Penny Dreadful (20 page)

Wishing she’d never opened it, Penny climbed up and set the box back on the shelf.

T
WENT
, N
OT
T
WENT

P
enny could not shake the worrisome numbers from her head. Sitting on the couch, she tried to read, but she could feel the presence of the carved box in the room.
Will we really have to move back to The City?
she wondered.
How long do we have?
At last she got up and went downstairs to knock on Luella’s door. But nobody answered.
That’s odd
, thought Penny. Maybe Luella had walked to town, or maybe she was at Duncan’s. Penny walked quickly past the orange cottage and the pink one to Duncan’s red door, thinking about how very quiet everything was today.

Nobody answered at Duncan’s either, so Penny returned to her porch to idly pick flakes of paint off the top step. As she picked, she wondered for the first time if it might be possible for
her
to help her mother. Delia had said that they each had a job to do, but besides running
a lemonade stand, or becoming a dancer in a pantomime like the three sisters from
Ballet Shoes
, Penny couldn’t think of any way for a kid her age to make money. She sat some more, thinking and trying to suck a paint chip splinter from under her fingernail. She doubted anyone ever made any real money selling lemonade, and she thought it unlikely that there were any pantomimes in Thrush Junction.

Unable to find any sort of real distraction, Penny dangled in the porch swing and wondered how long it would be until dinnertime. She wished she could remember how to get to Jasper’s house. Finally, irritated with herself for her lack of
inner resources
, Penny stomped down the steps and around to the back of the house, where she wandered out into the big garden.

She walked through patches of fragrant herbs, thinking about money. She nibbled on a handful of sweet little tomatoes the size of blueberries and considered how simple her life had been in The City. How much things had changed in such a short time! Was it really true they’d only been in Thrush Junction a little more than a week? It felt like much longer. How was it possible that in a matter of days Penny had felt more happy and more worried than ever before? She wondered—did it
always
work like this? Was good stuff always so much effort?

Lost in her thoughts, Penny failed to notice she was not alone in the garden. She didn’t see that creeping behind her, at a distance of about ten feet, was a creature. A creature with velvet paws and gnashing teeth that sniffed as it followed Penny, as it padded behind her almost silently.

Penny didn’t notice she was being followed until the creature suddenly pounced.

“GWAH!” growled the creature at the top of his lungs.

“Aaagch!” cried Penny in surprise.

“WAHW!” yelled the creature, baring its claws and shaking its head.

Once she was over her surprise, Penny had to stifle a laugh at the creature who roared as well as anyone can without the benefit of the letter
r
. “You’re very frightening,” she said, “but what are you supposed to
be
?”

“I’m a lion, king of the fowest,” said a boy in a yellow costume that might have been made from a bedspread. Penny guessed he was a four-year-old lion.

To say that the lion’s costume was homemade was an understatement, held together as it was with safety pins and masking tape. Around his head the boy wore a yellow moth-eaten tutu. An orange extension cord served as a tail. The boy had whiskers drawn on his face.

“WAHW!” he yelled one more time for good measure. Then, in a more subdued voice, he said, “I’m Twent.” He held out a hand, and when Penny took it, he gave a very formal little shake accompanied by a dignified bow. “Today I’m Twent the lion. Who awe you?” he asked.

“I’m Penny,” said Penny. “Penny the girl, I guess.”

“That’s a nice name,” said Twent. “I’ve nevew met a Penny befow.”

“I’ve never known a Trent either,” said Penny.

Suddenly the very dignified little lion became enraged. “NOT TWENT!” he yelled at the top of his lungs, thumping his chest. “TWENT!” He snarled. “WAHW!”

“Um, okay, Twent,” said Penny, not understanding in the least.

“That’s okay,” said Twent, calming down. “I shouldn’t have lost my tempew. Lions can be tempewmental. I’m sowwy.”

“It’s okay,” said Penny. “I was in a bad mood myself just a little while ago.”

“Do you want to come ovew to my house?” asked Twent. “We can play Pawcheesi.”

Penny looked down at the little lion for a minute and had a thought: a fun thought, a fun thought of a fun thing to do. Happily, all other concerns flew from her head.

“Wait!” she called out as she ran back through the
garden in the direction of the house. “Wait right here for just a second!”

Penny bolted up her stairs and ran through the apartment and into her room. She rifled through the closet, making a mess of the order she’d created just that morning. When she dashed back down the stairs, she wasn’t Penny the girl anymore.

She trumpeted as she ran across the yard and into the garden, and when she stormed back over to Twent, the boy could hardly contain his delight.

“Not Penny the
girl,
” she called as she ran toward him.

“Penny the
elephant
!” he shouted, gwowling in delight. “Oh! Let’s be a pawade. Wight now! Dum-da-da-da-dum. Dum-da-deedle-dee-deedle-dee-doo!”

So they were. The two of them gwowled and trumpeted through the garden. They attempted cartwheels and sang. It was lots of fun. Penny wasn’t sure why she hadn’t worn her elephant costume more often.

At last the animals took a break to pant and drink some water from the pump in the herb patch.

Then Twent jumped up and said, “Come on. I have something else to show you!” Penny jumped up and followed the strange little lion home to his cottage, which turned out to be the pink one in between Duncan’s red
house and the shining-hair girl’s orange cottage. The shining-hair girl was nowhere to be seen.

Twent threw open the door. “WAHW!” he yelled, and stalked inside. Penny followed, peering curiously around at the inside of the living room, which was decorated with all sorts of bright colors.

