Penelope Crumb Never Forgets by Shawn Stout Read Free Book Online Page B

everywhere.
    “What are you doing with Mom’s good pencils?” I say. “They’re supposed to be just for drawing.”
    On his hands and knees, he reaches underneath the dryer/desk to get the pencils that rolled away. “So?”
    “So, you don’t draw,” I say. “You don’t even like art.”
    He gets to his feet and shoves the pencils back into the glass jars on the dryer/desk. Then he starts to walk away, but I plant my feet wide apart and block him. I get a look on my face that says, I’m Not Afraid of You. Even though I kind of am. Aliens are like dogs, though, and he must sense the fear in me, because he shows me his alien teeth and lets out a growl.
    “Move,” he says.
    And I do, but not because he said so. Because I am on official museum business.
    After he’s long gone, I look around the laundry room to see if I can tell what Terrible is really up to. But all I see are brains. Drawings of them, I mean. All different sizes, and all full of wrinkles. There are piles of books of people’s insides on the desk/dryer. And a stack of drawing pads on Mom’s wooden stool.
    I pick up a drawing pad from the top of the stack and start flipping through it. Lots of creepy insides—brains, hearts, and one that looks like a giant, puffed-up worm that says “lower intestine.” More of the same in the next two. When I get to the one on the bottom of the pile, I’m expecting to see more creepy insides, but instead on each page is a drawing of my mom.
    I knew Mom was just as good at drawing people’s outsides as she is at drawing their insides, but she doesn’t do it very much, so I forget. It isn’t easy to draw yourself, that I know. I can only draw my face if I trace around it, and even then, with my big nose, I end up looking more like a penguin with long hair than me, a non-penguin-type person.
    My mom doesn’t have a big, stand-out nose like me and Grandpa Felix. Her nose is thin and small and suits her face just fine. The most stand-out part of her is her eyes. They are big and round and blue, and when she’s happy, you just want to dive right into them and do the backstroke.
    In these drawings, though, Mom’s eyes are shut. There are no big pools of blue to go swimming in. I don’t know why she would draw herself that way, because truth be told, without her eyes, she doesn’t even look like Mom. I keep turning the pages, hoping that she’ll open her eyes and see me and invite me in.
    But she never does. That’s when I decide that maybe what Mom needs is some help in the eyeball department. I take her drawings back to my room, and on every page, I erase her shut eyes and draw wide open ones that say, Come On In—the Water’s Fine.
    “Oh me, oh my, this is splendid,” Leonardo would say. “Thank lucky stars that she has you around to help.”
    Then I grab another plate from the kitchen cupboard and set the drawing pad on it, open to the first page. The card I make says this:
    Drawings of Mom Crumb by Mom Crumb, who is an excellent insides and outsides artist. Eyeballs by Penelope Crumb.
    This is becoming a real museum, I say to myself. Now I won’t ever forget.

13.
    W hat do you think of this one?” asks Grandpa Felix, sliding a photograph to me across his kitchen table.
    He got the pictures made from the wedding, and he’s checking over his work before handing them in. In this picture, the bride and groom are standing under an archway holding hands.
    “Good,” I say.
    “What’s good about it?”
    I study the picture. “Well, for one thing, they are both smiling.”
    “That’s the best you can do?” He raps his finger on the picture.
    “Okay.” I try again. “They don’t have red eyes or anything. And you didn’t get your thumb in the way, which is what usually happens when Mom takes pictures.” I slide the photograph back to him. “Like I said, good.”
    Grandpa Felix shakes his head. Then he grumbles something about wedding photography and puts that picture in a pile with