Sir,” Littie says to some man with a briefcase, “you failed to notice several lovely drawings by an up-and-coming artist over here. Would you like to buy one? She’s only charging two dollars, which is a wise investment, if you ask me. You might even see her one day on Miss Morgan Trunk’s TV show
Wise Investments with Morgan Trunk.
She’s on channel nine.”

How Littie learned to talk like that, I’ll never know. But to my surprise, it works, because the man comes over to me and looks at my drawings. “What’s this one supposed to be?” he asks, pointing to the egg.

I’m not sure if he doesn’t know that it’s an egg or not, or maybe he wants to know what kind of egg it is. So I say that it’s an egg from a chicken. “A brown one.”

He nods and scratches his chin. “Brown?”

“The egg, I mean, was brown,” I say. “The chicken could be brown, too, but I never met her, so I’m not exactly sure.”

He looks at the drawing with his head tilted to one side and then the other. Which doesn’t make any sense to me, because any way you look at it, it’s still an egg. Then he says, “Would you take a dollar?”

And I say, “Yes indeedy.”

He hands me a crumpled-up dollar bill. I spread it out on my leg and smooth out the wrinkles. Then I fold it up again and slide it into my pocket.

“Only fourteen more of those and you’ll have your necklace,” Littie says.

I smile at Littie and tell her she should be president of the world someday. Then she says there is no such thing as president of the world and that it’s important for the world to have many leaders, not just one. So I say, “Never mind, Littie. I was only trying to be nice.”

“Oh,” she says. “Thanks.”

I’m not as good of a salesperson as Littie, I guess, because I’d rather watch cartoons than Morgan Trunk on TV. The only person I can get to look at my drawings is a lady who says she’ll give me half of her burrito for the drawing of Terrible’s sticker.

“You’re not going to eat that, are you?” says Littie, eyeballing the half burrito that I set on top of my toolbox. “You don’t know where it’s been.”

“Not everything is dangerous, Littie.”

“I know,” she says. “But the other day when I was watching the news at your place, there was a report about nails in Halloween candy.”

“It’s not Halloween.”

“Even so, I still wouldn’t eat it. I’m just saying.”

We sit cross-legged on the sidewalk and watch the sun slip behind the buildings across the street. A few people pass by, but the crowds are long gone, on their way to somewhere else. The sky glows orange and dims to gray, but nobody stops.

The man with the table of pocketbooks starts to pack up his things. “It’s getting dark,” I say to Littie.

“I should probably get home,” she says. “Before Momma starts to worry.”

“I’m going to have to tell Patsy Cline I don’t have her necklace anymore.” If there was any hope of being friends forever with Patsy, that hope is gone. There’s no more holding on if there’s nothing to hold on to. I pick up my drawings and am about to put them back inside my toolbox when somebody behind me says, “How much for that?”

I turn around. The man selling the pocketbooks waves at me and puts his sunglasses on the top of his red hat. Then he points to the burrito. “How much?”

“You want to buy the burrito?” I say.

“I would advise against it,” says Littie. “It could have nails in it. I’m just saying.”

“Not that, man,” he says. “The box. How much for the box?”

“You want to buy my toolbox?” I say. “Oh, well, that’s mine. I mean, it’s not for sale.”

“Twenty dollars,” he says. “I’ll give you twenty dollars for it.”

I look at my toolbox, its rusty corners, chipped red paint.

Littie says, “Penelope, that’s not for sale, is it?”

I never thought I could ever let go of my toolbox. It reminds me of my dad, and if I didn’t have it, it might be like I didn’t ever have him. And I might forget that he was ever here.

Grandpa Felix said sometimes you have to just let go.

But how do you know what to let go of? Letting go of Patsy Cline’s necklace would mean letting go of Patsy Cline. I’ve already lost my dad, gone forever, and I can’t lose her, too. I can’t.

“What do you say?” says the man.

20.

N
o,” I tell the man. “It’s not for sale.”

“Too bad.” He shrugs and walks away like he can forget about the toolbox and won’t be sitting up all night thinking about it and wishing he had it in bed next to him.

Littie puts her hand on my shoulder and says, “We’ll find another way to get the money.”

“How?”

Littie sighs and looks around. “I don’t know exactly. But there has to be a way.”

I nod and try to smile at her, but I don’t see how there is any other way. All I can see is Patsy Cline’s face when I tell her that I broke her necklace. And then will she walk away from me, just like this man is walking away from my toolbox, to never think about me again?

I pick up my toolbox and press my fingers against the metal sides. I close my eyes, and in the dark I can see every rusty bump and blotch of chipped red paint. I can see how the paint has worn off where the handle rests against the lid. I can hear the click of the latch and the squeak of the handle when it swings.

“Come on,” says Littie. “Let’s go. Momma’s going to be worried if I don’t get home soon.”

I follow Littie to the top of the escalators at the metro station. The steps churn down and keep churning. They don’t stop. People push by me and are carried away by the stairs until I can only see the tops of their heads, and then they disappear altogether. Once I get on, there’s no getting off. Littie grabs hold of the rail and is about to step onto the stair, but I grab her arm and pull her back. “Wait.”

“What’s the matter?” she says.

I undo the latch of my toolbox and hand Littie everything that’s inside. “Hold this stuff for a second.” Then I pull at the corners of the tape that’s holding down the picture of my dad inside the lid. Real slowly, I peel off the picture, careful so it won’t rip, and then fold back the tape around the edges of the picture. I tell my dad that I’m sorry, and then I slip him into my pocket.

“What are you doing?” says Littie.

But I can’t look at her face, because if I do, I’ll lose my nerve. “Go on home,” I tell her. “Take my stuff with you, okay? I’m going back to the museum to get the necklace.”

“You’re going to do what?” she says.

Then I hug the toolbox to my chest and run at the man. His tables are gone, everything packed up, and he’s closing the door to his van. “Wait!” I yell. “Don’t go!”

“You change your mind about a bag?” he says.

I shake my head and hold my toolbox out to him. “Do you still want to buy this?”

“You’ll let it go now, huh?”

I nod at him.

The man reaches into his pocket and pulls out a thick stack of dollars all rolled up. He unrolls it, pulls one from the stack and stuffs it into my hand. Then he reaches for my toolbox.

I think I hear Littie say my name when my fingers loosen their grip.

I let go. And as soon as I do, my dad is dead all over again. And then the tears come.