Penny Dreadful, page 10
Luella was in charge of the list. With a pen Kay had lent her, she marked off ingredient after ingredient with a shout. “Wheat—check! Corn—check! Sugar—check! Beef—check! High fructose corn syrup—check! Cream and butter and jam—check, check, and check!”
Kay came by to oversee the goings-on now and then with a secret smile on her face. Periodically she recited a recipe, in case Luella missed an ingredient from the list. “There’s shredded carrots in the stew. Did you get that? And pineapple in the yams.” Then she’d go back to the kitchen.
Finally Luella cried out, “DONE!” and Penny set down the heavy camera with a relieved groan. According to the little red numbers on the digital display, she’d been recording for just under thirty-seven minutes—thirty-seven minutes of solid eating!
Duncan looked up, startled from his frenzied gluttony. He stared at the piece of paper in his friend’s hand. He seemed puzzled.
“You’re done!” she shouted again. “You have officially tasted every single food on your list. How do you feel?”
“Yeah, how do you feel?” Penny repeated, leaning in to peer at her new friend.
Duncan smiled. “I feel—” Then his eyes crossed as his stomach gave a terrible rumble, and his smile disappeared. “Actually, I feel—not so good.” He rubbed his belly. “I feel awful.”
As Luella and Penny watched, concerned, Duncan groaned and slumped down sideways so that he was lying flat in the booth. He let out a terrible moan and rolled onto the floor beneath the table. “I think I’m sick. I mean it. Oh, man. I’m going to die. And then my parents are going to kill me.” He closed his eyes.
“Oh no,” said Luella, sliding from the booth and kneeling beside her friend’s head. She felt his forehead. It felt clammy. “Oh no!”
Duncan groaned again, louder, and his eyelids flickered.
Luella slapped his face and he cried out.
Penny watched in horror, frozen. This was all her fault. It had been her idea. “Luella!” she said. “What can we do?”
Luella said nothing. She just stared down at Duncan, horizontal on the floor beside her.
Suddenly Penny stood up in the booth. They needed a grown-up immediately. “Kay!” she shouted. “Kay, help! HELP!”
The woman ran in from the kitchen, wiping her hands with a dish towel. “What? What? Is someone choking? What is it?”
“Quick! Where’s the nearest hospital?” cried Penny.
“Wha? Hospital? What for?” asked Kay, looking seriously worried. “What’s going on?” She looked down at Duncan.
“No time to explain,” cried Luella. “The hospital is all the way in North Junction. Too far. We just need to get him to Dr. Sanchez!” She pulled on his arm. “Here, help me get him up!”
“Hospital? Doctor? What are you kids saying?” asked Kay frantically. “Slow down. What happened? Did he slip and fall?”
“No!” said Penny. “He just lay down and began to moan. We think it’s his allergies! There’s no time to lose. We need a doctor now!”
Kay calmly crouched down and pulled Duncan to a sitting position. She put a hand to his forehead. “You going to be okay, Dunc? Tell me—where’s it hurt?” She gently helped him back up and into the booth.
“My stomach,” said Duncan, opening his eyes. “Oh, my stomach feels terrible.” Then he burped and began to whimper. “I must be allergic to something after all! How will we ever know what it was?” He moaned. “It could have been anything.”
But when Duncan burped, Kay made a strange noise, a kind of muffled bark. Looking over, Penny was shocked to realize that Kay was trying not to laugh.
Luella seemed to be thinking the same thing. “What’s so funny?” she yelled at Kay. “Duncan could be dying!”
The waitress straightened up and wiped her hands on her apron. She looked down at Duncan sitting limply in the booth. “You do not have an allergy,” she said, letting out a warm, rolling chuckle. “We do not have to bother Dr. Sanchez with this—though I’m sure Duncan’s parents would prefer if we did.” She waggled a finger at Penny and Luella. “For shame! You girls just took about ten years off my life, you scared me so bad.”
Duncan had managed to stay in an upright position. “Honest, Kay? You think I’ll survive?” he asked.
“You’re fine. I’d bet the Junction Lunch on it,” said Kay. “I raised four kids of my own, you know. A mother knows.” She considered this last point. “Well, most do, anyway.”
