Page 19

*fishy business*

A UNTIE B EV PULLED INTO a parking spot at Haverman’s and cut the engine.

“Do you need money, Jackie boy?”

“No, thanks,” Jackson said, opening his door. “C’mon, Emma—let’s go get our bait.”

“Jackie boy,” I said, getting out and following him into the store. “Explain how Auntie Bev will believe we’re fishing when we come back with a boatload of dead fish.”

“Auntie Bev is cool—and she trusts me. So she’s going to sit at the marina and read her little book while we ‘children’ take off and ‘go play.’”

“She won’t check up on us?” My mom was great at letting me hang out with my friends, but every twenty minutes or so, she always checked in on us to make sure we weren’t burning down a building or talking to strangers.

“Nope.” He sounded confident, and I had no choice but to trust him.

We went straight back to the meat counter of the tiny old grocery store, and as we approached, I wondered if this might’ve been where Archie got her fish way back in the day.

“Excuse me.” Jackson stepped right up to the butcher like it was normal for him to be out purchasing bulk meats on a Saturday morning. And not just bulk meats, but a ton of disgusting fishy meats.

“Can I help you?”

“Yes, uh, I would like four ten-pound catfish, please,” he said, pointing to one of the enormous fish that was laid out on ice in the window like it had just been caught.

The butcher, a round man in a bloodstained apron with the name CARL patched on his chest, glanced at me before telling Jackson, “That’s not how we sell whole fish.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, you buy a fish—that’s it. You say ‘I want that one’ and you get the whole fish. We weigh it for price, but you can’t request a specific weight.”

“But,” Jackson said, his eyebrows scrunched together, “since you’re already weighing it, can’t you—”

“No,” the man snapped, looking at Jackson like he wished he could make him disappear. His eyes were on Jackson’s hat as he muttered, “You get what you get, Beanie.”

I couldn’t stop the snort noise that left my body when I heard the nickname, which made Jackson give me a mildy threatening look that was ineffective because his eyes were squinted like he wanted to laugh, too.

“Sir,” I said, hoping he’d be nicer to me because I was a girl. Specifically, a girl who still looked like a little kid. Adults were always nicer to the younger kids. “Would you allow us to get them, like, trimmed?”

I really sweeted up my voice, leaning hard into the kiddie thing. “We’ll happily pay for the whole fish, but if it’s over ten pounds, can we just get a little taken off?”

He looked at me like I’d suggested he make out with the catfish. Still, he asked, “You want four catfish that each weigh exactly ten pounds?”

I nodded and wondered if Carl knew his head from his butt when it came to fish. “Yes.”

“For what?”

None of your business, Carl. I shrugged and said, “Science…?”

He stared at me for like a full minute—felt like an hour—before he threw both of his hands up in the air. “Science my butt, but whatever. I’m in.”

Carl picked up a catfish in one hand and a large knife in the other, and with a quick slashing swing, he lopped off its head.

“Are you scared of that guy, or is it just me?” Jackson murmured.

“Terrified,” I agreed, giggling a little as the butcher really got into it. The guy did the exact same thing with the other three fish, seeming to take pride in his supernatural ability to select the perfect fish and torture it the right amount to leave it at exactly ten pounds.

“That was impressive,” Jackson said as the guy wrapped the fourth fish. “You really know your stuff, Carl.”

We took the fish to the checkout—Jackson carried two and I carried two—and our arms nearly fell off while we waited in a long line. Twenty pounds wasn’t a massive amount of weight to hold, but it felt like twenty tons when it was in dead fish form.

The cashier scanned our fish, then looked at us like she thought we were going to bolt when she totaled the order. “That’s two hundred forty dollars. Even.”

I glanced at Jackson and he was looking at me with the same excitement in his eyes. The fact that the cost of four fish—forty pounds—came to two hundred forty dollars felt like a sign.

We were doing it right.

This was the way.

This was going to work.