“Too bad,” he said. The cardinal began to sing, its silvery song tumbling all around them. “I was hoping you’d be more open-minded. Maybe even glad.”
“That Buckman’s a creep!” Mo cried. “He wants to knock our house down!”
Mr. Wren’s face darkened. “A house is just four walls and a roof. You can put a price on a house the same as a car or a baseball team or a pedigree poodle. And when that price all of a sudden skyrockets, you’d be a fool not—”
“How come you’re the only one on the street who knows what Buckman’s doing?”
“There’s such a thing as asking too many questions.” He was scowling now. “You know when a chance like this is going to come our way again? Never, that’s when. ‘I hit big or I miss big.’ Babe Ruth, not Shakespeare, but it works for me.”
A single forgotten beer bottle lay near the building’s foundation. Mr. Wren nudged it with the toe of his sneaker. “Believe me, Mo. I wish I could tell you life was always fair.”
“You want to buy this place and so you’ll do anything! You’ll make a sleazy deal. You’ll betray everyone else. You’ll ruin my life. You don’t care!”
The cardinal broke off its song midnote, and the bird arrowed out of sight. The yard grew cemetery quiet.
“This conversation’s over.” Mr. Wren pulled his cap low over his face. “I’m the one making this decision. Your job’s to get used to it.” With that, he strode toward their car.
Mo grabbed the beer bottle and hurled it at the side of the house. The sound of it smashing zapped her like an electric shock. Yes! Whole one second and destroyed the next. Just like that. The blink of an eye.
“No!” she shouted. “I don’t trust you! And I never will again, as long as I live!”
Wild currents shot through her. At her feet glittered bits and pieces no one could ever put back together.
Traitor, Part 2
IT WAS A CHALLENGE, living in a house as small as the Wrens’ and refusing to speak to someone else who lived there, but Mo was determined. For the next three days, she wouldn’t even meet her father’s eyes, much less answer his questions or acknowledge his lame jokes. If she absolutely had to communicate with him, she put it in writing.
Messages and replies written in fury:
I think Dottie has another cavity.
Your uniform is in the dryer.
The TV is broken again.
No.
No.
No.
No.
Meanwhile, Mercedes’s father troubles were thickening, too.
“It’s like a surprise attack! Except he warned us!” Her eyes were wide. “He’s coming! Tomorrow!”
“She’s the one who should come.”
Mercedes drew a deep breath. Her next words fell one by one, like medicine from a dropper. “She is. She’s coming.”
“Your mom’s coming to Fox Street?”
Here it was, something Mo and Merce had wished for so many years: Monette coming home. Only now, it was far from the happy occasion they’d always dreamed about. Now it was a water-main break. A summer-long drought. A disaster.
“She says she has something to tell me.” Mercedes’s golden eyes were wide. “Something big.”
Mo grabbed a broom. “We’ve got twenty-four hours to get this house looking beautiful.”
She took the kitchen, which was in the worst shape, while Mercedes started in on the dining room. Someone from church had taken Da grocery shopping, so she couldn’t protest or get insulted as they scoured her house. Mo pulled the vegetable drawer out of the refrigerator and filled it with hot, soapy water.
“We’ll show him,” she reassured Mercedes, who was dusting the dining room. “We’ll whip the place into shape, and he’ll see it’s perfectly fine for Da to stay here.”
A rainbow-kissed bubble drifted up from the sink. Watching it rise made Mo feel strangely off balance, as if one leg had grown shorter than the other. All at once she saw herself in the kitchen of Corky’s Tavern, loading the dishwasher, Dad flipping an omelet, the two of them attempting harmony—pop! The bubble broke. Mo blinked.
“What did you say?” called Mercedes from the other room.
“All Da needs is someone to come in and clean once in a while.” Taking a deep breath, she recommenced scrubbing with all her might. “And I bet her church would help with meals if she let them. Don’t you think?”
Mercedes appeared in the kitchen doorway, dust rag in hand. Her nose wrinkled and her eyes shut and she pulled her head back against her neck as if someone were trying to kiss her, but the sneeze changed its mind.
