Teeth(47)

“They changed the game,” he says.

“I know. But we’re changing it too.”

“Can’t do this again, Rudy.”

“I promise.” But I have to stop there because my heart is beating so hard it’s shaking my whole chest, and it’s hard to talk, especially when I don’t know how to finish my sentences.

A few seconds later the spike is out. The wound doesn’t look as bad as the one farther up on his tail. Probably because this one hasn’t been agitated as much. I have to keep swallowing so I don’t throw up, or say something I shouldn’t, but the words “I’m really sorry” come out before I can stop myself.

I can tell he wishes I had. “Man, shut up and f*cking untie me.” He sounds so different without the teeth.

I dig through the fishermen’s stuff until I find a knife, and I start working on his wrists. “Diana, anything?”

“No,” she whispers.

“Who’s Diana?” Teeth mumbles. He sounds like he’s falling asleep.

“Your sister.” I smack his cheek. “Stay with me now. We’ll sleep later. I’ll bring you home and you can sleep on my couch.”

He snickers for a minute, then stops and creaks open one eye. “My sister?”

“Yeah. Don’t get excited. I mean your human sister.”

“I know . . . ” But he must not be processing it, because he still looks like he gives a shit.

“She’s our girl with a gun tonight,” I say, and he seems to wake up even more.

“Diana sounds like Daniel,” he says, and then he shakes his head a little and goes, “Gun?”

Diana says, “Rudy, I heard something.”

Fuck. “We’re almost done.”

I finish slicing through the ropes around Teeth’s wrists, and before I can even announce to him that he’s free, he crashes into me, his head against my chest, his arms curled up around himself and pressing into me. I can feel his heart beating, so much lighter than mine, so fast that it reminds me of a hummingbird from back home. He shoves his face into my chest, which must hurt his bruises, but he keeps pushing all of himself harder and harder against me, like every time he comes a little closer, he thinks it will be close enough, but it isn’t.

Shit.

I don’t know what to do besides whisper, “It’s okay,” because the fishermen are coming and it’s the middle of the night and he’s bleeding all over me and he’s a fish and I’m a boy and Diana and . . . shit.

“Rudy!” Diana hisses.

I put Teeth on the floor. “Stay here.”

“No no f*ck no you can’t leave me here.”

“And you can’t swim on your own, so you have to wait for us. It’s going to be fine. I’m gonna be right back.” There isn’t any other choice.

I scramble out the door. “We have to carry him out of here.”

“I want to see him . . . . ”

“Yeah, come on.”

Above us there’s a heavy clomp of two pairs of boots, and the fishermen come down the stairs to the boat’s main deck.

They were asleep right above us, and we didn’t even notice.

Shit.

“Well.” The one-eyed one sneers at us. “What do we have here?”

Diana raises the gun and holds it out with both hands. “We have this.”

For a second I’m afraid they’re not going to care. That they’re going to laugh and bend up the barrel of our gun, twist it into a knot, tell us that we are children and fish and they are humans and this is a world so much bigger than we will ever understand. They will pull the earth out from under us and show us exactly, stroke for stroke, what they did to the fishboy, and we will not be able to breathe.

Instead they freeze, their eyes huge. The fat one eventually croaks, “Look, lady. We don’t want any trouble.”

“No, you look,” she says. “We’re taking the fishboy. And you’re going to stand here and let me do it. Or you’re both going to taste your own brains.” She aims at the one-eyed one’s mouth.

I guess that’s from a book.

The fishermen grunt stuff about how that’s fine, they don’t care, there’s no need for any of this, they found him in the water a few days ago and they were just trying to keep him from stealing their fish, they don’t need him, they don’t want him. They don’t need him.

Diana doesn’t take her eyes off the fishermen when she says, “Can you get him on your own?” It takes me a minute to realize she’s talking to me.

“I think so.” I crawl back into the cabin. “Hey, you.”

“Hey.” He’s shaking. I should have stayed in here with him and let Diana handle them. She’s on top of this.

“Ready to go?” I say.

“They don’t need me?”

“Don’t worry about that. Come on. We’re going.”

“Never coming back.” He raises his arms and helps me pick him up. When I get him outside, the fishermen leer and the fat one smacks his lips, but they don’t make any moves toward him. Teeth shivers nonetheless and puts his face into my shoulder.

“Let’s get out of here,” I say. I touch Diana’s arm. Teeth looks up to watch my hands. I don’t know what he’s thinking, but his grip on me suddenly tightens, and he’s tugging that arm back over to wrap around himself.