Tricia Springstubb - What Happened on Fox Street

Even if Mo’s head had been clear, she was pretty sure she wouldn’t have known what that meant. She edged toward the step.

“I’m far from the best role model,” Da said. “But try to be kind. You never know what you have in common with another person.”

Mercedes gaped. “The only thing she and I have in common is we both suck in oxygen. Unless she runs on poison gas, which wouldn’t surprise me.”

Da sat back, looking worn-out. Over her head, Mercedes rolled her eyes at Mo.

“Um, I better go,” Mo said.

THE SPARROWS, enjoying their morning dust bath beneath the old lilac, whirled up in an indignant cloud as Mo ran down the steps. The letter was soft and squishy in her sweaty hand. As she ran down the street, Mo tried to imagine her father shouting with outrage, ripping it into a hundred shreds, and flushing it down the toilet.

But as excellent as her imagination was, it failed.

At the end of the street, the Green Kingdom rustled in the late-morning breeze, as if trying to shake off the dust that coated its leaves. On a normal summer afternoon, you could hear the head-over-heels rush of the stream all the way from up here, but today the only sound was the hiss of those leaves.

Mrs. Steinbott with a dead son! Could that be who she was knitting for, like a crazy old lady in a horror movie? So many people on Fox Street were missing things, permanent and otherwise.

1. Mrs. Steinbott: her son.

2. Da: her husband and daughter. Not to mention her toes.

3. Mercedes: her hair.

4. Mo: ____________________.

Mo, too.

The grass around the beat-up, boarded-up A.O.L. House grew so high, it covered the FOR SALE sign-wait a minute. The FOR SALE sign was gone! The Baggotts must have stolen it. The sign had been there nearly a year, ever since the last people had moved away. A family with two little girls. The older one would ride her bike up and down the street no-handed, grinning. One day they were there, and the next gone. Vanished in the night, skipping out on their rent. Poof! As if they’d never existed.

That was how fast a life could change. The blink of an eye. The turn of a head. Change could come barreling down on you, out of nowhere, without warning, humongous and stupid and unstoppable. While you were just stepping off the curb of a street called Paradise, humming maybe, thinking about your daughter waiting for you back home, beneath the plum tree. Thinking ice cream. Thinking strawberry, your daughter’s favorite? Or pistachio, your husband’s? How about some of both?

Poof! Just like that. The beat of a heart. She unsquished the letter and looked it over once more. She imagined her father getting a beer, sitting down, reading it through once, then again. Tugging on his cap, rubbing his jaw. Home Plate. The words appeared in cartoon bubbles over his head. Good Food, Good Friends, Good Times.

A down payment on my own place, he’d think. At last! He could make his longtime dream come true. Leave this street behind, start over, just like Monette.

Before her brain could manufacture one more troublesome thought, she ripped the letter in half. That felt so good, she ripped and ripped till a pile of confetti lay at her feet. She scooped that up, climbed over the guardrail, and, balanced on the edge of the world, scattered the pieces far and wide.

The first time in her life Mo Wren had ever littered. Not to mention destroyed someone else’s property.

Necessary evil, whispered a voice inside her.

“What you doing?”

Mo whirled around. Dottie spied out from the tall grass.

“What…what are you doing? You absolutely know that place is Absolutely Off Limits!”

“Playing foxes.” She patted down the tall grass, and Mo saw the two beer bottles nestled in her lap. “See our nest?”

“Foxes live in dens!”

“The house is so lonesome. It thinks nobody likes it.”

Which made Mo think of Mrs. Steinbott, sitting on her porch all alone, husband and son gone, which somehow made hot tears spurt up into her eyes. She wiped her eyes with the palm of her hand.

Being a thinker was a various thing. Sometimes you felt like a turtle, with a nice, private built-in place to shelter. Other times it was like having a bucket stuck on your head, making the world clang and echo and never stop.

A MONSTER BOILER, a million times bigger than the one in the basement of Mo’s school-that’s what the world had turned into. Mo’s T-shirt plastered itself to her back. Her curls clenched like fists. Still no rain-not in the sky, not in the forecast, not anywhere. This week, the city had declared an unnecessary-use ban. Watering your grass or washing your car earned you a citation, and every night Mr. Wren came home more disgusted. People were furious! All day long they phoned the water department, complaining. They opened hydrants, wasting thousands of gallons. Was it his fault the blankety-blank sky refused to open? Was it his fault it was taking so long to repair and replace downtown’s decrepit, century-old pipes? Yesterday, on his lunch hour, he had stopped for a beer, just minding his own thirsty business after working outside all morning in ninety-degree heat, and some guy had started haranguing him about how municipal employees were lazy and overpaid.

If only Mo had been there! She’d have told that guy a thing or two.

She wished she could water the plum tree again. Its leaves were droopy, the unripe plums falling plunk plunk in the dry grass. But how could the daughter of a water department employee violate the ban? Would that qualify as a necessary evil?

Sipping warm, syrupy Tahitian Treat, which somehow only made them thirstier, she and Mercedes languished in the Den, watching Dottie fasten a piece of string to a broken branch with approximately a hundred knots.

“I’m going to go fix a nutritious dinner. Da needs to eat better.” But Mercedes didn’t move. In the two weeks she’d been here, her bald head had grown a little cap of cinnamon-colored moss. Every day she wore a new outfit, as if she’d brought a magic, bottomless suitcase. Sometimes when Mo turned up in her standard baggy shorts and another Tortilla Feliz team T-shirt, Mercedes rabbited her nose. Mo pretended not to notice.

“Last night I baked corn bread, but the house got so hot I thought the furniture would melt. That old air conditioner doesn’t do squat!”

Breathing heavily with her effort, Dottie began to fasten the string to the other end of the branch.

“Three-C called this morning. Somebody needs to explain to him that he’s never going to be my real dad, not to mention being a dad doesn’t require knowing every single minuscule fact about your child’s life.” Mercedes slid Mo a sideways look. “Your dad’s living proof, right?”

Mercedes knew that Mo had destroyed the Letter. She also knew Mo did not exactly feel great about it, so did she have to bring it up?

“He would just have torn it up himself,” Mo said. “I saved him the trouble.”

Dottie gnawed the end of a green twig. For someone who ate so much candy, her teeth were surprisingly strong.

“Right,” Mercedes agreed. “I’m just saying-”

“Watch this!” Dottie positioned her contraption at arm’s length. Fitting the tip of the chewed-up twig to the string, she arched her back, aimed at the sky, and let fly. The twig made a graceful loop-the-loop and landed at her feet. Dottie scowled, picked up the stick, and tried again. And again.