Dear diary, Penelope speaks twenty languages.

I know it sounds absurd, but I’m telling the truth. I found out this afternoon in our tutoring session. Danny wasn’t with us this time because they already gotten their homework done. It’s probably a good thing anyway. I doubt Danny would have believed Penelope.

She wasn’t impressed when she found why I got grounded. She folded her arms and shook her head at me. “While I’m glad that you’re learning to stand up for yourself and risked punishment to stand up for me, I will not be the reason that you sabotage your relationship with your mum. I’m not going to threaten to stop tutoring you or anything like that, but you’ve got to understand that there are better ways to handle these kinds of situations. All it takes are a few well-placed words to destroy any type of relationship.”

“I just wanted to know why she treated my friend badly.”

Her expression softened. “I know. And I am grateful for that, I really am. But it’s okay if your mum doesn’t like me. I don’t mind.”

“But it’s not fair. You haven’t done anything wrong.”

“You can’t expect everyone to get along with everyone else, regardless of what has or hasn’t been said and done,” Penelope said. “You can however, expect that I’m going to help you get an A on every single one of your classes to show your mum just what kind of influence I am on you.”

“I don’t think even you could help me with all my subjects,” I pointed out.

She smiles. “Wouldn’t be the first time someone underestimated me.”

“I didn’t mean it like that,” I said quickly. “It’s just, I know that everyone has their limits and I don’t want you to feel like you’re not doing enough. Because you are; you’ve already helped me understand so many things over different subjects. Even Sadie and Thomas have started backing off a little.”

“Your frankly touching moments of maturity aside, please tell me what subject you’re worried over.”

“It’s LOTE.”

Penelope’s smile grew. “I think I can help with that.”

“But you don’t even know what language my school studies!” I glanced at Dad after yelling, but he was absorbed with his laptop and didn’t seem to notice.

“I probably know it.”

“How could you just be so confident?” I asked. Penelope just looked at me expectantly. I gave in. “It’s Japanese.”

“I’m fluent.”

“You’re bilingual?”

She laughed. “No, I’m multi-lingual. I speak a few languages.”

“Which ones?”

“Greek, Ancient Greek, Egyptian, Latin, Turkish, Italian, French, Spanish, Portuguese, English, Arabic, Hebrew, German, Russian, Mandarin, Hindi, Japanese, Korean, Icelandic and Afrikaans.”

I forced myself to stop gaping at her. “And that’s it?”

“Well, I’m a little rusty on my Serbian and I’ve been meaning to learn some Norwegian, but as far as fluency goes, I only know twenty.”

“Only?” I repeated.

Penelope laughed. “People always make it out to be some big thing, but really, it’s pretty simple with an eidetic memory.”

“Is this another one of those things that you’re actually lying about?”

She shook her head. “If I lied to you Emma, you wouldn’t be able to tell.” Before I could think that through, Penelope grabbed my exercise book. “So, what do you need to know for this exam?”

Flashcards. So many flashcards. That was Penelope’s solution. Tons of flashcards that she refused to help me make. “Because it helps you learn,” she told me, after I had asked for the twentieth time why she sat back and laughed at me writing every single character and every single word that I’d been taught so far.

I remember my teacher mentioning flashcards as a good idea last week, but she made it sound like it’d take five or ten minutes to make them. Not an hour. At some point Dad looked up from his laptop and saw what I was doing. He started laughing too.

“You’re not meant to join her,” I complained.

“It’s what you get for not asking your linguist dad for help on your Japanese,” he retorted.

I might’ve forgotten that. “How many languages can you speak?” I asked to distract him.

“Forty-three, not counting different dialects.”

Penelope whistled lowly. “Impressive.”

“Twenty’s pretty good too,” Dad said.

I guess he was listening after all.