YOU CAME TO THE END of Fox Street and kaboom, the world fell away. The pavement gave out and all you saw was a guardrail and the tops of trees. The guardrail was dented from drivers turning the wrong way out of the Tip Top Club, up on Paradise Avenue, and only realizing their mistake at the next-to-last minute, when they slammed on their brakes just in time to keep from sailing out over the edge and down into the ravine below.
When Mo stepped out of her house, the summer air was tangy and sweet, a mix of city smells from up on Paradise and country perfume from down in that Green Kingdom. Mo lugged the garbage bag back to the garage. The Wrens shared a driveway with Mrs. Steinbott, and Mo could hear the neighbor’s radio, tuned to a talk show whose every caller shouted and sputtered in fury over one thing or another. Starchbutt stayed tuned to that station twenty-four seven.
Every Saturday she boiled her sponges and hung them out to dry on her little line. In today’s heat the sponges had already grown stiff as boards. Taur Baggott, one of the way-too-numerous Baggott boys, claimed he’d once watched Mrs. Steinbott trap a cat digging in her rosebushes, and the poor thing was never seen again. Boiled, most likely. Her basement was probably piled with bleached bones.
Mo closed the trash-can lid tight. The animals who populated the ravine considered Fox Street their own personal all-you-can-eat buffet. Raccoons raided trash cans, skunks raised their babies underneath porches, and once Mo had watched a red-tailed hawk swoop down and pluck a pigeon right off the sidewalk in front of the Baggotts’ house. Another time a bunch of Tip Top regulars had piled out on the street, shouting and pointing, claiming they’d seen a wild turkey big as a washing machine go by. Not that you could trust those guys.
The only animal no one had ever seen was a fox. Mr. Wren said the chances of spying a fox on Fox Street were about as good as that of spying a band of angels playing harps up on Paradise. And then he laughed. Not his real laugh, but a laugh like something hard hitting something even harder.
She wiped her hands on the grass, which was littered with pale, hard plums no bigger than jelly beans. The plum tree was the best thing about the Wrens’ tiny backyard. It had planted itself, some ambitious plum pit recognizing a beautiful spot and making itself at home. Over the years Mo had done her most productive thinking with her back nestled against its trunk. But it was a bad sign for it to be dropping fruit like that-the weather had been so hot and dry, the poor tree was struggling. Mo made a mental note to pull the hose back here and give it a long drink, and then she headed for the street.
Whenever their father was at work, Mo was in charge of her little sister, Dottie, who was half Mo’s age but possessed approximately one hundredth of her sense. That wasn’t all Dottie’s fault, Mo knew. She hadn’t had the advantage of their mother very long, for one thing, and Fox Street had ruined her, for another. Everyone watched out for her, not to mention spoiled her rotten, so that at any given moment Dottie could be in Mrs. Petrone’s kitchen eating homemade pizza, or on Da’s porch being read to, or-this was all too likely-getting into deep doo-doo with the Baggotts.
Then again, she could be up on Paradise or down in the ravine, both forbidden, hunting bottles for her collection. Which she must have done already today, because there on the front walk was a careful arrangement of tall and short, fat and thin bottles. Dottie grouped her bottles into families-mothers, fathers, children, babies. She had aunt and uncle bottles, grandparent bottles, and teenage bottles with names like Tiffany and Rihanna. Hands on hips, Mo scanned the street. The front yards were small enough that you could lean right over your porch railing and have a conversation with your neighbor on the sidewalk, and there was Mr. Hernandez, owner of the restaurant Tortilla Feliz, chatting with Ms. Hugg, the piano player. Mrs. Baggott slouched on her porch swing, pulling on her cigarette, while beside her, Baby Baggott pulled on his bottle. Mr. Wren, wearing his water department uniform, backed the car out of the driveway, tooted the horn, expertly skirted the colossal pothole known as the Crater, and drove out of sight.
But no sign of Dottie.
Just as Mo was about to start hunting for her, Mrs. Steinbott’s front door opened and out she came, toting her knitting basket. Starchbutt’s hair was fuzzy and white as dandelion fluff, and she herself was skinny as a stalk. At first glance she looked several thousand years old, but look again and you’d see her hands were smooth and her step quick. Mrs. Steinbott whiled away her hours pruning shrubs within an inch of their lives and knitting, though who all those itchy hats and scarves could be for remained a mystery. No one ever came to visit her. Her life was solitary as the unplanet Pluto.
Why was she so alone? And so stone hearted? Which came first? It was as hard to determine as the chicken and the egg, a problem Mo had given some thought to.
“Hello,” called Mo.
Starchbutt cocked her head, like a robin just before it nails a poor, unsuspecting worm.
“Your roses are looking good.” Mo gestured toward the bushes that bloomed in profusion all around the porch. Their perfect, bugless leaves shone in the sun.
Mrs. Steinbott froze midknit. For a moment, Mo actually believed she might say, “Why thank you, neighbor.” But instead, a furious electric shock seemed to go through her. What in the world could make her shudder like that? Starchbutt raised a shining needle and pointed it across the street.
Mo looked, just in time to see a rubber band of a body sproing out Da’s front door.