Project Best Friend (8 page)

Walking home afterwards, Penelope still had a bit of the calm feeling inside her. As she passed her favourite house, she paused. There was a big truck in the driveway. Two muscly men were tilting a couch, trying to fit it through the front door.

Penelope sighed. Obviously her dream of living in the house was over. She looked up at the open bay window.

‘Penelope! Come in!’ Bob yelled, waving down at her.

Penelope stood on the footpath, her heart racing. Maybe it was because it was such a big change from feeling so calm, but she felt as though a panicked horse had lost its way and was galloping wildly inside her chest.

At last, this was an opportunity to spend some time with Bob. But it was entirely unexpected. Penelope was not prepared. She would have to think up a conversation topic on the spot.

She could also try to explain that the way she’d acted after her leg got thwacked in Dodgeball was how anyone would have acted, and that it was a very rare
outburst
(and definitely not a tantrum). But she suspected that wasn’t an actual topic of conversation.

Penelope took one of her biggest ever extremely deep breaths.
I’m going with the flow
, she chanted inside her head, a little bit for herself and a little bit for her grandpa, who could (sometimes) pick up on Penelope’s thought waves. She pulled out her phone and quickly texted her mum to say she would be late home, adding an ‘x’ at the end.

‘Sure,’ she called up to Bob, very casually. ‘I’m coming in.’ But Bob wasn’t at the window any more.

Penelope stepped cautiously inside the open door.

The house was as elegant on the inside as it was on the outside. Even the fact that there were boxes all over the place and no furniture in the foyer couldn’t hide it. The ceilings were so high, they made Penelope feel even smaller than usual.

Bob was standing at the bottom of some very grand stairs. Behind her was a man with a big smile and heavy glasses.

‘Dad, this is Penelope,’ Bob introduced her.

Bob’s dad extended his hand and lowered his head as though Penelope was an important guest. ‘I’m very pleased to meet you,’ he said.

Penelope felt funny as she shook his hand. It was always a bit odd meeting fathers who actually lived with their kids. Some of them were not at all nice or polite, so they didn’t affect her much. But when they
were
nice and polite, like Bob’s father, something seemed to tickle (or maybe scratch) Penelope’s heart in an uncomfortable way.

Luckily, Bob didn’t seem to notice the tickling or scratching.

‘Come and see my room,’ she said, stomping barefoot up the stairs without waiting for Penelope to answer. ‘It’s awesome. Kind of like a fairytale bedroom. It feels like Rapunzel might have hung out there once upon a time.’

Penelope felt a smile playing around her lips.

As they arrived at her bedroom door, Bob grinned and threw up her hands at the same time, as though she was happy with her new room but also in despair at the state of it. Penelope peeked inside. There was a bed in the centre of the room, but that was all. Nothing was unpacked. Twelve rather large boxes were stacked in the corner.

Bob shrugged. ‘It’s going to take fifteen forevers to get my stuff sorted,’ she said.

Penelope tilted her head. She wasn’t fond of sayings that didn’t make sense. A while ago, Oscar had said he was going to put 110% into a school assignment. Penelope had pointed out how silly that was. (Now, since the sausage incident, she kind of wished she hadn’t.)

Penelope let Bob’s ‘fifteen forevers’ go without comment.

Getting sorted was something she excelled at, and it would not take her even one forever to do it.

‘Would you like me to help?’ she asked.

‘Seriously Penelope, you are a legend! I could never have made my own room look this awesome on my own!’

Penelope smiled. Bob’s bedroom was coming along nicely. Her clothes were colour coded, which was important, since the clothes rack was exposed.

Bob’s personal knick-knacks were all out on display, including an interesting array of plastic moulded animals. Penelope had arranged them carefully on the shelf in front of the bay window, making sure that no predator was close to its prey.

As well as making the room look great, Penelope had also found out many things about Bob. She now knew, for instance, that Bob’s mother had a Very Big Job and that the family had shifted several times because of it. She knew that this was the first house Bob’s family had ever owned, and that this was because Bob’s mother had landed the Very Biggest Job, so (hopefully) they would not have to move again.

