What Happened on Fox Street Read online

  What Happened on Fox Street

  Tricia Springstubb

  For Kelly, our family’s newest reader

  Contents

  Map

  The Thinker, Part 1

  Starchbutt

  Mercedes

  Stumps

  Fox Den

  Traitor, Part 1

  Heartbeat

  The Letter, Part 1

  Poof!

  Magic Feather

  Scat

  The Letter, Part 2

  Stink Bomb

  Magic Hands

  The Plot Thickens

  On the Case

  The Thinker, Part 2

  Another Gift, If That Was What You Wanted to Call It

  Demolition

  And One More Gift

  Home Plate

  Traitor, Part 2

  The Letter, Part 3

  The Magic Runs Out

  Everything Changes

  Into the Storm

  Match Flame

  The Thinker, Part 3

  Wren Den

  And One More Gift, Part 2

  The (Dead) End

  About the Author

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Map

  The Thinker, Part 1

  FOX STREET WAS A DEAD END. In Mo Wren’s opinion, this was only one of many wonderful, distinguishing things about it.

  It was a short street, five houses on either side, smooshed close together but in a nice way, like friendly people in a crowded elevator. A piano player lived here, and a teacher, not to mention a man who fixed things, a woman who worked in a funeral home, and the two best burrito makers in the city. If you thought about it—and Mo did a lot of thinking—just about your every need could be satisfied on Fox Street.

  There was even a mean, spooky old lady, if ringing doorbells then running away, or leaving dead mice in mailboxes, was your idea of fun.

  Paradise Avenue bordered one end, and the ravine the other. Mo Wren’s house was in the middle, where a heart would be, had Fox Street been a person. Sparrows nested under the eaves. This summer a crop of maple trees had sprouted in the gutters. Nature loved that little house as much as Mo did.

  She personally had drawn every breath of her life here, having been born a week early and in a great headlong rush, in the very kitchen where she now stood, ten years later, on a boiling June day, fixing her father’s lunch. Mr. Wren had a softball game this afternoon, which meant he was in an excellent mood, for a change. He sat reading the sports pages, his dark, curly hair peeking out from under his cap. Mo’s father was handsome as a movie star, everyone on Fox Street agreed.

  “Want chips, Daddy?”

  “You’re a mind reader.”

  “I knew you were going to say that.”

  Fist bumps! She set his sandwich in front of him and sat down. The wooden table was inscribed with dark hieroglyphicish slashes and crescents. Mo’s mother had been an absentminded person, prone to forgetting things like setting a hot pad beneath a skillet or casserole dish. She’d always played music while she cooked, and when Mr. Wren came home they’d kiss for a while, then dance. Back then Mo’s feet could fit right on top of her father’s, and they’d all whirl around till a pot started boiling over.

  “You’re not eating?” Mr. Wren asked.

  Mo shifted in her chair, unsticking her thighs. It was fiery hot in the little kitchen, hotter even than outside, where the Cleveland cicadas buzzed like rattlesnakes that had learned to climb trees.

  “Mercedes is coming,” Mo reminded her father. “I’ll be eating at Da’s.”

  Mr. Wren pushed back his cap. “Mercedes! My third-favorite kid in the world.”

  Mercedes Walcott was Mo’s best friend. She lived down south in Cincinnati but spent every summer across the street with her grandmother. Mo counted the days till her friend arrived. Deeply as Mo loved Fox Street, she was forced to admit it lacked two things:

  Foxes.

  Girls.

  Three things, if you counted her mother. But Mo tried not to do that.

  “This calls for a toast!” Mr. Wren pulled two cans of pop from the refrigerator just as the phone rang. He swore under his breath. “That better not be work.”

  But it was.

  “You gotta be kidding me, Jake! Not again! Public Square?” He yanked off his cap and threw it on the table. “Man, I feel the pain. But no way can I come in. I got serious car trouble. Not to mention a…a root canal appointment in half an hour. And—what?”

