Fox magic, p.1
Fox Magic, page 1
Beverley Brenna
Copyright ©2017 Beverley Brenna
Illustrations ©2017 Miriam Körner
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without the express
written consent of Red Deer Press, except in the case of brief excerpts in critical reviews and articles. All inquiries should be addressed to Red Deer Press, 195 Allstate Parkway, Markham, ON L3R 4T8
Published in Canada by Red Deer Press
195 Allstate Parkway, Markham, ON L3R 4T8
Published in the United States by Red Deer Press
311 Washington Street, Brighton, MA 02135
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Red Deer Press acknowledges with thanks the Canada Council for the Arts and
the Ontario Arts Council for their support of our publishing program. We acknowledge the
financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund (CBF)
for our publishing activities.
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Brenna, Beverley A., author
Fox magic / Beverley Brenna ; illustrations by Miriam Körner.
ISBN 978-0-88995-552-3 (softcover)
I. Körner, Miriam, 1975-, illustrator II. Title.
PS8553.R382F69 2017 jC813’.54 C2017-904102-9
Publisher Cataloging-in-Publication Data (U.S.)
Names: Brenna, Beverley, 1962-, author. | Körner, Miriam, 1975-, illustrator.
Title: Fox Magic / Beverley Brenna ; illustrations by Miriam Körner.
Description: Markham, Ontario : Red Deer Press, 2017. |Summary: “A twelve-year-old girl in a small town must overcome loss to suicide and face bullying. This story of hope includes a mysterious magical fox that helps her find courage in the power of dreams. The book includes resources for dealing with grief, loss and suicide” – Provided by publisher.
Identifiers: ISBN 978-0-88995-552-3 (pbk.)
Subjects: LCSH: Grief—Juvenile fiction. | Suicide – Juvenile fiction. | Bildungsromans. | BISAC: YOUNG ADULT FICTION / Coming of Age.
Classification: LCC PZ7.B746Fo |DDC [F] – dc23
Edited for the Press by Peter Carver
Text and cover design by Tanya Montini
Cover image by GDallimore used under Creative Commons,
GNU Free Documentation License, Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported
Printed in Canada
To our children
Chapter One
The week after the Bad Thing happened, Chance is back in school. She’s walking away from the water fountain and Monika is right there in front of her.
“She was my cousin, you know,” Monika hisses. “It should have been you.”
Chance just shakes her head and tries to get by.
“Both of them were better than you,” Monika says.
Chance stands still, head down. Nobody else was supposed to know about the suicide pact. Does Monika know? What about the other kids? She waits until Monika turns into the classroom. Then she follows. There is nowhere else to go. At least, not right now.
Chapter Two
When Chance wakes up, her mouth is dry and her heart is pounding. “Breathe!” she tells herself. “Just breathe.” It takes a moment to realize that she’s in her room with music playing from her alarm.
Breathing in. Breathing out. She says the words in her head the way she and her counselor have practiced. When her pulse stops racing, she reaches over and bangs the clock radio until
it’s silent.
It’s Monday morning. The start of a new week. Or simply a copy of last week, and the week before that, and the week before that. The week before that was when the Bad Thing happened, almost a month ago now, but Chance doesn’t want to remember. It feels as if the memory of the Bad Thing is padding around her bed like a wildcat, ready to pounce. And Chance hates cats. She always has.
She throws back the covers, sits up, and leans toward the window, pushing aside the curtain. It’s a new flowered curtain that her mother’s sewn to replace the old blinds, and it runs easily on its hooks—no strings.
Outside, the sun is hesitating on the horizon. A new day. Or is it just a duplicate day in a long straight line of days, standing like dominoes, waiting until one of them falls and knocks down the others?
Everything out there is gray. Gray sky. Gray trees. The matted leaves are like a drab quilt with dead grass poking through. For a moment, Chance thinks she sees a flicker of red-gold weaving among the bushes at the edge of the yard, something solid and oddly familiar, but, as she stares, she realizes that she’s mistaken. Nothing out there is alive except the wind. It’s only the ninth of October, but Chance can feel wintry air pressing through cracks around the window frame. Even the wind feels gray.
The Bad Thing paws at her memory, trying to get a foothold. She looks back at the clock, feeling desperate. Already eight-thirty. How has half an hour passed while she’s been staring at the yard? There’s still time to pull on her clothes, grab a bowl of cereal, and hustle the few blocks to school before the nine o’clock bell. But she doesn’t want to. Something in her, some engine, won’t start. She lets gravity pull her back under the covers, rolling onto her right side with only the deaf ear open to the world. Then she squeezes her eyes shut, gratefully letting herself drift away from everything.
At noon, when the phone rings, Chance knows she should get up to answer it, but she doesn’t move. Lying on her back, her arms and legs are totally relaxed. At the end of each day, they feel as stiff as the bolts on an old car. She stretches her feet into the cool places on the soft sheets and then pulls them back into warmth.
