Teeth(16)

“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 f*cking 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 f*ck 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 f*cking 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 f*cking 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.