Teeth Page 5

  “Picture books are my favorites.”

  I am so warm. “This is a war metaphor, my mom told me.” I look at all the illustrations, the rabbits with their soulless eyes. “Like, sending your kid off to war.”

  “It’s about sending them off anywhere, really.”

  I don’t know how she got so close to me. Her lips are right against my cheek, all of a sudden, and I turn and kiss her because I don’t know what she’s going to say next, but for a second, I can feel all her thoughts about books, all these possibilities, hovering between her lips and my cheek. And I want to taste them.

  Like sandalwood and dust.

  She pulls away faster this time, but she smiles at me more.

  “We’ll do this again,” she says. “But my mother will be recovering from her crying jag soon, and I don’t think she wants to see you after she humiliated herself in front of you at dinner.”

  “Why’s she afraid of that boy I saw?”

  “So it is a boy.”

  “You know about him.” It’s a statement, not a question.

  “As much as I care to know about anything in . . . the ocean.”

  God, the way she says “the ocean,” I half expect to hear lightning crashing in the background.

  She says, “My mother doesn’t talk about him, but I know things she doesn’t expect. And I’ve seen your boy a few times. I don’t think he knows I can see him.”

  “He stays by the dock, I think. He’s not my boy.”

  “I can see the dock if I angle myself just right on the balcony. I don’t think he hides as well as he thinks he does. But I wasn’t quite sure he was a boy, with his skin. I couldn’t tell what he was. A boy?”

  I shrug a little. “He’s not a fish.”

  “He doesn’t have any legs.”

  “Why was your mom humiliated?”

  Diana rests her forearms on each other. “Long before I was born, my mother liked to consider herself the kind of person who would try anything. I’ve stumbled across tales from her wayward youth. All these men she’s bedded.” Diana looks over her glasses at me. “All these nonmen she’s bedded.”

  “Your mom’s big secret is she slept with women?”

  Diana coughs in the back of her throat until she turns it into a laugh. “Broaden your mind, Rudy. You just saw a half Enki, didn’t you?” Then her face gets a little more serious. “Why do you think we’re afraid of the ocean?”

  “You don’t seem afraid.”

  “Do you ever see anyone swimming?” She shakes her head and plays with the pristine cover of Runaway Bunny. “We can’t kill off those fish fast enough, really, if you ask me.”

  “Wait. What are—”

  She smiles. “If I tell you everything now, what will make you come back?”

  Well.

  You will, for one.

  eight

  THE FOURTH TIME I SEE FISHBOY, HE SCARES ME OUT OF MY MIND.

  Except it might not really be the fourth time. Ever since he cut our fishing line, I’ve thought I’ve seen glimpses of him every time I step outside, and a few times I’m sure I’ve seen the tip of his fin or a bit of blond hair poking out of the water. Even when I look through the thick bottle glass of my bedroom window, the ocean so blurry I can’t make out the peaks of the waves, I think I can see a hint of a tail weaving in and out between the rocks. Diana’s right. He’s a shitty hider. It’s almost like he’s trying to be seen.

  Although, now that I think about it, I don’t know why he really cares if people see him. He’s clearly not hunting the fish—he’s the very opposite of hunting the fish—so I don’t know why everyone would be so bothered to know he’s in the water. And if he’s eavesdropping on us all the time, he must get sick of people calling him a ghost. It must suck for people to think you’re already dead when you’re not.

  He must get so fucking lonely.

  So why does he hide?

  And why didn’t he hide from me?

  And if he doesn’t want to reveal himself to us, I don’t know what he’s doing here. If I were him, I would swim so far away from this island. But he’s always here, lingering by the dock and the cliffs.

  He still ducks under the water or underneath the dock when he sees anyone approach, so he’s clearly not waving his presence around like a flag. But now that I know he’s here, I don’t understand how I lived here this long without seeing him. I don’t understand how he’s only a legend to everyone on this island, why they don’t try to talk to him, or catch him. Not to hurt him, to touch him.

