“He doesn’t live on the island,” Diana says. “He’s one of the men who rides the shipping boat and unloads everything at the market. Usually he knows he’s supposed to stay far away. I suppose he forgot.”
I mentioned that boat to Fishboy the other day, and he lit all up like a little kid and said, “Oh, man, I love that boat. That boat is so cool.” To be honest, I think he’s crazy about all boats, though he won’t admit it, because of course fish aren’t crazy about boats. But he knows a lot about them from all his time in the marina. He apparently listens well to what they’re shouting back and forth when he’s getting the shit beaten out of him. That’s where he learned to curse, after all.
“Boats are the fucking kings of the universe,” he’ll say, his fin twitching like crazy as the ship pulls into the marina, and then he’ll start babbling about the difference between port and starboard like this is supposed to be brand-new information for me. “I could totally be a . . . whatever.”
“Sailor?”
“On a boat?”
“Yep.”
“Yeah.” He’ll sigh all wistfully. “I could be a sailor. But I’m too busy being a fish.”
Now Diana goes to her mirror over her dresser and puts on a bracelet. I’ve never seen a girl’s room with less makeup. Even my mom has a lipstick or two on the nightstand. “Do your parents fight?” Diana says.
Softly, I say, “More than they used to.”
“Maybe they’re going to get divorced.”
I didn’t know you were allowed to just say that. I clear my throat. “Your mom still probably likes your father more than she likes your brother’s father.”
“This is your way of asking for the story.” She sits down beside me. “The short and dark fable of my mother’s ocean adventure.”
I watch her. I don’t say anything, If she really knew how much I want this, she would stop. She would keep teasing. It’s not like she’s the only one being used here.
I’m trying not to wonder why I care so much. It’s curiosity. That’s all it is. It doesn’t have anything to do with how I feel about Teeth.
She says, “Four years before I was born, my mother decided to take a swim at almost exactly midnight. She’s living all alone, because this is right after her parents died in a car accident, when they were on vacation in Capri. She’s been told to never go into the ocean, that it isn’t safe. And at this time, there are very few others living on the island. Fiona and her husband and some other people who are not at all important.”
Yeah, it would be Fiona.
“So Mother wears her favorite bikini and goes down to the shore. A pink bikini. Her diary is very specific about the bikini. She usually used it for sunbathing. The diary implies there was once sun here. I don’t know if that is for effect. Maybe this is like Holes and the weather is very metaphorical.”
I have absolutely no options but to hear this story or to lie in bed at night and listen to the ocean and his screaming and wonder, wonder, imagine who is right. These are my only two choices.
I need to be right.
I need to hear that the fish are bad.
Diana lowers her voice to this dramatic whisper. “So she wades into the water, up to her hips. She’s in too deep, it’s too dark. She takes a step backward. She falls. She feels something pinch her skin, feels her bikini bottoms rip.”
I’m picturing Fishboy doing this, even though I know that his part of the story doesn’t come until later. I can’t get the image out of my head, and it’s scaring me.
With her voice so quiet I can hear the ocean groaning outside and the ticks of the clock on her shelf, each one so small and precise, like drops of water hitting the ground.
Diana says, “At first she thinks it’s a piranha, but she looks down and sees a chubby Enki fish. Her father has told her horror stories about these fish. Their scales are poisonous, their teeth can crush rocks, they are only safe dead, but she’s always been so fascinated, thought they were beautiful, loved them. Now she wonders if she can scoot out of the water before it bites her. And then . . . ”
I stare. Her voice is so excited. I wonder if she forgot that this is something that really happened—to her mother—and not just some horror story she read in her library.
Diana says, “She looks down and sees the fish has entirely disappeared. And she feels so much pressure—”
“Wait—”
She nods. “The whole thing.”
“No.”
“The entire fish. En. Tire.”
“Christ, Diana. That’s disgusting.”
She looks offended while she rolls onto her back and looks at me with her head tilted into the carpet. “It’s not disgusting. Books are disgusting.”
“I like books. I thought you liked books.”
“Let’s be honest, Rudy, books are pornography for brains. All that subtext and bullshit and hidden imagery. This is real life. It isn’t like that. Isn’t that what you just said?”
“I . . . ”
“You said, ‘Sometimes there’s just a transformation.’”
“I . . . ”
“This is real life. This is a woman raped by a fish. And sometimes it just happens.”
I’ve never hated getting what I want quite this much.
twelve
“YOUR FISH.” DYLAN POINTS TOWARD THE SEA. “THERE?”
I see the tip of Teeth’s tail poking out of the water. He does that on purpose when he knows I can’t come be with him, just to screw with me. “Yep, there’s one right there.” If Teeth heard me tell my brother he’s a fish, he’d never let me live it down. He’d do that little dance where he waves his arms around his head and go, “I’m a fish, I’m a fish!”
Sometimes, when I think about it too hard, I start wondering where Teeth learned how to be happy. I try not to think that hard, especially not about him.
To be honest, I’m having a hard time thinking about Teeth at all right now. I don’t know. I don’t know what to think. I’ve been avoiding the dock and spending more time at the mansion with Diana these past few days. I don’t know if he really knows that. I really, really hope not.
