Penny Dreadful (27 page)

T
he next few days were uneventful. In fact they were painfully ordinary.

Dirk tried out six different variations on Aunt Betty’s recipe for chowchow and waited for his editor to call. Delia went to work each morning on the garbage truck and called to nag the real estate agent in The City every afternoon. Meanwhile, Penny pretty much disappeared into the velvet folds of the sofa, where she read and sulked and was generally unhappy. Penny didn’t even
want
to be happy anymore. She didn’t want to have fun because the more wonderful her life in Thrush Junction was, the harder she thought it would be to leave behind. Once, when Duncan stopped by the apartment and her father knocked on her door to get her, she pretended to be sound asleep.

But there was another reason Penny was unhappy:
ever since they’d found the box of bottles in the cave, Luella had been absent. She hadn’t stopped by and she hadn’t answered her door. Penny was trying not to think about that.

Time passed slowly.

Then, when Sunday morning arrived, Penny opened her eyes very early and could not go back to sleep. The clock said it was not yet six. After rolling over four times, she finally climbed out of bed and headed into the kitchen for a glass of water. The sky outside the window was still a dusky gray.

In the kitchen Penny found her parents already up, deep in conversation. The room smelled like coffee and toast.

“Why are you up so early?” she asked.

Neither Dirk nor Delia answered. They just stared at her apologetically over the rims of their mugs.

“
What?
” she asked. But Penny knew the answer. “Go ahead,” she murmured. “Just get it over with. Say it. We’re moving, aren’t we?”

Delia nodded slowly.

“When?” asked Penny.

“Tomorrow if at all possible,” answered her father sadly. “Sorry, kiddo.” Then he stared over Penny’s shoulder through the open window. “Wow!” he said.

Penny turned around and saw why. Through the trees the sun was suddenly pushing its way up into the gray sky. Fingers of pink and orange and gold light were creeping over the mountains and through the dark branches and leaves so that all the trees looked as if they’d been set on fire. It was the most beautiful thing Penny had ever seen, and she forgot the awfulness entirely for a moment.

In under five minutes it was over, leaving behind another fine morning in Thrush Junction. The trees were green and the sun was up, burning its usual yellow in the sky.

Penny turned back around. “Everything changed so fast,” she said.

“Yes,
everything
did,” agreed Delia. Her eyes were wet, but smiling.

Penny looked from her mother to her father. “Why do we have to go so
soon
?” she asked.

Delia sighed. “It just seems like a good idea to leave before someone from the bank shows up to kick us out.”

“We’ve done all we can,” said Dirk. “But we’re out of ideas.”

Delia nodded. “And though I’m sure it would be a month or so before anyone would actually evict us, I don’t think we want to wait and see what
that’s
like.”
Then Delia set down her mug and laid her hands in an odd way on her belly. “Plus,” she added, “there are some other reasons—
good
reasons—to get ourselves settled sooner rather than later.”

“I—I understand,” said Penny hesitantly, but she didn’t really, not quite. She looked curiously at her mother, who wore a strange, calm smile.

“Hey, and we still have the potluck tonight!” Dirk tried to sound cheerful. “That’s fun, right?”

Penny frowned at her father. “I’m not in the mood for fun.”

“Penny,” added her mother softly, “I promise, it won’t be so horrible in The City. It won’t be like before. Things will be different now.”

“What do you mean,
different
?” asked Penny. “How can you know that?”

Delia smiled and moved one of her hands from her belly, reaching out to stroke Penny’s hair. “I mean they’ll be better,” she said. “How could they not be?
We’re
different.”

Penny thought about this. It was true.

Delia sighed and looked out the window. “We’ll take that with us wherever we go. I’ll find work, and … and your dad will finish his cookbook. We’ll go ahead and sell the house in The City, I think, and rent a nice
apartment for a while. We’ll find you a real school where you can make friends. Everything will be different. Okay?”

Penny nodded, thinking it might not be too horrible. Still, it felt like a wholesome, boring lesson at the end of the worst kind of book. Penny turned to leave the room. “I have to go pack,” she said dismally. “Tomorrow is
soon.
”

“Okay,” said Delia, “but before you go, dear, there’s just one more thing.…”

Penny stopped walking, but she didn’t turn around. “What is it now?” she asked with her back to her parents.