“Then why does he feel so sick?” asked Penny, her eyes wide and her voice shaky. Her frantic fear was melting away, leaving behind a kind of tired, fluttery feeling in her chest.
“Because, silly girl, he just ate the entire lunch menu, including our five-alarm chili and some questionable beets from Tuesday’s lunch special,” said the waitress. “I probably shouldn’t have served those.”
“But look at him. He’s really sick!” said Penny.
Duncan did look very pale.
“Of course he is,” said Kay. “But he doesn’t have an allergy, just a raging case of indigestion.”
“Are you sure?” asked Duncan, letting out another terrible burp. “It really hurts.”
“Of course it does,” said Kay. “You’ve spent your life eating boiled chicken. Your poor guts don’t have the first idea what to do with all those wild flavors, so they’re chock-full of plights and gripes. But a body is a tough thing. It takes a fair amount of harm to kill off a healthy boy.”
Duncan considered this. “Are you sure?” he asked.
“Well, I suppose you might be allergic—if your throat is closing up or you’re covered in hives. Can you breathe?”
“I can breathe.” Duncan nodded, swallowing huge gulps of air.
“Yeah,” laughed Kay. “Kinda looks that way to me. Any hives? You feeling itchy?”
“I don’t think so,” said Duncan. He inspected his arms and legs. “Not yet.”
“I think you’ll live,” said Kay. “And while I should feel bad for allowing this craziness, I have to admit I’m pleased as punch to see you eating like a normal kid. I’d say you’re as fine as anyone could be after a meal like that.”
“Fine?” asked Penny.
“Fine!” repeated Luella. “You hear that, Dunc? You’re fine!”
Duncan smiled weakly, though his joy was tempered by his frequent burps, so Kay mixed him up a cloudy glass of warm water and baking soda. Duncan made a face as he drank it. He complained that the mixture tasted worse than Benadryl, but it seemed to help a good deal.
Penny was concerned that perhaps they didn’t have enough money to leave a very big tip after causing Kay so much trouble, but the waitress just chuckled at them. “Oh, don’t you worry about the pennies, darlin’. Getting to see a hungry boy full for the first time in his life is its own reward.”
As the three friends left the Junction Lunch, Penny noticed Dijon parked in front of a very official-looking building called the Department of Sanitation/City Planner/School Board. She looked around, but neither of her parents was anywhere to be seen. So she trundled along home with Luella and Duncan. They only stopped once so Duncan could briefly lie down again along the side of the road.
Duncan looked up at the two girls from his bed in the weeds and said, “Thanks, guys. I’d never have been brave enough to do this without you.”
It made Penny feel very, very good, though it seemed a funny thing to be happy about—not at all like something that would happen in a book. Unless maybe the book was Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle.
Back at the Whippoorwillows, they had another stroke of amazing luck. Duncan’s dad was still sound asleep in a dark room, recovering from his anxious headache (or maybe getting ready for the next one).
The next morning Penny and Luella knocked three times on Duncan’s door, but nobody came to answer it.
“Let’s just hope Mr. Weatherall’s head didn’t explode when he saw that video,” said Luella, shaking her head with worry.
Just as Penny and Luella turned to walk away, the door swung open and Duncan stuck his head out. “I can’t play,” he whispered, “not right now. But I wanted to tell you both—things are okay. I think. I showed Dad the video, and he freaked out at first and called Mom, so then she came home from work in a rush and watched it too. After that they took me to see the doctor, just in case, but it turned out okay. Dr. Sanchez is on our side. She watched the video, laughed at my parents, and gave me a lollipop when we left. Mom and Dad were so relieved, they let me eat it!”
“Oh, good!” cried Penny.
“All right!” said Luella.
“Yeah.” Duncan grinned. “And we’re going to try ordering pizza for dinner tonight. My very first pizza ever!” He looked elated but kept his voice low. “It is good. Everything’s very good. But right now I have to run. My poor old dad. He’s feeling kind of fragile.”
LIKE REGULAR LIFE
After that Luella and Penny tried to think of something fun to do.
