Teeth

  “Oh, shit.” My brother loves this movie. “Robin Hood?”

  “Robin Hood. Yes.”

  My throat hurts again, God fucking damn it.

  He says, “I like the idea of being fish Robin Hood.”

  “You just made a metaphor. God, you’re something.”

  “But I wish I could just . . . go. You know. Leave.”

  “So why don’t you?”

  His voice is quiet. “They need me. The fish and . . . ” He gestures toward the marina. “And yeah. I don’t even know what to be if they don’t need me. I wish I could have different fish. Exchange them for new, exciting fish. With different fishermen.”

  After a while he breathes out. “Okay, so once upon a time, there was this boy who didn’t have any legs. Like, no legs, okay? And he had some weird skin, and his Mom hid him away and kept him and whatevered him and she carried him everywhere and read him a lot of stories and cried and prayed. And his mom fed him fish again and again, but he never got better no matter what she did and she didn’t know why. And the boy never even went outside, not once. This half a boy with no legs, you know?”

  I nod.

  “No one even knew that he existed because his mom barely left either. People came by with food and stuff, but the boy had to hide in his room whenever anyone came. His mom would put him in his room and close the door. His room had lots of books and toys and he could kind of drag himself around with his arms . . . and then Mom would come and she’d say, I love you, I’ll do whatever you need, I’ll keep you safe.”

  I sit on the sandbar and watch him. He isn’t looking at me.

  He says, “But besides the skin and the no feet and staying inside, he was a pretty normal kid, and he breathed air like Mom, and he loved her and she loved him. Or you know, the love thing, whatever it is. They said I love you all the time. And he didn’t care about being half, because he was happy.”

  I feel the same way I did in Diana’s room. Exactly the same. When I knew she was going to tell me something horrible.

  Teeth looks at me and says, “And she taught him lots of words.”

  I swallow. “Okay.”

  “So I know words.”

  “Yeah.”

  He curls his tail underneath himself. “And every night she’d tuck me in and she’d say, grow feet grow legs grow legs, because she wanted me to be big and tall and real and walking.”

  I want to say, You’re real, but it would sound so stupid. He knows that. He’s known that a lot longer than I’ve known that.

  God, they call him a ghost.

  “And then one day, surprise, boy is four years old, Mom’s about to have a new baby, talking to the boy all the time about his new sister and how he’s going to be so happy, and she’s going to be big and strong with legs. She’s going to be a real kid instead of half a kid. And Mom has the baby and she loves her, she loves the baby. The whole baby.”

  “Oh . . . ”

  “And that’s when the half boy starts growing fins. Well. One fin.” He looks at himself. “A tail and a fin. A really big fin. The tail’s kind of titchy. I like my fin.”

  “Yeah.”

  “And then he gets webs between his fingers and scales all over his chest, and his teeth grow long and skinny and more and more of them, and he gets cold and slimy and . . . ”

  “Yeah. It’s okay.” You can stop. Please stop.

  “And this woman, she could handle half a baby, she could hug that and put it to bed and cry about it, but she can’t handle half a baby and half a fish, because she hated fish, and she just wanted to eat fish all the time and kill all the fish, and after the boy . . . after the fishboy got his tail she didn’t even look at him ever again and she says she doesn’t know what to do and she throws him into the ocean and loves her new baby and eats more fish than any person ever should.” He digs into the sandbar.

  I don’t know what to say.

  She threw him in.

  “And Fiona fed me until I grew up.” He shrugs. “I didn’t want her to feed me. I don’t want humans to feed me.”

  She threw him away.

  “You could go back, you know? Or you could come stay at my house or something.” I actually don’t know how that last one would work. I can’t picture my parents believing in Teeth any more than I could picture them dealing with a sick kid before we had to.

  But they would never throw Dylan away. And it’s not like he’s the son they wanted.

  And knowing this is the only thing keeping me from screaming I hate humans.

  “Your parents would be scared of me,” he says.

  “They’d deal.”