Ten rings. Eleven. Twelve. The ringing stops. She imagines herself as Georgia’s Ford Mustang, the car they’d been fixing with Desiree just before the Bad Thing happened. Just like the car, deserted now in Auntie’s garage, she feels deserted, too. Her mom and dad at work. Her grandparents gone to Arizona for the winter. And her friends …
The phone rings again. It’s probably the school, calling a second time. Or her mom. She rolls over onto her right side so that she can’t hear it.
Her mother is standing beside the bed wearing her blue nursing scrubs. She doesn’t look happy.
“Chance, I can’t be coming home every day to get you up for school! And neither can Dad. Not unless he books another leave of absence. You know we work shifts, and the doctors and our patients need us. Come on, you’ve got to be more responsible!”
“I don’t feel good. I think I have a sore throat.”
“You’re fine! No excuses. Get up out of that bed and you can grab a granola bar on the way out. I’ll drive you.”
“I don’t feel good!” Chance turns her good ear away from her mother, preferring to scramble her mother’s orders if she can. But the words break through.
“It’s only for the afternoon, and then if you’re still complaining, we can go to the clinic after supper. And then—”
“Can’t I just stay home today?” Chance interrupts.
“Nope. You’ve had too many days at home, and Grade 7 is important. Come on. Which top do you want to wear?”
Chance grabs the closest one, a black sweatshirt. She feels like one of those dominoes, dark and dangerous. If she falls, she’ll knock down everyone near her. She knows that for a fact. But that’s their problem. Isn’t it? And anyway, they can get up again. Isn’t it better to be in control, take charge of whatever’s going to happen? Even if it means the end? Better than waiting for trouble.
“I wouldn’t miss anything,” she mutters.
“What?” asks her mother, turning around, the car keys in her hand. “What, Chance?”
“Nothing,” Chance says, and follows her mom out to the car. She has to be careful. Her parents can’t know what she’s thinking. Anyway, a couple more hours and she can be home again. Back in bed. That’s the only place where the Bad Thing can’t reach, try as it might. Out here, in the middle of town, it can easily get at her.
“Why aren’t you wearing that blue jacket of yours?” her mom asks when Chance slips into the front seat beside her. “It’s cold.”
“I don’t know. Maybe I lost it,” Chance mumbles. Her mother sighs.
“It’s important you take care of yourself. And stick to regular routines,” her mother says finally, pulling a Kleenex from the box between the seats and pressing it into Chance’s hand. “You were doing so well last week. Now, wipe those tears and remember to ask about your homework. We can’t have you falling behind. Come on, Chance—you can do it!”
I can’t, Chance thinks, blowing her nose and then taking another Kleenex as more tears fill her eyes.
“We go back to Dr. Hansen on Thursday. And we can see if she’ll offer anything else for these blues,” says her mom. “But for now, the best thing—the very best thing—is to keep going. One foot after the other. Okay?”
“Yeah,” says Chance, forcing herself from the car and into the parking lot. She knows her mother will wait until she gets inside the school, and she drags her feet, moving as slowly
as possible.
“And look for that jacket!” her mother calls out.
The afternoon bell has already gone. Now she’ll need to stop at the front desk for a late slip. And when she enters the classroom, everyone will stare.
Her two best friends killed themselves. There s
“For now,” Chance mutters as she flings open the door of the school. “Just for now.”
Chapter Three
Chance is answering in monosyllables, because that will make the appointment with the doctor go more quickly.
“Yes,” she wants to feel better.
“No,” she isn’t trying to get anybody’s attention by moping around.
“Yes,” she can think clearly and make decisions.
“Yes,” she’s eating normally and getting enough sleep.
“She might be getting too much sleep,” her mother interrupts from the other side of the appointment room. “And she’s not eating so well when she’s sleeping all the time.”
“Sometimes it’s hard to sleep at night, so I want to sleep in,” Chance mutters.
“Have you read those resources I sent home with you last time?” asks the doctor. “Checked out any of the online sites?”
“No,” says Chance. “I mean, yes. Everything’s fine. I’m fine.”
“And you would tell me if you weren’t feeling fine?”
“Uh huh,” says Chance.
“And you still don’t want to explore any options about that left ear? You know the good thing about having all this medical attention is that sometimes opportunities you didn’t know existed can be explored.”
“What?” says Chance.
“Your ear. You don’t want us to try and help you with that?”
“What?” Chance repeats.
“Very funny,” says the doctor.
“I can hear fine. If I want to,” Chance says.
“And there’s nothing new that you want to tell me? About anything?”
Chance shakes her head.
Her mother interrupts again.
“She just got a math test back. A hundred percent. So that’s a good sign!”
“Yes, that’s a very good sign,” says the doctor. “Shows that you’re concentrating on the present, just as you should. Good for you, Chance! Keep it up, and things will start feeling more normal soon.”
Normal? thinks Chance, turning her good ear away from them. Like soon it’ll be Desiree’s birthday and we’ll have a junk-food party, like always? But she doesn’t say it. She also doesn’t say anything about school that day, about the notes shoved into her desk, about the way the other kids keep their distance. Because that’s nothing new.
“Good riddance to bad rubbish,” she muttered when she saw that the others in her group had eased their desks away from hers.
