Teeth(14)

“Well. Thanks.”

I look around her room, at the stacks of books on the floor. Most of them are old ones I haven’t read. The only classics I’ve read are the ones for school. I feel like I should ask her how Jane Eyre ends, because I never finished it.

“You like books?” she asks. Kind of gently.

I nod. I can’t look at her right now, for some reason. I’m scared she’s going to ask me what my favorite is, or like she won’t believe me, so I say, “Roald Dahl.” I say, even though she doesn’t ask, because I can feel the question sitting between us anyway, because I feel like I have to prove myself. “I like Roald Dahl. Um. I read them to my brother.” Not true, but it’s easier than explaining that I like kids’ books more than adult books, or reality.

“The Witches,” Diana says, with a nod.

“Fantastic Mr. Fox.”

She stretches out on her stomach and puts her feet in the air, her ankles twisted together. I remember flopping like that when I was a kid. It makes her boobs look amazing. She says, “I like how his books pretend to be about something for the first third, then switch gears completely.”

“The real plot doesn’t show up until the middle, yeah. And usually the real characters.”

“And everything before that is completely dropped.” She smiles and rolls onto her back. She’s basking in this conversation. “It’s like a little story of its own that’s never finished.”

“Only Roald Dahl could get away with that shit. I mean, they let him write The Magic Finger.” I take her copy of Runaway Bunny off the bookshelf. “I like that you have this in here.”

“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.