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tell the kid who thought I pulled a gun on him that I’m sorry. Jennifer’s got his name and address.”
    Mom frowned instantly. “Didn’t you say that if he’s the type who’s afraid of the police, maybe he’s someone to stay away from?”
    I had said something like that. Naturally, my mother would remember.
    â€œI’ll be with someone who knows the area,” I said. “She wouldn’t take me anywhere unsafe.”
    After a second, Mom nodded. “Finish your dinner first. And be back in an hour, or I’ll start to worry.”
    â€œYeah,” Dad said, “and introduce us to Jennifer.”
    I sighed again. I got back on the telephone and told her I’d need another fifteen minutes or so. Then I gave Jennifer our address. I told her I’d be waiting outside on the sidewalk.
    â€œWhy the sidewalk?” she asked. “Don’t you want me to meet your family?”
    I sighed one more time.

chapter twelve
    She drove a Ford Escort—a few years old, with a few years’ worth of dents. A few years’ worth of hot sun had faded the red paint to something that looked pink beneath the streetlights. She drove carefully while talking about nothing much. That was fine with me. I liked the sound of her voice.
    The neighborhood we drove to was not at all what I had expected. Around our school—where I had expected Carlos to live—the streets were cluttered with old cars.As Jennifer drove, the streets got wider. Nicer cars were parked in long driveways that led to large houses with big yards.
    I thought of Wawa, my little town of a few thousand people in northern Ontario. Basically it had just one main street. The most famous thing about Wawa was a giant statue of a goose. And even that wasn’t real famous. There were no palm trees in Wawa but there were lots of spruce and pine. No Mercedes and bmws but lots of pickup trucks. In Wawa, the nearby water was not the warm Atlantic but the cold and dark and deep Lake Superior. I wondered what my friends were doing tonight while I cruised in the balmy, calm, night air of southern Florida.
    â€œWhat a surprise,” Jennifer said, breaking into my thoughts. “I wouldn’t have guessed Carlos came from a neighborhood like this. Most of the time, if people have money they send their kids to a private school. Not to one like ours.”
    â€œMaybe his dad is like mine,” I said, blurting out my thoughts.
    â€œLike yours?”
    Jennifer had just met Mom and Dad and my brother Kirk. They had gotten along fine, mostly because they’d all had a good laugh as Jennifer told them about watching me roll under a bush. And about discovering the stuff on my shirt.
    â€œOh yeah, you told me your dad wanted to help people who couldn’t afford good medical care. What made him decide to do that?”
    â€œLong story,” I said, thinking back to how hard everything had been a couple of years earlier.
    â€œCome on,” she said. “You said that to me once before. Are you trying to hide something?”
    I was. But I didn’t even want her to know that much.
    â€œLook,” I said, pointing. “That’s his address.”
    She slowed down at number 2515.
    We stared at the huge house, built in the Spanish style. Lights on the lawn pointed upward, throwing the house into a dazzling white display of marble columns and high walls.
    â€œBoy,” Jennifer said, whistling in admiration, “living in a place like that, I don’t think he needs his twelve dollars back.”
    I nodded. It made me feel less worried too. Dad and I had been wrong. Carlos wasn’t some criminal type who was afraid to call the police. He was a rich kid who didn’t miss the money he had given me.
    At least that’s what I thought, until the front door opened a minute after we rang the doorbell.

chapter thirteen
    â€œYes?” the woman who answered the door asked, obviously