“I just think,” said Delia, “that we’ll all be pretty busy, and distracted, what with the new baby. And I hope I can count on your help.…”

It took a moment for these words to sink in. Then Penny whirled around. “New
baby
?” she cried.

Dirk burst out laughing, but the look on Delia’s face was soft, quietly excited. She nodded simply. Her smile glowed.

Penny flew into her mother’s arms. “A
sister
!”

“Well,” Delia said into Penny’s hair, “I suppose it
could
be a brother. But that wouldn’t be
so
awful, would it?”

That evening, after an overwhelming day of baby dreams and painful packing, Penny walked with her parents slowly along the garden path behind the house.
Willa had drawn a little map on their invitation, but it wasn’t really necessary, as the path was straight and true. It led away from the back of the Whippoorwillows, past the garden where Penny had danced with Down-Betty and gwowled with Twent, past the raspberry thicket, and past the woods—that tangle of trees and vines where she and Luella had gathered branches for their fort. When the woods ended, the path cut across a large clearing, at the end of which the Greys spotted a gazebo and some tables beside a lake. The tables were lit up with torches and surrounded by people. As they walked across the clearing, they heard music.

Penny stopped walking and stared. She almost didn’t want to be there. It was too hard to see her friends, knowing that she’d be leaving so soon. She felt jittery about not having seen Luella for days, and nervous about why that was. But the news of the baby was burning inside her, and she couldn’t wait to tell the others.
Besides
, she told herself,
I’m leaving. I can’t go away without saying goodbye
.

As she neared the gazebo, she took a deep breath. The air smelled like honeysuckle and citronella, and the tables groaned with food. Penny’s friends were sitting in a circle with paper plates on the lawn. She waved and ran over.

“Hi,” she said to Luella, feeling shy.

Luella was her usual snarky self. “Hey, stranger,” she said. “What are you waiting for? Grab a plate before all the good stuff is gone and you have to eat my mom’s mushroom-tofu scramble.” Luella made an
ew
face.

Penny laughed and made a face back. This would be just fine. Luella wasn’t mad.

Then Penny headed over to the food tables, where she fixed herself a plateful of shish kebabs, deviled eggs, three-bean salad and twice-baked potatoes. She found a spot on the grass between Luella and Duncan. Jasper had come to the picnic too, and was spending the night with Luella and Alice, who was sitting across from Penny in the small circle, beside Twent.

“You can sleep over too,” said Luella. “Of course. Or we can come up to
your
place if you want us to.” She looked from Alice to Jasper and added, “Her dad makes the
best
breakfasts!”

Penny noticed that when she spoke to Alice, Luella looked straight at her and spoke very clearly. So Penny tried to do the same. “Hi, Alice,” she said carefully. “I’ve heard a lot of nice things about you.” Penny blushed and hoped it was dusky enough that nobody could tell.

But Alice just laughed with her mouth full of hamburger and said, “You too, Penny!” Her voice sounded
exotic to Penny, almost like she had a foreign accent.
Her voice is curvy
, Penny thought,
soft around the edges
. It was a wonderful voice, a friendly voice. Penny laughed back. Someday, maybe, she
would
ask Alice what Luella had said with her hands that day. But not tonight.

Munching her dinner, Penny watched her mother and father carefully from afar. She wondered whether they were sharing the awfulness with the people at their table—the Gulsons and Willa and a woman who must be Jenny. Then she wondered if they were sharing the wonderfulness with them too. Delia’s hand seemed to be permanently fixed to her midsection, and she
did
seem to be talking to Willa a lot. Penny wanted to hear the conversation, but not enough to waste a minute of her last night with her friends.

Then Penny forgot all the serious grown-up thoughts, lost them in a gloaming game of hide-and-go-seek and too many slices of watermelon.

I will never forget this night
, she thought,
not ever
. It was a deliciously fun party, and yet—as each bit of fun slipped past her, as each magic moment happened, she knew she was saying goodbye.

Watching Twent the rabbit jump around the clearing, she said, “Goodbye, Twent,” softly.

Watching Duncan taste his first piece of coconut
cream pie ever, with a grin on his face and his parents looming over him, she said, “Goodbye, Duncan,” into the night air.

Watching Jasper point out where an owl sat high on a branch above them, she whispered, “Goodbye, Jasper.”