“Maybe we should go see if anyone else wants to play,” said Luella. “There are other kids who live here too, you know.” She thought for a minute. “But Alice is away at camp, so it’s mostly my dopey sister and her friends who come over, plus some little preschool munchkins who hang around.”
“I wouldn’t mind meeting your dopey sister,” said Penny, who didn’t know the first thing about sisters.
Luella shook her head and frowned. “Better to keep our distance. Teenagers are awful. Bea just sits in her room talking on the phone and reading books about kissing with dumb pictures of lipstick girls looking sneaky on their covers. Sometimes the girls have their heads cut off.” Luella made a disgusted face. “Plus, whenever I do run into Bea, she asks me to go and get her something—a snack or her flip-flops or something. I’m never going to be a teenager.”
Penny wasn’t sure how Luella planned to manage that, but before she could ask, Luella said, “Let’s just play by ourselves today.”
That sounded fine to Penny. “Okay,” she said. “Didn’t you say something about dressing up a dog?”
Unfortunately, they didn’t have a dog handy, so instead they decided to sit on the porch and read books about everything but kissing.
Penny, who’d run up to fetch the copy of Return to Gone-Away she had just started reading, was surprised when Luella came out of her apartment with a huge stack of library books about people who were explorers or scientists or magicians.
“I’ve never read a book like this before,” said Penny, leafing through a book about a woman named Amelia who flew planes. “Except really boring ones my tutor made me read for lessons.” She stopped to stare at the pictures. “I usually read books about people who seem magical or different from me.”
Luella, who had been taking a quick peek at Penny’s book, held it up in the air. “You mean like this one, about a girl who moves one summer from the city to the country and ends up in a weird old house hanging out with some oddball characters?” There was a tiny smile at the corner of her mouth as she waved the book at Penny. “Magical or different?”
“Oh,” said Penny. “Hmm. I hadn’t thought about it quite like that.”
“Yeah,” said Luella with a laugh. “You should try reading nonfiction sometime. It’s more interesting. Less like real life!”
Penny laughed back. “Okay, let’s swap!”
They did just that, and for several hours the girls settled into comfortable reading spots. Luella sat on the porch swing and Penny settled down in the big wicker chair, and they didn’t say much to each other. When it got hot, Luella went in for two glasses of lemonade. At lunchtime they went upstairs, where Dirk made them elaborate grilled cheese sandwiches full of mushrooms and grilled onions and spicy mustard. But when they were done eating, they came back down. Oddly, nobody else came or went much. It was as though they had the Whippoorwillows all to themselves.
Penny liked leafing through Luella’s books and stopping on the old photographs. Once in a while the girls would stop reading to chat about nothing in particular, or to ask each other questions or share a joke.
Late in the afternoon Penny stopped reading to gaze up at the cloudless summer sky and listen to the porch swing creak and notice a bee buzzing. She glanced over at her friend, who seemed engrossed in a book called The Way Things Work, and wondered how it could be that she was not the least bit bored.
In fact, Penny was so content, and Luella was so content, that for a number of days the two girls kept mostly to themselves and stayed busy, if you could call it busy, doing nothing and everything, the way friends do. They sat in their fort beneath the waving willow fronds, and they swung on the porch swing. They lounged around in a falling-apart hammock behind the house and listened as Old Joe practiced playing the fiddle one morning. They played Uno under a tree and drew pictures of what they thought they might look like when they grew up and were famous actresses and/or fairies and/or vampires and/or rock stars.
Duncan joined them for the Uno, but he absolutely refused to draw pictures of himself as a fairy or an actress, and grumbled off, saying, “We have to get some more boys around here.”
Four days, seventeen scratches, two bruises, and three mosquito bites later, the two girls were upstairs helping Dirk shuck corn for a salad when Penny suddenly remembered something. “Hey—back before Duncan stopped being fragile, weren’t we supposed to go get penny candy?”
“Oh yeah!” said Luella. “I totally forgot. Yikes! You still haven’t been to the General Store! We should fix that right away, but we’ll need money.” Since Penny’s life savings was now gone and Luella was still saving for a skateboard, the two friends ran directly down to borrow some money from Luella’s mother’s change jar. Penny didn’t think it was a good time to ask her parents for any money.
