Penelope Crumb Read Online Free

only one. And I think it’s too bad that I don’t know him.
    Down the hall, Mom’s room is all dark. She’s snoring, and it sounds like slurping chocolate milk through a straw when you get to the bottom of the cup—
cwuuurgh!
—which I’m not allowed to do on account of the fact that it’s not polite. But
cwuuurgh!
when you’re sleeping must be different from
cwuuurgh!
when you’ve got a straw, because Mom is allowed to do it all the time.
    I climb in bed beside Mom and hug one of her extra pillows to my chest. It smells like cinnamon spice. Then real gentle, I touch the side of Mom’s face with my finger, right next to her ear. This is something I do to see how many touchesI can get in before she wakes up. Twenty-four is my world record. (Note: Do not try this game with aliens.)
    I get to eighteen when she sits up in bed and says, “Margarine!” like she’s been dreaming about groceries.
    So I say, “Butter!” like we’re playing that game where one person gives a clue about something and the other person has to guess what it is.
    But Mom must not be in the mood to play that game right now, because she looks at me, rubs the sleep out of her eyeballs, and says, “What in the world are you doing?”
    “Nothing,” I say, sitting on my finger.
    She props herself up on a pillow and yawns. “You weren’t doing that touching thing again, were you?”
    “Nope.”
    “Penelope Rae.” (Gallbladder.)
    “Why did you always say that Grandpa Felix was gone when he was not gone?” I ask.
    “What?” says Mom. I repeat the question, and she says, “Do we have to talk about this now?”
    “You said he was gone,” I say. “You said so. But he’s not dead and I have his nose and still I don’t know him.”
    “I never said Grandpa Felix was dead,” she says.
    “You never said he was
not
dead.”
    “Penelope Crumb.”
    “Mom Crumb,” I say. “So, where is he if he’s not dead?”
    She yawns and then rolls over on her side so that I’m talking to the back of her head. “Where’s who?”
    “Grandpa Felix. The not-dead grandpa that we’ve been talking about.” I poke my finger at the back of her head to wake up her brains.
    “Stop doing that,” she says once they get awake. She looks at me over her shoulder. “I don’t know where he is. I lost track of him over the years, but the last time we spoke he was living in Simmons.”
    “Simmons? That’s where Nanny and Pop-Pop used to live.”
    When she doesn’t say anything, I give her brains another poke. She turns over then and grabs my cinnamon-spice-smelling pillow right out from under me. “Go to sleep,” she says, pointing to the door. “Now.” And then she pulls the pillow over her head.

5.
    W hen I get to school, Miss Stunkel’s got our drawings hanging above the chalkboard. This would normally be a good thing because famous artists like Leonardo da Vinci have their drawings stuck up on walls for lots of people to see. But this is not a good thing on account of the fact that Patsy’s bad drawing of me is up there.
    I tell my eyeballs not to look at it, and try to get them to look at Miss Stunkel’s Friday lizard pin or the “Math is stupid” that somebody wrote on the corner of my desk in permanent marker.(Which was not me even though I also think that math is stupid.) But my eyeballs don’t listen, and they keep looking at Patsy’s bad drawing of me.
    The next thing I know, Miss Stunkel is saying my name. Twice.
    I put a look on my face that says, I Really, Really Have Been Paying Attention to Every Word You Have Been Saying. (Even though I really, really have not.)
    But it doesn’t work because Miss Stunkel says, “We are on page twenty-two…where are you?”
    Everybody laughs, except for me and Patsy Cline. “Umm,” I say, looking at Patsy for help. But Patsy is staring up at Friday Lizard like her tongue is starting to swell.
    Miss Stunkel says, “Eyes on your book.” And that’s when I know I have to fix that drawing if