Teeth(21)

“Why the f*ck don’t you ever get in the water unless I’m giving you a f*cking lesson? You’re driving me crazy. Jesus. Get in and give me that.”

“I’m not getting in today. Water’s rough.” I remember when Diana said that.

“Then why are you wearing a bathing suit?” God, he sounds just like a bratty kid sometimes. All of the time.

I say, “Because somehow or another you seem to always get me in the water. But I’m not f*cking coming in voluntarily. Go out and start choking again if you want me in so badly.”

He grins. “So many big words.”

“Sorry.”

“I liked it.”

“Not coming in. Will freeze.”

“Scared you’ll drown?”

I say, “Yeah,” before I process that he was probably teasing me.

But I am. Maybe not as scared as I am that every time I get in the water I will keep getting closer to this is your life, this is your friend and you are never leaving, but I’m not telling him that bit. Kid doesn’t speak English, he wouldn’t even understand. Yeah.

He looks at me for a while, then pushes off the dock with his fin and floats around on his back, beating the water with his tail. He has even more scaly patches on his chest than I remembered. I swear he’s the ugliest thing in the world. And the bloody hole in the middle of his tail is glistening.

He says, “What if I show you something cool? Something life-changing.”

I say softly, “Why do they put holes in your tail?”

He ignores that. “Something really cool, Rudy.”

“Can I fix it?”

“What?”

“Sick brother. I have the fix-it impulse.”

“Show you something.”

“Yeah, fine. How cool?”

“Really, really cool. But you can’t tell the fishermen. Promise?”

“What? Do you really f*cking think I’m having conversations with the fishermen?”

“I never know what you humans are gonna do. I’m not a very good spy, remember? Come on. I’m not going to let you drown, God, I’m a fish.”


“You’re not a fish.” I slide into the water as slowly as I can, feeling like all my limbs are going to snap off from the cold and my balls are going to jump up into my body. We’re past where the waves break, but the peaks still smack me in the face on their way to shore.

“Why do you keep saying that?” He waits until I’m halfway into the water before he grabs me by the shoulder and starts pulling me out to sea.

“Holy crap. You’re murdering me.”

He gnashes his teeth and laughs, and I can’t help it, I’m laughing too, although I’m still worried that while Fishboy is trying to show me something cool, the sea is going to swallow us both alive. And, in all honesty, sometimes I still worry. Sometimes he feels too charismatic to not be a bad guy. He’s a little too much like I was at school for me to completely trust him.

But then he’ll smile at me, and sometimes I don’t really give a shit whether he’s bad or not, as long as I’m not bored. And I haven’t been since the first day I rescued him.

He drags me over to the marina. “Don’t be seen,” he says, and he latches on to a rock and peers around it to the fishing docks.

“Seriously, let’s get out of here. This is bad.” Why the f*ck does he even come here? Shit, I don’t want to watch them beat him up. Do they even beat him up during the day?

“Uh-uh. Come here.” He pulls me to a new cluster of rocks. “Okay, here, dive down and open your eyes.”

“I can’t open my eyes underwater.”

“Do it anyway.” And he dunks me under the water.

I take a few seconds to convince myself that I’m still alive, and then I open my eyes. It hurts. Of course it hurts.

But then, fish.

Hundreds of them, all around me, swimming and nudging each other and screaming—I can’t believe it, actually screaming—in the same high-pitched voice that has become my lullaby or my nightmare or something.

Teeth is beside me. He grins.

I stay down for as long as I can, and then I come up, gasping. Fishboy emerges a minute later, one of the fish in his hands.

“This must be like a colony or something,” I say.

“This is where they hide. The fishermen have no idea.” He pets the fish’s back. “Look at my little brother.”

“Brother?”

“Well,” he says. “Fine. My half brother. All of them. Half brothers and sisters.”

“You have no idea which fish are the parents of which fish.”

He brings his face down to the water and presses his cheek against the fish he’s holding. “It doesn’t matter. They’re my siblings.” Then he takes the seaweed he stole from me and feeds it to the fish, stroking its scales the whole time. The fish nibbles it up with the same teeth as Fishboy’s. “There you go,” Teeth says softly. “There.”

If I didn’t know better, I’d swear that fish was cuddling with him.

If I didn’t want to believe that these fish are totally not sentient enough to worry about eating.

“They’re not just any fish, you know?” Teeth gently lets the fish go. “I mean, eat the minnows. I eat the minnows. The minnows are stupid as f*ck. They run into the rocks while they’re swimming. The ancho . . . what are they?”