Every flat surface in Atlas Boy's room was covered with maps. The maps ran from the floor over the ceiling, corners overlapping the doorjambs and windowsills. Yellowing paper curled at the edges, despite Atlas Boy's careful application of gum tack. Some of them looked alarmingly tattered and brittle. Cole wondered why, with all the care Atlas Boy had taken to straighten the maps, he had not tried harder to preserve the paper.

"You mean laminate them?" Atlas Boy said disdainfully when Cole voiced his question. "It makes a glare. Besides, it's a work in progress."

On the desk was a map larger than the ones stuck on the walls. Though it was a couple of decades old, Atlas Boy had started to draw some of the modern borders with a Sharpie marker. The rest of the room was cluttered with art supplies; a good proportion of them pilfered, Cole suspected.

"Your parents don't mind?" Cole asked. "That you covered the walls."

"My dad doesn't mind 'cause it's educational," Atlas Boy mumbled. "But Gillian complains all the time that its hard to clean in here. Like I want her going through my stuff."

Cole started to ask who Gillian was but Atlas Boy shifted his attention as he always did, with an impatience that would not tolerate any reverting back to the previous subject.

"I also got this." Atlas Boy lifted up what looked to be a piece of jumbled metal with a tiny telescope at the end.

"It's a sextant," Atlas Boy explained, warily watching his guest for an unprovoked guffaw at the instrument's name. Cole kept quiet. "It was my grandfather's. The readings are a little off because it's been dropped."

Atlas Boy held the sextant a distance away, so Cole knew better than to try and touch it.

"What does it do?"

"Navigate. Before ships had radar, sailors used these to find their way to their port."

"Cool."

A knock sounded on the door. A woman barged in without waiting for an invitation. From Atlas Boy's venomous look, Cole might have guessed she would not get one.

"Are you playing with that thing again?" she asked. "Why don't you leave it in your father's office so you don't break it?"

"I'm not gonna break it," Atlas Boy asserted through clenched teeth. To prove his point, he carefully stowed the sextant back in its case.

The woman honed her curious stare at Cole. "Rees, are you going to introduce me to your friend?"

"No."

She smiled determinedly. "Sorry my stepson is so rude. I'm Gillian."

"I'm Cole," Cole returned, trying to be as noncommittal as possible without becoming downright rude.

"Do you boys want to come downstairs?" Gillian offered. "We could play cards."

"No," Atlas Boy said loudly.

Gillian's shoulders stiffened. She conceded, "All right," and stepped out, pulling the door shut.

Gillian's awkward defeat hung over the room, though Atlas Boy did his best to brush it off. "Let's go in the yard."

Abby Mason was waiting in the foyer when Kendra and Cole came home.

"You didn't forget it was tonight, did you?"

Cole looked up at Kendra, referring to her to translate her mother's lunacy.

"What's tonight?" Kendra asked.

"The family dinner," Abby stressed. "Your father stopped at Rocco's for steak and I had Gavin pick up some dessert. If you had been home on time, we would have set the table."

Nobody had bothered to tell Kendra, of course. "It's tonight?" she echoed in dismay. She was in no mood for this nice family dinner. She wanted to check up on the status of Rick's father and eliminate him once and for all as a suspect. Then she had to write some poignant haikus for class tomorrow.

"Don't start Kendra." Abby scolded. "Go set the table. Cole, go see where Gavin has disappeared to."

Cole climbed upstairs. Spinner was sitting at the computer in the guest room. Spinner glanced at the door quickly. As he did, the cursor zoomed to the close tab and the box vanished.

"Aunt Abby wants you downstairs," Cole said awkwardly.

"Christ," Spinner muttered "One second."

Cole stepped into the room. "What are you doing?" he asked. He was a kid, right? It was his nature to ask annoying questions.

"Email." Spinner shut off the computer.

"I'll be right down," Cole said. "I have to wash my hands."

"'Kay," Spinner said dubiously, then left. Cole listened for his older cousin heading down the stairs then lunged for the computer.

Starting it up took little time. Spinner and Kendra habitually left it on sleep. He clicked on the email tab. A screen popped up with a list of emails.

It had to be Spinner's. Kendra only had a Yahoo address and his aunt and uncle predominately used their work computers. Cole scrolled through the messages. Aside from the Spam mail, the messages were all from someone called Walkingisanart.

He opened one.

