Lizzie Maple is knocking at my bedroom door. I keep my face pressed down on my drawing pad and tell her to get in here pronto because I am in need of some help. She does. Which is the good thing about Lizzie: she’s a do-er.
Lizzie lives in the apartment across the hall, but she spends more time in ours because she’s a Lonely Only. Which is what she calls herself on account of the fact that she is an only child and is homeschooled and doesn’t have a TV. “What do you have your face on that paper for?”
“Trace it, would you?” I say, shoving a pencil at her.
She steps over THE HEAP on the floor and kneels beside me. She doesn’t ask why or what for or anything like that, she just grips the pencil and starts tracing. Her tongue wags in the corner of her mouth as she steers the pencil. When she gets to my forehead, she clamps down on her tongue with her teeth like she’s keeping it from running off.
“There,” she says when she’s finished. She stands up and claps her hands. “That’s a keeper.” Lizzie is eleven, which is almost two years older than I am, but most people think she’s younger on account of the fact that she’s on the short side. (But don’t ever say anything about her being short because she will bend your fingers back until you say you’re sorry like you mean it.)
I look at the drawing. Mostly I look at my nose. It’s sticking out like it’s trying to get somebody’s attention. And here’s the thing: you have to admire a nose like that.
I imagine Mister Leonardo da Vinci would be happy to draw a nose such as mine. If he saw it, he would grab his pencils and say, “Drawing a nose of this size would use up all of my pencils, and my hand would surely get a cramp. But it would be worth it, yes indeed, lucky stars, it would.” Because that is how dead artists talk.
“Do me next,” Lizzie says.
I flip to a new page on my drawing pad and press Lizzie’s tiny head to it, then I trace. When I’m done, I hold them up side by side. Lizzie’s nose has no bumps and is round and short, sort of like the letter C if it had swallowed a coat hanger.
My nose, on the other hand, is like a mountain. I draw a tiny person on skis right at the top. The tip of my nose is more pointy than round. And that’s a good thing because that skier can go flying off the end instead of tumbling into my mouth.
Bleugh.
“It’s a Crumb nose,” I inform Lizzie. “From my dad’s side of the family. Whose nose do you have?”
Lizzie shrugs. “Everybody says I’m the spitting image of my mummy, but when I get into trouble, Mummy says I’ve got my dad’s disposition.”
While I think about whose disposition I have, I catch her staring. “What?”
“Nothing. I’m just having a look,” she says. “All this talk about your nose makes me notice it more now.”
“That’s all right,” I tell her, sticking it in the air. “I don’t mind.”
Lizzie looks it over real close. So close that I can tell she had spaghetti for lunch. “Don’t you mind having a boy’s nose?” she asks.
“What do you mean?”
“You said it’s from your dad’s side of the family,” she says. “You know, the boy side.” She sticks her tongue out of her spaghetti-smelling mouth like she’s going to throw up.
Which makes me say this not-so-nice thing:
“I’d rather have a boy’s nose than a pea-size head.”
“Who has a pea-size head?” she says with her hands on her hips.
“Nobody,” I say, shrugging. “Definitely not you, Lizzie Maple.” If she doesn’t know she has a pea-size head, I’m sure not going to be the one to tell her.
Boy’s nose or not, I really wish I did have my dad’s, on account of the fact that besides the toolbox and the shoehorn and some pictures, there’s hardly any proof that Dad was ever here. I used to pretend that he was just away on a trip, like Lizzie’s dad is sometimes, and that he’d be right here waiting for me when I got home from school, asking for his toolbox back. But Mum says I’m getting too old for pretending.
Terrible sticks his head in my door. “Hey, wombat. Mum wants me to tell you to get your dirty clothes together. She’s doing laundry.”
“I don’t have any,” I say, drawing goggles on my skier.
He points to THE HEAP. “What about all that?”
“That’s not dirty.” I pick up a shirt from the pile and sniff it. “See?”
Lizzie takes a whiff, nods and says, “Smells like hamburgers. I’m just saying.”
I sniff my shirt again, and somehow it does smell like hamburgers. Delicious ones that we sometimes get at the White Star Café. I hold the shirt out for Terrible to smell, but he shoves my hand away and tells me I’m both gross and disgusting.
Well then. Aliens don’t like the smell of hamburgers. That’s going on my list. I throw the shirt back on THE HEAP and get back to my drawing.
“Fine,” he says. “I’m telling Mum.”
“Fine,” I say, shrugging and sticking my nose in the air. But when he turns to leave, I follow. “Wait. What are you going to tell her?” I’m close behind him, down the hall. Lizzie is right behind me with the shirt in her hands.
Terrible comes to a stop beside Mum at the kitchen table. “She won’t pick up her clothes.”
Tattle-telling alien.
“Penelope.” Mum keeps her eyes on a family photo album that’s open in front of her.
“Tell her about the hamburgers,” Lizzie whispers as she shoves the shirt at me. But I give her a look that says, Now Is Not the Time for Meat.
“What are you looking at?” I ask Mum.
Terrible answers, “Pictures, duh. What does it look like?”
Mum sighs and tells the alien he ought to be nice to his sister. I say, “Yes, he ought.” Even though I know he won’t ought. I slide into the chair next to Mum and lean in close as she turns the pages. My nose twitches. “Where’s Grandpa Felix?”
As my family goes by in pages, Lizzie squeezes in beside me and chews on her thumbnail. Mum points to a picture. “There,” she says.
I’ve seen pictures of Grandpa Felix before, but my dad is in most of them. So I never really paid much attention to the grandpa part.
“And that’s your nose,” Terrible says, smirking.
“My grandpa’s got hair growing inside of his nose,” says Lizzie. “In his ears, too. Looks like spider legs.”
I give her a look that says, What Does That Have to Do with the Colour of Mud?
She says, “You’ve got a grandpa nose. I’m just saying.”
I nudge her with my elbow. “Maybe so. But my nose doesn’t have spider legs.” Then I stick my finger up in there just to be sure.
“Not yet it doesn’t,” Lizzie says, nudging me back. “I’m just saying.”
I look at the picture up close, nose to nose. No spider legs, thank lucky stars. When you’re Graveyard Dead, I bet there are spider legs, real ones, in your nose. And other places, too. Then my eyes go to the smiling face right beside Grandpa. “I wonder why Dad’s nose isn’t the same.”
Lizzie rattles on about how she doesn’t have some mole the shape of a bean on her neck even though her mummy and grandmother do, but I’m barely listening because I’m tracing my dad’s nose with my finger. His nose is thin and normal looking, and makes him look like the kind of person who would let a stray dog have a lick of a lollipop, just because.
Grandpa looks like the kind of person who would call the dog catcher, but I’m not sure if that’s because of our nose or something else.
“When Grandpa Felix was alive …”
Mum clears her throat. “Penelope Rae.” (Colon.)
“What?”
“Grandpa Felix is not dead. Why would you think he’s dead? Why do you always think that everybody is dead?”
“I don’t know,” I tell her. “A lot of the time they just are.”
Mum says she hasn’t spoken to Grandpa Felix in a long time, not since I was a baby, not since Dad got sick. But then I want to know, “Well, if you haven’t spoken to him, how do you know Grandpa Felix isn’t Graveyard Dead?”
Mum gives me a look that says, If You Don’t Stop Talking about Dead Things, I’m Going to Pull My Hair Out by the Roots.
So I do, for now. Because Mum looks a lot better not bald.