“I can’t…”
The sneeze changed its mind again.
“Aa…aa…aaaa!”
Mercedes collapsed into a sneezing fit. She yanked open the door and flung the dusty cloth out. “This is bonkerdom! I’m allergic to this whole house. Aaaa-choo!”
Another soap bubble rose in the sunlight. Mo wheeled away from the sink. “Come on, rock paper scissors—loser gets the bathroom.”
In reply, Mercedes draped her lengthy self over a chair. She looked worn out, though they’d barely gotten started.
“We have a stellar cleaning lady. Monette and Corny and me.”
“For real?”
“She cleans my room. I never have to do anything except put my clothes in the wash.”
“Wow.” Mo peeled away her sticky T-shirt and blew down her sweaty front. “I could get used to that.”
Mercedes sat up, looking encouraged. “You know what I’m thinking? Next summer you’ll come stay with me. I’ve got an extra bed in my room, just for sleepovers. With a lame pink princess canopy, but still. I’ll take you to a park you’ll love. It’s colossal, acres and acres, with a pond and cool little paddle-boats.”
“Wow. It sounds like a plan. I visit down there for a few days, then we come up here for the rest of the summer. I like it!”
Mercedes leaned back, legs and arms flopping as if she’d been deboned.
“Did I mention the juicer? Three-C makes these concoctions from fresh mango and pineapple, and I have to admit they’re almost supernatural. Oh, yeah, and the TV’s down in the family room, about half a mile from their bedroom. We can stay up all night, no problem.”
“Wow,” said Mo, stuck on REPLAY. “You make it sound like paradise. I mean, real paradise, not Paradise Avenue.”
“It’s different from here, Mo.”
“Rock scissors paper.” Mo tucked her fingers behind her back. “We don’t want His Royal Pain in the Butt to have a nervous breakdown when he sees this place.”
Mercedes’s spine melted. “Mo, I’ve got something to say.”
“Okay.”
“We’ve been friends for all of our formative years. We are sisters in some parallel universe. No one else knows that I used to be terrified of bridges.”
“You still are.”
“See? And I know you secretly like Pi Baggott, even though you’d never admit it even to me.”
“I need someone for a friend when you’re not around.” Mo’s cheeks grew toasty. “That’s all.”
“So that’s why I’m going to tell you this. I’ve been trying to tell you all summer, but you haven’t exactly been receptive.”
Mo braced herself against the sink. It was so quiet in the kitchen, she could hear the soap bubbles popping one by one.
“Suppose—” Mercedes poked her finger at her bottom lip. “Suppose the planet stops spinning, and Da’s brain gets taken over by aliens, or more likely by my mother and stepfather. Suppose she agrees to move downstate with us—wait! Don’t say anything yet! Let me finish.”
Pop pop pop. It was amazing, how deafening the sound of a bubble popping could be.
“That might not be the complete and utter disaster you think.” Mercedes began to lift her chin, but an invisible weight tugged it back down. “Because…because I might really need her. As my ally. In case. They decide to, you know. Procreate.”
Mo was stunned. Never on
ce in all her extensive thinking had she considered this possibility.
“They haven’t said it, not in actual words! But a blind man could see. They’re in love, Mo! They dance in the kitchen. They kiss any time, any place. She’ll be sitting at the computer and he—”
“Okay, okay, I get the idea.”
“It’s just a matter of time! That might even be what Monette’s coming here to tell me. Oh, they’ll pretend I’m part of the big decision, but it won’t really matter what I say or feel. Irrationality’s going to win out. And then?” Mercedes flung her hands over her eyes. “Life as I know it will come to an end.”
“You might be exaggerating. Being a big sister isn’t all that bad.”
Mercedes lowered her hands and stared. “I’ve witnessed with my own eyes what you go through. The torture, the unrelenting hardship! Dottie gets away with everything, while you’re expected to be responsible and mature no matter what. Fairness is a meaningless word, once you have a little brother or sister. Not to mention you have to share, and I hate to share.”
