“Is she . . . ?”
“She doesn’t know how long she lay there. Finally that woman who moved into your house came along. Sarah? She called 911.” Mercedes gave another sob. “If only Da had moved in with us! This never would have happened!”
Mo’s mind flew to the last time she’d talked to Da, when Da had asked her what the brave new world was like.
“She broke her arm. She had to have surgery and get pins in it. And they’re still not sure—she might—she was out in the cold so long—she could lose some more toes.”
Mo sank into a booth. She pulled off her backpack and clutched it like a shield. The last time they’d talked, Mo had told Da how hard moving away was. Instead of reassuring Da, and urging her to move in with Mercedes, she’d poured out all her own troubles.
“I . . . I’m so sorry!” she said.
“Monette’s with her now. I begged to go too, but she said no. She left me stuck here with Three-C.”
Mo squeezed her backpack tight. A bit of blue popped through the half-open zipper. Carmella’s sweatshirt. Pulling it out, Mo burrowed her nose into its lost and found perfume.
“That family?” Mercedes sniffled. “Sarah and Min and whatever the husband’s named? They called to tell us what happened. They’re really nice. Oh, Mo.” Mecedes drew a long, shuddery breath. “I feel better just talking to you.”
Mo swallowed. Her best friend wouldn’t say that if she knew it was Mo’s fault Da had gotten hurt.
“Say something,” Mercedes begged.
“Could you . . . could you give Da a message for me?”
“Oh, Mo.” Mercedes’ voice quavered. “You know I will.”
“Tell her I said to remember, fortune favors the brave.”
“She’ll like that.”
Mercedes promised to call Mo again soon.
Mo hung up but stayed slumped in the booth. The picture of Da lying hurt on an icy sidewalk wouldn’t go away, and she realized she was shivering. She tugged the blue sweatshirt over her head. Its scent wrapped her in its arms, soothing her.
That night, Mo couldn’t sleep. Her painted-shut window rattled in the wind. She thought of Homer sleeping in the shelter, Carmella all alone above the Laundromat, Da in a hospital room. From outside came the muffled sound of a dog barking, over and over. Was he lost? On a night like this? Why didn’t anyone come find him?
Mo pushed back her covers and tiptoed across the cold floor, around the green armchair, and down the steps. Flicking on the light, she checked that Handsome was all right. His silly starfish feet, his funny little leopard suit! The two of them stared at each other, unblinking. Was it really true, as Dottie’s book claimed, that lizards didn’t get lonesome? When she put her face close to the glass, he shot out his pink tongue.
“Handsome? Lonesome?” she asked.
Handsome slowly raised his foot, as if trying to tell her something. But what?
Back upstairs, Mo took the blue sweatshirt back out of the drawer and pulled it on over her pajamas. As she wiggled her arms into the sleeves, the dog stopped barking at last. Slipping under the covers, she discovered Dottie had crawled into her bed. Her little sister snuggled up against her, and Mo drifted into sleep.
The Curse, Part Two
“You’re wearing that sweatshirt again,” said Megan. “Not to criticize or anything, but it’s the third time this week.”
“It’s comfortable. I like it.”
Spring break would begin that Friday. Mo was counting the hours so desperately, you’d think she had something to look forward to. Outside, the crusty old snow still hid the grass. At home, her father continued to go through boxes of Band-Aids as fast as Mo could replace them.
Just last night, the electricity had dimmed, then surged, then gone out completely. Down in their dungeon basement, Mr. Wren had fiddled with the circuit breakers, calling up the stairs to Mo, “Now? How about now?” At last he’d coaxed the lights back on, but the freezer still refused to cooperate. They’d had to set their meat outside the back door in a cooler. Way past midnight, Mo woke to hear him trudging upstairs. She cringed, knowing he’d forget and stub his toe on the green chair, and sure enough, “Yeow!” Why couldn’t he ever remember? This morning he had dark circles under his eyes, and his coffee breath smelled as strong as if he’d chewed raw beans.
