A Fox

　　A fox. A real live red fox, tiny, with a small patch of darker fur just above its left front leg. Like a beauty spot.

　　Its eyes are so kind I just about to burst. That same look in another human's eyes, and my soul would be theirs for sure.

　　

　　I don't want it to run off. I want it to stay here forever. I want it to watch over the tent, like a sphinx, a bodyguard, a dragon.

　　With the fox out front, the outcasts' tent is transformed into tent of miracles.

　　

　　I draws near. One step, two.

　　I don't have any bread, fox. But come closer anyway. Come.

　　Three steps, four.

　　

　　It's within a few inches of my fingertips. With its ears pricked, it looks like it's waiting for me to tell a joke.

Jane, the fox and me, P78-79
by Fanny Britt, illustrated by Isabelle Arsenault
ISBN 978-1-55498-360-5

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A Laurentian Forest

　　Sometimes my mom invites her friends over for super.

　　Lenny, Marthe, Anita, Gerard, Ruth.

　　I lie on the the living-room floor doing my homework. With one ear, I hear their voices in the kitchen, with the other, I hear my mom's music coming from the stereo.

　　These days it's Kate and Anna McGarrigle over and over again.

　　

　　Listening to them, I imagine myself a gorgeous stubborn singer travelling the world with hope and guitar, turning as rough and piney as a Laurentian forest.

　　

　　My brothers think the McGarrigle sisters are too sappy. They'd rather listen to The Police.

　　They's rather lock themselves in their room with Mario Bros. And some Licorice. They are as skinny as rails, so they are allowed.

　　

　　Tonight the music, Anita's and Ruth's squeals, the joy shimmering in the light from the orange-fringed lamp, the leg of lamb, all of it helps me forget that tomorrow I'll be getting on a bus to Lake Kanawana with forty kids in shorts, not one of them a friend.

Jane, the fox and me, P54-57
by Fanny Britt, illustrated by Isabelle Arsenault
ISBN 978-1-55498-360-5

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A Taste of Eternity

　　Spring arrives and so do the flower planters on our balcony.

　　Barely two months of school left. A taste of eternity.

　　My mom stops smoking again.

　　

　　Sometimes the weather's so nice I walk home from school.

　　

　　I'm all flushed by the time I get home.

　　My hair plastered to my scalp.

　　I tell myself I can eat some caramels, I walked so much.

　　

Jane, the fox and me, P30-33
by Fanny Britt, illustrated by Isabelle Arsenault
ISBN 978-1-55498-360-5

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Overstayed Its Welcome

　　Today it's too cold for crinolines. Winter has overstayed its welcome like some rude houseguest.

　　Waiting for the bus on sherbrooke today is like waiting to die.

　　Or what I imagine it would be like.

Jane, the fox and me, P15
by Fanny Britt, illustrated by Isabelle Arsenault
ISBN 978-1-55498-360-5

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