Teeth(48)

Oh.

He brings his eyes up for just a second to look at Diana. He yanks my sleeve. “I want her to look at me.”

“Later, okay?”

“Now.”

I guess this isn’t the time to argue with him. Diana hands me the gun. I’m a lot more awkward with it than she was, but I keep it stretched out in front of me and I keep my face fierce. I’ll let them have their moment.

“Hey,” I hear Diana say.

And he says, “How’s Mom?” They both laugh weakly. I guess that was a joke.

Diana says, “Rudy, let’s go. He probably needs medical attention.” She’s talking like a textbook like she sometimes does. I kind of love that.

I let my hand brush against hers when I give the gun back. Teeth stares. I say, “Yeah, the mermaid hospital. We’ll clean him up as best we—”

Then Teeth grabs the gun.

He studies it for a minute, with his finger on the trigger, and mumbles, “Just like in Bambi.”

He straightens his arm toward the fishermen and methodically shoots each of them in the head.

I hear running footsteps as they hit the ground. I’m confused, and I think one of them has somehow survived and fled, or that Teeth has grown the legs he needs and started to run, thank God, far, far, so far away, but then I realize the fishboy is still in my arms and it’s Diana running as hard and as fast as she can toward her house, not looking back, and the blood is pooling at my naked toes.

I guess this was too real for her.

Because God f*cking knows it’s too real for me.





twenty-one


I MANAGE TO LOWER TEETH TO THE DOCK BEFORE I START throwing up.

“Whoa, what are you doing?” Fishboy leans forward and watches me. “That’s so cool. Do it again!”

I do.

“Man, that’s awesome. I wish I could do that. Can I do that?”

I grab him by his shoulders. “You f*cking killed them!”

He’s grinning like I just told him I’m buying him ice cream. “They went down so fast. They didn’t even get to say anything. I wonder what they would have said. Killed by a fish!”

I let go of him. “Christ, Fishboy!”

The smile’s gone. He stares at me. He’s the world’s most battered child. “My name is Teeth.”

I think I’m going to puke again, but I don’t.

“You’re mad at me?” he says.

I back away from the dock and pace on the sand. My chest feels like it’s breaking into pieces.

And the f*cking ocean, the ocean is so quiet, because I guess the f*cking ocean just doesn’t know how to act appropriately for anything, goddamn it, the f*cking ocean, I am so sick of the f*cking ocean and I don’t know what to do and I want to dive in and get clean and never have to come back out. I want to stay underwater forever and plug my ears and . . .

And I guess I just wish the storm way out at sea would come closer, just so I would have something to think about besides the two f*cking fishermen wrecked into pieces in the marina.

“I can’t believe you did that,” I say. “That you even could do that.”

“They hurt me.”

I can’t look at him.

“They hurt me!” Fishboy says again, louder, and fine, fine, I look up, and he’s raised himself off the dock as much as he can, resting on the bottom of his tail. “Look at me!”

I look.

Christ, half of his scales are gone. I don’t know how he’s balanced as well as he is when the bottom of his tail is that ripped. I don’t know if he’s ever going to swim well again. One of his eyes is swollen all the way shut. Half of his hair is matted down with blood. I need to wash him clean.

The fact that my brain is saying, right now, that I need to wash him clean, tells me that those men got exactly what they deserved.

I breathe out.

“I know.” I get back on the dock. “I know.” I want to touch him, but it’s like I can’t figure out how. My fingers keep twitching away. I eventually touch the swollen eye, really carefully, and he leans a little in to my hand. And it’s okay.

I take a handful of seawater and carefully rinse out the cuts on his face. He winces and looks down. “You got a scrape,” he says. “On your knee.”

“Yeah? I don’t know how.” Probably getting down on the ground too quickly when I first saw him. Or crashing onto the dock to let him go.

He leans down and cups his hands for water and rinses my scrape. It hurts more than it helps, but I let him do it anyway. Then I figure I should probably leave his cuts alone until I have something besides saltwater.

“I’m sorry,” I whisper.

He says, “You didn’t do anything,” in this voice that knows that I did. He exhales and looks out to sea for a minute.

“You don’t have to talk about it,” I say, but really I’m just not sure if I can stand to listen.

“They f*cking hurt me this time.”

I need to do something. I wonder where I put that peroxide. Fuck. “I know.”

He shivers, hard and fast, like a spasm. Then he gags.

I say, “You’re going to do that cool thing that I just did, now.”

He laughs a little, but he doesn’t throw up. He presses his slimy palms into his eyes. “They kept bringing in these loads of fish and dumping them right next to me. I think they caught more fish this week than they usually do in a month, without me free and being a whatever.”