A Fox's Honest Day

Felix the fox was known throughout Willowbrook Forest for his cleverness. If there was a shortcut, Felix found it. If there was a trick, Felix invented it. If there was a way to get something without actually working for it, well, Felix had already done it twice before breakfast.

But one rainy Tuesday morning, Felix woke up with a strange, prickly feeling in his chest.

It had started the day before, when he'd tricked old Badger into trading a perfectly good blueberry pie for a bag of "magic acorns." They were just regular acorns. Felix had painted them gold.

Badger had looked so happy holding those acorns, and somehow that made Felix feel worse than if Badger had been angry.

"Fine," Felix grumbled to his reflection in a puddle. "Just for today — ONE day — I'll do everything the honest, straightforward way. No tricks. No shortcuts. No schemes."

His reflection looked skeptical.

"I can do this," Felix said. "How hard can it be?"

His first stop was the Willowbrook Market, where Henny the hen sold the most delicious roasted sunflower seeds in the entire forest. Felix usually got his seeds by distracting Henny with a complicated story about a hawk while swiping a pawful from the basket.

Today, he marched right up to the counter.

"Good morning, Henny. I would like to buy some sunflower seeds. With actual money. Which I will pay you. Right now."

Henny stared at him.

"Please," Felix added, because he thought that might help.

Henny stared some more.

"Are you feeling alright?" she asked, pressing a feathery wing to his forehead.

"I'm FINE. I just want to BUY seeds like a NORMAL customer."

"You don't have any money, do you?" Henny said.

Felix checked his pockets. Lint. A button. One of the gold-painted acorns.

"I do not," he admitted.

"Well then," said Henny, and she folded her wings.

Felix walked away with no seeds and a growling stomach. This was already terrible.

Next, Felix needed to cross Crumble Creek. He usually crossed by sneaking over the Beaver family's private bridge while they were eating lunch. Today, he would ask permission.

He knocked on the Beavers' dam.

Mrs. Beaver opened the door and immediately narrowed her eyes. "Whatever you're selling, we don't want it."

"I'm not selling anything! I would just like to ask, very politely, if I could please use your bridge to cross the creek."

Mrs. Beaver laughed so hard she had to hold onto the doorframe.

"YOU? Asking PERMISSION?" She wiped a tear from her eye. "That's the funniest trick you've pulled yet, Felix."

"It's not a trick!"

"Sure it isn't." She shut the door.

Felix sat on the bank of Crumble Creek, getting rained on, watching the water rush past. He could see the bridge right there. He could just sneak across. No one would know.

"No," he told himself firmly. "We're doing this the honest way."

So Felix waded across the creek. The water was freezing and came up to his chin, and his tail got so waterlogged it felt like it weighed about forty pounds. He dragged himself onto the far bank looking like a soggy orange mop.

"This," Felix sputtered, "is the WORST day."

But the day wasn't done with him yet.

Felix needed to return a book he'd borrowed from the library — well, "borrowed." He'd snuck it out under his coat seven months ago.

He walked up to the library desk where Owl sat peering through her enormous spectacles.

"I'm returning this book," Felix said, placing it on the counter. "And I should tell you that I took it without checking it out. Seven months ago. I'm sorry."

Owl looked at the book. She looked at Felix. She opened the book and examined every single page.

"Page forty-seven is wrinkled," she said.

"I spilled soup on it," Felix said. "I'm sorry about that too."

"And there's a mustard stain on page one hundred and three."

"That was also soup. It was a chunky soup."

Owl calculated the late fees on her abacus for what felt like four hundred years.

"You owe the library twelve acorns," she announced.

Felix thought about his gold-painted acorns. No. Absolutely not.

"I don't have twelve acorns," he said honestly. "But I could work it off?"

Owl pointed one long wing toward a mountain — an actual MOUNTAIN — of books that needed to be shelved.

Felix's shoulders sagged. He picked up the first book and got to work.

He shelved books for three hours. His arms ached. His back ached. His tail was still wet and kept knocking books off the shelves behind him, which meant he had to shelve those books AGAIN.

Somewhere around the second hour, a small voice said, "Excuse me?"

Felix looked down. A tiny mouse stood there, clutching a piece of paper.

"Can you help me find a book about stars?" the mouse asked. "I can't reach the catalog."

Felix was tired and hungry and damp and grumpy, and every part of him wanted to say, "Not my problem, kid."

Instead, he said, "Sure."

He helped the little mouse find a book about constellations. Then he lifted her up so she could reach it on the shelf. She hugged the book to her chest and looked up at him with enormous eyes.

"Thank you! You're the nicest fox I've ever met!"

"I'm the ONLY fox you've ever met," Felix muttered.

"Still counts!" she said, and scurried away happily.

Felix stood there for a moment with that strange prickly feeling in his chest again. Except this time it wasn't prickly at all. It was warm.

Huh.

By the time Felix finished shelving, the rain had stopped and the late afternoon sun turned everything gold — real gold, not painted-acorn gold.

He walked home along the path by the creek, and there was Badger, sitting on a stump, turning one of the gold-painted acorns over in his paws. The paint was starting to chip.

Felix's stomach twisted into a knot.

He sat down next to Badger. For a long moment, neither of them said anything.

"These aren't magic, are they?" Badger said quietly. He didn't sound angry. He sounded sad, which was somehow much worse.

"No," Felix said. "They're not. I painted regular acorns and I traded them to you for that blueberry pie, and that was a rotten thing to do. I'm sorry."

Badger nodded slowly. "I made that pie for my daughter's birthday. Had to make another one from scratch."

The warm feeling in Felix's chest turned into something that burned. He wanted to disappear into the ground.

"I'm going to make it up to you," Felix said. "I don't know how yet. But I will."

Badger looked at him sideways. "Is this another trick?"

"No," said Felix. And then, quieter: "I don't think I'm very good at being honest yet. I'm kind of terrible at it, actually. Everyone either laughed at me or didn't believe me today. But I think I want to keep trying."

Badger studied him for a long, long time. Badgers are very good at studying things.

"Tell you what," Badger said. "My garden needs weeding tomorrow. You come help me weed, and we'll call it square on the acorns."

"Really?"

"Really. But Felix?"

"Yeah?"

"Bring your own lunch. I'm not sharing any more pie with you just yet."

Felix laughed — a real laugh, not his usual sly-fox chuckle. "Fair enough."

That night, Felix curled up in his den, still hungry, still damp around the edges, his arms aching from shelving hundreds of books.

It had been, without question, the most difficult day of his entire life.

He closed his eyes and smiled.

"Same thing tomorrow, then," he whispered.

And the warm feeling in his chest glowed on, steady as a star.