Seventh Grade in the Life of Me, Penelope Read online

  At Mrs. Schwartzbaum’s request, Nathaniel brought the guests their coats. Bea’s red cape was so heavy — it was a mix of shearling and mohair, a souvenir from Indonesia, Bea informed them — he practically had to drag it to her.

  “Thank you, young sir,” Bea Levin laughed, swooping the coat into her arms. “Do you know what you are?”

  Nathaniel shook his head.

  A big pain, thought Penelope.

  “An original talent. And isn’t that a superb thing to be?”

  Mrs. Schwartzbaum liked to clean as soon as guests left, and when Penelope begged to “do it later,” her mother gave her usual response: The longer they waited, the worse it would be.

  Penelope and Jenny removed the white linen tablecloth from the kitchen table, and Mrs. Schwartzbaum inspected it for stains. She discovered a blob of chocolate near the left-hand corner (clearly Nathaniel’s doing, thought Penelope), which she blotted with a mixture of ice water and bleach. “See, Penelope?” her mother demonstrated. “If you’d had it your way, we would have ignored this and the stain would be permanent.”

  They washed the cups and saucers and teapots by hand; they returned the china plates to their quilted zip-up protectors; Penelope wiped the glass coffee table with Windex while Jenny prepared a plate of leftover salmon sandwiches and miniature cookies for Carlos, and Mrs. Schwartzbaum buffed the leather sofas with a soft cloth.

  When they were done, Mrs. Schwartzbaum swiped her hand across her forehead exultantly, surveyed their work with a tired smile, and pronounced it complete. “Excellent work, ladies,” she proclaimed. “Like nobody was here.”

  This was a phrase Mrs. Schwartzbaum used on the rare occasion that the rooms in Penthouse C were suitably neat: It’s like nobody was here. It would leave her lips with a proud nod of the head and a tired, happy gasp.

  Penelope thought it was funny that her mother could be so very excited to have people over, and then so very relieved when not a trace of them remained.

  The next morning, a note was delivered to Penelope. It said:

  Meet me on the bench outside the side

  entrance of the Guggenheim today at 2.

  Your mom and Fred are going to a lecture.

  If you want to seek the truth, you’ll show up.

  If not, oh well.

  Sincerely,

  Cass

  P.S. Thanks for the purple cow.

  Penelope had planned on studying for the Algebra test all day. She really had. She hadn’t even considered meeting Cass. But at noon, when she heard the sounds of her mother preparing to go out — the shower, a blow-dryer, then humming (was her mother really humming?) — curiosity started to get the better of her.

  She tried to resist it. She had work to do! If she didn’t study, she was going to fail the Algebra test! She tried to do a word problem about a guy named Mario jogging along a trout stream. But every time Mario started his jog along the stream, she forgot about how many miles he went, and who was faster, him or the trout, and all she could think was, Who’s this stupid guy Mario? Who cares about trout? And why is my mother humming?

  She called Stacy. Whether she actually wanted to talk to her or if her fingers longed to perform their familiar dance on the number pad, Penelope wasn’t sure. But she knew that if she heard Stacy’s voice, she could get rid of the curiosity.

  After three rings, Shirley Commack answered.

  “Oh, hi, Pen — crunch! — how are you? — crunch! — good? — sorry, I’m eating potato chips.” There was a rumpling of the bag. “I guess I don’t have to tell you that. You know what I’m like on deadline. Anyway, Stacy’s not here. Hasn’t been all weekend. Somehow, don’t ask me how, she resisted a fun weekend at home and opted for a glamorous sleepover at Vicki’s house. You can call her there. She’s probably salivating over their precious Park Avenue pad as we speak. Crunch!”

  Shirley Commack hung up before Penelope could ask for Vicki’s number. She’d have to get it off the class list. But where was that? She was searching her room when she heard the noises: the clipping of high heels, the jangle of her mother’s keys, doors closing — first the coat closet door, then the front door. Penelope abandoned her search for the seventh-grade class list and Vicki’s number. Instead, she threw a sweatshirt over her head, pulled on her Levi’s, and shoved her feet into her Tretorns without lacing them up. She’d get them in the elevator. She grabbed her coat. It was 1:35, and if she ran to the bus, she might still make it.

