She turned to Harry.
‘AND YOU’RE SUPPOSED TO TELL ME THINGS BECAUSE YOU’RE MY BIG BROTHER. YOU DON’T TELL ME ANYTHING.’
She turned back to Ava.
‘YOU’RE ANNOYING, AVA. I DON’T CARE WHAT HARRY SAYS, YOU’RE STILL ANNOYING. IN FACT, YOU’RE BOTH ANNOYING!’
Penelope reached into the pocket of her school dress and dumped Ava’s (of course it was Ava’s – that’s where she’d seen it before) hair tie on the kitchen counter. The gold clasp made a clacking sound on the stainless steel, which was quite satisfying.
Then she stormed up to her room and stayed there. Alone. Without any dinner.
When Penelope’s mum came home from Zumba and opened her bedroom door to check on her, Penelope pretended she was asleep. It was true that she was absolutely exhausted. Outbursts zapped her energy and made her feel Very Floppy. She didn’t want to talk to anyone. Well, she would have talked to Harry if he’d come in to apologise for making her feel invisible. But Harry didn’t come.
Even though she wanted to be alone, Penelope still felt lonely. So she was pleased when her iPhone beeped. Penelope’s Grandpa George often sent her messages after he’d read her astrology charts.
Penelope sighed. Sometimes Grandpa’s messages helped her figure things out. Penelope knew that Cupid was supposed to be a god who hit people with his arrow and made them go all gooey with love. But perhaps Grandpa was a bit late with this message? Cupid’s arrow had already hit Harry hard. And it was pretty clear there wasn’t anything Penelope could do about it.
Penelope woke early on Wednesday morning to the soothing harp sounds of her iPhone alarm. She wanted to do a bit more work on her Monet painting, and Mr Cattapan always opened the art room half an hour before the bell went. If her picture was going to be dry and ready for the art show on Friday, this was her last chance.
Plus (and to be honest, this was probably the biggest reason), she wanted to get out of the house before Harry woke up. Because, even though her outburst had seemed totally justified last night, now Penelope wasn’t so sure. In fact, now that she’d thought about it a lot, it seemed possible that she might owe Harry and Ava an apology, instead of the other way around.
At least, one moment it seemed that way. The next moment, Penelope was convinced that her outburst was completely reasonable again.
Either way, she wasn’t quite ready to see Harry. And she would probably avoid Ava for the Rest Of Her Life.
As soon as Penelope poked her head around the art room door and saw the back of Oscar’s head as he worked on his picture, Penelope felt better. Oscar being there was a Very Nice surprise. Penelope knew that his basketball team was playing round robins (which was a kind of tournament and nothing to do with birds at all) for the rest of the day at another school. (Oscar was terrible at basketball, but Chelsea Primary was a Very Inclusive school.) He had a big day ahead of him, but he was still making the effort to get his picture done before he left. In that way, Oscar Finley was a bit like Penelope.
This was EXACTLY what Penelope needed. To relax working on her lovely picture and a play a couple of games of Would you rather? with Oscar would be the perfect way to take her mind off outbursts and crushes.
Penelope retrieved her picture from the drying rack and sat next to Oscar. His had gone downhill since the last time Penelope had seen it. Little pieces of bark were coming unglued all over the place. But Penelope did not comment on that. She liked (unless she was having an outburst – which was very rare) to say POSITIVE things to people.
‘Morning Oscar,’ Penelope said, putting her picture on the bench and sitting next to him. ‘I’ve got a really great Would you rather?’
Penelope waited for Oscar to show his enthusiasm. He was (normally) very good at showing his enthusiasm. But this time, all he did was nod.
‘Okay, Oscar,’ Penelope said. ‘Would you rather only be able to eat your favourite food for the rest of your life or never eat your favourite food again?’
Oscar put his head in his hands. He didn’t answer. Penelope assumed that was because he was giving the question a good amount of consideration. After all, it was a difficult question to answer. (Penelope had decided that she would have to sacrifice her favourite food rather than only ever eat one thing. Even though she still hadn’t quite decided what her actual favourite food was.)
