Mo Wren, Lost and Found Page 6

  But first Dottie had to tape her drawing of beautiful tropical scenery to the side of Handsome’s tank for his viewing pleasure. Too late, Mo realized her little sister had scribbled all over the back of her math worksheet.

  Comfortable

  Every morning before they left for school, Dottie made sure Handsome had fresh water and a breakfast cricket. This was a two-man operation, since Handsome could go from zero to a hundred miles an hour in the blink of his almond-shaped eyes. Mo hated being an accomplice to cricket murder. But if Handsome missed even one meal, his bumpy skin shrank against his toothpick bones. He was a sorry excuse for a pet, that was for sure.

  “Make sure his rock is turned on,” Mo said. “It’s going to be cold today.”

  “Duh,” said Dottie.

  Instead of easing up, the winter dug in. Some mornings when her feet hit her icy bedroom floor, Mo longed for her own personal hot rock. In math, Mr. Grimm made them chart the month’s temperatures and find the mean.

  “Mean doesn’t cover it,” Shawn said to Mo in his usual much-too-loud whisper. “It’s cruel and unusual punishment. This winter is unconstitutional.”

  Across the table, Megan giggled, then clapped her hand across her smile. When she leaned over, Mo could smell her sweet-sweet cherry Lip Smacker.

  “I mean, how can you stand him?” she whispered.

  “You seem to be increasingly popular, Mo,” said Mr. Grimm. His voice said stern, but his eyes said gentle. “Which doesn’t surprise me in the least.” A couple of other girls turned to smile at Mo, who slid down in her seat.

  At lunchtime, some of the girls stayed in to help Mr. Grimm put together the new math packets. Megan told Mo she should stay, too, and before Mo knew it, she was sitting at a table sorting paper and whacking a stapler. The other girls were big talkers. Their conversation skipped like a rock across a sun-spangled pond. Indoor soccer; what kind of cell phone they’d get when they were finally allowed; whether a koala, hedgehog, or baby seal was the world’s cutest animal.

  Mo had cataloged Megan with the more popular girls, so she was surprised by how bashful she turned out to be. She kept pushing her tired-out yellow hair behind her ear and picking at her chapped lips. How had they gotten chapped, with all that Lip Smacker? When her stapler jammed up, Megan gave a nervous giggle.

  “I’m so dumb!” she said.

  “Don’t say that,” a tall girl named Mary told her. “Low self-esteem is not attractive.”

  Mo took the stapler and fixed it. Megan gave her a grateful smile.

  “Your little sister’s my cousin’s friend,” Mary told Mo. “K.C.”

  “K.C.’s her idol,” said Mo. “She wants us to call her D.W. now, instead of Dottie.”

  That made everybody laugh, and Mo, encouraged, went on, “We used to call her Wild Child, but she won’t let us since she’s so grown-up and cool.” She turned to Megan. “You have any sisters?”

  “No,” said Megan. “But my little brother thinks he’s a knight. He has this sword he won’t take off, even in the bathtub.”

  “Aargh!” Asha jangled her bracelets. “My brother’s a T. rex! He keeps begging our mother to feed him raw meat.”

  “Well, my other brother’s sixteen, and his room stinks like a dinosaur lives there!” Megan’s cheeks went pink with the excitement of suddenly being in the middle of things. “Boys are so repulsive!”

  “They’re aliens!”

  “Primates!”

  “Boys should get declared another species!”

  “I beg your pardon,” said Mr. Grimm from his desk.

  When the bell rang, the rest of the class came in. Shawn was last, straggling along, blowing on his fingers. He must have lost another pair of gloves.

  “Don’t look now,” Asha told Mo, “but here comes your sweetie.”

  Mary threw her arms in front of Mo in a warding-off way. “Quit pestering her!” she ordered Shawn. “She doesn’t want to hang with you anymore!”

  The air around Shawn ceased its whirring and buzzing. A split second later he spun around and knocked into a desk, setting pencils and papers cascading to the floor.

  “Whoa!” he cried, wheeling his arms. “Avalanche! Look out!” He pretended to lose his footing and collapse on the floor.

  “That was so funny I forgot to laugh,” said one of the boys, stepping over him.

