I pull my jacket around myself. “It’s cold.”
“Where have you been all week?”
“My brother’s sick.” I say this with as much meaning as I can. I punch out each word like I’m trying to hit him with it. I don’t know if I can make this statement weigh as much as it really does.
But he looks down. He gets it. And now he doesn’t know what to say. I see all the possible sentences flashing across his face.
He eventually settles on, “Is he okay?”
God. “No. He was up all night puking and he can’t take a single step. He’s fucked. I can’t even believe we . . . ”
I put my hand against my forehead and rub as hard as I can.
I can’t even believe we.
“But it’s not that many,” Fishboy says, his voice all desperate. “The fishermen will catch a ton more and bring them to market—”
“Teeth, I’m not a fucking idiot. You’re still slitting nets.”
“A few, okay, maybe, but they’re the ones who bring me to the mar—”
“Teeth, this isn’t a fucking game, okay?” I charge toward the water, but I don’t let it hit my shoes. “This isn’t fucking Operation Anything besides Operation Watch Your Brother Die and it fucking sucks!”
He pushes his chest out. “You think I don’t know that? You think I of all—”
“Fuck you.” I leave him and walk the rest of the way to the marina.
“You didn’t do it for the fish, you did it for me!” he screams, but I can’t tell if he’s trying to comfort me or condemn me. I don’t know what he means. I don’t know why I try to listen to him.
Hanging out with the fishboy has been a horrible life decision. I’m lying to my parents and sneaking out, I’m not spending nearly as much time with Diana as I should be, even if the time I spend with her is time I’d rather be spending with him, but I shouldn’t be spending time with him, because it doesn’t make any sense why I want to be with him, and I shouldn’t . . .
Too many feelings.
If he calls my name one more time, I swear to God I’m going to hit him, and I don’t know if I’ll let him go like the fishermen do. I don’t know if I could.
Except with every exhale, all this anger is leaving me, because there’s really no point in blaming this all on him. I’m not fooling myself, and it isn’t making me feel any better. I was the lookout. I’m as much to blame as he is.
God. Shit.
I ignore the people who need me and latch on to people who don’t. I dive into every other world except my own just because I want something more glamorous than my real life. I do destructive shit so a stupid hypocritical fish will like me.
I fall for fish instead of girls.
Fuck.
I have to stop and hold my head for a minute, but then I charge forward into the marina and get my shit together.
“I need a fish,” I tell the fisherman. “Please.”
The one-eyed fisherman leers at me the best he can. I want to run. “Gave you one yesterday,” he says.
“Please. My brother’s really sick. I can pay. Whatever you need.” I take a handful of bills out of my pocket. They’re all balled together so I don’t have to think about how much it is and how little we will have left. “Please.” Begging you makes me want to kill myself.
“Still working off a loss today. Come back tomorrow.”
I scream. I want to hit him but I know what he’ll do to me, and fuck it, I don’t care. “This is a little fucking kid! Give me a fucking fish!”
The fisherman stares at me, then chuckles a little and turns back to the water.
I want to throw myself into the water, get all caught in his net, do whatever the fuck it takes to make him listen. Make him reel me in and I will scream at him the whole time. I’ll grab the fishboy and hold a knife to his throat and tell them what I’ll do to their toy if they don’t give me a fucking fish.
Fuck.
Fuck me.
I start back to the house. A piece of seaweed flies out of the water and hits me in the cheek. He’s not supposed to be here. His dock is ages away.
“Go away,” I say. “Not now.” I wipe off the salty, slimy trail under my eye.
“Look at me,” Teeth says.
I turn around, only because his voice sounds so funny.
He’s just about as close to the shore as he can get, his tail fully visible, curled next to him on the sand like a cat’s. He holds out a big, plump fish, its neck neatly slit.
He’s shaking. His eyes are streaked red. I wasn’t even sure that he could cry. He looks like he can’t catch his breath.