  He broke off, scowling. With one finger, Mo carefully traced a scorched squiggle.

  “You trying to say something’s wrong with my record?”

  Mo traced the squiggle faster. Mr. Wren had been out of work a long time before he landed this job at the water department.

  “Yeah yeah yeah, I get it,” he said at last. “I’ll be there soon as I can get away.”

  He hung up and mashed his cap back onto his head.

  “Forty-two-inch main just blew—that’s the second bleepin’ time this year. Public Square’s a river. Nobody within a mile’s got any pressure.” He took a swig of pop. “It’s all hands on deck.”

  “Wow. You better get your uniform on, Daddy.”

  He set the can down and clasped his hands around an invisible bat. The only uniform Mr. Wren had ever wanted to wear was a shortstop’s for a major league team. Slice—he took a hard cut at an invisible curveball. His runner-up dream was owning his own sports bar. It would be a nice neighborhood place, where families could enjoy a great burger together, and teams could hoist a few after their games. Sometimes he and Mo sat around dreaming up names for it. Home Plate. Time Out. Triple S (for ShortStop Spot). The only thing standing between him and it was scraping together enough for the down payment.

  “You and the other guys will be heroes,” Mo told him.

  “Mud-covered rats, you mean?” He drained the pop. “Mojo, work is the world’s most necessary evil.”

  He tossed the can in the garbage, then pulled a handful of scratched-off lottery tickets from his pocket and threw them away, too. “Sorry. This means you’ve got to watch Decimal Point the rest of the day.”

  “I don’t mind.”

  He crooked a finger under her chin. Two lines arched up between his eyes and disappeared into his forehead, forming a tree with no leaves. Mo hated how those lines had dug in deeper every time she looked.

  “You’re my dependabillibuddy.” His arms went around her. Nothing bad could ever happen with those strong arms circling you. “We open the Home Team, you’re my manager. Deal?”

  He started for the stairs.

  “But Daddy?”

  He turned around.

  “That can’t really be true, can it?” she asked. “I mean, ‘necessary’ and ‘evil’ can’t ever go together, can they?”

  When he smiled, his eyes were dark stars.

  “What’d I tell you about thinking too much? You’re going to get yourself in big trouble one of these days.”

  Mo retrieved her father’s can from the trash and put it in the recycling. She knotted the top of the trash bag, put her untouched pop back in the fridge, then offered the last crumbs of her father’s sandwich to two big ants foraging on the kitchen floor.

  He was always telling her she thought too much. Which made Mo uneasy for three reasons:

  She couldn’t help it.

  She thought he could be wrong, not only about this but other things, too.

  Maybe reason number two proved he was right.

  Starchbutt

  YOU CAME TO THE END of Fox Street and kaboom, the world fell away. The pavement gave out and all you saw was a guardrail and th
e tops of trees. The guardrail was dented from drivers turning the wrong way out of the Tip Top Club, up on Paradise Avenue, and only realizing their mistake at the next-to-last minute, when they slammed on their brakes just in time to keep from sailing out over the edge and down into the ravine below.

  When Mo stepped out of her house, the summer air was tangy and sweet, a mix of city smells from up on Paradise and country perfume from down in that Green Kingdom. Mo lugged the garbage bag back to the garage. The Wrens shared a driveway with Mrs. Steinbott, and Mo could hear the neighbor’s radio, tuned to a talk show whose every caller shouted and sputtered in fury over one thing or another. Starchbutt stayed tuned to that station twenty-four seven.

  Every Saturday she boiled her sponges and hung them out to dry on her little line. In today’s heat the sponges had already grown stiff as boards. Taur Baggott, one of the way-too-numerous Baggott boys, claimed he’d once watched Mrs. Steinbott trap a cat digging in her rosebushes, and the poor thing was never seen again. Boiled, most likely. Her basement was probably piled with bleached bones.

