Free Penny Dreadful by Laurel Snyder

clear this place out, and probably there are people we should give these things to, her friends and neighbors.”
    Getting rid of
Betty’s
belongings hadn’t been what Penny intended at all, but it turned out not to matter because Dirk interrupted with, “Well, once we have the whole house to ourselves, we’ll look into sorting it all out and setting up a real computer room, but for now let’s just live with it all. Okay?”
    Penny thought of Luella. She wasn’t sure she wanted the tenants to leave, but she nodded at her father as she flopped onto an old wine-colored velvet sofa that smelledof dust and cinnamon. From there she watched her parents run around and make sense of their belongings, arranging and rearranging. Eventually Penny fell asleep. It had been a long day.
    When she woke up, Penny sat up at once. She was in a room full of morning sunshine filtering through the willow-filled windows. Someone had moved her in the night, and she was puzzled at first by the unfamiliar room. Though she’d stuck her head briefly into every room in the apartment the day before, there had been too much to take in. She hadn’t really noticed the blue rag rugs and the white iron bedstead. She hadn’t noticed the ceiling, which was made of a bronzy-colored metal, covered in interesting patterns and designs. She hadn’t seen the bookshelves in the corner, made of white wicker. Beside the bed she was tucked into were the boxes she’d packed in The City. Penny bounced gently and found that the bed beneath her was creaky but cozy. She sat in her covers and inhaled deeply the dusty perfume of dried flowers, lavender maybe. It was nice, like something out of
Little Women
.
    Penny climbed down from her bed and poked around a little. She gazed out her new window, then headed into the living room. Her parents were already up, sitting on the couch munching toast and drinking their morning coffee. Her father handed her a banana and made a spot for her beside him.

    “Would you like some juice, dear?” asked Delia, handing her a dusty glass that read 1962 WORLD’S FAIR . “Careful not to spill! There’s no dining room, and your father’s covered the kitchen table with boxes, so we’re having a living room picnic this morning. How’s that?”
    Once they’d all eaten breakfast, Dirk removed himself to his new office. Penny followed him and watched him arrange his new desk, which was painted bright yellow and blue and was surrounded by bookshelves built out of more peach crates. She watched her father shuffle around with his box of papers, but when he began to set up his files, Penny lost interest.
    She went in search of her mother and found Delia in the avocado-and-chrome kitchen. The two of them ended up organizing the shelves, alphabetizing (and sniffing) the spice jars and bottles in the cupboard and trying to imagine what each old-fashioned kitchen implement was for. By lunchtime they were happily scrubbing out the refrigerator.
    For that one full blissful empty day, they went nowhere. It was like the Greys were living in a tiny bubble. They ate from their cooler, and room by room they cleaned allthe dingy and dusty old furniture Betty had left behind. They beat out rugs and fluffed pillows. When it began to get dark, they climbed through the living room window and onto the roof of the porch to watch the sun go down over the trees. They sat quietly together, and Penny found she could not stop smiling, sandwiched between her parents, who seemed like new people to her. Maybe Thrush Junction
was
small, and maybe it
would
be a little quiet, but so far it was wonderful. It was nice, fitting everything into five small rooms. It was nice, cleaning the house. It was nice, sitting together on a porch and not saying a word.
    The last thing Penny did before going to bed was sit down in her nightgown in front of her new bookshelf and run her finger over the spines of the dusty old books Betty had left behind. She thought about all the new