CHAPTER 4
THE FISHY AFTERMATH
CLAUDIA
One of the problems with any war is that sometimes innocent civilians get hurt. In this case, the innocent civilian was Reese’s backpack.
And I guess Mrs. Templeman, too.
But I feel especially bad about the backpack.
Also, the shin guards.
REESE
If it was up to me, I wouldn’t have thrown away the shin guards. It’s not like they didn’t work anymore. They’d just been sitting next to a dead fish for a couple of days.
But Mrs. Templeman wouldn’t even let me take them out of my backpack. Instead, she made me empty everything else out of it and put all my stuff in the wash. Then she made me put the backpack in a garbage bag and knot it up. Then she made me and Wyatt throw the bag away in a can on the corner so it wouldn’t stink up the house.
I tried to argue with her, but she said my mom had agreed on the phone that we should throw out the backpack.
On the way to the corner, Wyatt and I opened up the bag to get another look at the fish. It was pretty gross. Wyatt dared me to touch it, and I was going to pick it up and throw it at him just to be funny. But then Mrs. Templeman yelled at us from her stoop, and we had to cut it out.
After that, she dragged us to Modell’s and bought me new shin guards. I felt bad, because I could tell she was pretty annoyed at the whole thing.
Even though I’d lost my backpack and my shin guards, I wasn’t that angry at first. Mostly, I was just confused about where the fish came from. The next day at the game—we beat FC Riverdale 4–1, and I had a beastly assist—I asked the rest of the team about it. Nobody knew anything. But Xander Ed. Note: Xander is EVIL—more on him later said I must have made the Mafia mad, because they send dead fish to people whenever they’re going to kill them.
That got me worried. I don’t know anybody in the Mafia, but I think James Mantolini is Italian, and he can be pretty nuts. So I asked Dad about it after the game. He said there was no way James Mantolini was planning to kill me, and it was just somebody playing a prank.
He also told me it’s not cool to think somebody’s in the Mafia just because they’re Italian.
On the way home, he took me shopping for a new bag. That’s when I REALLY got mad—because it turned out they no longer sell my exact bag, and the new version only has one side pocket. So now I have to keep my water bottle in the main pocket, and it splooshes Ed. Note: not an actual word around in there and gets my homework all wet.
After that, I knew I had to find out who put the fish in there. Because I didn’t realize how awesome my bag was until it was gone.
And it was up to me to avenge its death.
CLAUDIA
I once left my favorite purse on the M79 bus, so I know what it’s like to lose something that’s as important to you as Reese’s backpack was to him.
I really do feel bad about that. If I had it to do over again, I would’ve put much more thought into what would happen to the backpack after I put the dead fish in it.
I also would’ve put much more thought into what I was going to say if anybody asked me about the situation. Because being honest and trustworthy is EXTREMELY important to me. People who lie about things—like my former best friend, Meredith Timms—are the absolute worst.
I am NOT one of those people. I do not tell lies. Ever.
Except this time.
When he came home from work Friday night, Dad asked me if I knew how a dead fish had gotten into Reese’s backpack. Until then, I didn’t even know the dead fish had been found, so I was totally unprepared for the question.
It didn’t help that Dad had just walked in while Ashley and I were watching Violent Housewives. Ed. Note: totally stupid but very entertaining show I’m supposedly not allowed to watch it, and I was holding the remote, so I had to switch to the Disney Channel super fast. I was still kind of flustered from that when Dad asked about the fish.
Basically, I panicked. Instead of telling Dad the truth, or saying something like, “A dead fish in his backpack? That is the STRANGEST THING I ever heard”—which sounds like a denial but technically isn’t, so I could always go back later and prove that I hadn’t really lied to him—I just flat-out denied the whole thing.
I think my exact words were something like, “Eeeew! A dead fish? No way! I wouldn’t even TOUCH a dead fish! That’s disgusting!”
In the short term, this was fine. Dad didn’t ask any follow-up questions, and after Ashley left, we ordered in Chinese food and had a pretty fun night until Dad fell asleep on the couch watching Super Future Star! Ed. Note: slightly less stupid show (but also less entertaining 
) with me.