  Except then I go to the marketplace and see them obsessing over any new rumor they can imagine up, and I get that they don’t spend more time trying to verify them. They move from thing to thing too quickly. Last week a rumor went around that Ms. Klesko cheated on her husband, and it swept us all up like a hurricane. Even my parents were talking about it. For the week it was like Ms. Klesko’s affair was the only thing in the whole world.

  How could they really care about a fishboy when they’re worn out from caring about each other?

  So what’s wrong with me?

  I don’t want to make this corollary.

  The fishermen know he exists. There’s that. And for some reason they haven’t told anyone. They shrug their shoulders when they don’t bring enough fish to the marketplace, but they never try to blame the ghost. I listen to the fishboy scream at night and don’t know why they don’t kill him. They’d rather catch him and beat him up every night than be through with him for good?

  The only person who seems to really want to know anything about our little ghost is Diana, and I haven’t seen her lately, because we haven’t had a Tuesday, and she hasn’t sent another letter.

  The real fourth time that I see the fishboy, the time that counts, I’m looking for him, under the guise of looking for sea glass, when I find him a million or something feet away from the shore, just a blur in the distance. But I can see him struggling in the water, panting, coughing. Coughing hard.

  I drop my sea glass and stare at him. I can feel my heart all the way down in my bare feet.

  He coughs something into the water, something that my experienced eye tells me is blood. His shoulders heave down as he’s breathing, and I can see his bottom half moving frantically to stay above water as he coughs.

  And I’m frozen on the shore, just staring. Useless.

  Of all the ways for this fucker to die.

  And I can’t go help him. It’s not even a possibility. He’s way too far out. And even if I got to him, he’d probably annihilate me with those sharp teeth, since he thinks I’m a fish killer.

  If he can even get the breath to annihilate me. Because right now, I don’t think he even has the oxygen to look at me and realize that I want to help. I do, I really do.

  He keeps coughing. I think he’s choking, even though I know that when someone really chokes, there’s no sound. Just dead quiet and huge eyes.

  I’m too far away to see his eyes, but not too far away to see him starting to slip under the surface of the water as more blood spills out of his mouth.

  And he can’t breathe underwater because he’s the worst fish in the world, and even if he could, he’s coughing too hard to get anything in, and holy fucking shit holy shit—

  A huge wave crashes in front of me, and I jump back. When the water rushes away, the fishboy is gone.

  Shit.

  I climb onto the dock and run down to the end to try to see him. Nothing.

  “Come back come back come back,” I whisper. “Fuck. Get up. You’re a fucking fish. Stop drowning.” It’s like everything in my little world depends on whether or not the fishboy comes up for air. And he isn’t. He isn’t coming back.

  And something inside is screaming that I don’t want anything to happen to him. And I know it’s selfish. And I know I need to stop caring about people just because they make me feel better about my life. But right now it’s what motivates me to dive into the water, so I’ll take it.

  The water rushes up my nose and into my mouth. I try to open my eyes. The salt stings me like acid. I’m going to die before I even get to him. This is awesome. This is the worst idea I’ve ever had, and the ocean is wrapped around my neck to strangle me.

  Relax. I come up for air, not because I need to, just to prove to myself that I can. Breathe.

  Swim. I shove myself off the dock with my feet and fucking flail as hard as I can. I’m not moving fast enough. I’m breathing too much because I keep getting scared and worrying that I’m not going to get another breath in. I’m not going to get there, and the fucking fish is going to drown. I kick my feet with everything in me.

  I only know when I reach him because my body collides with his. He’s still completely under the water, his arms and chest curled around his tail.

  I reach an arm around his waist and pull him up. He’s a lot lighter than I thought he would be, or maybe it’s just buoyancy in the salt water. Either way Fishboy feels even more breakable to me than he did the other day, with the big eyes.

  I kick hard until both our heads are above the water, but his face is still frozen and shut, his cheek resting half on his shoulder and half on mine. And he looks like shit. He has a red and purple bruise from his cheekbone to his eyebrow, cuts and bruises all over his shoulders, a blue boot print over his rib cage. Christ, if I’d been beat up this badly, I’d be coughing up blood too.