Mercedes’s arms and legs wove themselves into a knot. She pressed her forehead to her knee. When she spoke again, it was to the very center of her golden self.
“Not to mention. It’ll have a father.”
Mo racked her brain but could think of no way to deny that.
“That won’t be fair,” Mercedes said. “Right from the start, things won’t be fair.”
Mo turned back to the sink, where the water had gone cold and murky and every last bubble had popped.
“If I had Da living with me, it’d be different. Da’s mine, you know? And we’d be together, twenty-four seven. We wouldn’t have to be separated half the year, the way we are now. Families are supposed to stick together—let me see, what famous person said that? Shakespeare?” Mercedes raised her head. She cocked it in that infuriating way of hers. “Oh, wait, I know: Maureen Jewel Wren!”
Mo ran a finger around the vegetable drawer, so clean now it squeaked. She dried it with a towel, then slid it back inside the refrigerator.
“Why aren’t you saying anything?” Mercedes demanded.
“What can I say? You already have it all figured out.”
“You’re mad at me.” Mercedes undid her body knot and sat up very straight. “I knew you’d be mad.”
“Please don’t tell me what I am, thank you very much.”
“I knew it,” repeated Mo’s once-best friend. “You can’t stand things changing! You know what that makes you? It makes you a…a dictator! You want to be in charge of the whole world! Bossing every last person around, telling them how things are supposed to be, thank you very much. No one else’s opinions or needs will be taken into account, sorry about that.”
“Oh, yeah? That’s what you think. You don’t know everything about me, Mercedes Jasmine Walcott! Just because you wear better clothes than me and have a maid and all of a sudden you think Fox Street is the armpit of the world—”
“I never said that and you know it!”
“You’ve been faking all summer, pretending you were on my side!”
“I wasn’t faking! I am on your side! It’s…it’s complicated, that’s all. It’s not black and white! Why can’t you see that? What’s the matter with you?”
“Me? I’m not the one who changed! I’m no traitor!”
“Consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds!”
“Who you calling a hobgoblin, you Benedict Arnold?”
A stricken look stole over Mercedes’s face. Mo followed her gaze upward, along the length of her own arm, all the way to her hand, which clutched one of Da’s good glasses. Which, it appeared, she was preparing to hurl across the room.
Mo lowered her arm. Even as she set the glass back on the counter, she could hear the sound it would make when it smashed. She could feel the thrilling, sickening electric jolt of it.
“I’m leaving,” she said.
“Good idea.”
“Better call your cleaning lady to finish up here.”
Mercedes didn’t say another word as Mo swept out the door.
That night she lay awake brooding, face toward her window. The sky shuddered with heat lightning. Even the sky was making false promises now. Heat lightning was nothing but bluster and brag, never delivering the sweet gift every blade of grass longed for, every dusty bird dreamed of.
At last, when all the lights in Da’s house were out, Mo crept across the street and hooked the hideous purse on the doorknob. She’d considered throwing the thing in the trash, or down the ravine, but at the last minute she couldn’t stand to betray old Starchbutt that way. But this was it. No more favors. No more running interference. From now on, Mercedes could fend for her own high-and-mighty self.
Standing there on that heaving sea of a front porch, Mo heard a faint rustle beneath her feet. A field mouse, probably. Yet for an instant it seemed as if all those bits of toys that had fallen through the porch cracks over the long years of friendship were stirring, coming to life just long enough to whisper Good-bye.
Creeping back home, she saw fireflies drifting up from the grass like the last sparks of a dying fire. She tiptoed into her room, locking the door behind her. Moments later, another creature of the night began to scratch at it.
“Mo! Mo, it’s me!”
How could Mo have gone two whole years without realizing all she had to do was lock her bedroom door? That was how simple it had been all along! Click. The turn of a lock, and she had her whole bed to herself. No leech taking up nine-tenths of the mattress. No suckerfish sucking the life out of her. How could Mo have been so stupid not to think of it before?