Still, Oscar was taking a Very Long Time to respond. Finally, he took his head out of his hands. Perhaps the question was stressful for him, because he looked quite pale. Then, suddenly, his face turned red.
‘I’m not,’ he said, passing a hand over his forehead, which looked a bit sweaty actually. ‘I don’t really …’ Oscar stopped talking, even though, clearly, he hadn’t finished answering. Penelope stared at him. His behaviour was definitely not normal Oscar Finley behaviour.
‘Okay guys,’ Mr Cattapan said, coming into the art room. ‘The bell’s about to go. Time to hang your work up to dry.’
Completely ignoring Mr Cattapan and leaving his work there on the bench, Oscar suddenly took off.
As Penelope hung up her picture and then Oscar’s too, a terrible thought clunked inside her.
Actually, it was more than a terrible thought. It was a terrible FACT.
It was EXACTLY the sort of thing Tilly (channelling Miranda) had told her and Bob about. All the evidence was there. The flushed face, the sudden shyness, the sweaty forehead.
The odd behaviour. The thing that could happen to anybody at any time.
Obviously, it had happened to him.
Oscar Finley was crushing on her.
‘Oscar Finley, hey? Geez,’ Bob said to Penelope as they walked home from school together. ‘I would never have guessed that in a gazillion years. But Pen, he’s super nice.’
‘I know,’ Penelope told her very best friend. ‘And I’ve got to admit that it makes me feel kind of special that he has a crush on me.’ She paused, trying to think of the best way to explain her feelings.
‘The thing is, Bob,’ she said slowly, ‘I like Oscar Finley a lot. That’s why I don’t want him to have a crush on me.’
Penelope did not find many people extremely easy to talk to. Bob was, of course (and Penelope thanked her lucky stars that she had Bob to discuss this serious issue with). Penelope sometimes felt quite at ease with Tilly. But (and she hadn’t really considered this before because of Oscar being a boy) Oscar was probably her second best friend. He was excellent and funny at Would you rather? But the main thing was that he was extremely easy to talk to and Penelope could relax around him.
‘So,’ Bob said, ‘let me get this right. You don’t want Oscar Finley to have a crush on you because you like him a lot?’
‘Exactly,’ Penelope confirmed. One thing she had learned about crushes was that they did not make people feel relaxed around each other. ‘Everyone goes weird when they have crushes. They start giggling and flicking each other with tea towels and getting each other in headlocks and being all awkward.’
‘Like I was with Tommy Stratton during the Truly Terrible time in your life,’ Bob said in a teasing way.
‘It’s not a joke, Bob,’ Penelope said. ‘It’s deadly serious. What if everything changes between me and Oscar? I so, so want it to stay the same.’
Bob laughed. ‘Well, maybe you can change Oscar’s mind, and get him back to normal,’ she said. ‘Let him know you just want to be friends.’
Penelope nodded.
Penelope got out her iPhone. She was just about to show Bob the message from her grandpa when a text came through from Harry.
When Penelope got home (without answering Harry’s text) she opened the front door very quietly. Harry and Ava were right there, in her lounge room. She could see the backs of their heads where they sat on the couch, but they hadn’t noticed her coming in.
There was still a chance that she could avoid Ava for the Rest Of Her Life (a small one – it wasn’t going to be easy when they lived in the same street), and at least delay seeing Harry. Penelo
pe was considering whether she could creep quietly up the stairs without being seen when Ava turned around.
‘Penelope,’ she said, jumping up. ‘You’re home. Hey, I brought some stuff to fix your teddy.’
Harry turned around too. He looked at Penelope and shook his head. This was Harry’s way of saying (without words, because Harry was practically allergic to words) that he thought what happened last night was Penelope’s fault. But the good thing about Harry was that he usually got over things extremely quickly. Penelope would probably just have to pay him a compliment or make a joke and he would be fine.
But before Penelope had a chance to even think about her next move, Ava was heading up the stairs towards Penelope’s room.
Penelope’s blue teddy (who she’d had since she was a baby) was very brave during the operation. Penelope watched intently as Ava fixed up the scar he’d got from his terrible fall (he got snagged on a tree) with tiny, neat stitches in exactly the right shade of blue cotton.