But Mom got back from her business trip on the redeye Saturday morning, and that night all four of us went out for sushi. Even before the edamame showed up, Mom said to Reese, “So how did this dead fish get into your backpack?”
Reese said he figured it was just somebody playing a joke.
And Mom said, “I don’t know. Seems like a lot of trouble just for a joke. Mrs. Templeman said it was a pretty big fish.”
Then Reese told Mom his theory about James Mantolini and the Mafia, which was ridiculous. I saw James’s dad at a school play once, and the only way he could be in the Mafia is if he’s their accountant.
Mom thought it was ridiculous, too. She also thought it was ethnically insensitive, so Reese got a whole lecture about how you shouldn’t stereotype people, and the Mafia’s not even that powerful anymore, and almost every country has some kind of organized crime, so it’s not just the Italians, and besides which, Italy has a rich history and culture that goes back thousands of years, blah, blah, blah.
Then she said something like, “Is there anybody at school who’s mad at you?”
And Reese said, “No. Everybody likes me.”
Then I snorted.
I didn’t mean to. It just sort of came out involuntarily.
The second I snorted, Mom snapped her head around and gave me this look, and I knew I was about to get busted.
I had to cover fast. “That’s ridiculous!” I told Reese. “I can name AT LEAST five people who don’t like you.”
“Like who?” said Reese.
This was tough, because for reasons I will never understand, people actually do like Reese.
“James Mantolini,” I said. “Sophie, sometimes…” Then I got stuck. And to make things worse, Mom was drilling a hole in my head with her eyes.
“Claudia,” she said in her mad-but-trying-not-to-yell-because-we’re-in-a-restaurant voice. “Did you put the fish in his backpack?”
REESE
Right away when Mom said it, I knew it was you. It was SO OBVIOUS!
CLAUDIA
This is when things got a little sketchy for me, morality-wise.
Because I had like a tenth of a second to decide whether to admit the truth—not just about the fish, but about lying to Dad—or dig in.
I dug in. Which in this case meant acting like I was totally offended, and I couldn’t believe they’d accuse me of something like that, and even crying a little bit. I also told Mom she’d know what a ridiculous accusation it was if she was around more often and not away on business trips all the time. (This was very unfair, but also very effective, because Mom feels tons of guilt about spending too much time at work.)
Basically, I made kind of a scene.
The whole time, Reese was freaking out because he was convinced it was me.
And the elderly couple at the next table were getting really annoyed at us.
And I think we scared the waiter a little.
I am not proud of any of this. If I had it to do over again, I would tell the truth.
But it worked.
In fact, it worked so well that Mom and Dad wound up getting mad at Reese for refusing to believe I was innocent.
REESE
It was CRAY! Ed. Note: NOT a typo. My brother actually talks like this. She was totally lying, and they believed it! And then they started yelling at me for getting mad at her!
I was so skronking Ed. Note: also not a typo (or an actual word) angry I could barely eat my California rolls.
CLAUDIA
So I got away with it.
Except I didn’t, really. Because I felt awful for the whole rest of the weekend. Lying like that makes you feel totally gross. And for days afterwards, I walked around scared that Mom and Dad would somehow find out the truth, and I’d be in five times as much trouble because I was guilty of both the fish thing AND lying about it.
You know that story about how George Washington chopped down a cherry tree, and when he got busted, he admitted it right away, because he couldn’t tell a lie? I totally believe that happened. But I don’t think George Washington told the truth because he was noble. I think he did it because he was very, very smart, and he knew lying is almost always WAY more trouble than it’s worth.
Honestly, it would have been MUCH less painful if I’d just confessed. I probably would’ve had to use the rest of my birthday money paying for the new backpack, and Mom and Dad might’ve taken away all my electronics for a week or something.
But it would have been worth it not to feel all guilty and worried.
The guilt was so bad that by the time I went to bed on Sunday night, I’d decided that not only was I done trying to get revenge on Reese for the “Princess Farts-A-Lot” episode, but I was going to spend the rest of my life being really, really nice to my brother.
REESE
When I went to bed that night, I dreamed about payback.
Because IT WAS ON.