  Mo closed the trash-can lid tight. The animals who populated the ravine considered Fox Street their own personal all-you-can-eat buffet. Raccoons raided trash cans, skunks raised their babies underneath porches, and once Mo had watched a red-tailed hawk swoop down and pluck a pigeon right off the sidewalk in front of the Baggotts’ house. Another time a bunch of Tip Top regulars had piled out on the street, shouting and pointing, claiming they’d seen a wild turkey big as a washing machine go by. Not that you could trust those guys.

  The only animal no one had ever seen was a fox. Mr. Wren said the chances of spying a fox on Fox Street were about as good as that of spying a band of angels playing harps up on Paradise. And then he laughed. Not his real laugh, but a laugh like something hard hitting something even harder.

  She wiped her hands on the grass, which was littered with pale, hard plums no bigger than jelly beans. The plum tree was the best thing about the Wrens’ tiny backyard. It had planted itself, some ambitious plum pit recognizing a beautiful spot and making itself at home. Over the years Mo had done her most productive thinking with her back nestled against its trunk. But it was a bad sign for it to be dropping fruit like that—the weather had been so hot and dry, the poor tree was struggling. Mo made a mental note to pull the hose back here and give it a long drink, and then she headed for the street.

  Whenever their father was at work, Mo was in charge of her little sister, Dottie, who was half Mo’s age but possessed approximately one hundredth of her sense. That wasn’t all Dottie’s fault, Mo knew. She hadn’t had the advantage of their mother very long, for one thing, and Fox Street had ruined her, for another. Everyone watched out for her, not to mention spoiled her rotten, so that at any given moment Dottie could be in Mrs. Petrone’s kitchen eating homemade pizza, or on Da’s porch being read to, or—this was all too likely—getting into deep doo-doo with the Baggotts.

  Then again, she could be up on Paradise or down in the ravine, both forbidden, hunting bottles for her collection. Which she must have done already today, because there on the front walk was a careful arrangement of tall and short, fat and thin bottles. Dottie grouped her bottles into families—mothers, fathers, children, babies. She had aunt and uncle bottles, grandparent bottles, and teenage bottles with names like Tiffany and Rihanna. Hands on hips, Mo scanned the street. The front yards were small enough that you could lean right over your porch railing and have a conversation with your neighbor on the sidewalk, and there was Mr. Hernandez, owner of the restaurant Tortilla Feliz, chatting with Ms. Hugg, the piano player. Mrs. Baggott slouched on her porch swing, pulling on her cigarette, while beside her, Baby Baggott pulled on his bottle. Mr. Wren, wearing his water department uniform, backed the car out of the driveway, tooted the horn, expertly skirted the colossal pothole known as the Crater, and drove out of sight.

  But no sign of Dottie.

  Just as Mo was about to start hunting for her, Mrs. Steinbott’s front door opened and out she came, toting her knitting basket. Starchbutt’s hair was fuzzy and white as dandelion fluff, and she herself was skinny as a stalk. At first glance she looked several thousand years old, but look again and you’d see her hands were smooth and her step quick. Mrs. Steinbott whiled away her hours pruning shrubs within an inch of their lives and knitting, though who all those itchy hats and scarves could be for remained a mystery. No one ever came to visit her. Her life was solitary as the unplanet Pluto.

  Why was she so alone? And so stone hearted? Which came first? It was as hard to determine as the chicken and the egg, a problem Mo had given some thought to.

  “Hello,” called Mo.

  Starchbutt cocked her head, like a robin just before it nails a poor, unsuspecting worm.

  “Your roses are looking good.” Mo gestured toward the bushes that bloomed in profusion all around the porch. Their perfect, bugless leaves shone in the sun.

  Mrs. Steinbott froze midknit. For a moment, Mo actually believed she might say, “Why thank you, neighbor.” But instead, a furious electric shock seemed to go through her. What in the world could make her shudder like that? Starchbutt raised a shining needle and pointed it across the street.

  Mo looked, just in time to see a rubber band of a body sproing out Da’s front door.

