Penelope Crumb

ALWAYS LEARNING

PEARSON

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Acknowledgments

About the Author

M
iss Stunkel’s art class is my All-Time Favorite. Don’t get me wrong, the rest of fourth grade is all right, I guess. But for me, drawing is like wiggling my toes in the ocean. It just feels good.

I take out my No. 2 Hard drawing pencil from my red metal toolbox and carefully study my best friend Patsy’s face.

“Hmmm.” I squint my left eye and pucker my lips, which is what famous artists do when they are concentrating hard. I know that because I saw a
cartoon about Leonardo da Vinci once, who was a very, very famous artist who lived a very, very long time ago (he’s dead now, like all famous artists are), and that’s just what he did when he painted. I want to be a famous artist, too, but not a dead one.

“What?” says Patsy.

“I’m trying to decide which side of your face is the best one,” I tell her.

“They’re the exact same, Penelope,” she says.

“Are not.” But then I add real quick so she won’t be mad, “It’s okay, Patsy,
no
body’s face is that way.”

She gives me a look. I know that look because I’m real good at telling what different kinds of faces mean. It’s an artist’s job to notice things like that. Her face says, You Are Truly Making That Up.

Patsy doesn’t know anything about art. I mean, nothing. She wouldn’t know Leonardo da Vinci if he handed her a paintbrush and said, “How do you do, little darling?” But that’s okay, because singing is her thing.

When Patsy was born, her mom and dad must
have known she would be a good singer because they named her Patsy Cline. After the famous country-western singer also named Patsy Cline (she’s dead now, too). Only, Patsy Cline (my very best friend, not the famous country-western singer who is dead) is her first name. Her full name is Patsy Cline Roberta Watson. Which is the longest name of anybody I’ve ever met. Even longer than Leonardo da Vinci’s. (I’ve never actually met him on account of you know…)

So we just call her Patsy.

“I’ll do this side,” I say. “Because the other side has dirt on it.”

“Better stop your fibbing.”

“True blue,” I say. “It’s right here.” I poke my finger at Patsy’s smudgy cheek. And then I get a whiff. “Mustard?”

Patsy wipes at her cheek with the back of her hand. “Pretzels for breakfast.”

“Hold still,” I say.

Patsy makes her lips into a straight line.

“Wow, Patsy, you look just like Mona Lisa.”

She raises her eyebrow like she thinks I’m Queen of the Fibbers, but she keeps her mouth straight. “This is as bad as posing to have my picture taken for All-Star Kids,” she says without moving her lips. “You’re coming to my audition on Sunday, aren’t you?” I tell her that I am and to stop talking so I can finish.

“It didn’t take me this long to draw you!” she says.

“Patsy,” I say, being as patient as I can be, “do you think that Miss Mona Lisa told Mister Leonardo da Vinci to hurry up?”

“I bet she would if she had a thousand-legger crawling down her neck. Or if she ate some spoiled ham the night before that gave her the runs.” Patsy sure has a way of putting things.

After I get through with Patsy’s mouth, I draw her frizzed-out hair. It’s the color of chocolate cherry fudge, and she sure has a mess of it. Her curls sprout every which way on her head. “Tuck your hair behind your ear,” I tell her.

Patsy cups her hands over her ears and then pulls her hair forward to cover them. “What for?”

“So I can draw your ear. You know, the thing that’s on the side of your head.”

“Never mind my ear,” she says. “My hair is my best feature.”

I give her a look that says, That’s a Good One. I know for a fact that Patsy wishes she could get the curls out of her hair but good. Especially when Patsy’s mom attacks them with bobby pins and hair gel before singing contests just so she can get her cowgirl hat to fit. But I decide to keep this nugget to myself and keep on drawing.

“Are you done yet?”

“Almost.” I draw her eyebrow. I can only see one, since I am drawing just one side of her face. (The side without the mustard.)

Her eyebrow is like a furry caterpillar that might curl up in the palm of my hand. It is so cute, I name it. Marge.

I am right in the middle of drawing Marge the Caterpillar when Patsy leans over my desk to try
to get a peek at my drawing. But I quickly cover it with my arms so she can’t see. “You’re not supposed to look yet,” I tell her. “Remember?”

“Okay, everyone.” Miss Stunkel taps her desk. “Who would like to go first?”

Fast as a flash, I finish furry Marge and then raise my hand high.

Miss Stunkel peers around the room and touches her Thursday Lizard pin on her blouse. Thursday Lizard is plain and silver and not as good as Friday Lizard, which has red stones for eyeballs. But Patsy Cline hates them all because she’s allergic to things with tails. “Well, I don’t see many hands.”

I raise my hand higher, but Miss Stunkel keeps on looking. I think she might need glasses.

I raise my hand even higher still, so high that my fingers begin to tingle. “Oooh.” The tingles start creeping down my arm. I see Miss Stunkel look my way.

Then she looks right at me.

I flash her a smile that says, Look How Quiet
and Good I Am, So Pretty Please with Sprinkles on Top, Will You Pick Me? Miss Stunkel smiles back. But I know that smile. It says, I’ve Already Called on You Several Times Today, So Let’s Give Someone Else a Turn.

“Patsy Cline, why don’t you go first,” Miss Stunkel says.

Well then. I shake the tingles out of my arm. Miss Stunkel always picks kids who aren’t even raising their hands. I think it must be something teachers learn in How to Be the Kind of Teacher That Kids Don’t Like School, because last year my third-grade teacher, Mr. Adler, did the same thing.

Patsy slumps her shoulders, and I can tell by the look on her face that she is not one bit happy about having to go first. I try to give her a look like the one my mom gives me at the doctor’s when I’m about to get a shot: It Will Be So Fast You Won’t Even Feel It.

Patsy hugs the drawing to her stomach and heads to the front of the room.

I look from Patsy to my drawing of Patsy’s face and decide that Marge could use a bit more fur. I add a couple more hairs on Marge and then I hear Patsy say, “This is my drawing of my best friend, Penelope Crumb.” I put down my pencil and give Patsy a big grin. But then I see her drawing of me.

Good gravy. I’m not 100 percent sure, but I think I stop breathing right then and there. I might even go dead for a second. Maybe two. But somehow I get alive again, and when I do, Patsy is still holding up that drawing.

Don’t get me wrong. For a singer, Patsy drew my hair, eye, ear, and chin just fine and dandy. But that nose.
My
nose. Is. Humungous.

In the next row, Angus Meeker laughs. And for a second, I think he’s laughing at Patsy’s bad talent for drawing:
Ha-ha, that’s a real mess of a picture. Patsy drew a potato sticking out of poor old Penelope’s face!
But then he looks right at me, that awful Angus Meeker does, and he says, “Yep, looks just like her.” Which gets other people going.

I give Miss Stunkel a look that says, Aren’t You Going to Say Something about This?

But Miss Stunkel just smiles like Patsy is Mister Leonardo da Vinci himself. “Very nice,” she says to Patsy, making a big deal out of the
very
. And then Miss Stunkel says something else. “Your drawing bears a remarkable resemblance to Penelope.”

Which just about makes me go dead again.

N
ose thoughts, GREAT BIG ONES, are in my head for the rest of the day. And when I get home to our apartment, I let loose with a howl. “Mom!”

“Back here!” she hollers.

Down the long hallway to the back of our apartment, I find Mom perched at our dryer. She’s been using it as a desk ever since it broke last year. She won’t get it fixed, like most everything else that’s broken-down, and so we dry our clothes at the Laundromat or sometimes on our tiny porch if it’s not raining.