Maybe, Mo thought, maybe that’s the curse. Stubbornness. If there was ever a place that resisted getting reinvented, it was Corky’s. But her father was just as pigheaded. She’d never in her life seen him work so hard at something. To tell the truth, back on Fox Street, she’d wondered if he could work hard. Now he’d proved he was capable, but what if he was working at the wrong thing? The impossible thing?
The clamor of the lunchroom rose up around her. When she was home, she felt angry at her father, but away from him, she missed him. Did that make sense?
Mo nuzzled her chin down inside her sweatshirt. Its scent was fading, but if she sniffed hard, she could still catch it.
“Are you getting a cold?” Megan asked.
“Umm, I don’t think so.”
“Maybe we could go shopping together over spring break,” Megan said. “My mom could take us to Crocker Place.”
Mo was so startled, she nearly lost her grip on her tray. This was the first official Eastside Park School invitation she’d gotten. She recognized it for a big moment, even as she wished Megan had said, “Maybe we can watch a movie.” Or “Maybe we can bake cookies.” Mo was as pitiful at shopping as her father was at home repair. Plus, where would she ever get the money?
“Okay,” she said.
“Sweet!” Megan beamed. “This Saturday. And you can come over my house afterward. I’ll teach you to French braid.”
Mary, Asha, and the other girls smooshed together, making room for them. At the next table, Shawn wriggled around as if his skin was an especially bad fit today. After Mo threw away her garbage, she stopped beside him.
“What time is it in Tokyo?”
“Eleven-thirty p.m.,” he said, not even consulting his watch. “And five-thirty p.m. in Niger. I have my tutor today, so I have to skip Carmella’s. Please don’t weep.”
And Dottie had Daisy Scouts. Mo would be on her own.
At three o’clock Cleveland time, Shawn cometed through the door. Filing behind, Mo listened to Mary and Asha talk about Pet Universe, where they had kittens you were allowed to hold.
“You like kittens?” Asha asked Mo as they crossed the street.
“Well, duh,” said Mary, laughing. “You might as well ask her if she’s a normal human being!”
Were they inviting her to come along? Should she run home and tell her father? But what if they weren’t really, or what if she tagged along and when it was only the three of them, Mo’s tongue tied itself in a knot? Should she take the risk? She had to decide right this minute.
As if the answer might appear among the graffiti, Mo looked across the grass at the bus shelter. Someone with big feet and no hat was shinnying up its edge.
“There he is,” said Mary, following Mo’s eyes. “Your faithful shadow!”
“He’s actually kind of cute looking,” said Asha. “If only he didn’t have the most annoying personality ever.”
“Well.” Mo remembered the day she’d been sitting in the shelter, half frozen, and he’d come along to take her to the Soap Opera. As much as she longed to go see the kittens, Mo felt a little bridge arcing across the frozen park, linking her and him. “He’s not so bad. I mean, if you saw him outside school, you’d . . .”
“School’s more than enough for me!” said Mary. “You’re too nice, Mo.”
“Yeah,” said Asha. “There’s such a thing, you know.”
They walked away, kicking up sparkly sprays of snow with their boots. Mo stomped in the opposite direction. As she approached, Shawn’s eyebrows lifted into igloo shapes.
“Yo,” he said, fake surprised. “It’s you.”
“You said you had your tutor today.”
For once Shawn didn’t speed ahead but tried to match his pace to hers. They took a right, a left, another right. They were almost there when Shawn stopped and pointed.
“Hey, it’s open!”
It was a little place next to the hardware. The COMING SOON sign they’d passed for weeks had been replaced by NOW OPEN—THE ROBIN’S EGG CAFE. Peering in, they saw a cozy room with pretty blue walls. People crowded the tables or bent to choose from a glass case brimming with sandwiches, muffins, and other delicious-looking things. When a woman opened the door and stepped outside, the smell of butter and cinnamon made a beeline straight for their noses.
“They’re giving away free samples,” she said, pulling on her gloves. “And everything’s perfectly scrumptious!”
Shawn dove for the door, but Mo caught his arm.
