Teeth(33)

But I don’t know how.

After a minute he says, “It’s not just that. I can’t just swim away.”

“Why not?”

“I’m afraid I’ll drown.” He looks up and gives the world’s smallest smile. He takes a deep breath with those lungs. “I’m afraid I’ll drown.”



I can’t sleep. He’s screaming like nothing I’ve ever heard. I wish the ocean were louder. I shouldn’t have let him free the fish. Did I think the fishermen wouldn’t find out, wouldn’t know he was behind it? I shouldn’t have helped. He wouldn’t have done it alone.

I should have stayed with him tonight.

My room shakes in the wind, but even though my dresser and my mirror are rattling, I still hear the screaming. I wish the house would finally crumble into the sea, just to make noise, just because it’s going to happen someday anyway, just to be something else to think about. I wish we would all just fall apart so I wouldn’t have to listen to the downfall happen, so slowly, so painfully. Clawing at us.





fourteen


THAT TUESDAY, MARKETPLACE DAY, I STAYED UP HALF THE NIGHT listening to him scream and I’m nodding off into my oatmeal when my mom comes home from the market with one solitary fish.

I guess I’m just stupid, but the ramifications of what Teeth and I did doesn’t hit me until just then, when she’s standing at the door, staring at this puny fish, her face smushed into a ball.

Oh my God.

Fuck.

“What happened?” Dad asks. He’s standing up, the dish towel draped over his shoulder, and coming to the door to hold her together. “Did you get there too late? We’ll just have to ask someone for a few extra.”

No. There aren’t extra.

Fuck. I feel like I just ate something alive with my breakfast. I think Mom’s going to cry, which is one of the signs of the end of my world.

She isn’t steel. “They had such a small batch today. Everyone got one.”

And then she’s crying.

Shit.

I stand up. “I’m going to run to the marketplace,” I tell her. “I’ll barter fish off someone.”

“Rudy, I don’t know if . . . ” She doesn’t know how to finish this sentence.

“Maybe the fishermen will come in with a new load.”

She nods and shoves a bunch of money into my hand, then grabs me into a tight hug. Every second she holds on makes me feel sore and sick.

“I’ve got to go,” I say, and I pull out of the hug and sprint toward the marketplace. I think I hear Teeth calling me, but I won’t look over. No f*cking way. I can’t.

I didn’t think.

I didn’t even think about Dylan.

Oh my God. I have to stop running because my stomach hurts too much. I bend over and wrap my arms around my waist while I catch my breath. I shouldn’t have stopped, because now everything is hitting me a hundred times harder.

I sacrificed my brother to be wild for an afternoon.

I killed him so I wouldn’t be lonely.

No. This isn’t over yet. This is exactly like when I was clinging to the dock in the marina, and I thought my life was over. There is always an escape route. There’s always a way. And there’s always someone who’s going to appear and save the day.

Maybe today it’s me.

But when I get to the marketplace, all I see are twenty people wearing the same expressions as mine. All the wares are packed up, and they’re just standing with fistfuls of money, craning their necks toward the marina, waiting for fish.

Sam is shaking when he turns to me and says, “If my wife doesn’t get fish this week . . . ”

“My brother.”

“Me,” Mrs. Lewis says.

I look at all of them, look at their fists. Then I count the money in my hand. They have so much more than I do. Even if the fishermen do bring a load in this late, I am not going to be able to compete with these people.

And the fishermen aren’t coming.

There’s a hand on my shoulder. Either it’s shaking or I am. I turn and face Fiona. Okay, so definitely me, then.

“Your ghost is screaming,” she tells me.

I can’t take this. I start to go, and then I turn around, because I can’t leave her yet, because I made a promise to the fishboy. And because if I don’t keep it, it will stick in my head, and I cannot think about Teeth right now. I can’t. I need to do this for him and get rid of it so he cannot exist.

So I say, as quietly as I can, “Thank you for taking care of him. I told him I’d tell you.”

She looks at me for a long time. Her eyes are the palest blue I’ve ever seen.

“Thank you,” she says.

So in the end, keeping the promise didn’t help, because I’m walking home thinking about who I should have taken care of, and I’m throwing up on the beach.



It happens slowly.

First, he stops running. Then he’s raising his arms up in the air every time someone passes him, silently asking to be carried. Then, when we’re giving the smallest meals with the smallest bits of fish, he’s coughing until he throws it all up.

We take turns pounding shit out of his chest and it barely makes a dent. I stop leaving the house. I know that out there everyone’s trying to figure out bait, everyone’s threatening the fishermen, everyone’s trying a hundred ways, but it’s f*cking useless and no one knows it more than me. Almost every thought in my head is run, but it just stops being an option. I might as well be thinking fly. I can’t do it. I can barely even go to the empty market every day when Mom sends me, just to check if maybe, maybe there are fish. There never are, because I guess f*cking Teeth was encouraged by our success, I don’t know, and every second I’m out of the house burns in my chest. I definitely don’t look at the water when I go, but a few times I’ve heard the fishboy calling my name. Quietly.