  “They’d think I’m ugly.”

  “Teeth.”

  “I’d steal all their fish and throw them back in the ocean.”

  “They’re already dead when we get them,” I say, but it’s enough for me to understand that having Teeth in the house would probably drive us all insane. It’s not like I was seriously considering it, anyway. I knew he wouldn’t do it.

  The look on his face, though, says that maybe he would. But he shakes his head quickly. “It doesn’t even make sense. How would I get up there?” He clears his throat. “Did you miss the part where I don’t have legs? It is kind of important. God, you never listen to me.” He flops backward into the water. He’s breathing kind of hard. I’m watching his ribs.

  “You could crawl,” I say.

  “The sun hurts my scales.” He’s yelling because his ears are full of water. I yank him so he’s sitting up again. He frowns at me.

  “Yeah, you’ll see how you’re frowning when someone starts to wonder what the fuck a boy is doing yelling about his scales.”

  “I’m a ghost, remember? Wooooo. I could yell about anything. I eat your babies!”

  “I could help you get on land. Carry you or something.”

  “Big strong Rudy,” he quips. “Look. I don’t want to go on land. I hate humans.”

  “What about me?”

  He kicks his fin.

  “You know, that thing about how all fish aren’t like the one that hurt your mom? We’re not all like the fishermen either. Or like your mom.”

  “That lady.”

  “Yeah.” I sigh. “If I were you, I’d just get the fuck out of here. Since you don’t want to be around any of us. I don’t know why you stay. Just to stare at the Delaneys?” I wonder what his name was when he was a boy.

  “I can’t stare at them. They never come outside.”

  “Your sister does sometimes.”

  “Whatever.”

  “There’s nothing for you here.”

  “The fish.”

  I want to argue with this. I so, so do. I want nothing more in the whole world than to know how to argue why it’s okay for Teeth to leave his family.

  But I don’t know how.

  After a minute he says, “It’s not just that. I can’t just swim away.”

  “Why not?”

  “I’m afraid I’ll drown.” He looks up and gives the world’s smallest smile. He takes a deep breath with those lungs. “I’m afraid I’ll drown.”

  I can’t sleep. He’s screaming like nothing I’ve ever heard. I wish the ocean were louder. I shouldn’t have let him free the fish. Did I think the fishermen wouldn’t find out, wouldn’t know he was behind it? I shouldn’t have helped. He wouldn’t have done it alone.

  I should have stayed with him tonight.

  My room shakes in the wind, but even though my dresser and my mirror are rattling, I still hear the screaming. I wish the house would finally crumble into the sea, just to make noise, just because it’s going to happen someday anyway, just to be something else to think about. I wish we would all just fall apart so I wouldn’t have to listen to the downfall happen, so slowly, so painfully. Clawing at us.

  fourteen

  THAT TUESDAY, MARKETPLACE DAY, I STAYED UP HALF THE NIGHT listening to him scream and I’m nodding off into my oatmeal when my mom comes home from the market with one solitary fish.
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  I guess I’m just stupid, but the ramifications of what Teeth and I did doesn’t hit me until just then, when she’s standing at the door, staring at this puny fish, her face smushed into a ball.

  Oh my God.

  Fuck.

  “What happened?” Dad asks. He’s standing up, the dish towel draped over his shoulder, and coming to the door to hold her together. “Did you get there too late? We’ll just have to ask someone for a few extra.”

  No. There aren’t extra.

  Fuck. I feel like I just ate something alive with my breakfast. I think Mom’s going to cry, which is one of the signs of the end of my world.

  She isn’t steel. “They had such a small batch today. Everyone got one.”

  And then she’s crying.

  Shit.

  I stand up. “I’m going to run to the marketplace,” I tell her. “I’ll barter fish off someone.”

  “Rudy, I don’t know if . . . ” She doesn’t know how to finish this sentence.

  “Maybe the fishermen will come in with a new load.”

