One Day and One Amazing Morning on Orange Street (16 page)

The house on Orange Street was rented many times over, until years later, an earthquake shook its foundation. That's when they knocked down the house and what was left of the shed. Nobody ever built them up again.

Much later, Larry figured out a few things.

An orange could be a pretty good birthday gift.

A blue stone was just a blue stone, except when it helped you think about other things.

A poem could be written by anyone.

And Pug wasn't dumb when he looked at those pictures, remembering good times, hoping for more.

One day, years later, because Mrs. Tilley had died, Larry returned to Orange Street. He was now a tall, bald man with
a beard and a green car. And except for his height, he looked just like his father.

The back bone connected to the neck bone

The neck bone connected to the head bone

Now hear the word of the Lord!

 

Little Pop was doing his exercises. Nelson was squawking. It was a morning like all the others at 301½, except it wasn't, because Leandra had stayed up a lot of the night to greet it. She'd even witnessed the sun rising for the very first time, as it floated up like a lazy balloon from behind the hills. The other difference was Bean, whose life they had saved. It was a wonderful thing, to save a life.

Ali stood outside Leandra's house, waiting to help her escort Bean back home to the orange tree. She peeked into the FedEx box. “I'm glad everything worked out. It doesn't matter who nursed the bird, as long as it survived. You did a super job, Leandra.”

“Thank you,” Leandra said. Then she yawned, because of all the sleep she'd missed.

Ali thought Leandra looked different, somehow: She seemed sweeter, with a new, serene smile.

The girls began walking down Orange Street, Leandra carrying the FedEx box, Ali thinking about the Girls Who Save Birds' Lives Club.

“I'm sure your wishing stone helped save Bean, too,” said Leandra.

“Well, I don't,” said Ali. “Wishing is babyish and dumb. You only wish when there's nothing else you can do, and you've kind of given up hope. I was thinking of burying it again, except it's so pretty.”

“I think wishing
is
hoping,” Leandra said. “What's wrong with hoping?”

Ali stopped in her tracks. “Leandra Jackson! That is absolutely the most incandescent, amazing thing I've ever heard anyone say.”

“What's incandescent?” Leandra asked.

“Shining and clear. Brilliant. I will try to remember what you said, always.” And all of a sudden, incandescently, Ali knew what else to say to her friend. “I think you're going to make a great older sibling.”

“You do? Really?”

“I do. I really do.”

Robert noticed the hummingbird parade as the girls passed beneath his window, although he didn't realize it was a hummingbird parade. He did wonder what was in
their
box, why they kept bending over it, and murmuring quietly. He went to get his own shoebox, which contained a few orange chunks, an empty tuna fish can, napkins, and some leftover restaurant rice balled up in plastic wrap.

It was time. He was ready. Ready to wow everyone— especially Ali—with the magic and wonder of his ancient trick.

He ran outside and followed them down the street toward the empty lot.

“The Girls Who Save Birds' Lives Club should take turns guarding the tree,” Ali was saying, as the girls reached the lot. “We have to make sure the babies are safe, until they can fly on their own.”

“Oh, don't worry, I can handle it,” Leandra said. “It's my project and my bird, after all!”

“It's not
your
bird!” said Ali.

“Well, who else's then? OK, the mother hummingbird's, of course, but I think I should be the human in charge.” Leandra's new, serene smile had disappeared.

“Well—” said Ali.

“And I don't like that name for our club, The Girls Who Save Birds' Lives Club. Whee-hoo! What a mouthful!”

“We can talk about it later,” Ali said, grinning. She was actually relieved that the old, bossy Leandra was back!

Bunny/Bonita was coming down the street. She was finishing up her breakfast banana and trying hard to concentrate on her right-side-of-the-mouth chewing—for her mother's safety. The good part about right-side-of-the-mouth chewing was it took her mind off her mother's airplane, but only for a few seconds at a time. As soon as she stopped chewing, her mind went right back to her worry.