“I’ll get you more if you need,” he says. “Take it. Hurry, please. Take it and go. I’ll get you another one tomorrow. Is that enough?”
I don’t know, but I say “Yes,” and I come to him and hold his head between my hands for just a second, because he’s still going, “Go. Please go. I need to . . . you have to go,” and he’s not taking his eyes off that fish.
That night, the screams. God, the screams. Like they’re pulling out pieces of him.
Somehow, that one additional fish is enough to tide Dylan over.
fifteen
DYLAN KEEPS HOLDING ON, AND TEETH KEEPS DELIVERING, AND by the next week the fish market is stocked again. This fishboy, I swear.
Everything is all right. My parents are still tentative with Dyl, but they stop watching me like I’m going to jump off the cliffs at any minute. Dylan crashes around in the house again. I feel like I can start going out again.
But things are weird with Diana now, since the fish famine. We don’t even talk much anymore. I think that other half of the fish is lying between us. The elephant in the room.
Sometimes we just sit in the library and read together. It’s Tuesday afternoon and I’m bored even with all the books. This hasn’t ever happened before. I want to be outside.
Diana turns the pages at three times the rate I do, and lets me sit in the armchair by the window. It faces the water but not the dock. No Teeth from here today.
“The fishermen are hurting him,” I tell Diana. “Worse than they used to.”
“Interesting.”
I want to tell her that she looks like him, but I don’t know how to without it sounding like an insult. Who wants to be compared to a fish? I mean, besides Teeth.
As soon as I feel like I’ve stayed here long enough, I’ll head to the dock.
But first I need a break.
“Going to the bathroom,” I tell her.
Diana nods and doesn’t look up. “Be quiet, remember. Use the one close to my room. My mother has the other one tied up.”
I walk down the hallway, the carpet heavy and plush beneath my feet. I’ve never felt more out of place in my life. I guess this is how Teeth feels.
I can hear Ms. Delaney’s cries get louder and louder as I head down the hall. Every Tuesday. Why is she crying? Teeth and Diana both make her sound kind of heartless. She threw her son in the ocean. I’m beginning to hate humans.
There are two doors across the hall from Diana’s room. I know one is the bathroom.
Clearly, this was the wrong one.
I’m in a room twice the size of Diana’s with bright blue walls and a pale yellow ceiling, a red comforter crumpled over an unmade bed shaped like a race car. The fan is running on the ceiling, like whoever left this room is about to come right back. All the lights are on, even the tiny one on the nightstand painted with stars and moons and the words GOOD NIGHT.
The carpet is even thicker here, where it hasn’t been stepped on and worn down. The world’s smallest wheelchair is folded up by the foot of the bed, and there’s a little bloodred chair in front of the bookshelf.
The whole time it was right here.
The bookshelf. I go to it and there, right on the top shelf, are Mrs. Delaney’s diaries. But I don’t look. I don’t need them anymore.
Instead, I reach for the copy of Runaway Bunny. The spine is crumpled like an old piece of pap
er. Diana’s looked barely read.
I open the inside cover, hoping, hoping, and there it is. Blocky left-handed blue crayon letters spell out DANIEL.
Or I could have just looked up, because on the wall, there’s a framed embroidery, the same kind my mom made for me when I was born. It has a little train stitched across the bottom and the words DANIEL PETER DELANEY, TUESDAY, JANUARY 2ND underneath.
Oh my God.
“What are you doing in here?”
Oh, fuck. But I turn around, and it’s just Diana. Thank God.
Except she doesn’t look ready to laugh this off. “What are you doing?” she says again.
“I came in here by accident—”
“Yeah, bullshit you did. Get out.”
I take a step back. I don’t want to go. “I’m sorry—”
“No. Get out. Get out of my house.”
I can’t shake the feeling that there’s nothing left for me in this house, anyway.
And like she’s reading my mind, Diana says as I’m going, in a voice as small as Teeth’s when he’s sad, “I thought you were here for me.”
