Teeth(27)

“Yeah.”

“What’s a swing set?”

“What?”

“They’re in books, but no one ever explains what they are. They aren’t in my encyclopedia.”

“When I was a kid, someone told me that ‘pear’ wasn’t in the dictionary and I never checked and I think about it all the time.”

“We can check later.”


So I explain to her what a swing set is and then I try to tell her about TV and the Internet and all sorts of foreign crazy things and she rolls her eyes and reminds me how much you can learn from books and how much you really can’t, like the feel of her waist in my hand, like sea air, like what a swing set is.

And her face when I tell her about Michigan, when I show her what to do once our pants are off . . . God, that fascinated face. I know that face.

My hand drifts to her hip and before I can stop it, before I can even process that I’m thinking it, my brain thinks, What would it feel like to touch scales, tail, scars? and I’m kissing her deeper without meaning to and okay, fine, it’s fine, who the f*ck hasn’t had a mermaid fantasy? That’s something you can get from a book. That’s something that’s not real. It’s fine.

No, what’s actually weird is that I’m not really that concerned.



“Where have you been, kiddo?” Fishboy says as I make my way down the dock afterward. “Christ. No, I know where you’ve been. Don’t answer that.”

“Hmm?” I sit down and plunk my feet in the water. It hurts in a good way. “I need to talk to you.”

“I don’t want to talk.”

“It’s about the fish.”

“What about my fish?”

“Have you ever seen them hurt anyone? Anybody?”

“Like a human?”

“Yeah.”

He frowns. “Of course not. You know what I have seen? Humans hurting fish.”

“It’s not the same. No. Stop. You can’t say it’s the same. I . . . I don’t know, Teeth.”

It’s not as if people are going out and capturing his fish just to do it. We catch them because we need them to live. What did the fish get out of impregnating Ms. Delaney? What good did that do them?

I look at Teeth, bobbing in the water.

Shit.

Teeth frowns at me. “What?”

They needed something to keep them alive too.

I have to stay still for a few minutes just to collect everything in me. I can’t believe I’m weighing the morality of hurting a fish versus hurting a human. But it’s so hard not to compare the two with that creature in the water in front of me, sucking on his fingers.

“What are you thinking about?” he says.

“What would you say if I told you a fish hurt someone? Really hurt them?”

He’s making eye contact so fierce it scares me. “I’d say the fishermen hurt me every night.”

“Hurt you—”

“No. Really hurt me.”

“I—”

“Fuck humans! I hate humans. What the f*ck do you want from me? I don’t give a shit about your little human stories, okay? Some fish are bad, and do you have any idea how many humans have f*cked me over? Goddamn it, Rudy!”

I try to say something, I don’t even know what, but then he dives under the water and he’s gone.





thirteen


AND THE NEXT DAY, IT’S LIKE IT NEVER HAPPENED.

“So I know where you came from, by the way,” I say.

“Humans and a house and all that. Yeah, I know.” Fishboy isn’t even looking at me. His eyes are busy tracking something under the water.

“That house. The big one, right there.”

“You must think I’m an idiot.”

“What are you looking at?”

“I’m—” He dives and emerges with a tiny fish in his mouth. He spits it onto the deck. “Look at that! Check that out! Oh, man, Teeth is the king. Teeth is the king. I am the king of the seas. Look at that.”

I squirm away from it. It’s flopping around like my brother during a bad night. “What is it?”

“Minnow. Oh, God, look at this minnow. Mmm. It’s beautiful.” He kisses it and cuddles it against his cheek, then neatly slits its head off with his teeth.

“Oh, Jesus, Fishboy.”

He looks up, a laugh, halfway through, frozen on his face. “What did you call me?”

“Fishboy.” But I didn’t mean to. Shit. “It’s, uh, what I called you in my head before I knew your name.”

He shrugs and nods a little. “Fishboy. Yeah, that’s cool.”

Thank God. This would have been such a stupid f*cking thing to fight about.

He’s really grossing me out with this fish, licking the blood off its neck, so I shake my head quickly and say, “You know how I found out where you’re from?”

“I don’t care.”

“I made out with your sister.”

“What’s ‘made out’?” He’s looking at me with these huge eyes.

“Kissed.”

“Ew,” he says. “You kissed a fish?” Then he buries his face in the minnow and rips it to pieces.