Teeth(18)

God, it shouldn’t get me this turned on that she keeps acting like she’s older than me. Especially considering she has my mom’s name.

But then she’s kissing me, and I don’t care what I’m supposed to think for a few minutes. I still don’t know about her, really, but I know I like books, and I know I like kissing, so this feels right.



And now, for a few reasons, my routine has changed.

I still hug my family when I wake up and still watch Mom hit Dylan’s chest. Every day but Tuesday, when Mom still sends me to the market and my nights take a different sort of shape, I head down to the dock. Fishboy and I don’t say anything about it, but he’s always there now. It doesn’t feel like he’s waiting for me, and it doesn’t even feel like I’m going there to see him, most of the time. It’s just like we happen to be at the same place at the same time.

We don’t always talk much. He’ll show off his new bruises or the rips in his tail. He’ll tell me stories about what the fishermen do to him that I hope to God are exaggerated. The stories always end the same way. “And then I bit them and got away.”

My price for getting to listen to his stories, according to him, is that I have to learn how to swim rather than kind of flail around. “I’m not going to be whatevers with someone who can’t swim,” he says.

“Whatevers?”

“Yeah, like friends or whatever.”

He never looks at me when he’s talking. His eyes are always scanning the ocean and plucking out Enki fish; I can’t believe how easily he finds them. He holds them and cuddles them and lets them go, usually in the opposite way that they were going. “They’re so stupid sometimes,” he says. “They’d swim right into the nets if I let them.”

“You’re like the fish protector,” I tell him, and that seems to make him happier than anything I’ve ever said.

He claps his hands together. They make a noise like something squished.

“Swimming,” he says. “You have to learn to swim.”

He says the most important thing is that I learn how to float (I can f*cking float, I say, and Reliably, he says, so whatever) so I spend a lot of time lying on my back past where the waves break, my hairline tipped into the water, kicking, while he bitches about my flexed feet or the way I’m holding my shoulders. Every conversation we have gets easier, and it amazes me over and over that there’s someone here I can talk to without agonizing over every word, because finally there’s someone who sounds more like a belligerent idiot than I do. Even back home that was hard to find.

“Hold on.” He leaves me floating on my back while he rescues some fish who got stuck in the current and are about to be swept over to the nets. He can’t rescue nearly all of them this way, but he does what he can, cradling each one in the crook of his elbow before he lets it go. “I don’t usually see them actually get caught in the current,” he says. “I’ve only really rescued three today. The others I just said hi to.”

“I’m sinking,” I say.

“Well, stop.” He swims up to me and puts his hands underneath my back. He lifts me a little. “Up.”

I go up.

“Good. Not sinking, see?”

I try to nod, but I’m scared to move my head.

After a minute, he says, “So.”

“So?”

“So what’s cystic whatever?” His voice is very, very neutral.

“It’s this disease in the lungs and the stomach. He coughs and he gets infections and he’s really thin . . . ” I try to explain, but it’s a lot harder than it used to be. I can’t just recite everything that’s the matter like I used to, listing everything he can’t do like I’m reading off a menu. Because the truth is, Dylan is getting well.

And that’s the other part of my routine that’s changed. Because every morning I hug Dad, I kiss Mom, and Dylan shouts, “Rudy!” and springs off Mom’s lap and wraps his arms around my legs. “Puzzle. It’s really important.” Sometimes he has to pause and take a shuddery breath between words, but he keeps going. “Play with me.”

Sometimes I do. But it’s kind of terrifying, because it’s like the whole world for Dylan when I stay and put together a bit of his puzzle with him. I worry that I’m actually doing him a disservice by playing with him. I’m just multiplying his broken heart the day that I go off for college or go back home or drown or something, and the last thing this kid needs is a broken heart.

“Pay attention,” Teeth tells me. He sounds like someone’s mom. “You’re floating away. Kick.”

I kick, but I can’t get back to him. He has to come fetch me and drag me back to the dock. “You are so annoying,” he says. “You’re like that bunny sometimes.”

I laugh. “What?”

“The runaway one.”

I try to sit up and plunge right through the water.



Sometimes in the afternoons I take Dylan out to walk on the beach with me, though I still carry him for most if it. My hips are always sore by the time we get home.

“Can I swim?” he asks me.

“Nah, it’s way too cold.” This seems like an answer he can understand. It’s easier than telling him that there’s no f*cking way I’m letting his head go under the water. Mom still watches him like a hawk whenever he’s in the bath.