  “What mischief are you up to today, Miss Penelope?” asked Carlos as she tore across the lobby. Penelope knew he was joking — she’d be the last person to do anything Carlos considered remotely bad — but as he waggled his finger at her as if to say “I’m onto you,” she felt a surge of energy go through her and she ran to the crosstown bus in record time, not even stopping to search for Moes.

  “You showed up,” said Cass. She was sitting on the stone bench doing Fundamental Languages homework. “I’m impressed.”

  Penelope ignored this. She was more interested in Cass’s outfit. Apparently her sunglasses and jacket with all the buttons were too conspicuous for detective work, so she was dressed like a normal girl in gray corduroys so brand-new they were still creased down the fronts, a black-and-yellow-striped rugby shirt, a down vest over a Levi’s jeans jacket, and white Stan Smith Adidas sneakers. “Is that how you dress for school?” Penelope asked.

  “Yeah,” answered Cass solemnly;

  “You look good.”

  “Of course you’d think that.”

  “I like your shirt.”

  “Yeah, well, you can have it, if you want. I feel like a bumblebee in it.” She scrunched her face up and gnarled her fingers into tiny antennae. “Bzzzzzzzzzzz …,” she whispered in Penelope’s ear. “Bzzzzzzzzzzzzz.” Penelope swatted Cass away, and once again had the feeling she was in the company of a crazy person.

  Cass had already scouted out the scene at the Guggenheim, so she knew exactly where they should go. “It should be prime viewing and hiding here,” she whispered, directing Penelope down a hallway. “We can watch them on line to get into the lecture without being seen.”

  A professor from France was giving the lecture. The subject was “Modern Sculpture and Madness in Montmartre.” Whatever that means, thought Penelope. She watched the line form. There were old couples, a woman with Albert Einstein hair, a red-bearded guy with an eye patch …

  “Bzzzzzzzz,” went Cass in her ear.

  “Stop that,” snapped Penelope.

  “I’m trying to tell you something,” urged Cass. “Look.” At the end of the line, half-hidden by a large man in a NY Jets jacket, were Mrs. Schwartzbaum and Fred Something. It was funny: Mrs. Schwartzbaum talked so loudly at home, but Penelope couldn’t hear a word she was saying now. She and Fred stood so close together, they reminded Penelope of the stuffed monkeys Ivy gave Nathaniel for his eighth birthday. The monkeys were attached at the cheek and locked in a permanent embrace. “Stop breathing so loud,” hissed Cass through gritted teeth. “You’re louder than Sylvia Hempel.”

  Penelope had heard people on television say they “could feel their hearts beating,” but she hadn’t known what they’d meant until now, when her heart felt like it could thump right out of her chest. She ground her sneakers into the floor. Clutching the sleeve of Cass’s jacket — she hadn’t meant to! It just happened — she watched Fred and Mrs. Schwartzbaum glide by. They disappeared into the lecture hall.

  “Drinks are on you!” announced Cass once the hallway was empty.

  “What?” asked Penelope, who was still a little shaken up.

  “I’m doing you a favor. You buy the drinks.”

  Penelope reached into her jeans pocket. She’d left the house without preparation, and all she had on her were her bus pass and three crumpled-up dollar bills.

  Cass marched to the Guggenheim coffee shop, where they waited at a table, sipping Cokes with ice. Cass went back to her F. L. homework, and Penelope felt dumb for not having brough
t the Algebra review problems with her. She’d only made it through two so far, and she wasn’t positive she’d gotten either right. She stared out the window thinking about General Hospital and Rick and Monica and what she’d wear tomorrow.

  Had Cass really meant it when she said she’d give her that rugby shirt? Wouldn’t it go well with her white Levi’s? But that was a dumb thing to think about! If Penelope took the shirt, that would mean they were friends. And they weren’t friends. They were just doing this one weird thing together today.

  “Penelope? What are you doing here?” Just as Penelope was thinking Tomorrow will be back to normal, she heard the familiar voice. She looked up to see Tillie Warner standing over the table. “That’s so weird to run into you here! My mom makes me come to museums all the time, and I never run into friends from school.” She motioned to a table where Cherry Warner sat hunched over a cup of coffee.