She also knew that Bob was feeling quite frustrated (and Penelope could definitely relate to this) because she couldn’t find her collection of books. She would have to hunt
forever
if she was going to bring her favourite book to class the next day. (Penelope offered to lend Bob one of hers, but Bob said thanks for the offer, but that it wouldn’t be right.)

So far, Bob didn’t know much about Penelope, though. It had been so nice working on the bedroom and listening to Bob chatting away that Penelope had quite forgotten, even about the video on her phone.

Penelope opened the second-last box and pulled out a print. It was a painting of a bridge over a pond covered in lilies. It was quite a nice painting, although secretly Penelope thought it might be better if it was a little less fuzzy.

‘Do you want it here?’ she asked Bob, indicating some bare wall space.

Bob shook her head. ‘Not there,’ she said. ‘That space is reserved.’

‘What for?’ Penelope asked.

Bob’s grin was contagious, even though Penelope wasn’t sure why she was grinning.

‘I’ll show you,’ Bob said.

The next thing Penelope knew, Bob was doing a handstand against the wall. She was a bit worried, since the walls were white and Bob’s bare feet looked a little grubby, but she decided not to say anything. It was Bob’s room, after all.

‘Come on! Go next to me!’ Bob’s upside-down voice was squeaky.

Penelope bit her lip as she took off her shoes. So far, going with the flow had been a good idea – this afternoon, at least. She couldn’t ruin it now.

Although she hadn’t done a handstand in quite some time, Penelope found it quite easy. In fact, her arms felt very strong. Her hair almost touched the floor. Bob’s, on the other hand, remained exactly as it looked the right way up. Her face, though, was bright red as she turned it towards Penelope.

‘This is very relaxing, right?’ she said. ‘Sometimes I do this to get calm. Different thoughts come into my head upside-down. Like, right now, I’m realising that I’ve been talking too much and you know loads about me, but I hardly know anything about you. So …’

The ‘so’ was said with a little movement of her head to indicate that Penelope should talk now. Penelope’s blood seemed to tingle in her head.

‘Well, I have some techniques I use to calm down too,’ Penelope admitted. ‘Though they’re not handstands.’ She took her voice down a notch. Penelope had never actually shared her top-secret calming techniques with anyone, but now seemed quite a good time to do it.

‘I like to read or draw when I want to calm down,’ she said.

‘Cool,’ Bob said. ‘Both those things are totally calming. What else?’

Bob’s response made Penelope feel very pleased. She wanted to continue the conversation about calming techniques, but it seemed more important to explain something else first.

‘One thing I’d like you to know is that I never – well, hardly ever – blow up like I did at Dodgeball the other day. It was actually even a surprise to me. Normally I am quite good at being calm and sensible.’

Saying she was normally quite good at being sensible while she was upside down seemed a little bit strange.

It must have seemed funny to Bob, too, because she giggled.

‘Sometimes,’ Penelope tried again, ‘not very often, but just occasionally …’

Penelope sighed. It was a difficult thing to explain, and even if she did manage to explain it, what if Bob thought she was weird?

‘Is it like this?’ upside-down Bob asked. ‘You think you’re going to do one thing and you end up totally doing another? Sort of like you’ve got different people inside you?’

The feeling inside Penelope wasn’t just because blood was rushing to her head. Nodding when you’re upside down is quite hard to do, and Penelope’s hair actually swept the ground when she did it. But Penelope did it anyway. Several times.

Bob blew out a breath before she continued. ‘That sounded kooky,’ she giggled. ‘It’s probably not what you were trying to say. I’m not making any sense at all. You probably think I’m nuts.’

Penelope found that shaking her head upside down was a bit easier than nodding. At least this time, Bob seemed to notice what she was doing. Penelope could tell she was waiting for her to speak.

‘You’re
absolutely
not nuts, Bob,’ Penelope said. ‘Not to me, anyway. What you said makes perfect sense.’