Teeth(11)

I pull myself back. “My brother needs them.”

I really didn’t think this would concern him, but he lets go and looks at me. He keeps his eyes narrowed. “What’s wrong with your brother?”

“You’re a shitty spy.”

“What’s wrong with your brother?”

“He’s sick. Cystic fibrosis.”


“Cystic whatever.” He doesn’t say it mean, but like he’s trying to figure out what I said. “Whatever fibrosis.” He tilts his head and I practically see the words rolling around in his brain. It’s not an uncommon reaction. It’s so normal.

I say, “Yeah. The fish are making him well.”

He pushes his tongue into his teeth. “They’re working?”

“Yeah.” Slowly.

“Well. Good, I guess.” There’s this pause, and then he goes, “The little one, right? Who was with your . . . you know.”

“Mom?”

“Yeah.”

“That’s the one.”

The fishboy rubs the back of his head. “My hair used to be really long. It was awesome. Fisherman cut it off, said I looked like a girl.”

“Oh.”

“Your brother’s cute. How old is he?”

“Five.”

I can tell he doesn’t like this answer. “Oh. He looks more like four. I thought maybe four.”

The way we’re balanced in the water right now, I feel like he’s a lot shorter than I am. And his frown makes him look suddenly younger.

“Good luck with that, then, I guess,” he says.

I say, “Thanks.”

“But stay the f*ck away from my fish.”

Wait. “I . . . ”

Fishboy mumbles, “Sorry about your brother,” then he pushes off from me and swims away. He’s faster than I could ever be, but he doesn’t get out very far before he stops. His silver-spotted chest is heaving. I should have kicked him somewhere.

Then he dives back under the water and he’s gone, and I psych myself through a few breaths (can let go, will not drown, can let go) before I let go and push myself off the dock and hold my breath until I hit shore. I walk home shivering and trying to think of what story I’m going to tell my parents about why I’m all wet, but when I get there, Dylan’s coughing so hard that they don’t even notice me come in.





six


TWO DAYS LATER I’M CROSS-LEGGED WITH MY SKETCHBOOK when I hear Mom climbing the wooden stairs to my room, every one of her footsteps creaking the house closer and closer to the demise I’ve imagined and drawn a thousand times. I’ve been drawing a lot since I’ve been here. My friends and I made it a point to berate each other for any hobbies that didn’t involve girls or cigarettes, so my books and sketch pads were kind of contraband back home. Now it’s like when you have your favorite meal every day for a month. Too many drawings. She knocks on the open door of my room, and I’m really grateful for an excuse to stop.

She and Dad have been fighting all day. I don’t even think it’s about Dylan this time. Just like Mom looks for things to worry about, they search for stupid reasons to fight. I guess it makes them feel more normal.

She comes in and sits down at the foot of the bed. I like my mattresses thin and firm, which baffles Mom. She hates sitting on my bed because it reminds her that I’m sleeping somewhere she would never tolerate. She says she feels like Harry Potter’s aunt. Another example of making up problems where there aren’t any.

“Wow, look what you’ve done with the place.” She grins while she looks around the room. I’ve taped a few of my pictures up. It’s not much, but it makes the irregular walls look more uniform when they’re all papered with my sketches. “I like that one of your father,” she says.

“The one of you with Dylan is the best. I got your noses perfectly.”

She kisses my forehead and hands me a letter. “This came for you.”

Everyone here is really crazy about mail. People are always leaving cards and letters in each other’s mailboxes. We got all these “Welcome to the island” notes when we first arrived. Everyone gets excited when mail arrives from the real world, too, since it can take almost a month for the boat to bring it to us. That must be why I haven’t heard from anyone at home. Their letters just haven’t reached me yet. I can’t believe I thought they were blowing me off. Here it is, here’s proof that they didn’t all forget me. I used to get an e-mail or a Facebook message at least every once in a while, and I know it’s my own fault for not answering—but what could I even say? I would need to invent a real location, a real school, a real life—but I still wasn’t expecting them to dry up this quickly and this completely.

Mom’s gone, and I still haven’t opened the letter. I’m staring at it, clinging to it like a raft in a storm. I know it’s stupid, but I feel like I need to savor this moment. I let myself believe, just for a second, that the letter will say someone has found a loophole, that I get to come home. That ever since I left, they’ve been scheming ways to get me back to my house and my school and my life.

It’s going to tell me that everything has paused since the second I left, and nothing has changed, and my girlfriend misses me, and there’s a set of lungs for Dylan, and none of this has even happened. And that fish don’t do magic and they don’t talk.