But Penny could not say goodbye to Luella, not even in a secret whispery way. Each time she tried, she had to close her eyes and breathe deeply. She was filled with too much—
something
. There was too much to say, so there was nothing she could say.

It was a wonderful, difficult, magical night, and it had to end. Just as everyone was sitting around the fire pit staring at the flames, listening to the music of Old Joe’s fiddle and Down-Betty’s guitar, Delia suddenly stood up, cleared her throat, and said, “Excuse me, everyone? Excuse me? Ahem! I have an announcement to make.”

The music stopped. Penny’s heart stood still. Everyone looked up at Delia standing above the fire. Everyone except Penny, who couldn’t bear to watch.

“First of all,” Delia said, “my family and I would like to thank you nice people for making us feel so welcome. Thrush Junction is a special place. We had no idea it would be so special, and we cannot believe our good fortune in finding it. Yet …”

Penny closed her eyes. She felt a flutter in her chest. She opened her eyes, looked at the fire, and tried to focus on the flames so she wouldn’t cry.

Meanwhile, Delia forged ahead ruthlessly, in a strong voice that Penny could not ignore. “Yet I’m afraid I have some very sad news. When my aunt Betty left us the house, she also left us a great pile of debt, debt we cannot hope to …” Delia paused again and seemed to consider her words carefully.

Abbie Gulson stood up, her wild halo of curls glittering in the firelight. “Why don’t you just sit down,” she said in a friendly way. “There’s no need! You don’t have to—”

“I
do
have to,” said Delia firmly, “so please, let me get this over with. You see—we’re going to lose the house.” She looked around at the circle of faces before her. “The bank will foreclose.”

Down-Betty shouted from a lawn chair, “Delia.
Really
. This is silly. Stop fretting. You’ll ruin the picnic.”

“No,” said Delia. “You don’t understand. It isn’t just
us
. I wish it were. But this affects us all. All of you. Because if we lose the house,
you’ll
likely be turned out into the streets. I’m sorry. It’s not what my aunt intended. But there’s not much I can do.”

“
We
understand perfectly,” said Willa, walking over
to Delia and setting a hand gently on her arm. “It’s
you
who doesn’t understand. Please,
listen
to us. Here.” She reached into her pocket and pulled out a little piece of paper. “Here you go!”

Penny turned away from the fire now to stare. Whatever was happening, it was nothing she’d expected.

“What?” Delia took the piece of paper and tried to read it in the uneven light. “What
is
this?”

Then the other tenants—Mr. Weatherall and Old Joe and Down-Betty and Abbie and a man who must have been Alice’s father—pulled small slips of paper from
their
pockets too, and they passed them around the circle to Delia until she held a small pile of paper.

“They’re checks, of course!” said Willa. “Maybe not as much as we’d
like
to give you. But a little something—to help as much as each of us can afford each month.”

“But I’m not allowed to charge rent,” explained Delia. “It says so in the deed.”

“You’re not
charging
us!” said Down-Betty.

“No, we’re
giving
it,” said Abbie. “Did you really think we’d all stand by and watch a neighbor be thrown out into the street? That’s not how it works in Thrush Junction. Dirk can pay us back in chowchow, just like Down-Betty’s been paying in cucumbers for years. And maybe
you
can teach Luella some manners!” She shot
her daughter a funny, wicked look. “Lord knows I can’t.”

“But how did you
know
?” asked Dirk, confused.

“Penny told me,” Luella called out over the fire pit. “And I told my mom, and she told the others.” She turned to Penny. “Sorry for being such a snitch, but I’m not much good with keeping quiet. It’s my
one
flaw.”

Penny looked over at her friend, who stuck out her tongue.

Then Penny flew at Luella. Without thinking, she grabbed her and pushed her to the ground in a gigantic, crazy hug to end all hugs. It was a hug that could not be stopped.

“Thank you!” Penny whispered. “Thank you so much.”

After that Delia and Dirk told everyone they were speechless about two hundred times, and everyone shook hands a lot and said, “Oh, it’s nothing special,” when of course it was incredibly special. Dirk decided to have “one more little drink to celebrate” and Down-Betty said she couldn’t stand to watch him drink alone. Delia and Willa got lost in conversation again, both with their hands on their bellies now.