Penelope Crumb Finds Her Luck by Shawn Stout

Author:Shawn Stout
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Penguin Group US
Published: 2013-09-17T04:00:00+00:00

12.

I’m not talking to Grandpa. I’m not talking to him the whole way to Portwaller’s Blessed Home for the Aging.

I just look out the car window and squeeze the paper lunch bag in my lap. The orange Popsicle inside is already starting to melt.

“Are you going to tell me what’s got you miffed, or would you like me to guess?” says Grandpa Felix.

I say, “Humph,” and then nothing else. If Grandpa Felix doesn’t know that I’m his Favorite, and that it should always be me as his photographer’s assistant, not Terrible, then I’m not going to be the one to tell him.

“Suit yourself,” he says. And we go along for the rest of the drive without saying anything.

As I get out of the car, Grandpa says that Mom will be picking me up this afternoon, and not him. “I’ve got a wedding to photograph this afternoon,” he says. “Your brother is going to help me.”

“Is that so?” I say. Even though I already know it is so, I pretend that I don’t, and I don’t know why.

Grandpa Felix says, “I asked your brother to help me because I knew you were busy today with your mural project.”

“I could have left early,” I say.

He sighs. “So this is what your grump is about.”

“I just wanted to be the one to help you,” I say.

“There will be other shoots,” he says. “And I don’t spend near as much time with Terrence as I do with you.”

That’s because he’s Terrible the Alien. But I decide to keep that to myself for now.

“I’ll be by to bring you here tomorrow morning same as usual.” Then he waves at me, the kind of wave a grandpa might give to some girl who he likes okay but is certainly not his Favorite, and drives away.

Before my Popsicle puddles, I bring it to Nila Wister. The door to her room is open, so I go right on in. “I brought you some sweets today,” I say. “I hope you like orange.”

Nila sits in her wheelchair, facing the window. She doesn’t say a word, not even “Big mistake,” and I worry that she’s gone dead from not enough sugary sweets. That would be just like the Bad Luck.

Slowly I walk toward her, whispering her name. Because you don’t ever want to sneak up on an old person. They could go dead just from the scare. I stick out my finger and when I get close enough to touch her, I can already feel her cold Graveyard Dead skin on my fingertip. I poke her anyway, right in her cheek, and she screams, “I’m going!”

I drop my Popsicle. Because when somebody who is Graveyard Dead comes back to life, it can make you forget you’ve got something in your hands.

Nila Wister turns her old eyeballs on me and says, “Did you just poke me in the face?”

I nod and say, “Congratulations, you’re alive!”

“Of course I’m alive,” she growls. “What did you think?”

“That you weren’t.”

“Well, I am. At least for this moment,” she says.

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