Fox Den
THEY SPED PAST MS. HUGG’S pink house and then the Petrones’, where a hearse took up the whole driveway. Mrs. P styled hair at a funeral parlor, and when she worked late they let her drive the hearse home instead of taking the bus. The Baggott boys-named for signs of the zodiac because Mrs. Baggott believed they’d one day be stars, ha ha-were giving one another rides in a shopping cart stolen from the E-Z Dollar. Pi Baggott, a year older than Mercedes and Mo, practiced skateboard tricks on the edge of the Crater.
“Hey!” he called, flipping his board upright. It was strange. Up until this summer, Mo had never bothered to distinguish one Baggott from another. But all of a sudden, Pi stood out. Pi was impossible to ignore. “Welcome back!” he told Mercedes.
“I can’t believe the city didn’t fix that pothole yet!” she replied. “It’s seriously bigger than last year!”
“Hello to you, too,” Pi said.
The daisies were in full bloom, and the butter-and-eggs, too. Mo climbed over the guardrail, careful to avoid the thistles. On the other side, a path meandered down the hillside. Scraggly as they were, the trees clinging to the slope didn’t mind if you grabbed their trunks to keep from slipping. As you descended, rocks jutted out like the snouts of buried dinosaurs. And everywhere you looked, the landscape was decorated with trash.
People-no one on Fox Street, Mo was certain, but other people, who were lazy and ignorant-had the notion the ravine was a free dump and heaved all sorts of things over the guardrail, right past the sign that read $100 FINE FOR LITTERING. Mo spotted a wheel-less bike, a broken high chair, a torn lampshade. Ghostly garbage bags fluttered in the trees.
Ghostly, but in a good way-this was the feeling Mo always got here. Climbing down the hill, she took her time, making as little noise as she could, her eyes peeled. Fox Street had gotten its name for a reason, and sometimes, especially toward dusk, the air took on a mysterious, deep red texture. At those moments, Mo felt a beautiful pair of amber-colored eyes watching her. She’d sense a rust-colored tail, tip dipped in cream, disappearing just behind her. But no matter how quickly she turned, Mo never saw anything.
Still. Never once did she come down here without being on fox lookout. Light and quick and shy as they were- Mo had read a good deal about foxes-they always saw you before you saw them.
Mo didn’t keep secrets. She disliked them nearly as much as she did surprises, which is to say a great deal. And yet, deep inside her, wrapped up as carefully as a fragile glass egg, she cherished, if not exactly a secret, a belief. One she had never confided to anyone. Not even Mercedes.
“Maureen Jewel Wren! Come on!”
Mo believed foxes lived down here. And that they knew she was looking for them.
Or, at least, one fox knew. A certain one, graceful and beautiful, that she had seen in her dreams. And though it might take a very long time, if Mo was patient enough, and persistent and faithful enough, someday that fox was going to reveal herself. To Mo.
“MO!”
“I’m coming!”
Mercedes had already twirled the combination lock on the toolbox and set out cans of Tahitian Treat and bags of chips on the flat rock they used for a table. The Den was a hollow in the side of the hill, not quite big enough to stand up in, shaded and half hidden by an outcrop of rock. Mercedes and Mo had decorated it with things thrown over the guardrail, including the two only slightly ripped beanbag chairs on which they sat.
At the bottom of the ravine, across the stream, stretched the vast city Metropark. Mo could hear the distant cheers of a softball game-the one Mr. Wren was supposed to be playing.
“I can’t tell you,” Mercedes said, handing Mo a can, “how much I’ve been looking forward to this very moment.”
They clinked cans. Down at the invisible baseball game, a cheer went up.
“Especially since,” Mercedes went on, “this is my last summer coming.”
Tahitian Treat shot out Mo’s nose. “Whaaaaa?”
“It’s a miracle I got up here at all. My stepfather registered me for one of those enrichment camps where you learn calculus in the morning and French in the afternoon and for extra big fun you take a trip to a museum. He says a girl with my potential shouldn’t waste a whole summer doing nothing.”
Mo wiped her sticky chin with a leaf. “Nothing! Is he mental?”
Mercedes nodded.
“It’s useless trying to explain to him about Fox Street. He’s all about getting ahead in the world. He grew up poor, but he worked hard and took advantage of every opportunity and became an attorney and blah blah blah.”
Mercedes paused. She gazed at a spot somewhere over Mo’s shoulder. “It’s…it’s weird, Mo. But I’m afraid he’s infecting me.”
From down on the ball field came a huge, collective moan.
“Infecting?”
Mercedes knotted her fingers. “With the snob virus. Monette and I, we always lived in such butt-ugly apartments. The last one, if you sat on the toilet you had to put your feet in the tub. After you checked for roaches. But now we live in his stupid mini-mansion, and I…I don’t know.” Mercedes kept her eyes on that spot just beyond Mo. “You get used to nice things. Real fast.”
Mo hugged her knees. She searched for the right words.
“But Fox Street is nice.”
Mercedes pursed her lips. For no reason, a little rock broke loose from the hillside and tumbled down past them.
“When I got here last night, everything looked so, I don’t know. Used up. I told myself it’d look better in the morning, but…” Mercedes swallowed. “It looks even worse.”
One day last winter, Mo had been hurrying down Fox Street when she’d hit a patch of ice and whomped over flat on her back. All the breath went out of her. Her lungs refused to work, and for an endless moment, Mo lay staring up at the gray metal sky, abandoned by her own body. By the whole universe. This is how lonesome dying feels, she’d thought in terror, just before a great pain stabbed her chest and delicious, frigid air flooded all through her.
That was how it felt now. A shock, and then an outburst.
“This gets worse,” warned Mercedes.
“How could it? You’re disrespecting Fox Street! That means you’re disrespecting me, not to mention Da! And speaking of Da, I guess your stepfather-by the way, doesn’t this bonehead even have a name? I guess Mr. X doesn’t care if he breaks Da’s heart, because that’s what’ll happen if you quit spending summers here.”
Mercedes ran her fingertips over her gleaming head. “You didn’t even ask me why I shaved my head.”
“I did so. You ignored me.”
“I did it to make him furious. He’s always telling me I look just like my mom, and in his eyes, that’s the biggest compliment in the universe.”
Mercedes jumped up and started pacing on the edge of the Den, sending up dust clouds.
“He makes her so happy! It drives me bonkers! And now she can afford to quit her dumb job and go to college, the way she always dreamed.” Mercedes paced back and forth so fast Mo began to get dizzy, then came to a sudden stop. “It’s extremely challenging,” she said quietly, “to keep hating him.”
Mercedes had never known her father. When Monette had discovered she was pregnant, she’d moved away from Fox Street and never looked back. She refused to even say who he was-he was sweet and he was gone, that was all the information Mercedes had. Here was yet one more way Merce and Mo were alike, beside having identical initials, and being born the very same autumn, and both adoring Fox Street: They were both half orphans.
