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Go get the cleanser from the bathroom, the green one with bleach in it. We can get this clean.”

5
COWARDICE & SNOOPING
    F IN AND I SAT on the concrete bench by the flagpole. We had only a few minutes before school started.
    “Tell me everything,” he said. He blew into his bare hands to warm them up. “Did you show her the necklace?”
    “No. Her brain would have exploded. She freaked at the mere mention of his name. And I think she’s lying about it.”
    “What do you mean?”
    I took a breath, the cold air slicing into my lungs. I explained about the Web site and discovering Keanu Choy. “He’s a Hawaiian seahorse expert.”
    “Hawaiian?”
    “I have the same hair and eyes.” Unfortunately, not the same skin.
    “Hawaiian! I always thought you were half Japanese for some reason, but Hawaiian makes sense. Remember when we watched
Lilo and Stitch
, I said you looked like Lilo? Keanu Choy. I want that name. He sounds rich and exotic and cool.”
    A bus pulled up and a load of annoyingly loud freshmen got out. I closed my eyes and pressed my mittened hands against them. “You don’t get it, Fin. He can’t be cool. Either she lied about his name to keep me from finding him, or else his name was Kenneth Chip and he changed it to Keanu Choy.”
    “Why would he change his name?”
    “I don’t know. To avoid paying child support?”
    “Maybe he was a bad person, but he’s had a change of heart now. Maybe he was walking to work one day and God spoke to him from a burning shrub and said, ‘Contact your daughter, dude!’ ”
    “He doesn’t walk to work. He sails.”
    “Okay,” Fin laughed. “God spoke to him from a burning whale.” He put his arm around me, and we sat for a few seconds, both of us cold, staring at a blackcrusted pile of snow at the edge of the sidewalk. “Let’s assume his name has always been Choy, and your mom lied to you about it. Maybe she lied because he’s great and she was afraid that you’d want to live with him in Hawaii! That makes sense.” He grabbed my mitteny hands. “If you move to Hawaii, I’m going to kill you. Wait.… He works at the Shedd. So he lives here now? You have to go and meet him!”
    My head was splitting open. “No. I don’t want anything to do with him. He is a horrible, selfish person. I mean, who dumps a two-year-old kid and a wife?”
    “What — exactly — did his letter say?”
    I took a breath and recited it.
    Fin’s eyes were huge. “You memorized it.”
    “I read it a hundred times last night.”
    His eyes softened. “Min, he sounds nice.”
    “No. You should’ve heard my mom. ‘Let him in and he will hurt you,’ she said. He’s a loser. I wish he was a drug addict. It would be better that way.”
    “How would that be better?”
    “Because drug addicts are sick. They’re basically ruled by the drugs. They make involuntary mistakes because their brains are addled.”
    “But it’s better this way because you can get something out of him.”
    I looked at my boots.
    The vice principal walked out, eyeballing us and the other vagrants who didn’t want to go inside. “School is starting, people. You have thirty seconds.”
    Fin stood up and pulled me off the bench. “You have no real proof that Keanu Choy is your dad, Minerva. Your mom reacted to the name Kenneth Chip. You have this hunch … so let’s go to Keanu Choy’s office at the aquarium. You can say, ‘Hi, are you my daddy?’ If he is, then get everything you can from him and dump him. Protect yourself. You want money from him. That’s it. Be practical. You don’t want love. You just want cold hard cash.”
    My feet had stopped itching, but my toes were so cold they burned. “I’m not going to do that, Fin.” We walked into school.
    “Then confront your mom,” he said. “Just lay it out on the table. ‘Mother dearest, why have you been trying to convince me that I am related to a potato-based snack food?’ ”

    F IN WAS RIGHT about the fact that I needed