“We can’t go in there,” she said. “It’s the enemy. It’s direct competition for the Wren House.”
“One nanobite? How much can it hurt? I mean, considering the you-know-what?”
“You’re always talking about the curse!” she cried. “What do you really know about it, anyway? Did you just make it up or is it real? I need to know.”
Shawn shot an invisible basket, pulled his pockets inside out, stooped to pick up the junk that fell out. At last he gave up and looked Mo in the eye.
“It’s what people say. I’m not sure if that makes it real or not.”
“What else happened there? Besides Corky vanishing in the night?”
“Before him, it was an Italian restaurant called Bruno’s. Bruno hated kids. He was nice if you were with your parents. Otherwise he’d tell you get lost or he’d grind you in his sausage maker. One night everybody who ate there got sick, and people started saying he used bad meat, and after a while he went out of business.”
“How about before Bruno?”
“That was this sweet old lady named Granny Bumps. Or so she said. She ran a pie shop. One night a robber broke in, and she whomped him in the head with a hot blueberry pie. Only when the cops came, they took her in too. Her real name was Lola, and she was wanted for running a gambling ring.”
Shawn slumped against the wall. Sticking to one topic this long was wearing him out. Still, he forged on.
“Before that, it was a whole long line of people. It stretches back before I lived here. Maybe before I was born.” The corners of his mouth twitched. “Oh, yeah. There was another guy, I think his name was Bob. Bob was so stingy, he refused to even pay anyone a compliment. He . . .”
Mo clapped her hands over her ears. “That’s enough,” she said. “More than enough!”
The Robin’s Egg door swung open again, releasing a river of sugar and spice. In spite of herself, Mo’s mouth watered. Could the curse of Corky’s be that it attracted the wrong people, over and over? If only she knew what had happened to Corky. Why had he fled in the middle of the night? And where had he gone? A bus rumbled by, headed toward the river and the other side of town. If the Wrens had to leave, there was only one place on earth she could imagine them going.
Shawn consulted his watch. “I’m dead. Tell Carmella I’m at my tutor’s!” As he raced away, he yelled over his shoulder, “We’ll bust that curse! We can burn stuff and bury stuff and my stepsister has these crystals and . . .”
Mo’s thoughts rattled around her head like stones inside a can. She should go home, but somehow, next thing she knew, she was pushing open the door of the Soap Opera.
Number Three was pulled out from the wall. Gripping a wrench, Homer regarded its insides with the same pleasure Shawn did the photo of the man who could hold eleven diamondback rattlers in his mouth at once. Mo didn’t see Carmella till her head poked up from behind the machine.
“Can you give us a hand here, sugar?” she called.
“Probably a clogged drain line,” Homer said, passing the wrench to Mo. “Like to learn some plumbing? It’s a useful skill.” He ambled across the room.
On the floor, a big metal toolbox gaped wide, displaying pliers and hammers and screwdrivers of every size. Carmella was investigating a black rubber hose sticking out from the bottom of the washer.
“Something probably got caught between the tubs,” she said. “Poor old Number Three just spins its wheels but can’t pump.” She laughed. “Reminds me of some people I know. Get a grip on this hose, sugar. That’s right.” She selected a pair of needle-nose pliers from her toolbox.
“I didn’t know you fixed the machines too,” Mo said.
“Homer taught me. He’s a jack-of-all-trades.” She nodded across the room, where he pulled a tattered tablecloth from the lost and found and settled it capelike around his shoulders. “Just pray it’s not the pump. That I can’t fix, and I don’t really want to buy a new one.” Carmella poked the pliers around inside the hose. Ironing her lips into a straight line, she regarded the ceiling. “I could’ve been a surgeon, if I could stomach the sight of blood,” she said.
“How’d you ever learn how to do so much stuff?”
“Trial and error. A professional’s just an amateur who didn’t quit. Aha!”
Mo watched Carmella draw out the pliers. Dangling from the tip was a black bra.
“The culprit!” She flung it into a trash can.
“Not the lost and found?” Mo asked.
