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Cline says, “No, thanks.”
    I tap my brains to get them going. “How about a staring contest?”
    Patsy smiles, and then her eyes pop wide open. I’m an excellent starer. But Patsy is the All-Time Best, and she knows it. She can stare at you for so long that she doesn’t even see you anymore, and she can keep on staring even after you’ve given up and gone home for supper. It’s a little creepy, truth be told.
    I set my eyes on her left eyebrow, which I named Marge because it looks like a caterpillar. I stare at Marge for a long time without blinking, seems like days. I stare so long and so hard that my eyes start to water, which is usually how it goes. Marge gets all blurry, and then it happens. I blink.
    Patsy gets a big smile on her face, the kind of smile that makes me think we’re still best friends, even if she is still wearing that necklace, and then she says, “Want to go again?”

8.
    A n empty museum is nothing more than a closet. This is what I tell Leonardo da Vinci while I sit in the dark. If he were really here, he would surely say, “A museum does not make itself.”
    “I tried to get Patsy Cline’s trophy,” I tell him. If only my toolbox were bigger. “Why do they have to make trophies so big, anyway?”
    “I know nothing of trophies,” he would say. “In my day, people did not get statuettes for singing, only for jousting. I should have liked to receive one for my paintings, I do believe.”
    “But I still don’t know what to put in my museum.”
    “What you need, little darling, is what every artist needs. Some inspiration.”
    “Inspiration,” I repeat.
    The laundry room is where I find some. I pull a handful of drawing pencils and paintbrushes from the mason jars lined up on the dryer/desk and tuck them under my arm. Then I grab a couple tubes of paint—raw sienna, lemon yellow, and my favorite: ultramarine. I like to say it out loud. Ultramarine. Ultramarine. Because it’s not just marine. It’s ultra marine.
    I stuff the tubes into my pocket.
    When I turn around, there’s the alien behind me. Aliens have the quietest footsteps, and you can’t hear them coming. That makes them very good at the sneak attack.
    “What are you doing?” says Terrible.
    I answer with a question of my own. “What are you doing?”
    He gives me a Hairy Eyeball, but I sidestep past him and head to my room before he can do any of his alien mind tricks on me.
    I pull the paint tubes from my pockets, and I look at the white walls of my closet. Before this can really be a museum, it needs a name. I tap my head to get my brains started and then, after a while, I come up with one. Brain wrinkles are amazing things.
    I paint in big ultra marine letters on the wall:
     
    PENELOPE CRUMB’S ULTRA MUSEUM OF PEOPLE WHO WON’T BE FORGOTTEN EVEN AFTER THEY ARE GRAVEYARD DEAD
     
    The letters go the whole way across the one wall and then turn the corner and go across the next one.
    “That’s a mouthful,” Leonardo would say.
    I make some changes.

    PENELOPE CRUMB’S ULTRA MUSEUM OF PEOPLE WHO WON’T BE FORGOTTEN EVEN AFTER THEY ARE GRAVEYARD DEAD SHOULDN’T BE FORGOTTEN
     
    PENELOPE CRUMB’S ULTRA MUSEUM OF PEOPLE WHO WON’T BE FORGOTTEN EVEN AFTER THEY ARE GRAVEYARD DEAD SHOULDN’T BE FORGOTTEN FORGET-ME-NOTTERS
     
    I can practically hear Leonardo say, “Now that is ultra good.”
    And it is. Having a name is a good start, and while the paint dries, I get out my drawing pad and pencil and make a list of all the people I don’t want to forget about:
    Mom
    Grandpa Felix
    Dad
    Nanny and Pop-Pop
    Aunt Renn
    Uncle Cleigh
    Patsy Cline Roberta Watson
    Terrence (my brother, not the alien)
    Littie Maple
    Penelope Crumb’s Ultra Museum of Forget-Me-Notters doesn’t have any glass display cases like the ones at the Portwaller History Museum, so a dinner plate from our kitchen cupboard will have to do. I pull out the first thing for my museum from my toolbox—my dad’s shoehorn. It’s silver metal and