The image of dominoes flies back into her mind. One domino falling against another falling against another. Except, in her case, the first domino stayed upright while the other two tumbled down. Desiree and Georgia had gone through with it. But at the last minute, Chance had chickened out. Something she can never tell her parents. She can never tell anyone that she was part of it.
Everybody knows she and Desiree and Georgia were best friends. Whatever Monika’s heard, it could be just rumors. It’s not a stretch to imagine Chance could be involved in what happened. She’s trying hard to forget, though. Trying hard to pretend she wasn’t there at all. But the memory of her broken promise is around every corner, behind every door. Waiting. Waiting for her like the worst thing in the world.
After school on Friday, Chance takes the long way home, past Georgia’s place. The lights are all off. Auntie Verdine isn’t home. Chance stands at the edge of the lawn for a moment, staring at the garage where Auntie had set them up with the car. When Chance unlocks the garage door, she’s hit immediately by the dusty perfume of mice. She carefully checks the traps. Nothing. And all the cheese is gone. Now she’ll have to try peanut butter. If she’s going to keep working on the car, that is. She looks
at it, unsure.
The old blue 1996 Mustang was a gift to Georgia for her tenth birthday. It had needed work, but they figured that by the time they had their driver’s licenses, the car would at least be roadworthy.
“It was my best car,” Auntie told them, over and over. “And I’m gonna enjoy riding around in it when you guys drive me places.”
Auntie couldn’t drive anymore because of her diabetes. It had started to affect her eyes and, when the doctor told her that driving would be dangerous, Georgia said Auntie cried for a long time. But when she gave Georgia the car, Auntie was happy again.
“I’m gonna keep my window down and make sure everybody sees how much I’m enjoying the ride!” Auntie said, each time she brought them snacks like carrots and celery sticks. “I’m gonna love it!”
Over the past two years, they’d gotten various tools that were now an undeniable set: an adjustable wrench, a torque wrench, a socket and ratchet set, pliers, Phillips and flathead screwdrivers, and a new hydraulic jack, because the old bumper jack that came with the car hadn’t been safe.
At the beginning of summer holidays, they’d scraped together enough money for the right kind of protective mask, and then taken turns using it in a series of assaults on the front brake pads until they finally had them changed. What use had it been, when they’d never drive the car anyway?
Now the tools lie on the floor of the garage like dead bodies, legs splayed, arms out. A Mars Bar wrapper is crumpled beside one of the screwdrivers. A reminder of Georgia’s sweet tooth. Desiree preferred salt—chips, pretzels, Cheezies. And Chance went along with both of them—happy to snack on whatever was at hand.
But that was then. Now the thought of food makes her stomach sick. The doctor finally told her parents to let her alone, said she’d eat when she was ready. But she isn’t ready yet. Even though she’s wearing new jeans, two sizes smaller than her old ones.
The next job on the Mustang is spark plugs, last in the list of things Desiree had written in the folder under Stuff To Fix. Chance looks at the folder. She doesn’t want to touch it, doesn’t want to flip through to find the instructions for spark plugs.
But her hands reach out, brush off the dust, open the folder. She reads the journal that Georgia kept in the front, listing their completed work. Completed before. Before they’d come to the conclusion that life in this town was impossible. Before they’d made the plan. The plan that finished with the Bad Thing.
Chance throws down the folder and sees the two bags of dominoes sitting there on the shelf. She takes one domino from each bag and tucks them into her pocket. Then she backs away from the shelf and walks away from the car, away from the garage, and then runs the short distance home as if something is chasing her. Which it is.
When she gets to her bedroom, her arms and legs are aching. She empties her backpack, carefully piling the handful of notes in the top drawer of her dresser with the others. Reading them first, of course.
Somehow the more she reads, the more she feels she deserves them, no matter how awful they are. Then she sees the new notebook and pen the counselor has given her, remembering Mrs. Morin’s instructions to keep a journal of her thoughts. But instead she wipes her eyes and crawls under the covers. Tired. She is so tired.
The first thing Chance thinks about when she wakes up on Monday is that today is Desiree’s twelfth birthday. Last year, she and Georgia bought all of Desiree’s favorite foods and they stayed up all night at Desiree’s house watching old Harry Potter movies. Cheezies. Popcorn. Chips and dip, and salty chocolate. The works!
Probably they’d be celebrating tonight if the Bad Thing hadn’t happened. But it did happen. As it pushes itself into Chance’s mind, everything else goes into hiding. She turns her head and sees through the gap in her curtains that the sky is gray. And inside her, grayness purrs its satisfaction, stretching into her chest and throat, claws coming out. Then the pain is unbearable. She can’t stand it. The Bad Thing has her and it isn’t letting go.
“Chance!” calls her father from the kitchen. “Breakfast!”
The Bad Thing vanishes at the sound of Dad’s voice, but Chance knows it’s only a matter of time until it returns. It’s just like that cat that used to live across the street in the town where they’d lived before, when Chance was a little kid. Every time Chance went outside, it streaked toward her, scratching her ankles and biting. She has a couple of nasty scars to prove it.