  “Wake up,” I say. “Christ, wake up.” The water’s too deep here. I can’t tread water for both of us. We’re both going to drown. Shit.

  I don’t even want to know what Dylan would think of me if I died like this.

  Just as I’m starting to sink, Fishboy coughs water and his eyes flutter open. “Fuck.” He tries to pull away from me for half a second, but then he stops and holds on so, so tight. His voice is hoarse like Diana’s. And he’s still clinging to me, his fingers wrapped around my arm.

  “Holy shit, what happened?” he croaks.

  “Coughing.” He doesn’t know it, I don’t think, but he’s holding me up now. “You got dizzy.”

  “How long was I underwater?”

  My chest is starting to ache from breathing so hard. “Forever.”

  “Yeah. I wish.” He pushes away from me and shoves his hair out of his face. “Thanks.”

  “No no no. Now I’m going to fucking drown out here.”

  “Calm down.” He pushes me toward the shore. “There’s a sandbar about twenty feet that way. Rest there until you’re ready to swim back.”

  “What about you?” I say. He’s still totally pale. Except for that bruise, and the blood dripping out of his mouth.

  “I’m fine.”

  “Bullshit. Did the fishermen do that to you?”

  “What the fuck do you care?”

  “I just swam all the way out here to save you.”

  He grins. “I’m like your pet.” That smile kind of catches me in the throat. I didn’t see that coming.

  But all I can say is “Shut up,” because I’m starting to sink under the water again. Buoyancy my ass.

  “Okay, I got this.” Fishboy takes a handful of my soaked shirt and swims me to the sandbar. Sweet fucking Jesus. I lie on my back and pant for a while. I don’t know when the water stopped feeling so cold. Now that I can breathe, I feel like I could stay here forever.

  He stays on the edge of the bar, where the water’s a foot or two deep, and he sits and scrubs sand off his fin, watching me. “You all right?”

  “Yeah.” I stand up and catch my breath. I’m towering over him now.

  He clears his throat. “Anyway, thanks again. Bye.”

  “You’re going?” The shore still looks impossibly far away.

  He says, “I have things to do.”

  “Bullshit. You just lurk around the dock all day.”

  I expected this to make him mad, but he shrugs. He got mad about having lungs but not about this? “I do things.”

  “I’ve saved your life twice now.”

  “Yeah, just in time for me to drag your sorry ass back to shore.”

  “Not to shore, apparently.”

  “Poor Rudy.”

  “I think I should at least get your name.”

  “Who says I have a name? What do I need a name for? All the fancy parties I go to, yeah? I need to whatever and drink wine and introduce myself.” He sips from an imaginary glass.

  He has a point.

  “Fine.” I don’t know why I’m so disappointed. I guess I really wanted a name. It would make him more real.

  But then he sighs. “Aw, look at your face.”

  “What?”

  He says, “Teeth, okay? My name is Teeth.”

  Even though I almost just died, I’m laughing. “What kind of a name is that?”

  He doesn’t smile. “The kind I gave myself. What kind of a name is Rudy? The kind your parents gave you?”

  “It means ‘famed wolf.’”

  Now he grins. And I’m still smiling, too, so it’s kind of like, for a minute, we’re the same.

  I guess that’s a stupid thing to think. I look down at his hands. They’re so webbed they’re practically fins themselves, and they’re so much smaller than mine.

  He makes this big dramatic sigh. It’s this ridiculous relief to hear him breathe. Then he says, “So I guess this is the part where we stop acting like this is the last time we’re going to see each other.”

  I tilt my head a little and look at him. “Huh.”

  He rolls his eyes. “I’ll see you around.” He smacks my cheek gently. His hand is rough, freezing cold, and doesn’t feel quite alive.

  “Sure,” I say.

  He rubs the back of his head. “Look at this. I have no fucking hair. Fucking fishermen. I told you this, right? They said I looked like a girl with it long.”

