That was why she went by Penny, because she hated Penelope so much—although Penny wasn’t a whole lot better. She would much rather have a name like Desiree... or Miranda... or Natasha. Just about anything was better than Penelope. Well... almost anything. Certainly not Gertrude. The name Gertrude had been floating through her head lately. She was supposed to tell her handlers about everything that popped into her head but she hadn’t mentioned that. Handlers always wanted to know what was in her head, but she never gave them everything. Some things she kept to herself. She had so little that was hers and hers alone. It seemed only fair that some of her thoughts, at the very least, remain private. Worse than her name was her ... thing. That’s how she’d always thought of it—her thing—because it was too awful to give it a respectable name, and if she called it what she wanted to call it, people would get upset. It had brought nothing good into her life.
