Teeth(40)

I smack his hand away. “Why do you let them catch you?”

He drops the catfish on the dock and shoves meat into his mouth with both hands.

God. God. I look up at the sky, really just so I don’t have to look at him.

He says, “Can’t we talk about something else?” And I hear that his throat hurts and he’s tired and he wants me here so he doesn’t have to think about the other shit. But I can’t keep doing this. He was . . . God, he was supposed to be my escape. And now he’s turning out to be just as much of a nightmare as my f*cking family and this f*cking island, because I can’t fix this. I can’t save him.

And even if I could, how many times am I going to have to save this boy who doesn’t want to be saved before I finally get it through my f*cking head that I can’t actually change anything?

God, I’m just the world’s shittiest friend.

“Are you mad at me?” he says.

“I don’t know.”

This clearly wasn’t the answer he was expecting, and his face gets dark and his mouth gets small.

“Are you just f*cking with me, or what?” I say.

“I’m not f*cking . . . ”

“Do you even care what happens to you? Do you have to be so goddamn reckless?”

“They’re the ones who hurt me!”

“I just don’t understand why you don’t fight them off. Or swim faster. Or . . . bite harder. Something. I just don’t f*cking believe that this is something inevitable. Can you honestly tell me that you’re fighting as hard as you can?”

He doesn’t say anything.

Which is not what I wanted to happen.

Even though I knew it was what was going to happen.

“Goddamn it, Teeth! You know that some people have actual problems, right?”

“Hey! Getting whatever—”

“Raped. The word is raped, you stupid f*cking fishboy.”

That’s out of my mouth before I can even think about it.

And I don’t care how horrible it is, because what the hell, he can get away and he doesn’t.

And some people have actual problems.

He splashes halfheartedly. “It’s a big f*cking problem, okay?” His throat bobs while he swallows. “It’s a big f*cking problem.”

“But it doesn’t have to be.”

“What else am I supposed to do?”

“Anything,” I say. “Just get away. Please, Teeth.”

“And then what?”

“And then you’re free.”

He throws the catfish carcass into the sea. “Fuck it, Rudy, I’m not free.”

“Yeah, because—”

“Shit, boy. Look at me. Do they have me right now? Are you tying me up and hitting me and . . . whatever? Did you trap me?”

“I . . . ” I shake my head.

“And do I look free?”

He looks like a lonely kid in an enormous ocean.

He nods up at the dock. “Will you help me get up there?”


“Up here with me?”

“Yeah.”

I raise my eyebrows. “I thought the sun hurts your scales.”

“Yeah, well. Maybe I’m getting used to it. The salt’s hurting the cuts anyway.”

I make sure no one’s on the beach before I grab him by his elbows and haul him onto the dock next to me. He isn’t great at sitting—he has to keep his hands on the dock to brace himself—but he does okay. I can see the rip in his tail more clearly now. A bloody, glistening hole in the middle of his scales.

“Tomorrow I’ll bring peroxide to put on that,” I tell him.

Teeth touches his black eye and winces. “Look. If they don’t catch me . . . what do I do? I swim around my little corner of the ocean, afraid of them forever, wondering all the time if they’re coming up behind me. And I free a few fish, but I never free them all—” He looks at me. “You know I know that, right? That no matter what I do, they’re bringing fish into market every week?”

I didn’t know he knew that.

“You guys aren’t dropping dead,” he says. “So clearly they’re getting the fish out. And I notice when they’re gone. I don’t know all of them, but . . . you know? Some of them . . . some of them I notice when they’re gone.” He swallows. I wonder if he knew the one he fed me.

He says, “And then even if by some miracle I managed to stop them, the bigger fish are gobbling mine up all the time, and they’re not going to live forever. They’re fish. I don’t even . . . I don’t think fish live very long.”

“Yeah. They’re fish.”

“So I save a few and, in the grand whatever of things, it doesn’t f*cking matter. I know that. I’m really, really smart, you know?”

I nod a little.

“You don’t believe me.”

“I believe you.”

“You don’t even f*cking listen to me anymore,” he says.

“What are you talking about?”

“You used to think I was cool, and now I’m just this f*cking mess that you have to put perox-whatever on. We were . . . It used to be different.”

“But . . . ” I can’t save you and you can’t fix me and I still want to be here and I am scared out of my f*cking mind and why won’t you get well?