I’m still panting when I flop down on the dock. Fishboy comes right out from under it, grinning. “Hey!”
“Hey.”
“Let’s go swimming. I found this cave. Brand-new.”
“I’m sure it’s been here for a while. Dude, I am in so much shit with your sister.”
“New for me, which means new. Come on. Let’s go swimming!”
I laugh. I kind of want to, but I’m already freezing just in my jacket. I think being with Teeth keeps me warmer than I logically should be—half-magic, after all—but I don’t know if even that’s enough to take the bite out of today.
“This cave better be really good. Very, very good.”
“It’s awesome. It’s little, though. And dark.”
“It is a cave.” And it’s already dark out here. I should be getting home. But I don’t want to, at all. I need to unwind after all the drama with Diana, and I kind of can’t think of anywhere I’d rather be than here.
“Come oooon,” he says.
“Do you know how cold it is?”
“Obviously. I’m in the water, aren’t I? I’m always cold.” He flops on his back and paddles around with his tail.
“Don’t give me that shit. Your scales keep you warm.”
“Maybe I only told you that so you wouldn’t worry about me, did you think of that?”
I laugh. “That would be a new one.”
“Come on, Rudy. I won’t let you get cold.”
I don’t know why I listen to him. I thought I’d decided that that was a bad idea. But I’m smiling even while I’m gasping as I lower myself into the water. He’s giggling at me, so I smack the top of his head once I’m in.
“You’re all shaky!” he says.
“Yeah, it’s called shivering.”
“I do that sometimes after the fishermen get me. Come on. It’s not far.”
He swims with me instead of in front of me. He comes up for breath whenever I do, which I think at first is a weird way to be nice, until I notice the deep bruising between two of his ribs. It’s the darkest mark I’ve seen on him.
When we come up again, I pause him with my hand on his arm. “You okay?”
He’s panting hard. “What’s up with your teeth?” He moves his hand toward my mouth and I stop him.
“They’re chattering, and they’ll bite you,” I say.
“I’ll bite you.”
“You okay?”
“We’re really close to the cave, Rudy.”
I feel like I’m about to freeze to death in the water, so I nod. “Okay, come on.”
He brings me to one of the cliffs and hauls himself out of the water and through a hole. The opening is small. He grabs me by the arm and pulls me up. The ceiling is tall enough for us to sit, but we can’t stand up, which I guess is only a problem for me. The floor is the closest thing to real dirt I’ve felt since we moved here.
“This isn’t much, gotta tell you,” I say.
“No, no, wait. It gets better.” He gets down on his hands and starts to crab walk, dragging his tail behind him.
“You’re going to scrape yourself up,” I tell him.
“My tail’s tough.”
Okay. I crawl beside him. He moves more quickly than I expect.
“See?” I tell him. “You’d do fine on land.”
“Yeah, just chop my tail off.”
“That’s kind of an idea, you know?”
“I wouldn’t be a fish without my tail, Rudy.”
The farther we go into the cave, the heavier and colder the air becomes. I don’t think I’ve ever been this cold, and it’s a little scary. I feel like I’m going to need to stop and give up, but that won’t help, and the only way to get warm is to swim back to the land, and I don’t know how the hell I could do that right now. Too cold. Just too cold.
The cold is aching down to my bones, and I can’t hear anything but my teeth chattering.
Fishboy says, “You’re moving all over the place.”
“I’m shivering.”
“Don’t be scared.”
“I’m not . . . ”
“Look. Look up.”
I wrap my arms around myself, but it’s not helping. I’m just pushing my icy clothes into my skin.
“Look up,” Teeth says again. Gently.
I tilt my head up. When did the ceiling get so high?
It’s like we’ve entered some kind of natural ballroom. The ceiling, thirty feet above my head, is dripping with stalactites and bare in places, and moonlight shines down and lights up this shallow pool in the middle of the room. Fishboy crawls his way over to the water and splashes in. “Isn’t this place cool? See, you can be on the land and I’ll be here, and we’re like practically right next to each other. See, I can totally reach you.” He touches my hand.