  My eyes slip down to his chest. I’m picturing Diana’s. “You, um, don’t look like a girl.”

  He shrugs. “I don’t care. Girls are fine. Girl fish.”

  I wrinkle my nose.

  “I’m kidding. What am I going to do with a fish?” He turns around slowly, showing himself to me. “I got nothin’.”

  I feel like I shouldn’t look. “Well . . . you look like a boy.”

  “I’m a fish. You’re going to need to accept this. I’m a fish.” He messes with his hair again. I really don’t think he likes how it feels. He says, “So you can get back to shore okay?”

  “Um, yeah.”

  And then he’s gone.

  The part of this where I’m really scared out of my mind doesn’t come until I’m back in the house, tucked into my room, trying to get warm under the covers. I start thinking about the fishboy—Teeth, freezing cold Teeth—turning blue in the water, coughing and wheezing, and then bitching about his hair a minute later, like it’s nothing, like it happens all the time, maybe. All of a sudden I’m shaking so hard my teeth are chattering again. And I can’t get warm, no matter what I do. I’m just shivering like a nightmare.

  nine

  I’M TRYING TO DO MY HOMEWORK AT THE KITCHEN TABLE, BUT Dylan really wants me to play with him, and to be honest, I want to play with him, too, but Mom is giving me these hideously dirty looks because I was supposed to have all of this finished two weeks ago. So I have to give Dylan a hug and an “I’m sorry, buddy.”

  I wave my math problems at my mom. “I’m doing these outside,” I tell her. To get away from Dylan. Yeah. That’s the only reason. Definitely the only reason.

  I go straight to the dock.

  I’m only lying there for a few minutes before he bobs out of the water. “Hey.”

  I try not to look surprised. It’s been a few days since the rescue with not a lot of signs of him, and I guess I didn’t think that of the two of us he’d be the one seeking the other one out. Maybe I didn’t really think I was going to see him again unless he needed more saving.

  I’m getting used to the look of him, at least, with his flaky scales and his millions of bruises. He’s like Dylan’s hideous stuffed dog that started looking cuter the longer he carried it. “Hey,” I say.

  “Aren’t you cold?”

  I shrug. What am I supposed to say, Yeah, but I was hoping you’d swim up?

  “What are you working on?”

  “Math.” Avoiding the essay.

  “I can do addition.”

  I look at him.

  “I’m very smart,” he says.

  Still, I don’t know where a guy like him learns addition, or where he even learns the word “addition.”

  “Mm,” I say. “Not addition, though.”

  “Let me know if any comes up.”

  “Will do.”

  He leans his elbows onto the dock and watches me work. Then he sinks under the water, and I think he’s gone for good, but a few seconds later he pops up behind me on the other side of the dock.

  “What are you doing?” I ask him. He’s back beside me again, this time with his elbow right next to mine. I watch him out of the corner of my eye while I scratch answers. He smells like a fish, I’ll give him that.

  “Keeping an eye on you.”

  He reaches out to touch the page, then stops and wipes slime and water on my sleeve before he starts tracing the numbers as I write them. After a minute he turns his attention to the lines at the top of the page. He traces the date, which I still write on top of everything, out of habit, then puts his finger on the word next to it. He writes the letters with one finger, trying and failing to curl up the rest of his hand. The webs between his fingers stretch so thin.

  I stop working and watch his finger. He’s left-handed.

  After a minute, he says, “Rrrr.”

  “Hmm?”

  He’s staring at the top of the page. “Rrr. Ruh.”

  Oh.

  “Ruhd,” he says, after another minute. He’s frowning hard, the skin wrinkling between his eyes.

  “Rudy,” I say, kind of gently, I hope.

  He’s quiet for a minute. Then, “Oh.”

  “Where the fuck did you learn how to read?”

  “I can’t read. You just saw me not reading.”

  “Someone obviously taught you something.”

  “Go away,” he says, in this small, angry voice, the exact same one Dylan uses when he wants me to think he’s mad at me but he really isn’t. It doesn’t work any better for Teeth.