What Happened on Fox Street (12 page)

T
HE HILL WAS A WATER SLIDE
. Hardened as the ground was, the rain shot off it in sheets. By the time they reached the Den, Mercedes's beautiful skirt was a sodden, muddy disaster. She stepped out of it, then tossed it on top of the toolbox.

“That's better,” she said. “Now I'm streamlined for action.”

They shouted.

“Dottie! Dottie! Dottie!”

“The rain's so loud.”

“So are we.”

“Dottieeeeee! Dottieeeeee!”

Mo was so accustomed to being quiet in these woods, to making herself as invisible as she could, it was hard to force her voice out into the air. She imagined the mother fox, watching from her den.
So. She's just one of them, after all. Just another loud, stupid human blundering around here, making trouble. She'll never get a look at us, that's for sure.

“It's my sister,” she told the hillside. “I have to find her.”

Mercedes spun around. “What?”

“Why was I so mean to her, Merce? All those times I forced her to wear underwear. And last night I locked her out of my room.”

Mercedes planted both feet firmly, the way Da did, which was a considerable challenge on that slick slope.

“Sometimes mean is the only way you can go. I should know.” She wiped her streaming face with the hem of her jacket. “And that reminds me. What do you know about that handbag?”

“I was keeping it. I knew it'd freak you.”

“You were right.”

Inside her rubber tent, Mo grew very warm. She flapped her arms a little.

“You think I only see the up side of things. But Starchbutt's not that bad. She's almost kind of…” She was going to say “cute,” but she could already hear Mercedes replying,
Yeah, cute like a tarantula. Like
a rabid vampire bat.

But Mercedes didn't even notice Mo hadn't finished her sentence.

“There was something strange inside it,” she said. “At first I couldn't understand what it was. I mean, I knew what it was, but I didn't know why it was. So I showed Da. She took one look and said, ‘
Aah
.'” Mercedes tilted her face, aiming that Walcott chin toward heaven.

Mo squinted upward, trying to see what Mercedes did.

“I've heard of messages in a bottle,” Mercedes went on. “But never a message in a handbag.”

In this weather you couldn't tell the difference between rain and tears. Mercedes wiped her cheeks. “It's so weird. It's like…like all my atoms and molecules somehow got rearranged, not to mention my DNA, and I've been turned into a different person.”

“You look the same.”

Mercedes shook her head. “Don't, Mo.” It wasn't a lecturing, I-know-better-than-you voice. It was a quiet, truth-speaking voice. “I'm not.”

What wasn't Mercedes telling her? Whatever the secret was, it felt as enormous as this storm, but Mo had lost the right to demand an answer from her former best friend. The only reason Mercedes had come on this search party at all was because Da was so worried
about Dottie. She wasn't doing this for Mo's sake, that was certain. Outside her poncho, the rain streamed down, and inside it, Mo began to sweat. What was in the purse? Something that had changed Mercedes's life yet again. To think she'd almost thrown it away, in her fury at Mercedes for not being Mercedes anymore!

But then Mercedes said, “Come here.”

They huddled inside the Den, out of the rain. It was cooler in there, and misty, so when Mercedes un-Velcroed one of her jacket's many pockets and drew something out, she seemed to be pulling it out of another place, or time, altogether. She handed it to Mo. A photo. Its colors hadn't held up, and the two people in it, and the air all around them, basked in an unreal, orangey glow. A pale young man in an army uniform, holding himself very straight, had his arm around a beautiful woman who held her chin just so. Da in her younger days? Merce in the future? Mo's brain tilted.

Monette. That's who it had to be. She stood a head taller than the army guy and clasped a big purse. Even though they both looked right into the camera, you could tell their smiles were really for each other.

Inside Mo, a thought began to stir and stretch, like a beautiful animal waking up.

“It was in his things,” said Mercedes. “From the
military. The stuff they sent home after he died. She only opened it this summer. More than ten years later. She says she never…never had the heart before.”

The message in the handbag.

“We think it was the day he left for the service,” Mercedes said. “A friend must have taken it.”

Mo looked more closely at the handsome, kindly-eyed man in the photo.

“He and Monette always liked each other, all the way back to when they were little, but she…his…” Mercedes faltered. “Da says Mrs. Steinbott never wanted them playing together. My mother was always into so much mischief, and he hated upsetting his mother. He was all she had. Da says he was as obedient and sweet as Monette was wild. And it wasn't as if Da encouraged them to be friends. She's so proud—she never really forgave Mrs. Steinbott for snubbing her all those years.” Mercedes wiped her eyes again. “They're two of a kind, really.”

Mo gazed down at the photo. Even though the colors had faded, she could tell his eyes had been blue, like chips of sky.

