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bathroom, and a games room. My father had visions of pool tables, home theater systems, and wine cellars. Lynn was just happy he’d moved on from the idea of a hot tub in the backyard.
    Contractors had been tramping in and out of the house since early summer, but not much had been accomplished so far. Mostly a lot of banging, measuring, and dust. Still, we all had faith that the house makeover would be fully completed by Christmas. I had grown to realize that some things—even strong, solid things—had the ability to change drastically in a very short period of time.

Chapter 4
     
     
    Jessica Foley and I had become friends.
    It all started during the second week of school. We were sitting at our table in French class, waiting for Madame Bedeau to get there, and I’d finally gathered enough nerve to ask her the question I had been wondering since the first day of class: “Why fish?”
    She had looked down at her notebook, which was adorned end to end with fish doodles. Dozens of them. Big ones, small ones, fat ones, long ones, ones with big, bulging eyes, ones with string-like fins...
    “I like them,” she’d said shortly.
    “Oh.” She wasn’t as friendly and easy to get to know as I’d once hoped. In fact, she’d barely spoken three words to me since she’d sat next to me that first day, aside from some perfunctory “Hi”s and the occasional “Can I borrow a pen?”
    Then, she spoke again. “Have you ever gone to the pet store and stood in the aisle with all the aquariums?”
    “Sure.”
    She looked at me, and her heavily-lined eyes seemed almost dreamy. “I can’t think of anything more relaxing. The sound of the bubbles, the light reflecting off the water, the silent little fish swimming around with nowhere to go…and the colors. They’re beautiful, aren’t they?”
    I tapped my pen on the desk, a little wary now. “I’ve never really thought about it before,” I said. I mean, fish were fish. They swam, they died, they got flushed down the toilet.
    “I have a fish tank in my room,” she told me, sliding her long nail over one of her drawings, a round fish with stripes. “A twenty-gallon. I want a bigger one so I can get more fish, but tanks and filters and stuff are so expensive.”
    “What kinds of fish do you have?”
    “Just danios and tetras right now. I’ve considered adding some gourami but they tend to be aggressive.”
    I pretended to sift through my French workbook. “Um…I have a dog.”
    “You think fish are boring, right? Because you can’t pet them and take them for walks?”
    “No,” I lied. “I just don’t know much about them.”
    Her chocolate-brown eyes met mine again, but this time her gaze was appraising, almost challenging. “I can tell you about them, if you’re really interested.”
    The vibe between us felt friendlier now, so I said, “Okay.”
    And in the weeks ahead, we did talk about fish a lot. Well, she talked and I listened. Before long I knew more than I ever wanted to know about ammonia levels and algae and cycling. We talked about other things too, like our families. I told her that my parents were divorced and that I lived with my mom and little sister, Emma, in Oakfield. She told me that her mother had died of cancer eight years ago, and that she had a younger brother named Cameron who was in the ninth grade. Their father was an electrician and had never remarried. The three of them—plus Jessica’s fish—lived in Rocky Lake, one of the several small towns whose junior high populace had bled over into Oakfield High. Rocky Lake was more rural than Oakfield, and the kids who lived there had to bus to school unless they had their own cars.
    We also talked about our boyfriends. Jessica’s boyfriend, Brent, was a junior too, and they had been dating for eight months. I vaguely knew him from a math class we’d had together last year. He played soccer on the school team. This explained why Jessica and I had never crossed paths—she hung out with