And there were Leandra and Ali with that baby humming-bird! Bunny/Bonita tapped her mother's gardening hat, then blinked rapidly three times. Then she checked her ticking watch. They better hurry up and put that baby back into its
nest, so she'd have time for her good-luck wave. Only twenty minutes left before the plane was scheduled to fly by!

The strange thing was, and they talked about this later, none of them had thought much about the orange cone since the other morning. It had been sitting at the curb in front of the lot for twenty-four hours, blending right in with the rest of the Orange Street scenery. This morning it had even taken on a kind of innocent glow, the color of sunrise and juice. It was only when that brown truck drove up the street, rattling to a stop right behind the orange cone, that they began to worry again about the color orange.

man hopped from the truck and moved the orange cone from the curb to the sidewalk. When Ms. Snoops saw that man and that truck, she knew what was going to happen, just as the orange cone had forewarned.

She dialed 9-1-1.

“I'd like to report a murder,” she said, when the dispatcher answered.

That wasn't exactly true, she realized.

“Actually, it's an attempted murder I'm reporting.”

That wasn't true, either.

“The murder hasn't been attempted yet, but it will be attempted any minute!” She was practically whispering
now, even though the attemptee outside the window couldn't hear her.

There was silence at the other end of the phone line.

Probably looking me up on the computer
, thought Ms. Snoops.
As usual
. . .

Ms. Snoops seemed to remember causing a ruckus the last few times she'd tried to report a murder, as if she herself were the criminal. People even accused her of “crying wolf”! Wolves had nothing to do with this crime.

And how could they, when all the wolves, well, actually coyotes, poor things, had disappeared from the area, too?

Finally the dispatcher asked, “Is this another Bird of Paradise?”

“No. Those have already disappeared. Extinct on Orange Street, you might say.”

“Dying potato vine or sick night-blooming jasmine?”

“Gone, too, from neglect and abuse.”

Ms. Snoops supposed it was all there, lit up on the computer screen: all the old cases she'd reported in the past, to no avail.

“Starving cactus? Sunburned azalea? Weeping willow?” asked the dispatcher.

“Excuse me, I've never reported
those
! And certainly not
a weeping willow. I don't remember one growing in this neighborhood,” said Ms. Snoops indignantly. She wasn't sure, but she thought she heard the dispatcher giggling.

“Who, or what, is going to be murdered this time?”

“A tree. A very old orange tree.”

“Whoa. I'll get the entire police force right on this.”

“You're making fun of me.”

“Ma'am, I have a hard job, sometimes a sad one, and yes, I'm not taking you seriously. Thanks for making me smile this morning, but I just can't tie up this line.”

“I guess I understand,” said Ms. Snoops. “I just didn't know who else to call.”

Ms. Snoops hung up the phone and sat down on her orange and green striped couch, plucking at the antimacassars. Mitzi padded over and added a few snazzy scratches to the stripes.

“Well, I'm glad I made someone smile,” she said to her cat.

That was one of Ms. Snoops's rules of life: Always try to make at least one person smile as you go about your day. It was a worthwhile rule, except it didn't feel as worthwhile when that person was smiling at your expense—or at the expense of a worthy cause, such as saving an old tree.

Ms. Snoops thought of another rule of life, one she was breaking that very moment.

Don't just sit there. Do something.

Do something about that huge brown monstrosity of a machine parked in front of the empty lot and its heartless, cigar-chomping driver at the controls, and his muscular helpers. She'd seen their likes before, on Orange Street. She knew what murderous crime they were contemplating. That orange tree had survived lightning, fires, and earthquakes, but it would never survive that vile crew!

But Ms. Snoops couldn't think of anything to do. She didn't feel like eating her breakfast, or drinking a last glass of fresh, organic orange juice (a heartbreaking thought), or walking across the room to work at her desk. It all felt so inevitable.

So Ms. Snoops just sat there breaking her rule for a few minutes. Then she decided to go to her desk and call 9-1-1.