‘I’m sorry I pushed him out the window,’ Ava told Penelope, handing a fully recovered blue teddy back to Penelope. It was kind of weird to be sitting on the bed with her brother’s girlfriend, Penelope thought, but not bad weird. ‘I did a lot of not-very-nice things after my nana died. I was pretty cut up about it, and I didn’t know what to do with all my bad feelings.’
Penelope rested blue teddy on her pillow, then leaned forward and cupped her chin in her hands. She felt bad for Ava. If anything happened to her Grandpa George, Penelope knew she would be Terribly Sad.
‘I do some not-very-nice things, too,’ Penelope said quietly, ‘when I have bad feelings I don’t know what to do with.’
‘Yeah,’ Ava said, ‘I kind of got that last night. When you had the tantrum.’
Penelope did not like the word ‘tantrum’. She much preferred (if any word had to be used) the word ‘outburst’. Still, Ava was being way nicer than Penelope ever thought possible. And it was Very Interesting to be hanging out with an older girl (even if she was Harry’s girlfriend). So she totally (after holding her breath for ten seconds) let the ‘tantrum’ comment go.
‘So, do you want to tell me what your bad feelings were, Penelope?’ Ava asked. ‘Is it that you don’t like me and Harry being together?’
Penelope blew out a breath. Ava lay down on her side with her head on her elbow, as though she wasn’t in a hurry to go anywhere. This gave Penelope time to think about a truthful answer.
‘I don’t think I mind so much about you and Harry,’ she said. ‘But the whole crushing plague is driving me crazy. It’s happening everywhere. And this girl at school, Rita Azul, reckons I’m clueless about love.’ Penelope felt her shoulders slump. ‘Which obviously I am,’ she said. ‘I didn’t even figure out that you and Harry were together until a couple of days ago.’
‘Well, if it makes you feel any better, Penelope, I didn’t know it myself until about a week and a half ago,’ Ava said. ‘And I’m still pretty clueless about how it happened. Harry used to annoy me more than any other kid in the whole neighbourhood. Then all of a sudden, he starts looking really cute and saying really sweet things and I’m just …’ Ava threw up her arms and made her eyes roll around in a very funny way that made Penelope smile. And (even though it was Penelope’s brother Ava was talking about) it was good to be talking with someone older about the whole thing. In fact, Penelope felt quite differently about Ava now. She lay down sideways and propped her head on her elbow, just like Ava was doing but on the opposite side of the bed, with blue teddy between them on the pillow.
Penelope had seen things like this happen in the movies. But now it was happening to her. Perhaps it was because of the tender way Ava had treated blue teddy, or perhaps it was because she had confided in Penelope about behaving badly when her nana died, but Penelope felt like Ava might be someone she could trust.
‘Now, to make things even more complicated,’ Penelope whispered (though, really, Harry was still downstairs and there was no need to whisper except that it felt kind of exciting), ‘just today, I’m pretty sure I found out that a boy is crushing on me.’
‘Is that a good thing or a not-so-good thing?’ Ava asked. That was a Very Good question for Ava to ask. In fact, it was quite possible that their conversation was going even better than Tilly’s conversations with Miranda (which did seem more like Miranda telling Tilly things rather than actual, proper conversations, now that Penelope thought about it).
‘It’s not-so-good,’ Penelope explained. ‘Because I really like this boy, but as a friend.’
Ava moved so that she was lying on her tummy, with her elbows on the mattress and her hand supporting her chin.
Which was not quite ideal, because Penelope’s bed was only a single and it was quite crowded, so only one elbow made it onto the mattress.
Penelope toppling sideways onto the carpet didn’t hurt a bit. In other circumstances, she might have felt a bit embarrassed. But right then, as Ava, a huge grin on her face, held out a hand to pull Penelope back up, Penelope couldn’t help but laugh.
Penelope forgot to count exactly how long, but it was at least a full minute, which is a Very Long Time to be laughing.
‘You know what would be good?’ Ava said when they (finally) stopped giggling.
‘What?’ Penelope asked, sitting with her back to the bedhead so there would be no more toppling sideways.
