“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,
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, ‘
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.
Match Flame
THEY 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.