I glance at Dad to make sure he hasn’t noticed the fish tail that’s a little too big to be real. But he’s focused on the house, up by where Mom’s cooking with the door open. We’re sitting on the beach so close to the house that we can smell the fish she’s frying. I can’t see the dock from here, so I know Teeth came out of his way to wave his fin at me.
Dylan gets up by himself and scales the very edge of the shoreline, heel-toe, arms out for balance. He’s right in front of our house, and I’m sure for a second that it’s finally going to fall. And crush him. I watch his feet leaving tiny prints in the sand.
“What are you looking at?” Dad asks me.
I don’t want to tell him. They get mushy when I admit I’m worried about Dyl. And I probably shouldn’t admit my obsession with our house collapsing. He’d probably turn it into a metaphor. Something about my shit of a life. Enough metaphors.
I say, “Are you and Mom going to get divorced?” I don’t know. Just to have something else to say. Just because I can’t stop thinking about our house crumbling, and now I’m thinking about metaphors.
He double-takes like a cartoon character. “What?”
The ocean pounds three large waves in a row, like a drumbeat.
I say, “You never even talk anymore unless you’re fighting.”
“Hey, you’re not around that much lately, kiddo.” He wiggles his eyebrows a little when he says this.
I start talking fast, mostly so he doesn’t get a chance to ask where I am all the time or why he apparently thinks I’m doing something eyebrow-wiggle worthy. I guess I’m glad they assume I’m spending all my time wooing Diana. I say, “It’s just that ever since we’ve moved here it’s like we became different people. And it’s not like we’ve changed, or gotten better, or worse, it’s just that . . . we stopped being who we really are and started being who we expect
ed each other to be. We’re like . . . caricatures, compared to how we were.” I dig in the sand with my thumb. “It’s like we’re all trying to disappoint each other in exactly the same ways we always have, so that there are no surprises.”
“Rudy.”
“I’m all aloof and you and Mom are all . . . cramped.”
“Cramped.”
“In the tiny kitchen. And the house is so dark all the time. And the ocean’s so loud . . . . ”
He exhales. “This is a rough time. We know that.”
“It’s been a rough time for three years.”
“But now you can’t get away from it. And I understand how hard that must be for you. Leaving your friends . . . ”
“It’s not that.” God, it has nothing to do with them.
How long has it had nothing to do with them?
Dad says, “But he’s getting better now. Considerably.” He looks down at Dylan and smiles. “Dyl, start heading back, okay?”
“Okay!” Dylan shouts. He turns around and starts coming toward us, still pretending he’s on a balance beam.
I feel Teeth watching him.
“I know you don’t like it here,” Dad says.
“It’s not that simple.” I look back out to the water, but it’s nearly still right now, and Teeth has disappeared.
“You miss home.”
“Of course.”
He says. “We’re a family. And . . . unfortunately . . . ” He puts an arm around my shoulders. “That means your mom and I are going to fight sometimes when things are this rough, and it also means no one’s going to bail on anyone else. Even on you, kiddo.”
I look at him.
He’s giving me this encouraging smile that I don’t deserve. “We know that you’re not having an easy time here, and we’re so sorry. And we haven’t forgotten about you, you know?”
But the thing is that sometimes they have.
I feel my voice catching. “It’s like you’re mad at me all the time.”
He doesn’t take his eyes off me. It’s like this was the part of the conversation he was waiting for, and he knows what I’m going to say before even I do. “Nobody’s mad at you,” he says. His voice is quiet, but it has all this air behind it.
“Like I don’t love him as much as you guys do.”
He frowns. “You feel like that?”
“No. You feel like that.” I push my feet hard into the sand. I have this stupid thought that I want to get trapped where I’m sitting, just to prove to Dad that I’m not going to get up and run away. Then before that thought is even finished, my brain screams at me to get up and run away.
Dad’s hand is suddenly on my shoulder, heavy and solid like a harness. He says, “It’s normal to resent him. It doesn’t make you bad. It’s understandable. He gets a lot more attention than you do. And I’m sorry for that, Rudy. I really am. It’s not as if, if we could . . . if we could have chosen things, this is where you would have ended up.”
“It’s not like that.”
“You were our only kid for a long time.” He gives me this little smile. “You were our whole world. We never would have planned for you to feel lost.”
“That’s not what I’m saying.” Though I have to admit that something in there plucked me in a way I wish it hadn’t. Because it sounds stupid to say that I’m my parents’ second favorite. I’m too old, anyway, to give a shit whether or not Mommy and Daddy love me best. Give me a break.
It’s stupid.
I tilt my head back and breathe out hard. Dylan is almost back to us. We need to finish this now. “I don’t resent him,” I say.
Dad watches me.
I choose my words as quickly as I can. “I am scared to death of him, Dad.”
Dylan runs—runs—into me and crashes into my arms.
I say, “Hey, buddy,” and give him a hug.
I think Dad is reaching out toward Dylan, but then he palms my head instead. And I can’t tell which of us he’s talking to when he says, “You make me so proud.”
