“Scared you’ll drown?”
I say, “Yeah,” before I process that he was probably teasing me.
But I am. Maybe not as scared as I am that every time I get in the water I will keep getting closer to this is your life, this is your friend and you are never leaving, but I’m not telling him that bit. Kid doesn’t speak English, he wouldn’t even understand. Yeah.
He looks at me for a while, then pushes off the dock with his fin and floats around on his back, beating the water with his tail. He has even more scaly patches on his chest than I remembered. I swear he’s the ugliest thing in the world. And the bloody hole in the middle of his tail is glistening.
He says, “What if I show you something cool? Something life-changing.”
I say softly, “Why do they put holes in your tail?”
He ignores that. “Something really cool, Rudy.”
“Can I fix it?”
“What?”
“Sick brother. I have the fix-it impulse.”
“Show you something.”
“Yeah, fine. How cool?”
“Really, really cool. But you can’t tell the fishermen. Promise?”
“What? Do you really fucking think I’m having conversations with the fishermen?”
“I never know what you humans are gonna do. I’m not a very good spy, remember? Come on. I’m not going to let you drown, God, I’m a fish.”
“You’re not a fish.” I slide into the water as slowly as I can, feeling like all my limbs are going to snap off from the cold and my balls are going to jump up into my body. We’re past where the waves break, but the peaks still smack me in the face on their way to shore.
“Why do you keep saying that?” He waits until I’m halfway into the water before he grabs me by the shoulder and starts pulling me out to sea.
“Holy crap. You’re murdering me.”
He gnashes his teeth and laughs, and I can’t help it, I’m laughing too, although I’m still worried that while Fishboy is trying to show me something cool, the sea is going to swallow us both alive. And, in all honesty, sometimes I still worry. Sometimes he feels too charismatic to not be a bad guy. He’s a little too much like I was at school for me to completely trust him.
But then he’ll smile at me, and sometimes I don’t really give a shit whether he’s bad or not, as long as I’m not bored. And I haven’t been since the first day I rescued him.
He drags me over to the marina. “Don’t be seen,” he says, and he latches on to a rock and peers around it to the fishing docks.
“Seriously, let’s get out of here. This is bad.” Why the fuck does he even come here? Shit, I don’t want to watch them beat him up. Do they even beat him up during the day?
“Uh-uh. Come here.” He pulls me to a new cluster of rocks. “Okay, here, dive down and open your eyes.”
“I can’t open my eyes underwater.”
“Do it anyway.” And he dunks me under the water.
I take a few seconds to convince myself that I’m still alive, and then I open my eyes. It hurts. Of course it hurts.
But then, fish.
Hundreds of them, all around me, swimming and nudging each other and screaming—I can’t believe it, actually screaming—in the same high-pitched voice that has become my lullaby or my nightmare or something.
Teeth is beside me. He grins.
I stay down for as long as I can, and then I come up, gasping. Fishboy emerges a minute later, one of the fish in his hands.
“This must be like a colony or something,” I say.
“This is where they hide. The fishermen have no idea.” He pets the fish’s back. “Look at my little brother.”
“Brother?”
“Well,” he says. “Fine. My half brother. All of them. Half brothers and sisters.”
“You have no idea which fish are the parents of which fish.”
He brings his face down to the water and presses his cheek against the fish he’s holding. “It doesn’t matter. They’re my siblings.” Then he takes the seaweed he stole from me and feeds it to the fish, stroking its scales the whole time. The fish nibbles it up with the same teeth as Fishboy’s. “There you go,” Teeth says softly. “There.”
If I didn’t know better, I’d swear that fish was cuddling with him.
If I didn’t want to believe that these fish are totally not sentient enough to worry about eating.
“They’re not just any fish, you know?” Teeth gently lets the fish go. “I mean, eat the minnows. I eat the minnows. The minnows are stupid as fuck. They run into the rocks while they’re swimming. The ancho . . . what are they?”