“He…he looks nice, Merce. He looks really nice.”

Mercedes seemed to be trying to decide if what Mo said was true.

“He never knew. About me. We figured it out. He died too soon.”

All these years she'd thought her father had taken off and never looked back, when the truth was, he'd never even known about her. Which hurt more? Was this good news or bad news?

“I can't believe it,” Mercedes whispered. “I mean…she's my…”

“Grandmother.”

Mercedes nodded.

Outside the Den, the rain fell harder yet, sheets and sheets of it, so you could hardly tell the sky from the ground. The world had lost its up and down. It had no back and front, no now and then, no them and us. At this moment, Fox Street itself was probably no longer a road but a river, solid turned liquid.

“She's been trying to tell me all summer, in her own loony way,” Mercedes said. “And I just kept running away. Chances are excellent that if it weren't for you being so nice all the time, I still wouldn't know.”

Mercedes took the photo back and carefully slid it into her pocket. She fastened the Velcro, then held her hand over it a moment.

“Come on,” she said at last, and ducked back out into the wind, Mo right behind her.

T
HEY CLIMBED DOWN,
down, past flattened cans and rusty wire, a bicycle tire and a plastic cemetery wreath, down past the invisible line where the trash ended and the real kingdom began.

The sound of rushing water grew louder, as if a twin storm had blown up. The farther down they went, the louder it became, till at last they came to the spot where the hill gave out. Nearly erased a day ago, now the stream rushed and leaped, foaming over rocks, whipping fallen leaves and sticks along on a wild ride.

They both stood and stared.

Water overflowed the banks. There was nothing for it but to drop straight down into the stream. The moment Mo's feet hit, she lost her balance and toppled forward, landing on her knees. The water rushed nearly as high as her shoulders. Mercedes gave her a hand, and holding on to each other, they battled across to the far side of the stream.

How would Dottie ever make it?

“You see any footprints?”

But the water was rising so rapidly, any traces would be wiped out within minutes. It sloshed in Mo's sneakers, streamed into her eyes. Water had taken over the world, wiping out, washing away. The thicket where she'd found the fox fur was only a dozen feet away, yet she could hardly see it.

Dottie would plunge straight in. She'd never guess how deep it was. How strong the current. Though maybe, when she'd come down here, the stream hadn't been this swollen. Mo tried to catch her breath.

“What's that?”

From underneath a bush, Mercedes pulled out a sparkly purple sandal. Its stiff plastic strap jutted up, torn through at the buckle. A moment later, she came up with its mate.

Mo's relief gave way to new worry as she imagined
her sister soaked from head to foot. Barefoot.

“This is good,” Mercedes tried to convince her. “It'll slow her down.”

But all Mo could see was her sister's small pink feet, scraped and wounded. And now she found herself remembering Da's feet. Mo's courage began to fail.

“Mo,” Mercedes said, her voice firm and solemn. “We have to split up. She made it across the stream—there's no stopping her. She could've gone anywhere, in any direction.”

Small as Dottie was, when she was determined there was no stopping her. Mo knew Mercedes was right. Yet the idea of searching all by herself made her go cold to the bone.

All alone! Sorrow and anger and fear crowded up inside her. Why wasn't he here? He was supposed to be here! But he didn't even know what was happening. He didn't care about the things that really mattered. He made big mistakes, he chose the wrong things, he left them to fend for themselves.

Mo stared up into the dark, tree-choked sky. Someone had torn a jagged hole across it.
I'll never trust you again as long as I live!
The words flared up inside her, like a match struck in an unlit room. Then
poof!
The match burned out, leaving her alone in the
unknowable darkness. Mo put her arms around herself, a tent inside a tent. Wind rattled the trees.

Mercedes stood patiently, practically in her underwear, coated with mud, water dripping off her sensitive nose. Was she really here only because of Da? She hadn't had to show Mo the photo. She'd trusted Mo. She'd wanted Mo to know.

“Ready?” Mercedes asked her. “Because I am.”

“We're friends again, aren't we.”

Mercedes wrinkled that persnickety nose. “Only if you swear never to wear that poncho again.”

H
EADS TOGETHER,
they forged a plan. Mercedes would head toward the parking lot, then search the picnic grounds and vicinity. Mo, who knew the hillside and stream area so well, would continue hunting here, in case Dottie wandered in circles and wound up back where she started. In an hour, no matter what, they'd meet at the Den.

Mo's best friend parted the solid sheet of rain and disappeared.

“Dottie! Dottie!”

No sooner did Mo send the syllables up than they tumbled back down, landing in the mud. Her throat
ached from shouting. Her feet tangled in a vine.

At the thicket where she'd found the fur, rain glazed the thorns, making them shine like tiny daggers.

I need you.

