She didn't make mud pies. She made mud cakes. Rich mixtures of swirled dirt and a thermos's worth of tomato soup, whipped together thick as her mom's best brownie recipe. Sneakers splattered with clay-red batter, fingernails crusted with muck, Mona crouched over a freshly dug hole beside the sports equipment shed in the corner of the playground, a little swallow toiling with twigs and soil, the grilled cheese sandwich her mother always packed in her lunch bitten between her teeth, perfectly toasted crust sogging as she concentrated on her specialty: a single-layer mud masterpiece frosted with mashed green leaves. Crushed brown ones, if they were in season, for a special crunch. A golden dandelion or two on top, a few spikey gumballs fallen from their boughs, for a decorative touch. Gray gravel sprinkles. The neatest tree twigs for candles, if it was her or her best friend Ethel's birthday. For every celebratory moment, a mud cake. Gold star stickers on her math homework, book fair day. That time the lady from the zoo brought a hawk to teach them about birds of prey and it flew over their heads at the school assembly. Mud cake. When Mona pecked a kiss onto Ethel's blushing cheek while they huddled together in the breezeway during a class-wide game of hide-and-seek. There was mud cake that day, too …