  Shawn stayed on the floor till Mr. Grimm made him get up. The rest of the afternoon didn’t get any better for him. He sharpened his pencil till it was barely an inch long, and he had to borrow from Mo. In music he blew his recorder so loud, no one would stand next to him. When the day finally ended, he was first out the door. And yet when Mo stepped outside, she nearly collided with him. He was waiting on the step, his bare hands tucked into his armpits, his hair wafting in the wind.

  “You need to come to the Soap Opera,” he said. “Carmella’s been asking about you.”

  “Oh, right,” said Mo. But Carmella’s words whispered in Mo’s ear. “You’re just the friend Shawn needs. He spends way too much time hanging out here with me.”

  At the crosswalk, Mary, Asha, and some of the other girls who walked home stood waiting with Mary’s mother. Mary was pointing across the park, doing a robot imitation.

  “Doughnuts!” she said. “Must. Have. Doughnuts!”

  The crossing guard tooted his whistle, and the cluster of bright jackets and cute hats jiggled across the street, then swerved in the direction of the Pit Stop. Mo imagined running and catching up. Imagined them making room for her as they bunched in front of the counter, agonizing over glazed or chocolate or jelly.

  Shawn looked from Mo to the girls and back again. With a grunt, he bolted toward the crosswalk. The guard grabbed the back of his jacket.

  “Slow down, young man!”

  Now he was in for a lecture from the crossing guard, too. Shawn’s head slumped forward. He didn’t look up as he and Mo crossed the street side by side. But when they reached the other side, she stepped in front of him.

  “You go to Carmella’s every single day?”

  “Umm. Affirmative.”

  “How come you don’t do any other stuff? Like join the science club, the way Mr. Grimm keeps begging you?”

  “Mr. Grimm!” Shawn staggered backward. “He only wants me to come so he can torture me further. Mr. Grimm hates my guts!”

  “Well, what about basketball? You shoot a million invisible baskets every day. Why don’t . . .”

  Shawn reached for his hat, then remembered he wasn’t wearing one. Grabbing a chunk of gritty frozen snow, he threw that into the air instead.

  “I like it at Carmella’s.” He caught the snow and tossed it again, higher this time. “It’s comfortable. Nobody bothers me.” Higher yet. “I don’t have to worry what people . . .”

  This time he missed. The ice ball hit the ground and smashed. Shawn rubbed his hands together.

  “What people think or say. It’s like I’m wrapped in super armor or something. Safe from everything. I wish I could stay there all the time. “

  How could Mo argue? Shawn was describing the very feeling she longed for herself. It was the feeling of being wrapped inside the yellow sweater.

  “Carmella really did ask about you. Who knows why?” He balled his bare hands into fists and marched away. After a moment, Mo marched behind him, fitting her boot prints into his.

  At the Laundromat, Homer waved them over. He was drinking from a mug that said I ♥ CHIHUAHUAS.

  “You missed it,” he told them. “A really tall woman just left.”

  “How tall?” Mo asked.

  “When it rains, she gets wet an hour before everybody else.”

  “Homer,” called Carmella. “Drink your tea—it’s full of antioxidants.”

  “I thought oxygen was good for you,” he said, but obediently drained his cup.

  “And don’t forget,” Carmella added, “you promised to change those lightbulbs for me.”

  Homer gave a two-fingered salute a
nd went to get the ladder.

  Moments later, Gilda rushed in, her earrings like wind chimes in a hurricane.

  “I got the part! I’m Blanche!” She jumped up on a chair and clasped her hands to her chest. “I have always depended on the kindness of strangers,” she declared in a luscious Southern drawl. And then, somehow, a real tear trickled down her cheek.

  Mo applauded, along with everyone else. Shawn settled in with his Ripley’s while she watched a TV cooking demonstration on mashed potato variations. The cheesy ones looked so good, and not that hard. Too bad she was still angry at her father. She might have copied down the recipe.

  Back home she found Dottie sitting at the bar. In his tank beside her, Handsome seemed to be watching X-Men as attentively as she was.

  “Where’s Daddy?”

  Without turning her head, Dottie said, “He went . . . he went . . . I forget. Just for a minute, someplace.” A commercial came on, and she twirled her stool. “Look, you got a letter.”