I don’t want Dylan to see me cry again, so I hold my breath when he starts running around the beach in circles with his arms flailing around, looking exactly like this kid we’ve had in our heads for the past three years.
“Can I ask you a question?” Diana says, mid-kiss, not sexy, just conversational.
“Yeah.”
“What’s a swing set?”
“What?”
“They’re in books, but no one ever explains what they are. They aren’t in my encyclopedia.”
“When I was a kid, someone told me that ‘pear’ wasn’t in the dictionary and I never checked and I think about it all the time.”
“We can check later.”
So I explain to her what a swing set is and then I try to tell her about TV and the Internet and all sorts of foreign crazy things and she rolls her eyes and reminds me how much you can learn from books and how much you really can’t, like the feel of her waist in my hand, like sea air, like what a swing set is.
And her face when I tell her about Michigan, when I show her what to do once our pants are off . . . God, that fascinated face. I know that face.
My hand drifts to her hip and before I can stop it, before I can even process that I’m thinking it, my brain thinks, What would it feel like to touch scales, tail, scars? and I’m kissing her deeper without meaning to and okay, fine, it’s fine, who the fuck hasn’t had a mermaid fantasy? That’s something you can get from a book. That’s something that’s not real. It’s fine.
No, what’s actually weird is that I’m not really that concerned.
“Where have you been, kiddo?” Fishboy says as I make my way down the dock afterward. “Christ. No, I know where you’ve been. Don’t answer that.”
“Hmm?” I sit down and plunk my feet in the water. It hurts in a good way. “I need to talk to you.”
“I don’t want to talk.”
“It’s about the fish.”
“What about my fish?”
“Have you ever seen them hurt anyone? Anybody?”
“Like a human?”
“Yeah.”
He frowns. “Of course not. You know what I have seen? Humans hurting fish.”
“It’s not the same. No. Stop. You can’t say it’s the same. I . . . I don’t know, Teeth.”
It’s not as if people are going out and capturing his fish just to do it. We catch them because we need them to live. What did the fish get out of impregnating Ms. Delaney? What good did that do them?
I look at Teeth, bobbing in the water.
Shit.
Teeth frowns at me. “What?”
They needed something to keep them alive too.
I have to stay still for a few minutes just to collect everything in me. I can’t believe I’m weighing the morality of hurting a fish versus hurting a human. But it’s so hard not to compare the two with that creature in the water in front of me, sucking on his fingers.
“What are you thinking about?” he says.
“What would you say if I told you a fish hurt someone? Really hurt them?”
He’s making eye contact so fierce it scares me. “I’d say the fishermen hurt me every night.”
“Hurt you—”
“No. Really hurt me.”
“I—”
“Fuck humans! I hate humans. What the fuck do you want from me? I don’t give a shit about your little human stories, okay? Some fish are bad, and do you have any idea how many humans have fucked me over? Goddamn it, Rudy!”
I try to say something, I don’t even know what, but then he dives under the water and he’s gone.
thirteen
AND THE NEXT DAY, IT’S LIKE IT NEVER HAPPENED.
“So I know where you came from, by the way,” I say.
“Humans and a house and all that. Yeah, I know.” Fishboy isn’t even looking at me. His eyes are busy tracking something under the water.
“That house. The big one, right there.”
“You mus
t think I’m an idiot.”
“What are you looking at?”
“I’m—” He dives and emerges with a tiny fish in his mouth. He spits it onto the deck. “Look at that! Check that out! Oh, man, Teeth is the king. Teeth is the king. I am the king of the seas. Look at that.”
I squirm away from it. It’s flopping around like my brother during a bad night. “What is it?”
“Minnow. Oh, God, look at this minnow. Mmm. It’s beautiful.” He kisses it and cuddles it against his cheek, then neatly slits its head off with his teeth.
“Oh, Jesus, Fishboy.”
He looks up, a laugh, halfway through, frozen on his face. “What did you call me?”
“Fishboy.” But I didn’t mean to. Shit. “It’s, uh, what I called you in my head before I knew your name.”
He shrugs and nods a little. “Fishboy. Yeah, that’s cool.”
Thank God. This would have been such a stupid fucking thing to fight about.
He’s really grossing me out with this fish, licking the blood off its neck, so I shake my head quickly and say, “You know how I found out where you’re from?”
“I don’t care.”
“I made out with your sister.”
“What’s ‘made out’?” He’s looking at me with these huge eyes.
“Kissed.”
“Ew,” he says. “You kissed a fish?” Then he buries his face in the minnow and rips it to pieces.
“This is so gross.”
He comes up with flesh speared on his teeth. “Oh my God. Rudy, this is the best minnow in the world. You have to try this.”
“I’ll pass.”
“I’ll save you the liiiiver.”
At least now I know he’s screwing with me. “Do fish even have livers?”
“You’re a liver.”
“How do you know that word?”
“I’m very, very smart.” He licks the skin clean. “Oh my God. Minnow. You are a beautiful minnow.”
“It’s dead.”
“It doesn’t speak English anyway. Oh, lovely, lovely minnow.”
“You’re disgusting.”
“You’re the one kissing a fish. Gross.”