Blindly, dully, Mo retraced her footsteps. She sloshed back across the stream, climbed halfway up the hill, slipping and sliding in the muddy tracks she'd made herself, only a few minutes before.

Stop, Mo.
A voice that was both hers and not hers whispered inside her.
You can do better than this.

Mo pressed her fingers to her temples.

Think. Think like Dottie.

Dottie, with her big heart and small self. Her bare feet and short legs. By now she'd be all worn out. Lemme take a little rest, she'd think. She'd plop down, she'd pull a snack out of her pocket….

As if Mo's brain had conjured it, a waxy bit of paper blew against her feet. A Dum-Dum wrapper. Sour apple.

Mo opened her mouth to shout—but instead she listened.

Ssssh,
whispered the voice inside her.
Gently.

Mo stood very still.

Patiently. You know how.

Mo pulled the bright, alarming poncho off and
laid it on the ground. Rain wet her in the few places she was still dry, evening her out, making her just the same as the trees, the grasses, the glazed thicket.

Yes,
whispered the voice.
That's better.

One cautious step at a time, zigzagging to avoid jutting stones, fallen branches, slumps of rotting leaves. To one side lay the racing stream. The wind gusted.

Mo hadn't ventured this far into the kingdom all summer. Another powerful storm had swept through here, maybe in the spring. The trees were battered, missing limbs. The spots where they'd broken off were still raw looking, like the gaps on Da's feet. Some trees had taken their neighbors down with them when they fell, crashing to the ground tangled in each other's woody arms. Mo stepped carefully, feeling the air grow warmer. Without the thick cover of leaves, the sun would be more generous here. It would pour out great, golden buckets, and that was why the wild mustard and the first black-eyed Susans were already blooming here, and why those black raspberries were plump and ripe.

Berries. Sweet, smeary, eat-till-your-greedy-little-belly-busts berries.

Slowly. You know how.

The voice filled Mo, the way the joy of her father's
singing did, or the perfume of Mrs. Steinbott's roses, filled her with something she couldn't name, something that nuzzled her, assured her, carried her forward.

How easily her feet navigated the ground. No twigs snapped. No vines or prickers snagged. The rain began to fall more softly, its thick gray curtain turning pearly and translucent.

The voice was both inside and outside her now.

Just ahead lay a majestic, fallen tree, its bark thick and protective as the shingles on a house. This tree had fallen long before the others. Grass sprang up around it, and silver-green moss grew a furry coat along its ridges. Just beyond it, a tangle of pale purple berry canes snagged the light. The thick clusters of berries appeared lit up from inside, as if each one cupped its own tiny candle. Mo stopped, her heart beating patiently, steadily.

Here you are. At last.

From the other side of the log, the fox raised her head, unsurprised, and gazed at Mo. Her face was long and narrow, her delicate ears tipped forward in greeting. Her red fur was wet and matted, as if she'd been waiting a long time.

I knew you'd come.

The fur at the base of her throat glowed white as a star. Her almond-shaped eyes held Mo's in a look both loving and searching.

The fox stretched her neck and nuzzled the air. Nothing, nothing about her was frightening. Mo longed to run toward her. Her arms lifted, aching to circle that neck, to press her cheek against its downy warmth.

But as if she could read Mo's mind, the fox rose up on all fours. She bent her face to something on the ground, hidden from Mo's sight. The fox's eyes slowly closed, their light winking out, her beautiful self drawing in, motionless and rapt, as if trying to memorize this moment. Mo didn't dare breathe. She hung suspended, willing this moment to last forever.

But already time was up. A flash of velvet black legs, and the white-tipped tail streamed out like something in your happiest dream. No one could keep up with her, even in a dream, but just before she disappeared into the undergrowth, she stopped. She looked back with those wise eyes only a shade darker than her fur, eyes that saw so many things you couldn't.

Foxes and humans can't mix. That's how life is. But wherever we both go, we'll remember.

Swift, silent, an arrow shot from an invisible bow. She was gone.

Mo bent over the fallen tree's thick, ridged walls. She held her hand over the spot where the fox had been, cupping the lingering warmth in her palm. Cradled against the tree, nearly hidden, something else stirred. A small wild animal uncurled and sat up, yawning and rubbing her eyes with her fists. At the sight of Mo bending over her, Dottie smiled dreamily.

“You said I couldn't, but I did. Lookit!” Dottie opened a fist sticky with mashed berries, and there, right in the center, like her heart in her body or their house in the center of the street, lay a tuft of hair that at first looked transparent. But then a slender beam of pale, watery sun caught it, and the fur turned just the same color as Dottie's hair. She looked from it to her big sister and then back again, her sleepy, berry-streaked face coming fully awake, alive with wonder.