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.