Teeth(4)

Maybe I’ll drop off the milk and then run more, blow off my schoolwork, go past my house until I hit the marina. I’ll scale the cliffs. I’ll watch the grimy fishermen catch my brother’s meals.

And then I hear someone whistle.

I turn away from Ms. Delaney’s mansion and that’s when I see him, sitting on a rock with a piece of seaweed hanging out of his mouth.

He’s only about twenty feet from me. And before I notice anything else about him, I realize he’s about my age.

And then the rest of him hits me: webbed fingers, the scrawny torso patched with silver scales, and a twisted fish tail starting where his hips should be, curling into a dirty fin. A fish. A boy. The ugliest thing I have ever seen.

Can’t be real.

I take a few steps toward him, but I’m afraid to get much closer.

I’m afraid I’ll wake up, I guess.

He gives me a funny smile and a small wave. And then he pushes off the rock and dives into the water.

I find him with my eyes a few seconds later. He’s swimming out past the surf, hard. I see his fin hitting the water behind him with each stroke, setting up waves that push him farther and farther away from the shore.

He can’t be a mermaid, because he has to come up to breathe. He’s stopping to pant. He’s tired. Mermaids sing underwater. Mermaids can’t get tired.

Because mermaids aren’t real.

And then he’s gone.





three


“I THOUGHT SHE LIVED ALONE,” I WHISPER TO MY MOM.

She holds her finger to her lips. I can’t believe this. I can’t believe that for three f*cking months I’ve been thinking I was the only teenager on the island, and now I’ve found two others in one day. Even if one is half-fish.

I watch Ms. Delaney’s daughter bring an enormous bowl of soup to the dining room table. Her red hair goes down to her hips. It sways with her like it’s another limb. She’s glancing at me, too. I feel guilty that I didn’t somehow let her know I was here.

My parents don’t look surprised at all. You’d think they would have mentioned her. Maybe they kept this from me on purpose. Maybe the whole get-your-brother-well thing is a ruse, and we’re really here because my parents want me to be less of a slut.

At home I went to a school with over a thousand kids. I had strings of girlfriends and the kind of friends whose cars you borrow when you take them out, because theirs have bigger backseats. Here I do math problems alone at the kitchen table. If celibacy was their plan, it’s working.

I reach next to me and rub Dylan’s back while he chokes on his cup.

It’s not like I actually think that’s their plan.

Mom might not let me demand any more information, but she can’t stop me from staring as the girl sits across the table from me and passes the mashed potatoes to her left. “Thank you, Diana,” Ms. Delaney says.

Diana. That’s also my mom’s name. This never happens in movies.

My last girlfriend at home was Gabrielle. We were together for only a month before I left. I pretty much knew by the time we kissed for the first time that I was leaving soon. That’s probably why I kissed her so hard that I bruised my lip against her teeth. I felt like I could get every bit of me inside of her, if I tried hard enough. I don’t know.

We haven’t written.

“I’ve never seen you before,” I say to Diana.

“I don’t get out much,” she says. She sounds proud of it.

Diana Delaney doesn’t seem like a real name, and she’s so secret and pale, the closest thing to a ghost I’ve ever seen.

She’s probably sick. There’s got to be a reason the Delaneys stayed.

I turn my head and look out at the beach. Ms. Delaney has a window so big it takes up an entire wall. I’d be terrified, I think, living here with ghosts. They could push you right out through the glass and into the sea. You’d die with cuts full of salt water.

“This brie is phenomenal,” my dad says.

Ms. Delaney slices neatly through her fish. “Linda Curlin, who lives down on the north tip? She makes it from Sam’s milk, but of course it isn’t available every week.” She keeps chattering about the amazing apples she got from the marketplace last week, but while she makes small talk her eyes jitterbug from her plate and my parents back to her daughter, like she thinks any minute Diana will get up and run out the door.

Diana chews each bite of food a zillion times before she swallows. Her teeth are straight and perfect. Each sip she takes from her water glass seems to take a lifetime. I don’t know how she does it. I want to shake her, or throw something at the wall. I at least get to go home to a house that isn’t made of right angles and wade through my brother’s toys. She stays here.

I want to take her by the wrist and pull her outside.

The conversation stays appropriately dull until Dylan faints, likely just from boredom, but my parents make a big deal out of scooping him up and making him drink water until he feels better. At home we’re so used to Dylan fainting that we barely blink. Half the time he does it for attention. He’s a clever little bastard. It doesn’t usually work at home, but here at least it’s something to talk about besides what fruit was good at the marketplace this week, so yeah, it looks like we’re letting him get away with it.

Mom fusses over him for a minute, and Ms. Delaney murmurs “Poor thing” and “I hope he’s all right.” Diana looks kind of fascinated. Ms. Delaney is averting her eyes the way people think they’re supposed to, like Dylan has an extra head and it’s rude to stare, when, come on, he’s five years old, he wants you to look at him. And Diana does, smiling at him like he’s a little kid.