“MO!”
“Merce!”
Dodging between the parked cars, Mo tore across the street. Mercedes flung long golden arms around her.
“Merce! You look so different!”
“Mo! You look precisely the same!”
“No I don’t!” Mo always talked too loudly around Mercedes Walcott-she couldn’t help it. “I grew a whole inch.”
Mercedes had always been taller, but this year she’d grown so much that Mo had to step back to look her in the eye. Her laugh was the same, though-head back, gap teeth flashing white against her gingersnap-colored skin. Everything about Mercedes Walcott crackled and bit. The only soft thing about her was her hair. Speaking of her hair…
“Merce! You’re bald!”
“Really?” Mercedes widened her eyes and ran a hand over the top of her head. “Crudsicles!” Mercedes laughed again. She adored teasing Mo. And Mo didn’t mind. Much.
“You shaved it? How come? And how come you’re here so early?”
“I took a plane.” Mercedes yawned. “Then a cab.” She plucked at her jeans, which were black and, Mo suddenly noticed, the precise kind the popular girls at her school wore. Her tank top was black, too, with little sparkles around the edge. Mo smoothed her own baggy, wrinkled shorts.
“Wow,” she said. “Cool.”
Every June before this-and there had been five so far-Mercedes had ridden the Greyhound out of Cincinnati. Da would send the money for the ticket, and Merce would jump down the bus steps holding one practically empty suitcase. Every August she staggered back up, that suitcase weighted with all the books Da gave her. Da also tried to plump up her only grandchild, but that never took.
“My new stepfather,” Mercedes said now, as if those two words carried as much meaning as a whole chapter book. Her mother, who’d never had a husband, had gotten married that winter.
“He’s rich?” Mo asked.
“We’re comfortable,” Mercedes replied. “He’s got avalanches of money, but don’t ever say ‘rich.’ That’s ghetto. You say ‘comfortable.’”
“Oh.”
Mercedes had a way of raising her chin that elongated her entire self, as if she were about to turn into a human steeple.
“Not that he corrects me,” she said. “I have to admit, he’s too smart for that.”
“Oh.” Mo smoothed her wrinkled shorts again. “Soooo, you don’t like him?”
“Did I say that? If only it was that simple.”
Mo was saved from saying “Oh” again by a voice that had set hundreds of schoolchildren quaking like wind chimes in a high wind.
“Mo Wren!”
Mo told herself that Da didn’t try to make her name sound like “moron” on purpose. All the same, she was grateful that Da had retired and there was zero chance of ever having the woman for a teacher. Da was tall as a man. Her beautiful skin had a midnight sheen that reminded Mo of silk or satin, the sort of delicious fabric you long to lay your cheek against.
Her voice, however, was the kind of wool that rubs your neck raw.
“I wasted time, now time doth waste me!” cried Da, who, if she ever went on a quiz show and got Shakespeare for her category, would become an instant millionaire. “Your beans and rice are getting cold, Mo Wren!”
Da’s red beans. Mo would choose them for her last meal on Earth. She was already up the front steps before she noticed Mercedes still rooted to the sidewalk. Her best friend stared across the street, past the parked cars gleaming in the sun and Mrs. Steinbott’s roses blooming like a piece of heaven, directly at the porch of the tiny, blue-white old lady, who stared steadily back. For a brief, bizarre moment, Mo saw something identical in the way they cocked their heads, as if listening to a bit of music just out of range of everyone else’s hearing.
“Mercey!” Mo called, breaking the spell. Her best friend whirled around and ran to join her.