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upturned face, his throat closed, and he had to turn away.
    "Yeah," he managed to croak, "I guess you can help with my route today."
    "Whoowee!" Bobby yelled, and he clapped his pudgy hands and skittered out of the room and backdown the stairs.
    Joel squared his shoulders and took a deep breath. Then he stopped, breathed again, sniffed. What was that smell in the air? Almost like ... almost exactly like dead fish. Joel sniffed his arm, his shirt. That's where it was coming from ... him.
    Joel drew the neck of his shirt up over his nose and inhaled deeply. There was no question. The stink of the river had followed him home ... and his father hadn't noticed that either.
    Joel pulled the shirt off, got another from the drawer. The new shirt was fresh—it smelled like his mom's fabric softener—but the light fragrance couldn't cover the stench of the river clinging to his skin.
    Joel started down the steps. Maybe nobody knew what a river smelled like.
    Bobby was holding the screen door open for their mother. Looking tired and a little bit frazzled, she set down the grocery bag she was carrying and came to the bottom of the stairs. She stood with her hands on her hips exactly the way Bobby had when he was imitating her earlier. "What on earth were you doing today, Joel? Mrs. Zabrinsky says you and Tony hid in the house all afternoon."
    Joel closed his eyes. It was going to start all over again. That was the problem with having two parents. You never heard anything only once. He drew in his breath, composed his face, and continued down the stairs. There was nothing he could do about the smell. "Tony wasn't here," he said, "and I wasn't hiding. I was lying down."
    "Lying down?" Joel's mother reached to feel his forehead. "What's the matter? Are you sick?"
    "No," Joel answered, submitting to the cool hand pressed to his head, "just not feeling good for a little bit."
    "What did you and Tony do today?" his mother asked, her other hand circling the back of his head as though she could feel his temperature better by pressing with both hands. Her eyes were on his face.
    "Just rode our bikes" The musky river smell was so strong it made his eyes burn. She had to smell it. There was no way she could miss it.
    "How far did you go?"
    Joel jerked free, ducking and coming up a few feet down the hall with his back to his mother. "Not very far. Tony was going to ride out to Starved Rock—Dad said we could—but I didn't feel good, like I told you, so I came home."
    He couldn't tell what she was doing, behind him as she was, and he didn't want to turn around to look.
    "Starved Rock," she repeated. "But that's so far!"
    "Dad gave us permission," he said. And then he amended, "He said I could go."
    "Well"-a light sigh-"you'd better get busy with your route before people start calling. They'll be complaining about their papers being late."
    Joel felt his body go limp. His mother hadn't smelled the river. She hadn't even guessed he was lying. Relief swirled in his brain, curiously mixed with anger. Didn't anybody around here pay attention to anything?
    He pushed out the screen door, letting it slam behind him ... hard.

Chapter Nine
     
    B OBBY WAS SQUATTING ON THE PORCH OVER the stack of newspapers, tugging on the twine that held them, his small, dirty fingers making little headway against the knot.
    "You cut it, dummy," Joel said, pulling out his pocket knife. "Like this." He cut the twine on the papers and also on the stack of inserts next to them, his hands moving with angry impatience.
    Bobby watched, his lower lip poking out. "You know I don't got a knife."
    "Don't have " Joel corrected gruffly, looking away from Bobby's face. "You don't have a knife."
    "Well, I don't," Bobby said, and he grabbed an advertising circular and stuffed it inside a paper, crumpling both.
    "Take it easy," Joel ordered, thumping Bobby on the top of the head with the handle of his knife. "You're going to mess everything up."
    Bobby's face rumpled, and he began to cry.