Free One Day and One Amazing Morning on Orange Street by Joanne Rocklin

house. Manny ran inside, and after a short while he returned, carrying a flushed and sleepy-eyed Edgar, just up from his nap.
    â€œ
When you’re set for the show, you gotta stay in the now
,” Manny crooned.
    This time Manny’s poem sounded like a lullaby. Edgar put his head on Manny’s chest. “We’re off to the lot. It’s cooler there. Come with us?”
    â€œI’ll pass ... for now,” Robert said.
    And so it happened that everyone was in the empty lot that afternoon (except for Robert, who had gone home to practice —the only pointer from Manny which seemed to make any sense!).
    Just around the time Mitzi decided to pounce.

uch later, they’d all discuss how so much had happened in one small space and one small space of time that afternoon in the empty lot. Mitzi the cat didn’t pounce right away. A few other things happened first. Things having to do with
words
. There were:
    (1) Ali’s new word,
    (2) Edgar’s strange words, and
    (3) all those mysterious words on those scraps of paper in the old glass jar.
    So when Mitzi burst from her silent hiding place behind the jumble of orange nasturtiums, raced up the tree, then made her long, graceful leap, no one was able to stop her intime. That’s because everyone had been distracted by the meaning (and mystery) of all those words.
    Ali’s word was
infrangible
, the word she’d heard from Ms. Snoops and examined further in the OED. A word she’d never expected to use so soon! Leandra had just apologized for yelling and saying mean things.
    â€œI accept your apology,” said Ali, linking arms with both Leandra and Bunny/Bonita. “We are infrangible.”
    â€œWhat’s that?” asked Leandra suspiciously, who wasn’t sure if infrangible was complimentary. To her it sounded too much like a fruit gone bad.
    â€œI mean our
friendship
is infrangible,” said Ali. “That means unbreakable. We’ve been friends since we hung out in our strollers together. And we’ll be friends until college when we’ll probably move away to different cities. And even then we can still chat online and get together during vacations. That’s what Ms. Snoops does with her old friend Gertrude.”
    Bunny/Bonita nodded her head. “Sticks and stones can break your bones, eggcetera.” Although, not exactly, thought Bunny/Bonita, since the eggcetera part was how words could never hurt you. But words
could
and they
did
. It was a bit confusing.
    Bunny/Bonita was glad the club was infrangible anyway.
    Ali lifted Edgar from his stroller. “And I’ll check on your idea about smaller wigs, Leandra,” Ali said. “Maybe you won’t have to cut off more than a few inches.”
    A soft fuzz of brown hair covered Edgar’s head but you could still see his ziggidy-zagged scar. Edgar had been wearing a baseball cap that said angels, but he’d pulled it off. The little red hat was lying in the deep mulch under the tree, where, Ali supposed, a little wig would lie, too, if he’d been wearing one and pulled it off. She couldn’t imagine that kids’ wigs were glued on. What a sad thought.
    But now Manny had begun to juggle and it was hard to have sad thoughts when Manny was juggling. Two balls were golden, two were silver, one was bright fire-engine red. Manny always asked everyone to keep their eyes on the red one to help him concentrate, and before Ali knew it, her sad thoughts were juggled away. She put her little brother into his swing.
    And then, as she pushed Edgar back and forth, something amazing happened.
    Maybe it was the musty coolness under the tree’s leaves, or the juggling, or maybe it was because Ali was pushing theswing higher than usual. All of a sudden, Edgar said, “Ahhh,” very softly.
    And he said it again. “Ahhh.”
    That is to say, Ali and Leandra heard “Ahhh.”
    Bunny/Bonita heard “Bahhh,” or