What Happened on Fox Street

Dottie dove forward and buried her head in Mo’s lap. “I didn’t mean it! I just wanted to look at it for one single tiny minute, and I came out here so you wouldn’t know, and I didn’t know it was so windy, I didn’t know. I didn’t mean it!”

Mo dug her fingers into Dottie’s hair and yanked her head up. “Where is it? Where is it?”

Dottie’s eyes tilted upward in Mo’s iron grip. She pointed toward the plum tree, then the house, then the sky, her arm wheeling around like a compass gone loco.

Mo raced around the yard, directionless as the leaves and scraps flying at the mercy of this wind. At the base of the plum tree lay a bit of blue tissue paper, flimsy as a torn moth wing. That was all. By now the weightless fur would have blown everywhere, and nowhere.

“I’ll get you some more,” Dottie promised. “I’ll go ask Mrs. P right now.”

“Forget it! You can’t!”

“Oh, yeah? Well, she was my mama too!”

Mo spun around. Dottie had her fists up, ready to duke it out.

“Not just yours! Mine too!”

“What are you talking about? That wasn’t her hair.”

Dottie landed a punch in Mo’s belly. “You big fat liar! She wasn’t just yours. I remember too!”

Mo caught her arm, but Dottie bared her fangs and bit down on Mo’s hand. Hard.

“Yeow!”

Above their heads the branches of the plum tree creaked. Mo, with Dottie still attached, stepped back just as a sudden, sharp crack split the air. A branch swung down and hung there, like a broken arm. A tiny nest spilled onto the grass, then tumbleweeded away.

Dottie’s jaw fell open. Mo pressed the back of her hand against her own mouth.

“You bit me.”

Instead of apologizing, Dottie put her dukes back up, ready for round two.

“She had a sweater with buttons like Life Savers. She made me dandelion necklaces. I put an ant in my mouth and she took it out and it didn’t even die.”

“That was fox fur,” Mo said. “I found it down in the ravine.”

Dottie lowered her fists. How easy it was to read her face-her feelings scrolled across it like closed-captioned TV. Distrust, disappointment, sorrow, guilt.

“Cross your heart?”

Mo longed to say, “I never lie.” But that would be a lie.

“I’ve been looking for signs for a long time,” Mo told her. “Every time I go down there, I’m looking.”

Lonesomeness flashed across the little face. After all Mo’s work to keep her safe, Dottie carried lonesomeness and sorrow around, too. All this time, like a scar in a place no one else ever saw.

“You shoulda showed me, Mo.”

“Maybe.”

“I’ll get you more!”

Laughing and crying-who knew how closely the two were twined inside you?

Mo turned away from her sister and fitted her spine to the trunk of the plum tree-there it was, the groove that had shaped itself, year by year, to cushion and hold her just right. The back of her hand throbbed, and her eyes felt rubbed with sand. The broken branch swung in the wind.

“Don’t sit there,” Dottie begged. “It’s danger out here.”

“Just go inside. I’ll come in a minute.”

“I’m sorry I bited you!”

“Yeah, right.”

Dottie looked heartbroken. But what could Mo do? It was no use. The fur was gone, and with it any power she’d had. Any hope. The fur was scattered on the evil wind, and her father had sold the house, the yard, everything, out from under Mo’s feet. All this time she’d believed that if she tried her hardest, and did her best, she could fix things-if one thing didn’t work, then something else would, and if not that, then something else. But Mo had run out of things. There was nothing left for her to do.

“Never mind,” she said. She longed to make her voice comforting and kind, but Dottie only looked more wretched. What could Mo do? It was no use. The time had come for Dottie to stop believing in magic, stop believing in Mo.

Everything Changes

WHEN MO WOKE, the sky had grown dark, and the very air had changed. She no longer inhabited summer, maybe not even Earth. For one thing, a mangy doll blanket covered her goose-bumpy knees, and for another, her body was experiencing an alien sensation.

The plum leaves shivered, and now Mo did too, as if she’d been paddling along in a warm pond and suddenly found herself in a cold spot. Pond. Swim. Water. That was what Mo was feeling, the long-lost sensation she couldn’t put a name to. She was wet. It was raining.

Raining! The wind’s rough fingers had planted the air with rain seeds and they were blooming, silver blossoms falling on Fox Street. She watched the rain darken the roofs and the hard, parched ground. As if she herself were a thing with roots, she sensed the plum tree sigh and drink. Up on Paradise, the passing cars made swishing sounds. Mo tilted her head and stuck out her tongue.

Then she remembered. As the rain washed away the world’s weary dust, it all came back to her, all the things that had happened and couldn’t unhappen. When it arrived at Dottie’s secret sadness, Mo’s mind snagged and caught.

Yes. There was one thing she might still undo. Wadding up the little doll blanket, she went into the house.

“Dottie! Put on your swimsuit!” Mo shook her head, and drops flew. Glancing at the kitchen clock, she was startled to see how late it was. How long had she slept, after all?

“Dottie! Come on-let’s run in the rain together!” She climbed the stairs. “Don’t hide. I won’t bite you back.”

It wasn’t as if the Wild Child had never disappeared before. But Mo was surprised she would today, after their big fight, and in this rain. This rain, which was coming down harder and harder, slanting in the windows, wetting the floor and her bed, her bed on which lay a soggy sheet of paper with a strange four-legged creature drawn in orange crayon. The animal wore a big smile, happy as could be in a sea of grass blooming with crooked hearts.

Mo hurried from room to room, shutting windows. In her father’s, his Tortilla Feliz softball shirt lay on the bed, and that was when she realized that he hadn’t come home in time for his game. It would have started hours ago, before the rain, and when had he ever, ever missed a game? Only one thing she could think of possessed the power to keep him away.

He’d closed the deal. He was buying Corky’s, signing away their life once and for all.

The little door inside her opened and banged shut, as if she were a haunted house.

Mo flew back down the stairs. Unable to think straight-would she ever be able to think straight again?-she raced outside. By now the rain was pouring down so hard, she could barely see Mercedes’s house. Even Dottie wouldn’t stay out in this! She must have ducked inside someone’s house. Grabbing an umbrella, Mo dashed down the steps.

None of the Baggotts had seen her since morning. As Mo thanked them and headed back into the rain, Pi raced after her. He threw a yellow poncho over her head. It stunk, but the rain rolled off it like a duck’s back.

“Thanks.”

Pi had already forgotten how mean she’d been to him. Or else he was as good at forgiveness as he was at kick flips. He headed toward Paradise, shouting over his shoulder, “I’ll check out Abdul’s and E-Z Dollar!”

Mr. Duong, glasses misting over, interrogated Mo. Did Dottie know not to cross Paradise on her own? Not to talk to strangers? She wouldn’t go down the ravine when it was storming like this, would she? That stream could