Teeth(24)

Maybe I can get her drunk and get her to show me the diaries. God, I’ve never ended that sentence that way.

Diana peers through the curtains at me, then cracks the door open, grinning. “Good to see you.” She’s all dressed up again. She has her hair in a bun and glasses near the tip of her nose. I think she’s going for sexy librarian. The glasses don’t even have lenses. I’m smiling in spite of myself.

It’s still temporary, but it’s still amazing to feel something. Even when that something is just a tongue.

She pulls me inside, down the hallway, and backward onto her bed. I can’t believe that after all this passion, manufactured though it may be, we haven’t had sex yet. But I have to admit that the kissing is nice.

As is being half-drunk and crashed on her floor and talking about Kafka. I’m losing some kind of man card for this and I don’t even care. Wine is nice.

“Did you finish The Metamorphosis?” she says.

I roll onto my stomach. “Yeah.” She’s fixing her hair. I like watching how quickly her fingers move.

“Well? I don’t like it.”

“Then why’d you give it to me?”

She grins. Her cheeks are getting all flushed. She gets more turned on when we talk about books than when we kiss. I shouldn’t be okay with that. I’m beginning to think I’m using this girl as some kind of symbol and that’s really not okay with me. I wish I were a different person. I kiss her like that will fix me.

“I loved it,” I say. “It was the most relevant thing I’ve read in a long time.”

“It doesn’t make any sense.”

“He’s ostracized and they throw fruit at him and he dies. From loneliness.”

She shakes her head. “The part where he turns into a bug.”

“Or whatever.”

“Or whatever. Why did that happen?”

“You don’t know. That’s the point. Sometimes there’s just . . . a transformation. And there isn’t a real explanation.”

She considers this, winding the end of her braid around her finger. “I don’t like that.”

“Spoken like someone who lives her life in books.”

She stretches like I’ve touched her. I wonder when I can ask about the diaries.

She says, “My father came by yesterday, and my mother threatened him with a gun.”

Just when I’ve written her off, she can make one sentence more exciting than my entire life. I say, “Your mother has a gun?” I’m not sure my mother’s even ever seen a gun in real life. I know I haven’t.

“A silver handgun.”

“Wow.”

“She keeps it loaded.”

“Um . . . damn.”

“She is not a fan of my father. They were never in a real relationship and they still fight like married couples do in those books about teenagers. My mother thinks it was all a mistake. It was during a vulnerable time in her life. She is full of those, to be honest. My mother would not make a good heroine. She is weak and unsympathetic.”

I guess that’s how you talk about someone you know your whole life.

I guess that’s kind of how you think about anyone when you’re Diana.

I’m trying to figure out where Teeth fits into this. He’s almost definitely older than Diana. But he’s hard to age, with all the scales and that smile.

“He doesn’t live on the island,” Diana says. “He’s one of the men who rides the shipping boat and unloads everything at the market. Usually he knows he’s supposed to stay far away. I suppose he forgot.”

I mentioned that boat to Fishboy the other day, and he lit all up like a little kid and said, “Oh, man, I love that boat. That boat is so cool.” To be honest, I think he’s crazy about all boats, though he won’t admit it, because of course fish aren’t crazy about boats. But he knows a lot about them from all his time in the marina. He apparently listens well to what they’re shouting back and forth when he’s getting the shit beaten out of him. That’s where he learned to curse, after all.

“Boats are the f*cking kings of the universe,” he’ll say, his fin twitching like crazy as the ship pulls into the marina, and then he’ll start babbling about the difference between port and starboard like this is supposed to be brand-new information for me. “I could totally be a . . . whatever.”

“Sailor?”

“On a boat?”

“Yep.”

“Yeah.” He’ll sigh all wistfully. “I could be a sailor. But I’m too busy being a fish.”

Now Diana goes to her mirror over her dresser and puts on a bracelet. I’ve never seen a girl’s room with less makeup. Even my mom has a lipstick or two on the nightstand. “Do your parents fight?” Diana says.

Softly, I say, “More than they used to.”

“Maybe they’re going to get divorced.”

I didn’t know you were allowed to just say that. I clear my throat. “Your mom still probably likes your father more than she likes your brother’s father.”

“This is your way of asking for the story.” She sits down beside me. “The short and dark fable of my mother’s ocean adventure.”

I watch her. I don’t say anything, If she really knew how much I want this, she would stop. She would keep teasing. It’s not like she’s the only one being used here.