Fairy of Teeth

  Chapter 6

   

  George grabbed him by the arm and pushed him against a row of lockers. A few people looked over, but when George gave them the stink eye they went back to minding their own teenage business.

  "I know you've been back there," George said.

  Paulie shrugged. "Back where?"

  "At the fucking lake. I've seen you out there. I've seen you go in and I've waited all night for you to come out."

  "And here I am."

  "What if you screwed up or floated off somewhere and couldn't find the hole you made? What if it froze over, or it snowed so much you couldn't tell how to get out?"

  George was mad and there was a hint of garlic on his breath. George's family didn't eat garlic. That meant George had been over to Paulie's house for dinner again.

  "Did my parents tell you to spy on me?" Paulie asked.

  "They're worried. I'm worried."

  "Don't worry."

  "You can't keep doing this. Whatever it is you're doing or taking, you've got to fucking stop."

  "He's right," a voice said. It belonged to Pinder.

  "What is this, an intervention?" Paulie yelled, a little too loud. People looked over. George had taken hold of his arm again. Paulie shook it loose. "I'm not doing anything to you guys. Leave me alone."

  "You're our friend," Pinder said.

  "You saw what happened to me out there that night. You know I'm different."

  "Because you can't drown? Maybe I can't burn, but I'm not about to go setting myself on fire to find out."

  "I didn't go looking for this."

  "It was an accident. Maybe you should leave it at that. Fluke goal, lucky bounce. That's it," George said.

  "What, this is hockey? You're the one who pulled me out of the water after nine minutes. You thought you were pulling out a corpse, something to stick into a casket for my parents to cry over. What's the first thought that came to your head when you saw that you were wrong, when you felt me breathing?"

  "That you're a lucky son of a bitch and none of us are on the verge of getting sued," Pinder said.

  "And you?" Paulie asked. His eyes bore into George's.

  "I felt guilty."

  "I didn't ask what you felt. I asked what you thought, the first thought that crossed your mind. The thought that keeps crossing your mind, that I'm a goddamn freak."

  George shook his head. "I don't like to think about that night at all, dude."

  "None of us do," Pinder said. "Like the time I walked in on my step-sister rubbing one out. I saw it, I processed it, I purged my mind of all the details."

  "Was she hairy?" Akira had completed the circle.

  "She's not even Indian," Pinder said.

  "Point being?"

  "Yes, she was hairy. There. Are you happy now?"

  Paulie wondered whether Akira had told the others about the experiment in the bathtub. He was leaning to the side of no.

  "The point of this discussion, which for once ain't about sex at all, is that you fell into a hole you weren't supposed to fall into and you should forget it and stop going back."

  "Get a hobby," Akira said.

  "Start smoking pot," Pinder said.

  "Anything. Just stop fucking drowning yourself because it's unnatural as fuck."

  The morning bell rang.

  "I'm late for class," Paulie said. "And so are you."

  "Promise me you'll at least take a break and think things over. We miss you, buddy."

  "I promise," Paulie said.

  As they scattered, each going off in a different reaction, Paulie grabbed Akira's shoulder. "I didn't tell them," Akira said. He looked frightened. "I didn't tell anyone."

  "When does your dad get back?" Paulie asked.

  "Next week on Tuesday."

  "Fill him in, show him the video, and tell him I want to meet."

  Akira swallowed hard. "I will tell him—but what if they are right, what if it is better to leave it alone?"

  Paulie's own doubts had vanished the day he laid eyes on the castle in the desert. The doubts and fears of his friends only served to reinforce his determination. Science always frightened the unenlightened. The clueless masses would do anything to keep the exceptional among them down.

  "Set up the meeting."