  Lying among the bills—Mr. Wren used the bar for his desk—was an envelope addressed to her. “East 213th Street” was written in precise, uniform cursive, the t’s like the slashes of a miniature sword. Da’s teacher handwriting, for sure. But someone else had written Mo’s name, in print so tiny, the mail carrier must have needed a magnifying glass.

  The writing inside was just as minuscule. The words huddled at the top of the paper, leaving a vast empty space beneath.

  Dear Mo,

  How are u? Da says fine. Are u really?

  I found that red shirt you like in your driveway. I’m keeping it for u.

  Urs truly,

  Pi Baggott

  P.S. I can do a 180 now.

  “He should have put SWAK,” Dottie said, looking over her shoulder. “That means Sealed with a Kiss, FYI.”

  “MYOB,” Mo told her. Folding up the letter, she hurried through the door that said PRIVATE. Upstairs, she knocked her shin against the green armchair but hardly noticed. At last, sitting on her bed, she unfolded the letter and read it again.

  I’m keeping it for u. Her heart did a little sparkler imitation. He missed her, she could tell. Not that she took any pleasure in imagining him gloomy and lonesome. At least, not much pleasure. Just a little. If his feet grew heavy when he passed her old house, or if his thoughts flew to her when he pulled off a perfect 180, well.

  Kneeling beside her dresser, she opened the bottom drawer and moved aside a pair of pajamas. There they were, her Fox Street treasures. First she unwrapped the tissue paper that protected the woody little plum pit. Almond shaped and dark gold, it reminded her of Handsome’s eyes. Next she picked up the knit bag and unknotted the drawstring. Lifting it to her face, she breathed in the perfume of long-lost summer.

  And now Pi’s letter. Just when she’d begun to feel that maybe, just maybe, she could belong in this new place, here was another reminder of Fox Street. Homesickness pierced her, a sliver too deep to ever tweeze out.

  But the next reminder, when it came, was worst of all. She had a promise that her old favorite shirt was waiting for her back there. Maybe Pi had put it in a drawer of his dresser, for safekeeping.

  Comfortable. That was Shawn’s word for how he felt at Carmella’s. But comfortable was too flimsy a word for Fox Street. Like saying the earth was round, or trees had leaves—it was only the beginning.

  The Blue Sweatshirt

  Powdered sugar drifted down on the park. A group of little kids with name tags pinned to their jackets lay on their backs making snow angels while their teacher clapped for them. Dottie scooped up a mittenful and ate it.

  “Hello, Shawnster,” she said as he jumped out from behind a tree.

  Shawn walked backward in front of them. He still hadn’t gotten a new hat, and his hair glittered with snow.

  “By the way.” Dottie stopped and put her hands on her hips, one of her new, infuriating habits. “Mo already has a boyfriend. Back home. He writes her love letters.”

  Shawn looked stupefied. “So?”

  “Just a tip to the hip, as Ms. Thomas says.”

  “It’s my duty to inform you,” Shawn said, “that according to the laws of big sisterhood, Mo is now required to beat you up.” He turned to Mo. “I’m here to help, if you want.”

  Dottie fake screamed and started to run. Her first-grade backpack was so light, it flopped up and down on her back.

  “There’s only one safe place!” Speedy as he was, Shawn lapped circles around her. “The Soap Opera. Go!”

  Today Carmella was all about scarves—tied in her hair, knotted at her throat, lassoing her hips.

  “Red!” she cried. “What’s up?”

  “I got a gecko! I’m teaching him tricks. He already knows ‘Lie down.’”

  “He’s a genius!”

  “I read that book you gave me,” Dottie said. “To make sure I’m doing everything right. My sister helps too.” She patted Mo’s arm. “She cleans out his poop. It looks just like dried-up chocolate ice cream.”

  “My my my. Lizard poop. That’s a true test of sisterhood. You two . . .” Carmella’s gaze lingered on them; then she poked her lip and turned away.

  The place grew busier and busier as afternoon spun into evening. A ballpoint pen left in a shirt pocket exploded during the spin cycle, and all the guy’s clothes turned baby blue. When a teenage girl started screaming and stopped her washer to fish out her cell phone, Carmella clucked and said it must be Forgetful Friday. Round and round people’s clothes twirled, bright cloth fish in their big aquariums.

  “There’s a guy with like five hundred tattoos,” Shawn said, looking up from his book. “He has them between his toes. On his eyelids. That is one dedicated dude.”

