Teeth(15)

He must get so f*cking 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 f*cker 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 f*cking 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 f*cking 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 f*cking 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 f*cking 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.