After the Fire by Becky Citra

“I’m going to go inside. It’s too hot out here.”
    â€œThat was extremely rude,” said Sharlene. She stood in the doorway of Melissa’s bedroom.
    Melissa was lying on her stomach on her bed. She had been picking away in her brain at Alice’s lie. Why had she said that she and Austin had built the tree house when it wasn’t true? Had she lied about other stuff too? Melissa rolled onto her back and studied the ceiling. “What do you mean?”
    â€œYou know exactly what I mean. Bonnie was trying to be friendly about your drawing and you didn’t even have the decency to answer her.”
    â€œI don’t want everyone to keep pestering me about putting my drawings in the fair.” Melissa could hear how weak that sounded. But she didn’t have the courage to tell Sharlene what was really bothering her. She didn’t exactly understand it herself but it had something to do with hearing her mother laugh and chat with Bonnie, pretending that they were a normal family when they weren’t.
    What would Bonnie think if she knew what the real Sharlene was like? Melissa flopped back on her stomach and buried her face in her pillow.
    â€œI’d appreciate some help with supper,” said Sharlene tightly. “I got some corn at the store that you can shuck. And after supper you and Cody and I are going fishing.”
    Not, would you like to go fishing? Not, maybe you have something else you’d rather do. Melissa sighed. The trouble was, there was nothing else to do here. The only good thing that had happened so far was Alice and Dar Wynd. And now her feelings about that were mixed up with Alice’s lie and jumping off that stupid cliff. Melissa closed her eyes until she heard the angry banging of pots from the other room that told her that Sharlene had left her alone.
    Melissa sat in the bow of the canoe, Cody in the middle and Sharlene in the stern. Cody had refused to wear a life jacket unless Melissa did too. Melissa’s jacket was too small and bumped her chin. It didn’t improve her mood.
    They paddled into a small deep cove partway up the lake and let themselves drift. Sharlene had brought a fishing rod along, which she had fiddled with after supper, unscrambling the line, attaching something she called a sinker, which she found in a tackle box in the shed. Melissa had pretended to be uninterested but inside she was impressed. Her mother acted like she knew what she was doing.
    Sharlene baited the hook with a shrimp, dropped the line over the side of the canoe and handed the rod to Cody. Cody stared at the water, his mouth open. “If you feel something jiggle, let me know,” said Sharlene. Melissa stretched her legs out and closed her eyes. There was no sound here, not even a bird call. She thought of the apartment, where you could always hear someone’s tv or people arguing in the hallways or the backfire of a truck.
    Cody had three false alarms. The first two times Sharlene pulled in the line there was nothing on the hook except the shriveled-up pale pink shrimp. The third time there was a mass of gnarled green weed that looked like a nest.
    â€œWe’re drifting too close to shore,” said Sharlene. “How about we paddle and let Cody troll the line behind us?”
    Melissa studied the shore as they paddled up the lake. Mostly it was dense forest, with tall dark trees that grew right up to the edge of the water, but in a few places there were grassy clearings sprinkled with purple and yellow wild flowers.
    After a while, Cody announced that he didn’t want to fish anymore. Sharlene reeled in the line and laid the fishing rod carefully in the bottom of the canoe. “We’ll try worms tomorrow.”
    â€œI want to go back,” said Cody.
    â€œNot yet,” said Sharlene. “It can’t be much farther to the end of the lake. Pretend you’re an explorer.”
    Cody hunched over and jammed his thumb in