By now Penny had been inside Luella’s apartment a few times, briefly, and each time she’d wondered at the odd emptiness of it: the white walls with nothing on them, the stark few bits of furniture, the absent parents. It did not feel to Penny like a place where people lived, and she had been more than happy to roam outside or to invite Luella to play upstairs.
From time to time, darting in and out downstairs, they had run into Bea on her way to the bathroom or getting a snack in the kitchen. One time she yelled bossily from her room, “Hey, Luella! Grab me a soda, will you?” But mostly it seemed like she wasn’t there at all.
Today, when Penny and Luella stepped inside, the place looked different. A huge easel with a giant canvas on it stood in one corner of the front room. On the floor was a tarp covered in splatters of every color imaginable. On the tarp were brushes and tubes of paint. The room smelled funny, in a chemical way.
In front of the easel was a surprise—a person, a woman.
“Hi, Lu!” said the woman, who had her back to the girls. She held a brush in one hand and a palette in the other. She dabbed and daubed at the canvas in front of her. She didn’t turn around. “Painting furiously. Can’t stop. Talk later,” she said.
“Okay, Mom,” said Luella. “But you said you wanted to meet Penny someday, and you’re home today, and this is Penny, and today is someday. Penny, this is my mom.” She added in a whisper to Penny, “I’ll be right back. With moola.”
Then she left Penny to stare in wonder at the scene before her.
Although Penny had visited museums on field trips with Joanna, she had never before met an artist, or seen an actual studio, which is what the living room was transformed into today.
Luella’s mom turned around. She wore a pair of old denim overalls, with no shoes, and her wild black curls stood out from her head in a glorious pouf. Her skin was much darker than Luella’s, and a smear of silver paint on her nose stood out brightly, almost glinting in the sunlight. As Luella’s mom stepped aside, Penny saw that she was working on a picture of a horse that didn’t really look like a horse. Penny wasn’t sure how she knew it was a horse, but she was certain it was.
“Sorry to be rude, Penny. Didn’t know we had a guest!” laughed Luella’s mom.
“It’s okay, Mrs. Gulson,” said Penny a little shyly. “It’s nice to meet you.”
“Nice to meet you!” said Luella’s mom. “But I’m not a Mrs. Anybody. I’m just Abbie. Lu has been saying such nice things about you.”
“Thanks,” said Penny happily, though still quietly, “Abbie.”
“Now that we’re friends,” said Abbie, “do you mind if I keep working?” She waved her paintbrush in the air. “The light is just right, and it won’t last long. It never does.”
Penny shook her head, and Abbie turned away to dab and daub, smear and splatter. Penny watched, fascinated, until Luella burst back into the room, pockets bulging.
“Ready, Penny?” she asked.
Penny didn’t even have time to reply. Without turning around, Abbie called out, “Yes, she’s ready. Now go. Go. Get!” in a tone both forceful and friendly.
The girls got.
This time they didn’t run. Slowly, Penny and Luella walked to town, stopping every twenty feet or so, so that Penny could notice a cardinal or remark on how pretty the blue flowers were that grew by the road. Each time Luella responded with something like “Oh, it’s just a bird” or “What, that old weed?” But it was all new to Penny.
On Main Street, Penny stopped to peek in the windows of all the funny old storefronts they passed, which she hadn’t had time for when they’d run to town with Duncan. Though there weren’t very many shops, each store was well worth peering into because each was different from the next, and they were all a little strange besides.
Looking in one dusty window, Penny realized she was staring at gigantic vats of dried corn and what looked like different kinds of pellets and seeds. A woman in a cowboy hat sat behind a cash register reading a magazine, but the store was otherwise empty. Penny shifted her gaze toward the ceiling of the room and discovered an iridescent glow caused by a number of stunning wedding dresses, worn by mannequins of every size. The mannequins dangled from the ceiling so that they seemed to rise from the vats, hanging over them like ghosts in the dim, their silken arms covered with corsages. Penny stepped back so she could read the sign over the shop’s door, and she laughed out loud to discover that it said FUGATE’S FEED SHOP AND BRIDAL STORE.
