Penelope Crumb Never Forgets Read Online Free PDF Page A

toward the pine trees. “This way. Let’s get this over with.”
    I grab the camera bags and sling them over my shoulder. “How come you haven’t thought about Mandrake for so long?”
    He shrugs. “I don’t know. I just haven’t.”
    “But you were friends?”
    He nods. “The best.”
    “Then why?”
    “Nothing is forever. You’ll learn that someday.”
    I say, “Some things are.” Like my dad being gone forever. And what about what’s on Patsy’s and Vera’s necklaces? FRIENDS FOREVER .
    “Sometimes you forget about things or people that seemed really important long ago.” He holds Alfred up to his face.
    “I won’t,” I say. “I don’t want to forget.”

6.
    W hat are you doing in there?” asks Littie Maple.
    I stick my head out from inside my closet. “Nothing.” I throw the last of my shoes and hang-up clothes onto the Heap. Which now comes up to Littie’s eyeballs.
    “It doesn’t look like nothing.” Littie grabs my pair of my polka-dotted rain boots from the Heap and holds them up to her feet. She tells me I must be related to Sasquatch and then throws the boots back on the pile. She finds a pair of my sandals and buckles them over her socks. “Can I have these,” she asks, “if you’re going to throw them out?”
    “I’m not throwing them out,” I tell her.
    “Oh.” Littie clunks over to my dresser and kicks up her leg to try to get a look at her foot in the mirror. “I really like them. I’m just saying. And they fit me perfect.”
    I give Littie a look that says, That’s a Good One. But I don’t say anything about the sandals, because if she doesn’t know she has tiny bird feet, then I’m not going to be the one to tell her.
    “Is your brother at home?” asks Littie.
    “I hope not.”
    “Remember the other day when he pulled my hair?” she says, standing on her tiptoes.
    “I don’t know. I guess.”
    “Remember? We were out there by the couch and he was going somewhere, because he just put his jacket on and he said something to you and then he pulled on my hair? Remember?”
    I shrug and push some of my clothes and shoes to the top of the Heap.
    “I mean, on a regular day, he usually pays no attention to me at all. Doesn’t even say hello or anything. But the other day, he pulled my hair . . . You really don’t remember?” she says, folding her arms across her chest. But when I don’t answer, she says, “ I do. I remember.”
    “You can tell Mom if you want,” I say. “Terrible pulls my hair and does worse to me all the time and hardly ever gets into trouble, but maybe if you told Mom, she would do something.”
    “I don’t want to get him into trouble,” she says, and her face turns red. “That’s not what I’m after.”
    “Then what?”
    “Nothing, Penelope,” she says. “Nothing.”
    “Why are you so bothered about Terrible, anyway?”
    She unbuckles my sandals and kicks them off. “Never mind.”
    I crawl into my empty closet, curl into a corner, and run my hand over the white walls. If Mister Leonardo da Vinci were here, he would surely say, “My goodness, thank lucky stars for such a place as this. Oh me, oh my, indeed the plain walls should not be plain for long.” Because that is how dead artists talk.
    Littie clucks her tongue like a pigeon from the other side of the Heap. And then maybe because sitting in an empty closet makes my brains work better, all of a sudden it hits me why Littie is so bothered about Terrible. I grab a shoe from the bottom of the Heap and throw it at her. My aim must be pretty good, because she lets out a yowl. “What the heck did you do that for?”
    “Because, Littie Maple, if you’re meaning to say that you like Terrible the space alien, blech, then maybe you’re an alien, too.” I crawl back into my closet and prop my feet against the wall.
    “What are you doing in there?”
    “Nothing,” I say.
    Her clucks get louder. “Well, what are you doing with all this stuff out here? And don’t say