Just Like Home(46)

“Pull it in!” he says, reaching up and grabbing his own fishing line. Vera mimics the gesture without thinking. She grabs the line in her hands and pulls on it, and it cuts into the flesh of her palm but she keeps pulling and pulling, tucks her stick under her arm so she can reel in the line hand-over-hand—and then the fish finally breaks the surface of the water, and oh.

Oh, it’s so much better than the worm.

The fish flails in the water, splashing and spasming wildly. Vera finishes pulling it in, holds it up by the hook in its mouth so its head is level with hers. It seems to calm down for a few seconds. She peers into the wet black glass of its pupil, looking for any sign of fear or desire or thought.

“That’s a beauty,” her father says, wading closer to her. “When they get that big, you know, they’ll eat anything. Frogs, salamanders. Baby birds that fall in the water. Little girls, maybe.” He nudges her and she laughs even though she’s not little anymore. She doesn’t look away from the fish’s glossy eye. The iris is green and brown and yellow and strange, and she has a deep impulse to touch it.

“Where’s the hook?” she asks. The fishing line is in the trout’s mouth but the hook isn’t jabbed out through its lip. It isn’t stuck anywhere she can see.

“He probably swallowed it,” her father answers. He grabs the fish by the lip and holds it up, turning it in the sunlight. It thrashes again, struggling against his grip. It’s silver-green and covered in dark brown spots. It looks smooth instead of scaly. Vera can’t help thinking it looks like a frog that took a wrong turn. “It’s okay,” her father adds, not looking away from the fish. “We’re going to have him for dinner anyway. We’ll just pull the hook out when we gut him.”

Vera grins so hard she feels like she’s going to swallow her own teeth. “I did it!” she says, her voice coming out so childish that she’d be embarrassed if she weren’t so excited.

“You did it,” her father agrees. He grabs the fish in both hands and points it at Vera, squeezes it by the face so its mouth puckers. “You deserve a congratulations fish-kiss, don’t you think?” She fake-barfs, clutching her stomach and putting on a show, hoping to make her father laugh, and he does. But he doesn’t put the fish down. “Come on, Vera,” he says in the same voice he used to use for every storybook character, back when Vera still wanted bedtime stories. “Gimme a fish-kiss!”

Vera wrinkles her nose at the fish. “Well, since you asked so nice, Mr. Fish,” she says. She blows a loud, smacking kiss, her mouth a safe inch away from the trout’s gasping lips. “I guess it’s better kissing you than kissing nasty old Brandon.”

This is the worst wrong thing to say.

The air forms a crust, like when the entire top of the skating pond ices over all at once. The sound of the current in the creek seems to grow very loud, and the bottom falls out of Vera’s stomach as she shifts her gaze from the fish to her father’s face.

“What did you say?” he says.

Vera scrambles to think of a lie, to think of a way to turn the whole thing silly. She wants to save this, but some part of her knows that’s not possible. So she doesn’t say anything at all. Her father’s looking at her like he’s never seen her before, like he can suddenly see all of her at once. “Have you been kissing Brandon?” Her father’s voice is so soft.

He doesn’t sound dangerous—he sounds wounded, small, lost.

If Vera didn’t know better, she’d say he sounds afraid.

“N-no,” she says. A tear slips down her cheek, and then another, and then she can’t stop crying and she’s not sure why but her arms are tight around her father’s middle and her face is pressed into the soft flannel of his shirt.

The whole story comes out of her, just like that. The kiss, the shove, the fuck you, which she whispers through hiccups, and her father doesn’t say a word to stop her. He puts one arm around her shoulders and hugs her to his side, still holding the fish in his other hand, his makeshift fishing pole long ago dropped into the water and swept away by the creek.

Her confession ends with the moment her mother found her sitting on the curb. Only then does her father speak.

“And you told her you just fell down on your own?”

Vera hesitates here, because she doesn’t want to get in trouble for lying—especially for lying she didn’t actually do—but she also doesn’t want to snitch on her mother. In the end, she decides that she might as well take the blame. She’s already probably in so much trouble, she might as well add this to the pile.

“Yeah,” she says. “I’m sorry I lied.”

“Come on,” her father says. “Let’s get out of this water.” He turns and wades toward the shore, and Vera follows, her stomach hollow. It had been such a good day, and now it’s ruined. All because she had to go and run her big mouth.

Vera’s father sits on the rocks where they made their fishing poles what feels like a thousand years ago. He drops the fish, which is now very dead, at his feet.

He pats the rock next to him. To Vera’s surprise, he doesn’t look upset at all. His eyes are crinkled up, and his smile is warm and patient.

She sits. The rock is warm against her frozen legs. She and her father are both dripping, darkening the stone with creek water. She studies her ruined shoes.