Penny Dreadful by Laurel Snyder Read Free Book Online

the drainpipe beside her. “What’s that called?” she asked her parents, pointing at the vine.
    “Is that bougainvillea? I think that’s bougainvillea!” said Dirk, popping an olive into his mouth.
    “No, dear,” Delia said gently. “That’s wisteria. I’m almost certain.”
    “Same thing, pretty much, right?” said Dirk.
    “Wisteria,” mouthed Penelope, memorizing the unfamiliar name. Starting tomorrow, there would be a lot of new things and places and names to remember.
    The next morning the Greys were eager to be on the road again, but they were also ravenous, so they stopped for a good hearty breakfast in the first town they found. They sat down at their table in a place called Momma’s Happy Land, in clean clothes, with their hair still wet. After ordering omelets and toast and juice and coffee (for Dirk and Delia), the Greys found things slightly less perfect.
    First, there was a hair in Delia’s water glass. Then thecoffee was cold. Once Agnes (the cranky waitress) had brought hot coffee, they discovered that the cream in the tiny metal pitcher was clumpy. After that, Dirk stuck his elbow in a smear of grape jelly, and Delia discovered a broken toilet in the ladies’ room. Finally, there was an awful, but appropriate, grand finale to a terrible meal: when the food arrived (after nearly an hour), Agnes managed to slide Penelope’s cheese omelet right off the plate and through the air, into her lap.
    “Oh no!” said Penelope, stunned, looking down at her lapful of eggs.
    “Sorry, kid,” said Agnes in a voice that sounded anything but sorry. She reached into Penelope’s lap and simply flopped the crescent of eggs back onto the plate with a none-too-clean hand. “I hate when that happens.” Then she dropped the plate in front of Penelope and walked back over to the cash register.
    Dirk and Delia looked at Penelope in horror. Penelope stared at the eggs on her plate and then at the now-greasy lap of her favorite blue shorts. With a tiny paper napkin she attempted to wipe off the spot of grease. It only smeared into a bigger spot.
    “We’ll get you a new breakfast right away,” said Delia efficiently, glancing over at the surly waitress and beginning to raise her hand.
    “No.” Penelope shook her head. She tapped the eggs with the tines of a slightly dirty fork. “No,” she said. “No, these eggs are fine.”
    “What?” said her mother. “Why on earth—”
    “Really,” said Penelope. To prove it, she shoved a bite into her mouth as her parents stared. “They’re
fine,
” she said through the eggs.
    As silly as Penelope knew this sounded, she needed for it to be true. The eggs
had
to be fine. Penelope had escaped from boredom and sadness and silence, and now she wanted
everything
to be good and fun and happy. She didn’t want to jinx the move by making things unpleasant now. She didn’t want to complain. The eggs would be fine if Penelope said they were fine.
    Her father looked at her as though he seriously doubted the fineness of her lap eggs. “Don’t be silly, Penelope,” he said.
    Penelope tried to convince him with a quick nod and another bite. “I mean it—they’re yummy. See?” As her parents continued to stare in disbelief, she shoveled the eggs into her mouth and nearly choked on a lump of congealed cheese.
    Penelope wanted to get out of Momma’s Happy Land as quickly as possible. If they could just get away from this greasy place, things could go back to being perfect. She ate faster.
    Penelope was still chewing grimly when Agnes headed over with the check and asked in a perfunctory, waitressy way, “Everything okay here, folks?”
    “I
guess
so,” said Dirk with a doubtful look at his daughter. “We’re about done anyway.”
    Delia just nodded stiffly, the way people do at the end of a meal that is not worth complaining about. “Fine, fine. I
suppose.
”
    Penelope nodded too, with a grim smile and a mouthful of eggs.
    But just as Dirk was reaching into his