  A good-looking man, half again as tall as Carmella, asked for advice on the dark, oily stain on his shirt. Pearls might have been dropping from her lips, the way he bent toward her, catching every word. Before long he was explaining the stain was tamari sauce. Did Carmella like Thai food? Carmella replied she liked any kind of food she didn’t have to make, since cooking was the one thing on this earth Carmella couldn’t do. What do you know—the man loved to cook! Especially for other people!

  “He’s probably going to be her boyfriend now,” said Dottie.

  “She’s already got a bazillion.” Shawn shut the Ripley’s and yawned. “I got this book memorized.”

  “It’s about time you read something else,” Dottie told him. “Ms. Thomas says variety is the hot sauce of life.”

  Homer left for supper at the church on the next block. As Mo, Dottie, and Shawn got ready to go, Carmella brought a pair of lost and found earmuffs and settled them on Shawn’s head. Then she handed Mo a plastic bag.

  Inside was the blue sweatshirt, washed, fluffed, and folded. When Mo held it up, a fragrance heavy and light, sweet and sharp filled the air. It was honey and lemons, roses and just-cut grass, all mixed with something pure and clear as water tumbling over rocks.

  “Umm,” Mo said, sniffing.

  “That’s the smell of something once lost and now found,” Carmella said with a wink.

  Something both pretty and warm. Until Mo could claim her old red sweatshirt, it was just what her wardrobe needed. Still, she was reluctant to take it.

  “It’s your turn,” Carmella said, reading Mo’s mind. “You’ll see.”

  Shoulder to shoulder, the three kids walked home. The days were getting longer now, the light stretching on both ends like pastel-colored taffy. Shawn told how Carmella’s parents had both died when their car crashed in a freak blizzard. That made Dottie slide her hand into Mo’s. So Carmella didn’t have parents, and as they knew, no sister, either. She lived upstairs, and every morning she got dressed, brewed herself some tea, and came down to work. Most everybody knew her, some for years, some just for the few months they rented in the neighborhood.

  Here Shawn paused to crouch and pet a gray cat sitting in a doorway. The cat flopped over, paws tucked up, and rolled from side to side. Its purr said i
t had never gotten a better belly rub in all its nine lives.

  “I’m never living all by myself,” said Dottie. “Not even when I’m grown up.”

  Shawn stood back up. The furry lost and found earmuffs stood out on his head like he was part teddy bear.

  “Carmella’s happy.” He snapped off a dagger-sized icicle hanging from a stop sign. “She’s like a wizard. People walk into her place loaded down with smelly clothes and walk out all fresh and clean.”

  But was she as happy as Shawn said? Every time the talk turned to sisters, something came over her. Life had played Carmella a dirty trick, not giving her one. What a perfect sister she’d make!

  “You know she’ll be there, anytime you’re looking for her,” he said. “Like the moon.”

  “The moon travels,” Dottie said. “Ms. Thomas says . . .”

  “Okay. Like the sun.” Bending backward, he javelined the icicle into the air. It crash-landed at the feet of a woman wearing a fur hat the size of a bucket.

  “What in the world!” she yelped.

  “I’m outta here!” Shawn took off.

  No sooner had they turned onto East 213th than Dottie began to run, the way she always did. Their father must have been watching for them, because he stepped outside and raised his arm as if Dottie were a long fly ball he was preparing to catch. When Mo got closer, she saw he was holding the phone.

  “For you,” he said. But when Mo reached for it, he pressed the phone to his chest.

  “Is something wrong?” Mo asked.

  “Da’s in the hospital.” His hand cupped her shoulder. “Mercey’s really upset. Think you can handle it?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s what I thought.” He pushed open the door. Still wearing her jacket and backpack, Mo took the phone. Mr. Wren led Dottie into the kitchen.

  “Hi, Merce!”

  Her best friend started crying.

  “Merce? What happened? Is she . . .”

  “She slipped on the ice. She was on her way to Abdul’s and she fell, and nobody was around.” Her voice quavered. “How can that be? Somebody’s always out on Fox Street!”

  Mo pictured Da lying alone on a sidewalk, in pain. Calling out, and nobody coming. In some terrible way, this felt like something she’d already seen, like a bad dream come true.