“Anchovies.”
“Yeah. They’re just assholes. Eat them if you want. Seriously, I’ll even help you catch them. They taste okay.”
“The fishermen catch those too, sometimes.”
“Yeah, when one swims right into their net.” He shakes his head. “They’re hunting the Enkis. I know that. And I get that. But . . . we’re special.”
“The reason they want them is because they’re special. Anchovies aren’t going to cure anyone.”
“That’s not the special I mean.” He catches another fish and hugs it to his chest.
I’m trying to be gentle. “They’re only special to you because they’re yours.”
“I could say the same thing about that cute kid you were holding.”
Well, shit.
I look away.
His voice is quiet. “It’s not like I can have my own babies, you know? It’s not like there are girls like me. Or anyones like me. And I don’t even have the proper equipment. You know that. The fishermen sure as fuck do.”
Now I look at him again. “The fishermen just rip at you.”
And fuck, he lets them because he’s dying to be touched. I know that because I know that feeling.
So I put my hand on his arm, of course I do, before I even register that he might not want that this second, but he fucking leans in to it, then shakes his head a little.
He says, “The fishermen just rip at me, but we’re not talking about that right now.” He holds up the fish in his hand as much as he can while still keeping it in the water. “You see him, this little thing, this trusting little thing? These guys are sort of . . . all I have.”
This would probably be a good time to say, You have a sister, and I made out with her. But I can’t tear myself away from that fish in his hands, its empty animal stare. It sees just as well as I do, but I don’t want to think about that. But I am.
But then Teeth is looking at me with these swamp green eyes and going, “So it’s time to stop eating my siblings, okay? Please. I’m saying please.” He swallows. “Magic word and all that.”
eleven
“JUST MAYBE WE CAN START WEANING HIM OFF, IS ALL I’M saying.”
Mom picks up a cabbage and examines it. “Will you eat cabbage?”
“If you fry it in bacon.”
She makes a face, but she puts it in her basket and pays anyway. I wonder what happens when we run out of money. We’re going to have to find something to sell.
“Weaning him off, Mom.”
“It feels too risky right now, Rudy. We’re seeing so much improvement.”
Mr. Gardener, the fat old man who lives closest to us, bumbles past on his way to the homemade newspaper stand and shoves me stomach-first into the desk of the produce booth. I wince. Mr. Gardener ignores me and starts yelling at Mrs. Lauder, the produce lady, “I’m not paying fifty for that!” but he will, we all know he will, because every week he does. Eventually.
Sometimes it’s like we’re all playing these small parts in a play, and our job is to show up every Tuesday and say the same two lines, and go home.
My role is to scan the ocean for the fishboy until Fiona comes and handles me. I already see her watching me from her standard spot on the edge of the cliff. I think a strong wind could push her off. She winks at me. She always does.
I turn back to Mom. “So why would he g
o back to being sick once he’s well?”
“The same reason we couldn’t take him off medicine on good days. It’s for maintenance.”
“The medicine didn’t work.”
She laughs like she doesn’t mean it. “That’s pretty much the point, Rudy.”
“Yeah, and now he’s better than he’s ever been.”
“Exactly why we can’t risk halting his progress now.” She picks up one of the fish we bought with both hands and tips it back and forth, checking its weight. It’s facing me, eyes round and smooth as marbles. I have to keep reminding myself that it’s dead, and it can’t see me.
I say, “I’m scared I’m becoming a vegetarian.”
“You had three hamburgers yesterday.”
“No, like, mentally becoming a vegetarian.”
“And why’s that such a bad thing?”
“Because vegetarians annoy me.” I’m watching her put that fish into her tote bag, and I can’t stop feeling like I’m going to throw up. I wish that one had swum away. I don’t know.
Mom says, “You sound just like your father sometimes.”
