“Everyone did.” She peered at Mo. “What’s wrong with you? You don’t look right. Oh, no.” Her gaze darted across the windswept street. “Did something happen to her? Are they all right?”
“They’re fine. They’re inside getting ready for some important company. Do you mind if I read your letter?”
“Company?” Without tearing her eyes from Da’s porch, Mrs. Steinbott passed Mo the paper.
Mo recognized the stationery at once. The same opening paragraph, introducing himself, blah blah blah. She scanned the page. Here. Right in the center, like the worm in the apple.
“Every indication is that the city is considering tax abatement… Other residents have already accepted this timely offer… Act now to avoid the possibility of the jurisdiction of eminent domain. Avoid legal tangles!”
The words wriggled, wormlike, as she tried to reread them.
“Could it be?” Mrs. Starchbutt’s voice was so low, she must be talking to herself. “Could it be?”
One line squirmed worse than all the rest. Mo told herself she couldn’t have read it right.
Yes, that’s what it said. Her heart plummeted. It was too late. He’d made up his mind.
“You gave her the purse, didn’t you?”
“What?” Mo rubbed her eyes. “Um, sure.” So what if she hadn’t exactly
“That’s good. You’re a very good girl.”
“Do you mind if I keep this letter?”
Mrs. Steinbott had already turned away and opened her front door. “He was sweet as a climbing rose,” she said. “Without the thorns.” The door shut quietly behind her.
Mo tried to put the letter in her pocket but realized she was wearing her one and only pair of pocketless shorts. All her others were in the wash.
The wash. She’d left the fur on the shelf beside the machine, where she’d set it when she emptied pockets. In her grogginess, she’d forgotten to take it upstairs and put it in her drawer for safekeeping. As she hurried down the front walk, Pi Baggott coasted by on his skateboard. He flipped up the board, blocking her path.
“What’s wrong?”
Mo clenched the letter in her fist. Why did people keep asking what was wrong with her? Nothing was wrong with her-it was the whole entire rest of the world that was wrong.
“Your mother,” she accused. “She got a letter about selling your house.”
A bee so big and fat it could barely keep aloft bumbled between them, landed on a purple rose, and burrowed in.
“Right-everybody did,” said Pi. “Didn’t your dad?”
Lies danced on the tip of her tongue-how easy deception had become in the last few weeks. But why should she protect her father? Why pretend he was innocent? He’d taken that crook’s offer. He was ready to trade away everything for what he wanted. He was the true traitor.
“My father’s been getting letters for weeks.”
Pi set his board down and pushed it back and forth with the toe of his shoe. Mo could see him adding up two plus two. The purple rose nodded up and down. “So he knew. Is he the one who already sold?”
How she longed to pour out every last thing to him. What a relief that would be! Instead she stared at the sidewalk.
“My mom says we gotta sell,” he went on. “If we don’t, the city takes the house anyway and hardly pays us jack.”
Pi was a patient person. You could almost hear the steady
“I think she’s wrong, though,” Pi said at last. “If you read the letter real careful, it just threatens. Like a punk saying, ‘I will freakin’ bust your head if you don’t give me your jacket.’ Like that.”
He waited some more and, when Mo still didn’t speak, pushed off. Just as quickly he wheeled around. He coasted back, arms at his sides, as if he’d forgotten something. Something of great importance, judging from the serious look he bent on Mo.
“If we have to move,” he began. He touched a finger to the purple rose, and the bee shot up and away with an angry hum. “We wouldn’t live on the same street anymore.”
“You just figured that out? You’re really a genius.”
If Pi’s lips had been about to release a secret, instead they closed around it. Mo watched him zoom up the street, crouch, and leap. Beneath his feet, the board twirled in a perfect 180. In the hazy air Pi hovered as if gravity were a myth. Landing perfectly, he raced away, leaving her in the dust.
The Magic Runs Out
BY NOW THE BREEZE had worked itself into a wind, the mischief-making sort that conjures up mini-tornadoes, grabbing bits of trash and grit and whirling them high in the air. Head down, Mo trudged toward her back door. She trailed her fingers along the side of Starchbutt’s house, then tossed the wadded-up letter over the fence. But just as she was about to go inside, her ears pricked up. What was that sound, mingling with the wind? A little bark, a musical howl, coming from her own, her very own backyard.
I knew it.
Holding her breath, pressing flat against the house, Mo crept around the corner. There beneath the plum tree, down on all fours, rusty headed and wild, crouched Dottie, emitting sounds that were a cross between a human’s
Mo smooshed her forehead against the side of the house. She’d expressly told Dottie she was grounded. The little monster was deliberately disobeying. If there was ever a time Mo was justified in completely and totally letting her sister have it,
But to her own confusion, Mo discovered she had no anger left. She’d used it up, on her father, on Mercedes, on Pi, on the whole world. As enormous as her supply of anger had been, a supply big enough to last a lifetime, it was all gone. Where it had raged and burned was only a hollow tender place, empty as could be.
“What’s the matter?” The trickster wind snatched Mo’s words away. She crossed the grass to stand over her sister and asked again. Dottie lurched over sideways. Bits of grass stuck to her hands and knees. Around her neck hung a string of plastic pearls Mo had once found tossed down the hill. Dottie claimed they were magic-wearing them gave her X-ray vision.
Oh, if only Mo still believed in magic! If only she could be as little and ignorant as Dottie, whose world was so simple that just wanting something bad enough might make it happen.
Dottie’s hair streamed across her face. When Mo pushed it back, Dottie’s cheeks were streaked with tears. All Mo’s envy of her little sister vanished. Dottie, who never cried, was crying her head off.
“I’m sorry I yelled at you.” Mo tried to pull her sister to her feet. “Let’s go inside. You need a bath. I’ll let you have bubbles.”
But Dottie grabbed her sister’s ankle in a death grip. “I didn’t mean it,” she blubbered.
A strange calm took hold of Mo. She became a smooth rock in a rushing river.
“What? What didn’t you mean?”
Dottie looked frightened, like a child who’s woken up a guard dog. Mo waited. Calmly. Like a rock.
“How come you never tolded me?” Fat tears rolled down Dottie’s cheeks.
“Told you what?”
“Mrs. Petrone gave it to you, right?”
“Gave me what?’
“It was just the same like mine,” Dottie bawled. “Everybody says that. You keep saying I don’t remember, but I do. I do!”
“Remember
