Teeth(30)

Oh.

He laughs and grabs me. “Sorry!” Oh my God. He’s hugging me. He says, “Thought you were behind me. I’m sorry! You’re such a shitty swimmer!”

And then he’s throwing me into the water and pulling me along with him, and we’re out of there.

And f*ck it, because that was seriously f*cking fantastic.



Once we’re back to safety, we float on our backs by the sandbar. Teeth does big, lazy kicks.

I’m so tired. If the water weren’t just a few feet deep, I’d probably be freaking out that I might fall asleep and drown, and Teeth would forget about me again, even if it’s just for a minute. Though I once read something that said babies can drown in like four inches of water. I wonder how many inches it would take with me. He better not forget about me again.

Teeth is singing about wanting another minnow. He cannot carry a tune at all.

Mostly just to make him for the love of God shut up, I say, “So I am seriously almost sleeping with your sister.”

“Why do you keep talking about that?”

Because I like it. Because I’m waiting for you to care. “I thought you’d be interested.”

“This isn’t, like, my life. I don’t care. I hate humans.” Then he doesn’t talk for a minute. I stroke behind me, my arms moving in circles.

“How old is she?” he says.

“Your sister?”

“Yes.”

“About my age.”

“Oh. How old are you?”

“Sixteen.”

“I’m not sure how old I am.”

I know Diana told me how long the fish-bikini thing was before she was born, but I can’t remember how many years she said. So I say, “Probably nineteen or twenty. Older than me.”

“Yeah. Older than the baby.”

“I wonder how long fishboys live.”

“Forever.”

I say, “Wait. What baby?”

“My sister.”

“Not a baby, you know?”

“I know that. I see her sometimes. She just . . . was. Fussy baby.”

“You knew her?”

“Yeah, so I knew her when she was a baby. I didn’t know her. She was a baby. Like, whatever. Stupid baby. Didn’t have a personality.”

“So you were still in the mansion when she was born.”

He sits up in the water, so I do too. I can only see his torso. He looks like a regular boy with a bad skin condition. I have a hard time staying afloat this way, but I want to be able to watch him.

He isn’t looking at me, just splashing the water with his hands and watching the ripples. “What did she tell you about me?” He barely moves his lips when he talks.

“Nothing,” I say, which is sort of true. I want those f*cking diaries.

He lived in that house. For years.

Teeth clears his throat. “I don’t care about her. She’s a human.”

“You’re half-human.”

He mumbles something about me being half-*.

I say, “What makes fish better than humans, huh?”

“Better tails.”

“Fishboy.”

“Humans suck.”

“What about the minnows?”

“Minnows are delicious.”

“And they’re fish. Like you or whatever.”

He plays with his tail. “The minnows have their own brothers to worry about them.”

I’m quiet. Teeth gives me a minute, because he knows what I’m thinking about.

I say, “You know, fish aren’t perfect.” I can’t believe these are sentences in my life. “Your mom . . . ”

He shakes his head. He doesn’t like the word “mom,” I can tell.

“The fishermen,” he says softly. “Did you not get how this conversation really sucked the first time? Do we have to?”

“Hey. We don’t. You okay?”

“I’m bored of this. I want to hear about you. Favorite color. Go.”

I laugh. “Green.”

“I’m green!”

“Fuck yeah you are.”

“Why are you laughing? Isn’t this what friends do?”

“Interrogate each other?”

“What? Uh, sure. I don’t know what that means. But yes.”

I lean my head back as far as it will go, letting the water creep over my head and onto my forehead. “See, I know what having friends is like, because they are something that I had. Have you . . . ever had a friend?”

This horrible question doesn’t seem to make him sad. “Fiona used to feed me.”

“Really?” So she does know. I knew it. She’s talking in weird fortune-teller code. Someday, years from now, when something, anything, has happened that will make sharing the fishboy with someone okay, I’ll rub Mom’s face in the fact that Fiona isn’t crazy. Just a little handsy.

Teeth says, “Yeah, when I was . . . after . . . ” He’s either confused or upset and doing a good job of hiding it. “I mean, before I was big enough to catch anything, and I was just floating around and crying and stuff . . . she would give me bread and carrots and stuff in the morning. Healthy shit. She was really into that. She’s still alive, right?”