Dad's fishing trip was cancelled. A friend of his having chest pains and is going to the hospital for tests. Now I'm getting paranoid. Buying all these healthy foods for us and throwing out all the high fat stuff. He's not too happy with it.

This weekend Lina and I are running the distorted photo booth at the art fair. Lina has all the camera expertise so I guess my job will be taking money from the customers. We tested the equipment by taking my picture. It came out like my face was a blob of spaghetti.

Thanx for the spoons. How's life in the coffeemaking world?

"Cole," Aunt Abby's indignant voice interrupted. "We're waiting up for you."

"I saw Conrad Cooper today," Dave Mason brought up. Oblivious, Kendra supposed, to the tense atmosphere that already permeated the dining room. "He's been looking for a wheelchair basketball league for Jimmy. Might take some commuting . . ."

"There are a lot of those leagues now," Abby piped up. "Jimmy will certainly get his choice of them."

"Right," Dave proclaimed. "Jimmy was on an actual team. He could run circles around those kids."

Kendra's father had a deep passion for sports. Dave was a Degrassi basketball champion and had dreamed of playing professionally when he was teen. When that dream had never become reality, he had hoped that his children would continue the tradition. That hope had never become reality.

Spinner stared into his plate.

A woman swept by the table. "Rats," she rasped. "Rats."

"Maybe those kids could use a towel boy, huh," Dave ribbed Spinner.

"Sure, Dad," Spinner said flatly. That was his stock answer for any of his father's sports jokes. It was the closest to keeping silent, and keeping silent only led to Dave repeating the joke in case no one heard the first time.

"Cheer up, Gavin." Abby ordered. "Jimmy can't blame you for what that psycho kid did forever."

She glanced at Cole and swiftly decided to change the subject. "So Kendra, is that boy you like in your art class?"

"Poetry class," Kendra corrected. "No."

"Rats," the dead woman interjected. She paced back and forth. "Rats. Rats."

"What about you Cole?" Abby asked. "I heard you were at a friend's house today."

"Yeah. Atlas Boy's," Cole answered.

"Atlas Boy?"

"Rees Landon," Cole said.

"Strange kid," Dave commented, to which Kendra raised her eyebrow. Sometimes it seemed like her father had never outgrown high school.

"I might get to go sailing with him and his dad," Cole said.

"That sounds like fun," Abby said.

Dave nodded in approval. "It's something. Boys need things like that in their lives. Or they get loopy."

"Rats," said the woman.

"Maybe if Rick played more sports, he wouldn't have needed to shoot up the school," Kendra said crassly.

"Kendra-" Abby sighed.

"You make fun, but there is a connection between playing sports and self-esteem," Dave insisted. "It helps you learn discipline and self reliance. Kids today don't have enough discipline and self-reliance. That's when they start demanding things that the rest of us have to spend a lifetime of work to earn."

"Rats," said the woman.

"I thought we agreed . . ." Abby spoke to Dave.

"This isn't just about that," Dave argued. "This is one of the fundamental blocks of life. Discipline. Self-reliance. Any responsible parent should teach their kids about discipline and self-reliance. Cole's old enough to learn about discipline and self reliance."

Cole shrank back into his chair. Please don't ask my opinion on this, he begged silently. He recalled the arguments between his parents about him; the last thing he needed was to get involved with another family's battles.

"Without discipline and self-reliance, we would be back in the stone ages!"

"Fine with me," Spinner commented. "At least we wouldn't have guns."

Abby stood up. "I can't believe you two. All I ask for is one nice family dinner. I want an attitude adjustment right now or you can go upstairs without dessert."

Kendra and Spinner pushed back their chairs and climbed out of their seats. "Sit down!" Abby shouted. "Sit down and behave like civilized people." Next to her, Dave guffawed. "I'm getting the dessert. You sit down and I don't want to hear a word of complaint."

She exited the room in a huff.

Dave ignored his insolent children and turned to Cole. "Maybe I'll take an afternoon off and work with you on some shots. Then you won't end up like Towel Boy here."

From the kitchen, Abby let out a piercing scream.

"Gavin, get in here! Now!"

Spinner flung down his fork and galloped to the kitchen. Naturally, Kendra came in right behind him.

"What is this?" Abby thrust out the open pie box to them. A furry rat toy lay on top of the crust, its tail trailing off the plate.

"Rats," said the woman next to Kendra. "Rats."