“Mo! Mo? Are you in there?”
Scritch, scratch, the little rat. Mo pulled the pillow over her ears, yet still she heard the sound, as if it came from inside her own head. Turning toward the window, she watched the jagged yellow streaks electrify Mrs. Steinbott’s roses. A light burned upstairs, in the window just across from Mo’s. Did that mental case stay up knitting all night long?
Or could it be that, all alone, she sometimes got scared of the dark?
The middle of the bed was so uncomfortable. Mo huddled on the edge, the way she usually did. One last feeble scritch and scratch, then silence.
A siren whoop-whooped up on Paradise. Mo kept her eyes on Mrs. Steinbott’s light—the night-light of Fox Street—till at long last she fell asleep.
The Letter, Part 3
OPENING HER BEDROOM DOOR the next morning, she stepped into an ambush of tangled sheets and candy wrappers. Mo kicked them aside. Her eyes felt hot and grainy, as if she hadn’t slept a single wink.
Downstairs, Dottie’s cereal bowl, swimming with blue milk, sat on the floor in front of the TV. It was Saturday, and Dottie should have been deep into her lineup of favorite cartoons. Mr. Wren should have been trying to start the lawn mower, cursing, trying again, giving up, and borrowing Mr. Duong’s.
Instead, ghost house.
At least he could have left a note. Just because she wasn’t speaking to him didn’t mean he had no obligation to let her know where he was.
Unless he didn’t want her to know where he was.
Mo rushed out the side door. The morning air smelled strangely burned, as if an angry giant had lit and blown out a forest’s worth of matches. The sky hung low and heavy. On Mrs. Steinbott’s clothesline, the boiled sponges should have been swaying in the kicking-up breeze, except her line was empty.
No sponges.
No cartoons.
No car.
No father.
She went back inside and did the dishes, but her hands were clumsy and she broke a glass. Cleaning up the pieces, she nicked her finger and stuck the Band-Aid on crooked, and later, when she put the laundry in, she dripped drops of blood on her father’s T-shirt and had to rinse it in cold water and treat it with stain remover.
Wait’ll I tell Mercedes.
Oh.
No best friend.
As the washer churned, Mo drag
ged herself up the basement steps. Her father had forgotten his cell phone, there on the counter. Mo looked out the front window. Da’s front porch was empty. The handbag was gone from the knob. What time was Three-C due? Mo didn’t know. The way things stood, she wouldn’t even get to meet him. She’d be reduced to spying from across the street, just like Mrs. Steinbott.
Outside, the heat wrapped itself around her like a wool coat. The air smelled as if the sky were paper and the heat lightning had singed it all along the edges. Bag on his shoulder, Bernard the mailman strode up the sidewalk.
“Nothing but junk for the Wrens today. Sorry!” He handed Mo a bundle of circulars. “Instead it’s other folks’ turn to finally get their registered mail.”
Mrs. Petrone stood on her lawn, refolding a sheet of paper, her lips pressed as straight as if they held a row of bobby pins. A few doors up, Mrs. Baggott paced her front porch, a sheet of paper in her hand, too. She was gabbing into her cell phone, her voice excited. Her shoes were actually going flip as well as flop.
Bernard knocked on Mrs. Steinbott’s door. And knocked. Watching him shift the heavy bag on his shoulder, Mo’s brain served up another one of Da’s quotations. “Love is patient.” She was sure there was more to it—love was gentle, maybe? Or was it strong? Or both? Her mind was fog. A cry cut through its swirling mist.
“Mo! Guess what?” The Wild Child tore across the street.
“Stop! Halt! What’d I tell you about looking both ways?”
Dottie jerked her head from side to side, though she was already on the sidewalk.
Mo grabbed her shoulder. “I thought you went with Daddy.”
“Daddy?” Dottie wriggled free.
“The man who lives in our house? Where is he?”
But Dottie couldn’t be bothered with boring questions.
What Happened on Fox Street Page 9