For the first time ever, his hand feels warm. He straightens up in the water. “Damn, Rudy. You’re cold.”
I try to nod but I can’t.
Holy fucking shit, I’m frozen solid.
No, I’m not. I’m breathing. Really slowly, but I’m breathing.
And then his voice changes, and he goes, “Oh, Rudy. You’re so cold. Are you okay?”
“I don’t know.”
“Ummm. Ummmm.” He’s looking around, his eyes darting from one blank wall to another. “Ummm, okay. Don’t worry, Rudy. Don’t worry don’t worry I’m going to make you okay!”
I close my eyes. My backbone hurts. I’m driving it into the floor with my shivers but I don’t even feel cold anymore. I don’t feel anything.
“Rudy, I’ll be right back!” And then he’s doing his stupid crawl out of the cavern and right back the way we came.
There isn’t even the seed of doubt in my brain. I know he’s coming. I keep my eyes closed, and I can see him here already, with blankets or warm clothes or a fucking fire or something, I don’t know. Anything that will help. I know he can fix this. I know. I don’t know how I know.
Maybe I should have stayed in the mansion.
I know he’ll come back, but I’m worried it won’t be in time.
No. He’ll save me. It’s his turn. He would never ever miss his turn. I’m smiling just thinking about it. I’m smiling . . .
I hear the slippery sounds of him sliding back in, and he slurs something, but I can’t understand what he’s saying. Is that me? Am I dying?
No, it’s him. His mouth is full. I watch him come toward me, something glistening in his mouth. Then he spits an Enki onto the ground next to me. “Presents!” He smiles at me and touches my cheek. “Still with me?”
“Uh-huh.”
He doesn’t even pause before he slits the Enki’s throat with his teeth. No tears, no deliberation. He opens up its stomach and takes out a hunk of meat. He moves my jaw up and down to help me chew.
And it’s like he’s feeding me marshmallows right out of a campfire. I want to close m
y eyes and fall asleep. I want to be small enough to swim in my mouth, to fill my whole body with this feeling.
He feeds me another bite, and the warmth pricks its way down to the tips of my fingers. I can sit up a little, and I do. “More.”
“Right here.” He puts another bite in my mouth. More. There’s a soft layer between my clothes and my skin. I’m a blanket right out of the dryer.
“Better?” he says.
“Mmmhmm.” I’m praying that he won’t stop, and he doesn’t. He keeps his eyes locked on the fish while he picks it clean of meat, searching each crevice and around each tiny bone. I can taste the slime on his fingers when he brings them to my lips. It’s not as gross as I would have expected—musky, salty, and alive.
By the time he’s halfway through, I’m practically okay, but I keep letting him feed me the whole thing. I don’t even grab for the meat myself once I can. I let him do it. I want to see if he’ll stop. Or break.
He’s smiling at me the whole time, bigger and bigger the better I get.
“All done,” he says, once the fish is cleaned out. And that’s the first moment that he lets go and looks a little sad. And I feel it, warm and heavy, in my stomach.
I grab his wrist and say, “You’re incredible,” because there’s nothing else to say.
Then we’re in the pool of water, except really he’s in the pool and I’m in the air, because he doesn’t want me to get cold. He has me on his shoulders, and he swears it isn’t hurting him, swears, and he spins me around and I hold my arms out like I’m flying.
We swim all the way back to the shore like this.
And I spin all the way home.
Mom is staring at me like she doesn’t know who I am, but all I’m doing is running around with Dylan on my back. “We’re playing airplane,” I tell her. I don’t know why she looks so surprised. It’s not as if I never play with Dylan.
“Must be that new girlfriend,” Dad mumbles to her.
I don’t know why they think I’ve changed. It’s Dylan. The difference is Dylan, playing back.
I haven’t changed. Why would I have changed?
I balance Dylan on my hip while I help Dad with dinner. I realize I’m whistling.