Penelope Crumb Never Forgets Read Online Free PDF

‘nothing.’”
    “I just don’t want it in my closet.”
    “Why not?” she says.
    I sigh. “Because.”
    “Because why?”
    “My closet isn’t going to be a closet anymore, that’s why.”
    “What’s it going to be?”
    I can almost hear Leonardo say, “I am simply unable to think with all this clucking in my ears. Thank lucky stars that this wonderful room has a door.”
    I tell Littie that I don’t know what it’s going to be.
    “You don’t know?” she says. I bet she’s got her hands on her hips now. “Penelope Crumb, if you don’t want to tell me what you’re doing, then just say you don’t want to tell me instead of saying you don’t know. Because if you—”
    “Okay, Littie,” I say. “I don’t really want to tell you.”
    “You don’t want to tell me!” she yells. “Well, that’s just a bruise on a banana, isn’t it! Why? Why don’t you want to—”
    I close the closet door then, and the clucking stops soon after. “Ah, how lovely and quiet when the pigeon leaves the windowsill,” Leonardo would say. “Now, let’s get to thinking. Whose things are you going to put in this wonderful museum of yours?”

7.
    I call Patsy Cline the next day. “Do you want to come over?”
    “It’s Sunday,” she says. “I’ve got practice.”
    “Oh, right,” I say. “I forgot.” I tap my brains to wake them up. “Maybe I could come over, then?”
    Patsy doesn’t say anything. But I can tell she’s still there because I can hear her mom in the background calling her to come finish her scrambled eggs. “I guess that would be okay,” she says finally.
    I hang up the phone and yell to Mom, “I’m going over to Patsy Cline’s!”
    Patsy lives two metro stops away. On the train, I flip the handle of my toolbox back and forth, while my stomach does some flipping of its own. “I hope I’m not getting the stomach flu,” I tell my stomach. The man sitting next to me says, “I hope not, too,” and then he changes seats.
    When I finally get to Patsy’s building, my stomach is making all kinds of noises, and I’m worried the elevator might not be fast enough. But then as I’m getting ready to knock on Patsy’s door, my heart is really pounding, and I know that what I have isn’t the flu: It’s nerves.
    I don’t know why I would be nervous about visiting Patsy Cline, whom I have visited more times than I can count, but I take a deep breath and try to slow my heart. Then I knock.
    Patsy Cline’s dog, Roger, barks and scratches at the door. I can hear Patsy tell Roger to keep it down, and then the door opens. There’s Patsy in her blue cowgirl outfit with Roger tucked under her arm. “Howdy,” she says.
    As soon as I see her, my nerves go away, but then I see her FRIENDS FOREVER necklace around her neck, and my stomach does another flip. It doesn’t help that Roger, who has a face like a vampire bat and is missing a great number of his teeth, growls and lunges at me like he wants to gum me to death. With a face like that, Roger should thank lucky stars he doesn’t have a tail, because if Patsy Cline hadn’t adopted him, he’d still be at that shelter. Or worse.
    “He’s having one of his bad days,” Patsy explains.
    It’s not easy being a dog when you’re missing your tail, I guess. “I know the feeling,” I say quietly, and follow her inside. Somehow between the knock and Roger’s bad day, I decide the best thing to do is to keep talking and not let there be any empty space, because empty space will leave room for Vera Bogg. So right away I tell her about how Mr. Drather was singing a Patsy Cline song on the bus the day of the field trip and how I drew a picture of him and about how I think he wants to be a singer but is driving a school bus now instead. And how I had forgotten to tell her about that on the way home from the Portwaller History Museum on account of the fact that my brains were on Miss Stunkel and the note she sent home.
    And then without giving that