When I told my sister about the conversation I had with the fox, I could tell she was jealous. She didn’t want to admit yet that I could talk to the foxes before she did, but here we are. We had started school a few weeks before and had a new headmaster and he was more aligned with getting along with all of our neighbors. All the squirrels, all the birds and even the bears. I didn’t mind the squirrels, birds and foxes, but I tended to shy away from the neighbors who could hurt me.
My favorite neighbors were the wild mustangs who lived just over the ridge. The fox (who was named Sam) led me to the ridge and the mustangs. We sat in wonder as we watched them gallop across the wide-open fields and went back every day for the next two weeks. The last day I saw Sam he had been limping. He mumbled something about a snake hole, but I couldn’t quite get him to tell me what had happened. Had he been running from a predator? Or had he just been careless? I had never known foxes to be careless, but the day Sam didn’t show up, I knew he hadn’t been careless. I knew he had run into a larger problem.
I had a feeling that larger problem was my sister. All I had to do now was plot my revenge. And I knew exactly how to turn the forest against her.
Standing Room Only 