I wish I had a reason to think that it’s more okay to eat them than it would be to carve up the fishermen and suck at the insides. I wish that was the cure Dylan needed.
No. I don’t care about the fish, end of story. I haven’t lost my knowledge that fish are fish, and whether or not they hug themselves against Teeth’s slimy chest, they’re fish. Teeth isn’t interesting because he’s half fish, but because he’s half human. Or because he’s just mine or whatever.
But . . . “But they’re magic fish,” I tell Mom. “Maybe they’re more like . . . like mammals or something than we think. You know. Sentient. Maybe they’re like dolphins.”
“Oh, honey, don’t say that.”
“Just because we don’t want to think it . . . ”
It’s so stupid. I would feed my brother dolphins if it would save him. I’d feed him babies if it would save him. Just . . . Dylan, okay?
It hits me for the first time that that might not be an okay thing to feel.
“We have no reason to believe that’s true,” she says.
“They’re different from minnows and anchovies and stuff.”
Mom says, “And minnows and anchovies don’t save your brother’s life.”
I pick out apples. “I know.” I’ve had this conversation before. Clearly I suck at arguing either side.
She squeezes a nectarine and lets it go. “He still has a long way to go, Rudy. Don’t get me wrong, I’m so excited about all the progress he’s made. But this isn’t something to mess around with.”
“So what’s the endgame? It’s not like there are schools here.” There is no real life here.
“We’ll go home someday,” she says, but even she doesn’t sound like she believes it anymore. How can she talk about going home in the same breath she admits the fish are tying us indefinitely here?
“Nobody ever goes home,” I mumble.
She stops and hugs me. “Oh, sweetheart. Your brother loves you so much.”
I have a headache.
She says, “Maybe someday there will be a good set of lungs for him at home, and we will look back on this as the thing that got him through the wait.”
“I hope so.” That does sound pretty perfect.
“Oh, look,” Mom says. She lets me go. “Fresh fish.”
The fishermen are hauling huge wicker baskets up to the stand, and now everyone in the marketplace is rushing over, haggling for a better price. But they’ll pay anything. They’re all in the same position as Dylan: saved from dying and petrified of being sick again. Without the fish, who knows if they’d go back to how they were: arthritic, diabetic, catatonic.
Of course no one ever leaves this island. No one’s willing to risk it. Why would we ever be? We’d be too afraid that the lung transplant would fall through the way it did last year, and we wouldn’t be able to get back here in time, and . . .
Ugh. I don’t want to think about that shit. That fucking scrapbook, that fucking library, the fucking fishboy.
The fucking fact that staying here is starting to sound not so horrible.
God, I really was desperate for a friend.
But no, I think about leaving. I think about college. This is what I’m supposed to do. I taste that promise for as long as I can, rolling it around my tongue and letting it settle into my cheek. Until I leave them. Until I get on a plane or a boat and get so far away that no one can even see me. I am free. I am free.
I can get through a few years.
I won’t get glued to this place.
I don’t have to be.
I’ll keep searching for exits all the time. Even when I don’t want to.
I’m a horrible brother.
I’m still chewing on everything when Fiona comes over. “The ghost likes you,” she whispers. She’s leaning on my shoulder. She smells like she’s from the ocean.
“You’re crazy, Fiona.”
“The ghost is with you,” she rasps. “He isn’t leaving anytime soon.”
“He’s not a ghost.”
She smiles with her lips closed. “Who’s he?”
“The . . . ” I shake my head. “See you next week, Fiona.”
One of the fishermen, the one missing an eye, looks over at me when my mom and I approach the booth. His hat is pulled low on his forehead. He grins at me with his gold teeth.
Why the hell shouldn’t they be bastards, seriously? They rule us.
My mom hands over a fistful of bills and points to the fish she wants, and the fisherman starts wrapping them in paper. I’m focused, this time, on the money instead of the fish’s dead eyes.
Fuck. We’re paying them.
