Penelope Crumb Never Forgets Read Free Page A

his seat and start drawing his wavy brown hair that’s real short on top and on the sides and real long in the back. “How much longer do you think they are going to be?”
    “Who?” he says.
    “You know, Mary. And the rest of my class.”
    “Now, don’t you go calling her Mary,” he says. “She’s Miss Stunkel to you.”
    “Okay, fine. When do you think Miss Stunkel and everybody else will be done in there?”
    “Don’t know. A while more, I’d say.”
    I get back to my drawing. “You’ve got a real nice round nose.”
    “Think so?” He sniffs the air. “It’s been working all right for me so far.”
    “That’s good.” I get to his chin, which has a big pucker in it. Like someone finger-poked a mound of wet clay and let it dry. I’m about to tell him this, but a song I know starts playing on the radio. “Patsy Cline!”
    Mr. Drather gets a smile on his face that says, Thank You, Lord Above. And his chin pucker almost disappears. He turns up the volume to the radio. “How do you know Patsy Cline?”
    I tell him how my best friend, Patsy Cline Roberta Watson, is named after Patsy Cline the dead country-western singer. And how Patsy Cline, my best friend, is also a singer who knows how to sing songs by Patsy Cline, the dead one. “Did you know she is dead?”
    He nods. “I did.” Then he tells me that if I could be quiet for a minute, we might actually be able to hear her sing.
    I keep on drawing while the song plays, and Mr. Drather even sings along in a couple of parts.
    I’ve got your picture that you gave to me,
    And it’s signed “with love,” just like it used to be.
    The only thing different, the only thing new,
    I’ve got your picture, she’s got you.
    He’s not as good of a singer as Patsy Cline (either one), but he’s not the worst I’ve ever heard. One time I sat outside our bathroom listening to my brother, Terrible, sing in the shower. Do all aliens sound like roosters that have just had their tonsils taken out? Which is what I asked Terrible when he caught me listening. But he just punched me in the arm and I never heard him sing again.
    After the song is over, Mr. Drather turns down the volume and sings the last verse again real loud. Then he stares out the front window of the bus for a long while.
    I whisper, “Mr. Drather?”
    Then he jumps a little like he’s forgotten he’s sitting inside a school bus. And that I’m here with him. His face turns red, all except for his chin pucker. “Right. Sorry.”
    “That’s okay.” I decide to put a stage and a curtain and a microphone in my drawing, along with lots of musical notes. When I’m finished, I show him the drawing.

    He doesn’t say anything at first, only takes in a deep breath and holds it. Then he touches one of the music notes with his fingertip.
    “Well?” I say. “Do you like it? I put you on a stage. You know, because it seems to me that you like to sing.”
    “I see that.” He clears his throat. “And I do.”
    I tear off the page and hand it to him. “Here. You can have it, if you want.”
    He nods at me and smiles. Then he rolls up the drawing, pulls a rubber band from around his wrist, and slides it over the drawing. With both hands, he tucks it into a bag by his seat. “So you never did say why you’re here.”
    “What do you mean?” I say.
    He jabs his thumb in the direction of the museum. “I mean, what did you do this time to get into trouble?”
    “Oh, that,” I say. “I yelled and caused a disruption that interfered with our learning.” Which is how Miss Stunkel put it before she told me I’d earned an afternoon on the bus.
    Mr. Drather raises his eyebrows at me.
    So I tell him that all everybody was doing was fooling around in the gift shop anyway, which doesn’t involve any learning, so my yelling couldn’t have gotten in the way of that.
    “What did you go and yell for in the first place?”
    “Because there was stuff in the museum that we skipped over,” I say. “Don’t