  “She says it’s her way to escape her rotten life,” whispered Tillie. “She’s having a bad weekend. My dad came to pick up his stuff. And he brought Rochelle. To our house! Can you believe it?”

  Tillie’s mother’s bad weekend showed in Tillie’s cheeks, which were speckled with measlelike spots. “I know, I know,” Tillie blathered when she saw where Penelope’s eyes had landed. “My face is an eczema explosion.” She reached to cover the spots with her hands. Penelope averted her eyes. Tillie’s hands didn’t look so good, either. They looked dry and scaly.

  “It gives you character,” declared a bold voice from the other side of the table.

  Penelope had almost forgotten about Cass.

  Tillie’s eyes shifted Cass’s way, and Penelope watched miserably as Tillie put it all together. “Hey,” Tillie declared with stunned realization, “I know you!”

  “I’m Cass. I’m in your English class.”

  “Right! I’m Tillie.”

  Cass nodded. Apparently, she knew that already.

  “You’re new, right?” Tillie asked. When Cass shook her head yes, Tillie’s eyebrows arched upward as did the corners of her mouth.

  “I liked the stuff you said about The Old Man and the Sea,” Cass told Tillie. “You made it actually seem like a good book. I mean, before that class I was thinking: Who cares about an old man or the sea?”

  Penelope wondered if the desire to evaporate could actually make her evaporate.

  “Well, Ms. Betz can make anything boring, if you ask me. Julius Caesar is this really exciting play, right? In her class, it’s a giant yawn. And doesn’t it seem to last forever, that class? Every time I look at the clock, I think an hour has gone by — but it’s five minutes!”

  “Speaking of clocks,” said Cass, glancing at her watch, then looking up at Penelope. “We should go.” The lecture was about to let out.

  Penelope nodded meekly

  She wanted nothing more than to avoid being confronted by Tillie. She wanted nothing more than to skulk out of there. To pretend this had never happened! She protested when Cass said she was going to throw away their Coke cups. “Let’s just go,” she muttered.

  “I’m not going to just leave them here for someone else to clean up,” Cass scolded. “We still have a minute.”

  “Hey,” whooped Tillie once they were alone. “You’re hanging out with a new kid! Ha! Guess you want to cross your name off The Pledge, too!” If Penelope was going to respond, she didn’t have time. Cass was back. Good-bye was all there was time to say.

  Penelope and Cass resumed their positions and watched as Fred Something and Mrs. Schwartzbaum sauntered out of the lecture, out the museum door, and onto Fifth Avenue. The air was brittle, but Mrs. Schwartzbaum — who usually complained about the cold — didn’t seem to mind. She grinned as she pulled her silk scarf tighter around her head, watching admiringly as Fred Something hailed a cab. Even Penelope had to admit that, with his arm outstretched, Fred Something looked pretty commanding — almost as commanding as Carlos, and he was a professional cab hailer.

  A shiny Checker cab arrived, and Fred Something opened the yellow door for Mrs. Schwartzbaum, then leaned his own tall body in. Penelope couldn’t see what he was doing. Was he getting in? Saying something mushy? Giving her mother a kiss?

  She’d never know. Moments later, the cab was whizzing down Fifth Avenue and Fred Something was loping his way across the street and into the park.

  Penelope and Cass followed Fred Something down a winding path, past the Alice statue, past the model boat pond. They watched him buy a coffee at the refreshment stand. Then they trailed him as he exited the park at Seventy-second street. He proceeded to Madison Avenue where he window shopped — for the most boring things imaginable: ties, leather address books, art posters. He spent a full twenty minutes gazing at an antique typewriter. They followed him until Sixty-sixth street, until Cass said she had to go. “I’d say chances of an affair are fifty-fifty,” she said, brusquely, before turning east, toward her house. “It could go either way.”

  That night Penelope had the dream about Stacy and the rope ladder, only this time, Tillie was standing at the edge of the pit, peering in at Penelope and laughing.

  “You don’t understand, I didn’t study at all. I’m totally going to fail!” cried a distressed Annabella Blumberg. She stomped her foot, and her brown suede clog made an angry clap on the cafeteria’s linoleum floor.

