“Oh.”
“This has somethin' to do with your old man, doesn't it? About him sinkin' Dusty's boat?”
“Maybe.” It sounded silly as soon as I said it. “Maybe” almost always means “yes.”
“Okay, let's hear the whole story.” Shelly cocked her head and cupped one of her ears, which had, like, five silver rings in it. “Come on, Noah,” she said, “I'm listening.”
There was no way I wasn't going to cave in and blab everything. She was a pro at shaking the truth out of guys who were a lot bigger and tougher than I was.
But then Lice Peeking came to the rescue. He stopped snoring, flopped over on his back, and opened one bleary red eye.
Shelly thumped him with both heels and said, “Get up, you sorry sack of beans, before I park that slimy aquarium on your head.” I didn't wait around to see if she was serious.
FOUR
The next morning the lawyer stopped by our house. Mr. Shine looked about a thousand years old, but Mom said he knew his way around the courthouse. She had hired him twice before to get my father out of trouble.
Mr. Shine put his briefcase on the kitchen table and sat down. He looked mopey and gray, and his eyelids drooped. Abbey said he reminded her of Eeyore from Winnie-the-Pooh.
My mother made a pot of coffee and began dropping hints that Abbey and I should leave them alone. Abbey grabbed a bagel out of the toaster and ran off to play on the computer. I got my spinning rod from the garage and biked up to the drawbridge at Snake Creek.
The police won't let you fish from the top of the bridge because of the traffic, but you can go down underneath and cast from the sandbags, in the shade. Sometimes homeless people sleep under the bridges, but they usually don't bother anybody. The last time I'd been to Snake Creek, some woman in an army jacket had made a campsite high on the bank, under the concrete braces.