‘Some kind of quiz to see whether someone has a crush,’ Ava finished.
Penelope nodded vigorously.
‘I know!’ she said. ‘I’ve actually thought that myself.’ (Well, she’d had a similar thought, only it had been about a test rather than a quiz).
‘If people understood what they were feeling, at least everyone would know what they were dealing with, right?’ Ava said. ‘Sometimes it’s just too confusing.’
‘Yes, yes, yes,’ Penelope agreed. If she was going to be able to reverse Cupid’s arrow from where it seemed to be stuck in Oscar Finley’s heart, she would most likely have to start by getting him to admit that he had a crush on her. Oscar Finley was a very reasonable boy. Once his crush was out in the open, Penelope would be able to point out that it could ruin their friendship. Then things would go back to normal. In fact, she was already thinking up a Very Good Plan of how to do just that.
‘A quiz might be EXTREMELY helpful, Ava,’ Penelope said.
‘Great idea,’ Ava encouraged. ‘Let’s make a quiz of our own! Say, ten questions?’
Penelope got up and went to her dresser, pulling a second chair beside her so that Ava (who was probably even better than a real big sister like Miranda!) could sit next to her. She looked at her stand of jewellery. Just the week before, she had put a lot of effort and energy into making a plaited bracelet, following instructions from a clip on YouTube. It was made with three strips of 1mm cotton cord (yellow, blue and white) and even had a proper clasp to hold it together. Penelope had intended to sell it at the street stall she held in front of her house each month.
But now she had another idea. She had truly and completely (with no grudge left at all) forgiven Ava for pushing her teddy out the window four years ago. And, just in case her outburst had been a teensy bit wrong and Ava held a little grudge against her, she was pretty sure this would help.
So, Penelope picked out the lovely plaited bracelet and gave it to Ava, absolutely for free. ‘This is for you,’ she said.
‘That is SERIOUSLY COOL,’ Ava said, clipping it on her wrist straight away. ‘Thanks!’
Sometimes, when Penelope gave away pieces of her jewellery absolutely for free, she felt a pang. But, this time, there was not even a little pang. In fact, it felt great.
‘So, Miss P, are we going to create a quiz?’ Ava asked. Truly, Penelope preferred to be called by her proper name. But (because Ava was practically a sister and wearing one of Penelope’s special pieces of jewellery) she totally let it go.
Penelope got out a piece of paper and some pencils. Then she wrote a (Very Lovely) heading.<
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On Thursday, Penelope woke up determined to carry out her plan. She carefully packed the Quiz Questions for Complicated Crushes into her schoolbag. As soon as she saw Oscar Finley (which was normally before school) she would take him aside. There was a tree near the gym with a canopy of leaves you could lift up like a doorway and then close behind you. The secret spot would be perfect for keeping things PRIVATE.
Once they were tucked away, Penelope would ask him to answer the ten Quiz Questions for Complicated Crushes. After that she’d give him his results. Then Penelope would say (and she’d rehearsed this until she knew it off by heart):
Oscar would have to agree with her.
Then, Cupid’s arrow could fly off in another direction and she and Oscar Finley could keep being friends.
When Penelope got to school, Oscar was crouching on the oval with his magnifying glass. She took a deep breath and walked up to him.
‘Oscar, you need to come with me,’ Penelope whispered. Oscar kept scanning the grass with his magnifying glass.
‘Actually Penny, I’m just searching for a Green Ground Beetle. I reckon I saw one before, but it got away. Apparently when you hold it, it gives off a really strong smell.’ He paused for a moment and looked up at her. ‘Is it important?’
‘Really important,’ Penelope said. Oscar stood up.
‘Okay Penny,’ he said, ‘the Green Ground Beetle will just have to wait. Lead the way.’
When they arrived at the tree, Penelope parted the canopy and motioned for Oscar to go in. The space was darker than usual. Penelope figured that was because it was a cloudy day. She could only see the shape of Oscar, rather than the actual Oscar. She put her schoolbag down and fished out the Quiz Questions for Complicated Crushes. Then she took out her iPhone, switched on the flashlight app and shone it on the page.
Quiz Questions & Complicated Crushes Page 3