“Now and then, a thing comes to the end of the line!”
Mo watched Carmella rehook the hose, check and clean some other parts, squirt oil here and there, and at last screw on the back panel. It was true—she’d make a thorough, gentle doctor. Once her patient was all patched up, she and Mo pushed it back into place.
“By the way,” said Carmella with a wiggle of her eyebrows, “that sweatshirt looks adorable on you.” She switched the machine on for a test run. “Shawn went to his tutor, I hope?”
How could Carmella keep so many things straight? It was as if she stored knowledge not just inside her head, but in special compartments in her fingers and toes too. When Number Three commenced to both spin and pump, she unlocked the vending machine and selected two bags of chips. They sat side by side on the van bench, feet tucked under them.
“This is the definition of cozy.” Carmella ate her chips one by one, licking her fingers after each. “And where’s Big Red?”
“Daisy Scouts.”
“The way she looks up to you!” Carmella considered the fringe on the bright scarf twisted in her long hair. “Like you not only hung the moon but every single star, one by one. No, like you’re the moon itself!”
“You might need glasses, Carmella.”
“Ha. Joke all you like, little wren. Just as long as you know how lucky you are!” Carmella’s feet hit the floor with a thump. “All right. Time for me to get back to work.”
“Carmella,” Mo blurted, “do you believe in being under a curse?”
Carmella sat back. She carefully selected another chip and considered it. Mo began to feel better, knowing Carmella was preparing a lecture on such a ridiculous, ignorant notion.
“I do,” Carmella said. “I surely do.”
Mo’s mouth went so dry, she couldn’t swallow. Bits of chip lay on her tongue like dust.
“Carmella’s under one herself.”
“You?” Mo managed the one word.
Carmella nodded. She creased and folded her empty chip bag as if it were a piece of laundry. “It’s a bad one. I don’t think I’ll ever break it.” Her beautiful, gold-flecked eyes dimmed.
The door kept opening and closing. The after-work rush was under way, and Carmella stood up.
“Don’t ask what just came over me. Carmella never talks this way.” She gave Mo a sad smile. “Thanks for listening, sugar. But just forget what I said, okay?”
And she swept away to help her many customers.
Don’t Worry
On Friday, the last afterno
on before spring break, Mr. Grimm showed the class a movie. Everyone had already seen it, plus it was for kids far younger, but Mo considered this a symbolic gesture. Even teachers recognized a day for rejoicing.
“I’ll call you tomorrow,” Megan said before she hurried to meet her babysitter. “I can’t wait!”
“Me either,” said Mo, though she’d still rather do most anything than try on clothes. And she still had no idea where she’d get the money to buy them.
Some kindly giant hand had found the sun’s plug and connected it. If you closed your eyes and tilted your face, the backs of your eyelids prickled with color, and warmth brushed your brow and cheeks. In the park, green grass islands dotted the snowy sea.
Dottie picked up a fallen, shiny-wet branch.
“I wish we were going someplace,” she said, dragging it behind her. “K.C.’s family goes to this really cool indoor water park.”
“I guess you wish you had another family,” Mo teased.
“No.” Dottie broke the stick in half and scratched her head with it. “Just sometimes.”
Mo couldn’t believe it. Once upon a time, Dottie’s biggest fear was whether Mo would always be her sister. But that was ancient history, apparently. Dottie tossed the stick over her shoulder and started walking in the wrong direction.
“Where do you think you’re going?”
“The Robin’s Egg is giving away free samples all week. They got these sugar cookies that are to die for.” At the mention of sugar, Dottie’s face softened. “You should come too, Mo.”
“That’s the enemy! We can’t go there.”
“The lady’s really nice. She wears purple nail polish.”
“We can’t give her our business, and that’s that. Besides, this isn’t Fox Street. You’re not allowed to go places alone.”
The two old friends were back on their bench for the first time in weeks. Both wore binoculars around their wrinkly necks. Pigeons clustered at their feet, making greedy, chortling sounds. In the snow their tracks looked like a line of miniature jet planes, swooping and curving.
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