  It was the morning of the Algebra test, and girls from Bobkin’s three Algebra sections huddled around a long table littered with orange juice cartons and corn muffin wrappers, crumpled-up pieces of graph paper, and pencil stubs. “Oh, Annabella, don’t worry, you’re not going to fail,” consoled Pia, who wasn’t studying but was busily making mysterious checkmarks on her clipboard.

  “Yeah, I’m the one who’s really going to fail!” blustered Stacy, wiping a frustrated tear from her eye.

  Vicki’s head bobbed sadly in agreement.

  Here was something Penelope noticed: People who failed tests, who actually failed tests, never made a big deal about it. But the ones who sobbed and whined and worked themselves into a lather always did fine. It was contagious. One girl would say: “I’m going to fail.” Then another girl would say: “No, I’m going to fail.” And it went on and on like that until the test happened, and nobody failed.

  Except Penelope, that is.

  She’d come home after her trip to the Guggenheim with Cass and she’d tried to study, she really had, but there’d been too much to think about: Tillie and The Pledge, Mrs. Schwartzbaum and Fred Something, Cass and what she would do if she ran into her in the halls at school.

  It turned out she didn’t have to worry about Tillie. Because she didn’t come to school that Monday. Or Tuesday or Wednesday. “She says it’s her asthma,” whispered Vicki in her most top-secret voice to anyone who would listen. “But if you ask me, it’s her mom. I heard from my dad, who’s friends with Tillie’s dad, that Cherry Warner’s certifiable.”

  “What does ‘certifiable’ mean?” Penelope asked. She’d heard divorces were complicated, and maybe being certifiable was one of the steps between separation and divorce.

  “It’s a way of saying she’s crazy,” Vicki said, as if this were the most obvious thing on earth. “Like she should go to a mental institution.”

  “Oh,” said Penelope. Cherry Warner hadn’t looked crazy when she and Cass had seen her at the Guggenheim, but she couldn’t bring that up.

  Speaking of Cass, it turned out Penelope didn’t have to worry about running into her in the halls. Because wherever Penelope was, Cass wasn’t. They didn’t have homeroom together. They didn’t have classes together. Penelope never saw her in gym or at lunch. Still, Penelope walked with her head hanging downward, like she was searching for Moe Was Heres on West End Avenue. Just in case.

  Without Tillie blocking her view, Penelope had a much better view of Dr. Alvin during homeroom. She was wearing a beige sweater, which gave her puckered face a sallow look. Underneath each eye was a leathery gray purse of tired skin.

  “It has come to my
attention,” grumbled Dr. Alvin through gritted teeth, “that some kind of pledge has been circulating the seventh grade. Something about segregating the new kids from the old. What do you people think this is? Kindergarten?”

  The class was silent. Dr. Alvin continued. “I’m going to give you an option,” she told them. “You can confess, tell me you signed The Pledge, explain the errors of your ways, and there will be no punishment. Or you can take a risk, gamble on whether this pledge will make its way to the administration. If it does and I see your name, and you haven’t confessed, I promise the consequences will be much worse.”

  Penelope spent extra time packing her backpack after class, lagging to see if anyone confessed to Dr. Alvin. When no one did, she sped out of the classroom and toward the library. “Did you need to talk to me about anything, Penelope?” Dr. Alvin called out to her. Penelope pretended like she didn’t hear her.

  She had a free period before the Algebra test and she settled in a corner by the back of the library, opened her textbook, and pulled out her review questions. Study, she told herself. Study.

  If X times Y = Z, then what would Tillie do when she heard about Dr. Alvin and The Pledge? Would she turn herself in? Would Stacy? Would Vicki? They would if it affected their college records. Would it? And how would Dr. Alvin ever get her hands on The Pledge? Could she steal Pia’s clipboard? Could she? Would a teacher do that?

  Why hadn’t Penelope studied? Study, she commanded herself. Study! You have to study! It’s pathetic, it’s pitiful! Why hadn’t she studied?

  Could a stomach hiccup? Because if it could, that’s what Penelope’s was doing. She was so hungry. Starving, in fact. Why, she’d never felt this starving in her entire life. She was going to have to eat something.

  She could go to the vending machine. Get a 3 Musketeers bar, that would be just the thing. Then she could study.

  Stacy and Vicki had already taken their Algebra test, and they were giddy with the relief of having it over with. “I have to go. I have an Algebra test,” Penelope announced when she saw them.