Teeth(39)

He looks so different out of the water. So much smaller, and his scales look dry enough to fall off.

In his sleep he whimpers, and his webbed grip tightens on the calf of my jeans. “Rudy,” he whispers, and my throat clenches. In a way it hasn’t since Dylan was sick.

“It’s okay,” I whisper. I’m right here.

His hand around my shin is scaring the shit out of me. I can barely move. I don’t want to move, and that’s so f*cking terrifying.

I don’t know what I’m going to do. But now I’m shaking too. Fucking f*cking Fishboy, what am I going to do?



Dad’s making cookies downstairs, gingerbread. The burned-sugar smell is mixing with the salty air on its way up the stairs, and my mouth is watering up here in my room. It takes me back to my grandmother’s house, when she used to make caramel on the stove and spike it with sea salt.

It’s been a streak of warm days, and my window’s open. I know it isn’t night yet, but I don’t hear Teeth screaming, and I let this convince me that everything is okay. Maybe he’s still asleep under the dock where I left him.

I wonder if he liked gingerbread when he was a kid.

A breeze rolls into my room. It smells just like the water. I feel calmer than I have in a long time.





seventeen


IT’S TUESDAY AGAIN, AND EVEN THOUGH OUR MEETINGS AREN’T regular like they used to be, it still feels strange not to go up to Diana’s in the evening. And I regret it more than I would have thought. I know it’s only been a week, but I already feel like I’m forgetting what she looks like or the way her mouth tastes. I miss kissing, but I don’t think I miss kissing her.

Maybe that should worry me.

It doesn’t. I don’t know. Maybe I have too much else to be worried about.

Like the fact that I don’t see him on my way to the marketplace, but I hear him now that I’m on my way back. He’s moaning my name in between the thrashes of the waves. “Rudy. You motherf*cker. Stop waaaaalking. Ruuuuuudy.”

“Just a sec.” I run the rest of the way home to drop off the groceries. I have a feeling he doesn’t want to see my bags full of fish. I can hear him the entire way back to my house, and again the second I step back outside.

“Christ.” I get up on the dock. “Where are you?”

“Below you.”

I lean over and see the tips of his webbed fingers. I grab his hand and pull him until he floats into the open water. His black eyes have blossomed all the way down his face, and big patches of his scales are missing. I’ve never seen his tail as mangled as this.

“Shit,” I mumble. They found him last night. I thought I hid him well before I left, in that nook by the marketplace. God f*cking damn it. He already looked sick last night. He didn’t need this now.

He covers his face with his hands and starts moaning, “Rudy,” again.

“I know.” I want to ask if he’s okay, but he’s so clearly not okay—the scrapes, the bruises, the tearing at his tail—that I can’t ask this the way I mean to without seeming incredibly dense. I know he’s not physically okay, but I need to know where my fishboy’s brain is right now. I want to know, every time I see him, if they’ve finally pushed him beyond repair. How much of this he can actually take before his human brain explodes with human pain.

“Let’s go swimming,” I say, because I don’t know what else to say.

“I’m tired, Rudy.”

“I know.”

“I’m hungry,” he says. Really quietly.

“Have you been floating there all day?”

He nods.

I take a deep breath. “Then get off your ass and catch a fish. You can’t just lie around waiting for me all day. Christ, boy. I caught that one catfish and that was just luck.”

“You can’t even catch a fish with one of those big sticks.”

“Fishing poles?”

“Yeah.”

“I might have, if you hadn’t sliced my line.”

He grins, but getting bitched at seems to have given him some energy. He tilts himself up and starts watching the water.

“What did they do to your tail?” I try to ask like I don’t really care about the answer, because nothing makes Teeth uncomfortable like feelings that aren’t his own. I guess that explains a lot of things I don’t say.

“They got bored of my mouth, I guess.”

I whisper, “Christ.” I don’t want to think about it.

He shrugs. “It’s what makes me more interesting than a human. You have to use your imagination. Or I don’t even exist. I’m a ghooooost.” He looks up at me and sticks his tongue out, then dives into the water. He’s not as fast as he normally is. He comes up with a foot-long fish in his mouth, grinning at me.

I don’t smile. “Why do you do this?”

“What, this?” He slits the catfish’s throat. “Kills them faster. It’s actually nice of me.” He looks at the catfish. “You should be thanking me right now, fishy. Thank your fish king.”

“It’s dead, babe.”

“You know what it is? It’s mushy.” He holds up some of the meat, making a face. “Look at this. It’s mushy. Probably has bugs or something. Taste it. Do you think it has bugs?”