From a back room came the voice of a woman. “Oh, gosh, Twent. Do you
have
to be a lion today? Couldn’t you maybe be something else? A monkey or a giraffe? I do so love when you’re a nice quiet giraffe.”

“WAHW!” cried Twent, as though his mother’s suggestion were downwight ludicwous.

“Okay, okay, a lion it is,” said his mother, walking into the room. When she saw Penny, her face lit up. “Why, hello! A guest! What fun!”

Penny couldn’t help staring a little at the woman, who was hugely pregnant and had hair to her knees. She reminded herself that beside a makeshift lion and a talking elephant, a pregnant lady with very long hair was hardly that unusual.

“I’m Penny the elephant,” said Penny with a curtsy and a giggle.

The woman curtsied right back and said, “Oh, yes, you must be the new Dewberry girl! Luella stuck her head in the door last week and mentioned she’d met you.
Goodness, you do look like your aunt. You have Betty’s eyes!”

“I do?” Penny said, blinking the eyes in question. She’d never been told she had anybody else’s eyes before.

The woman nodded. “I’d have stopped in to welcome you to town myself, but we were away for a few weeks. And it’s so hard for me to get around with this.” She patted her belly. “I figured I’d wait for the big dinner next week.”

“What big dinner?” asked Penny.

The woman looked concerned. “Hasn’t anyone told your folks about it yet? We have a potluck supper every summer, for everyone at the Whippoorwillows and some of our friends. You arrived just in time!”

“Oh,” said Penny. “That sounds fun.”

“It is, but really—nobody told you about it?”

“I don’t think anyone has told us about much of anything,” said Penny. “My parents haven’t really gotten to know very many people at all. My mother has been hunting for a job, and my dad is writing—um—a novel and cooking a lot. He did meet Down-Betty. And Old Joe too. But he hasn’t really been going out of his way to meet people yet.” Penny didn’t add,
because we might not be here much longer
. She couldn’t bring herself to say those words. It made her feel horrible just to think them.

“Even so,” said the woman, “I feel terrible. I just assumed Abbie Gulson would have given you all a proper introduction. But people do get busy. Maybe we should start all over—”

“Start over?” asked Penny.

Without further explanation, the woman left the room and then came right back in, holding her belly. She awkwardly recurtsied and said, “Why, hello there! What a pleasant surprise! How do you do? So nice to meet you! I’m Willa! And you’ve met Twent, of course—”

“Wait, so his name really
is
Twent? I assumed it was”—she dropped her voice to a whisper, in hopes that the little boy wouldn’t lose his temper again—“actually
Trent
.”

Willa laughed. “Folks always assume that when Twent introduces himself. But you see, my father’s name was Trent, and he passed away some years ago. Of course I absolutely had to name my son after my dear old dad, but Jenny—that’s my wife—has a little speech impediment. Can’t say her
r
’s. So since Jenny was going to end up saying Twent instead of Trent, we just named him that instead. Turns out it was a good idea, because Twent can’t pronounce
his r
’s any better than Jenny can.” Willa laughed again.

Penny was a little confused. “Your
wife
?”

“Sure.” Willa smiled happily. “Twent’s other mother.
She’s at work now, but you’ll meet her one day soon. At the potluck, if not before!”

Penny looked over at Twent, who seemed not to be paying any attention. She had never known anyone with two mothers, but then, she’d also never known anyone with hair to her knees. Or anyone with a pet skunk. Or anyone who painted huge pictures of horses in her living room.

“That would be nice,” she said. “Meeting Jenny, I mean.”

“Jenny isn’t around much lately,” sighed Willa. “She’s been working a ton of overtime to get ready for the baby. Thank goodness for the Whippoorwillows. Without the free rent here, we’d never have been able to afford another kid. But we think Twent needs a sibling. It seems lonely to be an
only
, don’t you think?”

“I’m an
only,
” said Penny. “I guess.” She hadn’t ever really thought about it like that before.

“Oh,” said Willa. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean anything bad by that. It just seems a little quiet to me, growing up alone. But then, I grew up with nine brothers. So I’d like Twent to have at least one sibling.”

“
Nine!
” said Penny. “Wow.”

Twent looked up and frowned. “I’d
wathew
have a dog.”

Willa laughed. “You’ll have to settle for a sister.”

Twent gwowled faintly.

“I bet it’ll be nice, Twent,” said Penny.

Twent bared his teeth and gwowled louder. He seemed unconvinced.

Willa laughed. “Penny, I hate to say it, but I think this little lion needs a nap. He gets like this when he’s tired.”

“That’s fine,” said Penny. “I want to go see if Luella’s home now, anyway.”

“Of course you do,” said Willa. “Tell her hello from me. But, oh! Before you go, let me write a note to your parents explaining about the potluck.” She sat down on the couch and wrote a few sentences on a little card.

“We have it out back,” she explained to Penny as she wrote, “about a half mile down the path that runs beside the garden, at the picnic tables around the gazebo in the clearing. I’ve drawn your parents a map and written some directions, just in case, but you shouldn’t have trouble finding the spot. Do come! It’s a ton of fun. Very neighborly.”

Penny hadn’t even known there was a gazebo, but a potluck did sound fun and neighborly. “There’s a gazebo?” she asked. “There’s a clearing?”

“Certainly,” said the woman. “Just through the woods behind the house, right near the edge of Languid Lake.”