Melody Crumbley's Arc

Chapter 1 of 5

Melody Crumbley had been crying for forty minutes when the coyote took her bunny's eye. She was six years old and sitting on the hot gravel beside the family sedan, in the shadow of a sagging convenience store with faded red letters. Her stuffed rabbit, Mr. Boots, lay in her lap with one plastic eye missing. The eye had popped off in the car. She had held it in her palm the whole drive, and she had dropped it when her mother yanked her out by the wrist. Since then she had wailed. Loud. Wet. The kind of crying that made truckers turn their heads. Her father sat in the driver's seat with the door open and his forehead on the steering wheel. Her mother was inside the store buying aspirin. Melody's grandmother mumbled in the back seat about soldiers in a trench. "Shut up already," said her brother Dexter. He crouched in the dirt beside her, poking an ant with a bottle cap. His striped shirt was stained with orange soda. His pockets bulged with things he had stolen from the glove box. He grinned like he was waiting for something to break. Melody sobbed harder. "I want his eye." "It's right there, dummy." She followed his finger. The tiny black bead sat in the gravel by the front tire, catching sun. Then a shape slid out from under the car. It was thin and orange, ribs showing through patchy fur, snout low to the ground. A coyote, or something close to one. It sniffed at the shiny thing. Its blue eyes flicked to Melody and did not care. Melody stopped crying. The coyote's tongue flashed. The eye was gone. The coyote turned and trotted toward the dry brush behind the store, ears back, tail low. "It ate it," Dexter said. He sounded delighted. Melody stood up. Mr. Boots dangled from her fist. Her cheeks were still wet, but her mouth was a hard flat line. She took one step after the coyote, then another. "Dad," Dexter called, bored. "Melody's running away." Her father did not lift his head. Melody ran. Her sandals slapped the gravel. The coyote glanced back, saw her coming, and picked up speed. It slipped between two dry shrubs at the edge of the lot and vanished. Melody reached the shrubs and stopped. The scrub stretched out flat and yellow for a long way. She could not see the coyote. She could not see the eye. She could see a narrow track pressed into the dust where its paws had gone. The track led toward the back of the store, past a stack of crushed crates, toward somewhere she was not allowed to go. Melody wiped her nose on Mr. Boots's ear and followed the tracks.