Page 2
“Knox. Like knocking on a door, but it’s K-N-O-X.”
“Wow.” I gasp. That’s cool. “I’m Felicity.”
“Wow.” He gasps, like maybe my name is cool too. “Like electricity but with an F.”
That makes me smile. My tongue brushes against where my front tooth is missing. My S’s kind of sound like tha’s.
“I think so.”
“Well, we’re not strangers now, Felicity. Maybe I can come play with you at your house?”
I think about it for a minute and decide yes. I want a friend to come play at my house besides Mommy’s friends. They all smell funny and don’t talk right. But Knox doesn’t seem to have problems with either of those things.
“Okay, you can come with me, and we can ask Mommy when we get there.”
“Okay.” He smiles, and he has a tooth missing right up front just like me. For once, his blond hair is out of his big green eyes, and he looks excited to come with me.
I go to pull the wagon, but he gets to it before I can, tugging it along the dirt and gravel path toward the back road I used to get over here. On the way to my house, Knox tells me all about his family’s ranch. He explains that it’s a farm with lots of animals—not ranch like the dipping sauce for your fries.
He says they have horses and cows. Ducks and goats. Even some puppies that run around the barns. He tells me I can come back later today after we play at my house and I can actually pet them all.
I try to take the wagon from him because he’s breathing a lot and sweaty, but he won’t let me. He says he likes pulling heavy things around. I don’t argue because I hate having to drag that thing back home. The wheel squeaks the whole way, and right when we’re about to be in my neighborhood, he bends over and messes around with it. Suddenly, when we start moving again, it’s fixed. Quiet as a…something quiet.
I think Knox is good at fixing stuff.
“You live here?” he asks in awe as we look out to the big row of houses side by side. They’re not tall and wide like Knox’s house. They’re all long and skinny, and some have wheels hiding under them. Most of them don’t have porches either. There’s big jumps you have to take to get down from the door. And they’re shiny, like metal. Not wooden like Knox’s.
“This is so cool.” He starts pulling the wagon even faster. “I bet you have a ton of friends over here. The only kids near our house are my sister and me.”
“You have a sister?” I’d love a sister.
“Yeah.” He nods. “She’s nice, but sometimes she’s mean. And she doesn’t like to play with the animals like I do.”
“Hm. Will she be there when I come back?”
He shrugs. “Probably.”
I guide him to where my house is on the third row. We each lift up a heavy jug of water and put it by my back door. I use the stack of concrete bricks as steps to climb up.
“Let me go wake my mommy up and ask if you can come in.”
Knox smiles at me, big and bright like it’s Christmas morning. “Okay.”
I open the door and step around all the stuff on the floor to work my way to the couch. Mommy is on her side with her back facing me. She smells like how her friends do, and my nose curls. It’s mean to say someone stinks, but I’m allowed to think it.
“Mommy,” I whisper and move her back around. She is a super heavy sleeper. Sometimes she doesn’t wake up for two or three days. “Mommy!” I shout in her ear. She doesn’t really move, so I put my ear to her back and listen to her heartbeat. It’s slow and quiet.
“Can my friend come inside?” I ask in her ear. She stays still and I frown to myself. I guess that’s a no.
My feet step over the empty glasses by the couch. I step in something wet and almost whisper an “ew,” but I think that might be rude too. I sneak back over to the door, and when I open it, Knox is staring up at me, all hopeful. I almost want to cry that I can’t bring him in.
“She won’t wake up.” I sigh. “It’ll have to be another time.”
“Oh.” His shoulders move back down. “Okay.”
“Can I still come play later? With the horses and stuff?”
Knox nods. “Yeah. But you probably should wear shoes—there’s poop everywhere. You can borrow my sister’s, just don’t tell her if you step in the poop.”