  She nods and shoves a bunch of money into my hand, then grabs me into a tight hug. Every second she holds on makes me feel sore and sick.

  “I’ve got to go,” I say, and I pull out of the hug and sprint toward the marketplace. I think I hear Teeth calling me, but I won’t look over. No fucking way. I can’t.

  I didn’t think.

  I didn’t even think about Dylan.

  Oh my God. I have to stop running because my stomach hurts too much. I bend over and wrap my arms around my waist while I catch my breath. I shouldn’t have stopped, because now everything is hitting me a hundred times harder.

  I sacrificed my brother to be wild for an afternoon.

  I killed him so I wouldn’t be lonely.

  No. This isn’t over yet. This is exactly like when I was clinging to the dock in the marina, and I thought my life was over. There is always an escape route. There’s always a way. And there’s always someone who’s going to appear and save the day.

  Maybe today it’s me.

  But when I get to the marketplace, all I see are twenty people wearing the same expressions as mine. All the wares are packed up, and they’re just standing with fistfuls of money, craning their necks toward the marina, waiting for fish.

  Sam is shaking when he turns to me and says, “If my wife doesn’t get fish this week . . . ”

  “My brother.”

  “Me,” Mrs. Lewis says.

  I look at all of them, look at their fists. Then I count the money in my hand. They have so much more than I do. Even if the fishermen do bring a load in this late, I am not going to be able to compete with these people.

  And the fishermen aren’t coming.

  There’s a hand on my shoulder. Either it’s shaking or I am. I turn and face Fiona. Okay, so definitely me, then.

  “Your ghost is screaming,” she tells me.

  I can’t take this. I start to go, and then I turn around, because I can’t leave her yet, because I made a promise to the fishboy. And because if I don’t keep it, it will stick in my head, and I cannot think about Teeth right now. I can’t. I need to do this for him and get rid of it so he cannot exist.

  So I say, as quietly as I can, “Thank you for taking care of him. I told him I’d tell you.”

  She looks at me for a long time. Her eyes are the palest blue I’ve ever seen.

  “Thank you,” she says.

  So in the end, keeping the promise didn’t help, because I’m walking home thinking about who I should have taken care of, and I’m throwing up on the beach.

  It happens slowly.

  First, he stops running. Then he’s raising his arms up in the air every time someone passes him, silently asking to be carried. Then, when we’re giving the smallest meals with the smallest bits of fish, he’s coughing until he throws it all up.

  We take turns pounding shit out of his chest and it barely makes a dent. I stop leaving the house. I know that out there everyone’s trying to figure out bait, everyone’s threatening the fishermen, everyone’s trying a hundred ways, but it’s fucking useless and no one knows it more than me. Almost every thought in my head is run, but it just stops being an option. I might as well be thinking fly. I can’t do it. I can barely even go to the empty market every day when Mom sends me, just to check if maybe, maybe there are fish. There never are, because I guess fucking Teeth was encouraged by our success, I don’t know, and every second I’m out of the house burns in my chest. I definitely don’t look at the water when I go, but a few times I’ve heard the fishboy calling my name. Quietly.

  But what the fuck is there to say to him? That I’m mad, but not as mad as I should be? That I don’t really think fish are more valuable than people, but that’s essentially the choice I made? That I made it because I wanted him to like me? Please stop? I thought you needed me?

  I am the worst brother in existence, and it’s not even because of the things I do and know are terrible. It’s the stuff I don’t notice, because he isn’t on my mind.

  I should never have made a mistake like that.

  I don’t know. I can’t think about this anymore.

  We watch TV in the evenings now, just to avoid talking to each other. Mom and Dad haven’t fought once since the fish ran out, or if they do, it’s whisper-fights in their room, and they come out looking close to stone. Mom had the breakdown initially, but since then I haven’t seen a feeling from either one of them.

  It’s not that I think the emotions aren’t there, I just wish that they’d show them so I could show mine. Because I can’t be the one who’s not strong enough for Dylan right now. I can’t do it. I need to be the strongest one. Because the kid has no idea what’s going on, and every strangled breath he takes is completely terrifying him, and . . . shit.