  Mercedes

  “MO!”

  “Merce!”

  Dodging between the parked cars, Mo tore across the street. Mercedes flung long golden arms around her.

  “Merce! You look so different!”

  “Mo! You look precisely the same!”

  “No I don’t!” Mo always talked too loudly around Mercedes Walcott—she couldn’t help it. “I grew a whole inch.”

  Mercedes had always been taller, but this year she’d grown so much that Mo had to step back to look her in the eye. Her laugh was the same, though—head back, gap teeth flashing white against her gingersnap-colored skin. Everything about Mercedes Walcott crackled and bit. The only soft thing about her was her hair. Speaking of her hair…

  “Merce! You’re bald!”

  “Really?” Mercedes widened her eyes and ran a hand over the top of her head. “Crudsicles!” Mercedes laughed again. She adored teasing Mo. And Mo didn’t mind. Much.

  “You shaved it? How come? And how come you’re here so early?”

  “I took a plane.” Mercedes yawned. “Then a cab.” She plucked at her jeans, which were black and, Mo suddenly noticed, the precise kind the popular girls at her school wore. Her tank top was black, too, with little sparkles around the edge. Mo smoothed her own baggy, wrinkled shorts.

  “Wow,” she said. “Cool.”

  Every June before this—and there had been five so far—Mercedes had ridden the Greyhound out of Cincinnati. Da would send the money for the ticket, and Merce would jump down the bus steps holding one practically empty suitcase. Every August she staggered back up, that suitcase weighted with all the books Da gave her. Da also tried to plump up her only grandchild, but that never took.

  “My new stepfather,” Mercedes said now, as if those two words carried as much meaning as a whole chapter book. Her mother, who’d never had a husband, had gotten married that winter.

  “He’s rich?” Mo asked.

  “We’re comfortable,” Mercedes replied. “He’s got avalanches of money, but don’t ever say ‘rich.’ That’s ghetto. You say ‘comfortable.’”

  “Oh.”

  Mercedes had a way of raising her chin that elongated her entire self, as if she were about to turn into a human steeple.

  “Not that he corrects me,” she said. “I have to admit, he’s too smart for that.”

  “Oh.” Mo smoothed her wrinkled shorts again. “Soooo, you don’t like him?”

  “Did I say that? If only it was that simple.”

  Mo was saved from saying “Oh” again by a voice that had set hundreds of schoolchildren quaking like wind chimes in a high wind.

  “Mo Wren!”

  Mo told hers
elf that Da didn’t try to make her name sound like “moron” on purpose. All the same, she was grateful that Da had retired and there was zero chance of ever having the woman for a teacher. Da was tall as a man. Her beautiful skin had a midnight sheen that reminded Mo of silk or satin, the sort of delicious fabric you long to lay your cheek against.

  Her voice, however, was the kind of wool that rubs your neck raw.

  “I wasted time, now time doth waste me!” cried Da, who, if she ever went on a quiz show and got Shakespeare for her category, would become an instant millionaire. “Your beans and rice are getting cold, Mo Wren!”

  Da’s red beans. Mo would choose them for her last meal on Earth. She was already up the front steps before she noticed Mercedes still rooted to the sidewalk. Her best friend stared across the street, past the parked cars gleaming in the sun and Mrs. Steinbott’s roses blooming like a piece of heaven, directly at the porch of the tiny, blue-white old lady, who stared steadily back. For a brief, bizarre moment, Mo saw something identical in the way they cocked their heads, as if listening to a bit of music just out of range of everyone else’s hearing.

  “Mercey!” Mo called, breaking the spell. Her best friend whirled around and ran to join her.

  Stumps

  BACK WHEN DA STILL TAUGHT SCHOOL, she’d stalked her classroom in shoes adorned with buckles and buttons and rhinestone bows. Da didn’t just have smarts—she had style, which made it especially disturbing to watch her clomp down her front hall now in shoes heavy and ugly as miniature coffins.