“I want to call Grandpa Felix,” I tell my mum as soon as we get home.
She gives me a look that says, Don’t Even Think about It. And then she tells me I’m to stay on the couch with ice on my face and not to get up for any reason. She also says that if I think she’s joking, I should just try her, missy.
Staying on the couch at first sounds pretty good because I pretend the couch is a pirate ship and I’m out at sea with eels all around me. The scary kind that can shoot electricity out of their eyeballs and turn your insides to soup. “Arrr! Would be a mighty fine day at sea, matey, if it weren’t for those blasted eels!” I say to Terrible.
Only, Terrible doesn’t talk pirate. He only talks alien. Because he says, “You’re a dork,” and then goes to his room.
After a while, I get hungry. Pirate hungry. I yell loud so that Mum can hear me all the way in the laundry room, “Ahoy! Bring me some grub, ya cockroach!”
And when she appears with her hands on her hips and calls me “missy” again, I know that’s the end of my pirate life. “Can I at least call Patsy Cline?” I ask her after she brings me apple slices with peanut butter. She tells me fine but then says that just because I’m injured and she’s bringing me snacks doesn’t mean she’s forgotten about how much trouble I’m in after not going to school for two days and sneaking around like I’ve been.
I tell her that I know she would never forget anything as important as that, and she gives me a look that says, Don’t Be Smart. Which I really wasn’t being.
“What’s the matter with your voice?” Patsy Cline asks me when I call her up. “You sound funny.”
“My nose is broke,” I tell her.
“You have a broken nose?”
“Not broken, just broke. I fell on top of it. And now I have to keep ice on my nose to keep it from swelling up to the size of Jupiter.”
“You’re just saying that so I’ll feel sorry for you and won’t be angry at you any more.”
“Am not,” I say. “But I did have to go to the hospital.”
“Stop your fibbing,” she says.
“There was blood coming out of my nose holes and everything.”
“Penelope.”
“True blue.”
Patsy Cline doesn’t say anything for a while. But I know she’s still there because I can hear the video of her from her last singing contest playing in the background. And her mum telling her to smile with her eyes at the people in the audience. Patsy Cline always says smiling with her eyes would be a lot easier if they had lips and teeth.
“I’ve got to go,” she says. “Mum wants me to meet with some people who’ll take pictures of me so I can get more singing jobs. You’re still coming to 
, aren’t you?”
I tell her that I’ll come if she’s not angry at me, and she says she won’t be angry if I come, so we’re back to being best friends again, thank lucky stars. And then I say, “Wait a minute, did you say you want someone to take pictures of you?”
“Not me, my mum does.”
“Patsy Cline,” I say, “I know the best person for the job.”
I tell her all about Grandpa Felix and his picture-taking business but leave out the part about Winston because he has a tail. Right after I hang up, Lizzie plops on the couch beside me. Her eyes get great big when she sees my nose. “You look like your face has been stampeded by an African rhinoceros.”
“My face was stampeded by Grandpa Felix’s floor,” I tell her.
She stares at my nose while I explain what happened. When I get to the part about Great-grandpa Albert and his nose powers, she says, “Are you pulling my leg?”
“It was in the newspaper,” I say, “so it has to be true.”
“Do you have nose powers?”
“I don’t know yet,” I tell her. “I didn’t have a chance to really practise before this happened.”
“I hope you do,” she says, “because it would stink to have a big nose for no reason. I’m just saying. Anyway, I’m not supposed to stay. I came over because I have something to tell you.” Lizzie watches my mum pass through with an armful of glass paint jars.
“What?” I say.
“Mummy found out about me and you going to Grandpa Felix’s yesterday,” Lizzie whispers. She points towards the kitchen. “Does she know about it, too?”
“Yep,” Mum answers loudly. “I do.”
“Oh,” says Lizzie. “In that case, Mummy says I should say I’m sorry.” Then she adds, “Even though nothing bad happened to us.”
Mum sticks her head back in the living room and says, “Thank you, Lizzie. That’s nice of you to come over here and speak from the heart.”
“Well, my mummy made me,” she says. “That’s part of my punishment.”
“And Penelope will be sure to do the same,” says Mum, nodding at me.
Right away I tell Lizzie that I’m sorry that her mummy found out. But Mum says that’s not what she meant.
Lizzie shrugs. “It’s not all that bad. My mummy’s blood pressure went up when she found out what we did, and she had to go to bed with a hot water bottle. But it went back down, her high blood pressure, I mean, and when it did, she said if I promise not to do anything like that ever again, she’ll buy me a helmet and let me skateboard. So.”
“That’s lucky,” I say.
Lizzie nods. “I better go now before she changes her mind about the skateboard. If you ever want another adventure to your grandpa Felix’s, let me know.”
“Not a chance,” calls Mum from the kitchen.
“She’s got good ears,” Lizzie says. “I hope you find your nose powers. I’m just saying.”
“Me too,” I say. My nose twitches just then. Which makes me think about Grandpa Felix. I go to the hall cupboard, which is where Mum put his coat after we got home from the hospital. When I swing open the door, his green coat brushes my arm. I pull the coat down off the hook and put it on.
I bury my nose in the collar and breathe in, but I can’t smell him. I shove my hands into the pockets and pull out two nickels from one and a stack of “A Thousand Words” cards from the other. I use my finger to trace over A THOUSAND WORDS. Then I whisper to him, at the card, “Mum said that there aren’t words. And that she wouldn’t know what to say to you, Grandpa Felix. I wish I had a thousand words to give her.”
And then my brains must start to unfreeze about what to do for my coat of arms because right then and there I know what Grandpa Felix means when he says a picture is worth a thousand words. Maybe I don’t need a thousand words to make things right. Maybe a PICTURE is all I need.