  He trusts us.

  We’re all just quiet. It’s like we’re afraid if we talk, we’ll miss someone opening their mouth and coming up with the solution to everything. So we sit and stare and wait for someone else to come up with the answer.

  When I go into town, when Mom makes me, it’s more of the same, and the guilt blooms in my stomach. Sam’s wife hasn’t been out of bed in days, and you can see the tumor in Leann’s neck growing back and pressing against her skin. Mrs. Lewis collapsed on the beach a few days ago. Nobody’s died yet, but it’s just a matter of time, and I have to get home. I can’t stand this.

  I really didn’t think we were this reliant. I really didn’t.

  And they’re grabbing Teeth harder and he’s crying louder every night and I lost my only friend, so in what way wasn’t this a hideous mistake?

  I’m a shaky mess all the time.

  My parents have no idea this is all my fault, that they should be tying me down and excising me or lancing me like a boil or shooting me full of poison, anything, and then taking my lungs and stuffing them down my brother’s throat and watching him turn pink again.

  I have a dream about carving Teeth open and taking his liver and giving it to Dylan, and Dylan keeps asking me what a liver is.

  But I can’t even fool myself into thinking my parents would want me dead, because I see how badly they need me right now, how they need me to be the one who leaves the house for milk and no fish, because they couldn’t stand it right now. They need me because I’m the only one who can leave Dylan, even for a second.

  “It’s not going to happen,” I growl at him when he’s asleep. “So stop even thinking about it.”

  Mom holds him and strokes his hair and he asks—sometimes with words, when he can, sometimes just with his eyes—what the hell is going on, why the fuck he feels so sick. “Only a bump in the road,” she says to him.

  I wonder what the fuck road she thinks we’re on. There aren’t even any cars on this island.

  I trap Dylan on my lap with my arms and listen to him wheeze. We put together puzzles. When he’s falling back asleep, I whisper, “Breathe breathe breathe breathe,” over and over again, my foreh
ead up against his.

  I don’t care how much time he has left; he needs to be spending every second of it listening to every single thing I’m telling him right now. Because I am telling him some important shit.

  “Don’t you fucking dare,” I whisper.

  On our doorstep there is half a fish, the head and half a body. It’s wrapped in wax paper. It’s cool enough out here that it’s like it’s been refrigerated, but really it doesn’t matter how long it’s been waiting for us. Magic fish don’t spoil.

  The footprints in the sand are small, and the note says:

  Mom’s sick, could spare this, hope it helps. –D.

  My parents act all grateful, like they don’t know that half a fish isn’t going to do shit.

  Dylan is worse today, but something inside me has let go a little, and when Mom tells me to go down to the marina again to check for more fish, I go. I’ve gone a few times most days, just to beg for something. But they’ve been holding on to what they’ve caught this week very tightly, selling it to the rich old women on the island whose hearts haven’t been beating right since the shortage at the market. Even though Dad tells me to spend whatever I have to get my hands on a fish, one single fucking fish, they’re always already reserved for someone else who’s paid even more. I can’t believe this. It’s like nobody in the world cares about a dying kid anymore. Except Diana, and even she didn’t care enough to matter.

  If I steal one, they’ll never give my family another fish again, but I don’t know how long that will be a problem for us.

  “Rudy.”

  I look over and there he is, bobbing in the water. He looks worse than I’ve ever seen him. He has bruises and scabs all across one cheek. I knew by the screams that the fishermen were really punishing him, but I didn’t know he’d look this bad. It’s more bruising than I’ve ever seen, and he’s wearing this expression like he doesn’t even notice. And it makes it very hard for me to be as mad at him as I want to be. My anger’s more a thought than a feeling. Maybe I don’t have room for any more feelings right now.

  Except no, because apparently I still have room for my throat to tighten when I’m around him. Goddamn it, Rudy.