The guy I pulled off Teeth is slipping the money into his pocket right now. He’s going to take it to Mr. Gardener’s stand and buy cigarettes and some crackers and whatever the hell he wants.
I don’t know why this hadn’t occurred to me before.
We’re eating Teeth’s brothers and we’re helping the guys who hurt him.
Mom makes me carry the fish home. I’m praying the whole walk by the water that Teeth doesn’t see me with this bag. I don’t see him, but I’m pretty sure that doesn’t mean anything. He’s maybe a better hider than we give him credit for.
God, if he sees me, I’m so fucked. He’ll make me swim laps next lesson.
I say, “Can’t we at least start catching the fish ourselves? Instead of buying them from the fishermen?” I know this wouldn’t appease Teeth one bit, but it would make me feel better about the whole thing.
“They guard the bait with their lives, you know that.”
“Power-hungry assholes.”
“Sweetie, I wish it were simple too.”
Mom thinks we should try to make amends with Ms. Delaney, so she asks me to bring over a bottle of wine from Dad’s puny collection. I obviously decide to go over on a Tuesday evening. I’ll let Diana give her the wine. Or maybe we can drink it.
Maybe I can get her drunk and get her to show me the diaries. God, I’ve never ended that sentence that way.
Diana peers through the curtains at me, then cracks the door open, grinning. “Good to see you.” She’s all dressed up again. She has her hair in a bun and glasses near the tip of her nose. I think she’s going for sexy librarian. The glasses don’t even have lenses. I’m smiling in spite of myself.
It’s still temporary, but it’s still amazing to feel something. Even when that something is just a tongue.
She pulls me inside, down the hallway, and backward onto her bed. I can’t believe that after all this passion, manufactured though it may be, we haven’t had sex yet. But I have to admit that the kissing is nice.
As is being half-drunk and crashed on her floor and talking about Kafka. I’m losing some kind of man card for this and I don’t even care. Wine is nice.
“Did you finish The Metamorphosis?” she says.
I roll onto my stomach. ??
?Yeah.” She’s fixing her hair. I like watching how quickly her fingers move.
“Well? I don’t like it.”
“Then why’d you give it to me?”
She grins. Her cheeks are getting all flushed. She gets more turned on when we talk about books than when we kiss. I shouldn’t be okay with that. I’m beginning to think I’m using this girl as some kind of symbol and that’s really not okay with me. I wish I were a different person. I kiss her like that will fix me.
“I loved it,” I say. “It was the most relevant thing I’ve read in a long time.”
“It doesn’t make any sense.”
“He’s ostracized and they throw fruit at him and he dies. From loneliness.”
She shakes her head. “The part where he turns into a bug.”
“Or whatever.”
“Or whatever. Why did that happen?”
“You don’t know. That’s the point. Sometimes there’s just . . . a transformation. And there isn’t a real explanation.”
She considers this, winding the end of her braid around her finger. “I don’t like that.”
“Spoken like someone who lives her life in books.”
She stretches like I’ve touched her. I wonder when I can ask about the diaries.
She says, “My father came by yesterday, and my mother threatened him with a gun.”
Just when I’ve written her off, she can make one sentence more exciting than my entire life. I say, “Your mother has a gun?” I’m not sure my mother’s even ever seen a gun in real life. I know I haven’t.
“A silver handgun.”
“Wow.”
“She keeps it loaded.”
“Um . . . damn.”
“She is not a fan of my father. They were never in a real relationship and they still fight like married couples do in those books about teenagers. My mother thinks it was all a mistake. It was during a vulnerable time in her life. She is full of those, to be honest. My mother would not make a good heroine. She is weak and unsympathetic.”
I guess that’s how you talk about someone you know your whole life.
I guess that’s kind of how you think about anyone when you’re Diana.
I’m trying to figure out where Teeth fits into this. He’s almost definitely older than Diana. But he’s hard to age, with all the scales and that smile.