Teeth(49)

“Vigilante.” It occurs to me that I could feed him a fish and he might be good as new, but somehow I don’t think he’d go for that. He’s not an idiot. He knew the fish would fix hypothermia, he knows if they could fix this. There’s no way it’s worth it to him. He’d kill one to save me, but not to save himself. Just like I’d risk Dylan’s life for him but not for me. It makes us a little horrible.

“Fucking *s,” he says. “Going to fish them all away. Then what?” He exhales. “Then what do I do? What am I even supposed to do here, no fishermen and no fish?” He looks at me in a way that might mean something.

But my throat just dropped down to my chest.

Teeth watches me. “What’s wrong?”

“Holy shit.”

Dylan.

Fishermen.

Dead.

Dead.

“Dylan,” I manage to say.

“Your brother?” He lights up, just like every time, then I see him go through exactly the same process I just did, and his eyes go out and his cheeks drop and he bites his lip. “Oh.”

“Yeah. Oh.”

Holy f*cking f*cking f*cking shit.

What have I done?

I’m staring at Teeth like I don’t know who he is.

“There will be more fishermen,” he says. “There are always more fishermen.”

“In the next week?” No one knows the f*cking bait. Fuck. Fuck.

He doesn’t say anything.

Fuck. I can’t believe what I did. I went in recklessly and didn’t even think about how my family would get fish after I threatened the fishermen at gunpoint. And I didn’t think, for a second, what we were going to do if things went so incredibly wrong.

I say, “What are we going to do?”

“I don’t know.”

“What did you do?”

“I can try to catch fish for you—”

“You can’t swim!”

“I have to swim!” His voice breaks. “I’m a fish!”

“What were you thinking? You killed two people!”

“I don’t give a shit! Stop yelling at me!” He folds up and puts his head in his lap. “Stop yelling at me!” he says again, breathing so hard. “I hate them and I hate humans and I hate you and I don’t f*cking care, and if you say one more word about your f*cking brother, I’m going to scream so loud that my throat falls out and I’m going to tell everyone I exist and that you killed the fishermen!”

I stare at him. This bruised and bloody fish I don’t recognize.

“I don’t care,” he says. “I don’t care about the fishermen and I don’t care about my stupid human sister and I don’t care about you and I don’t care about your brother.” He looks at me. “I’m a fish. I’m a heartless mean king of the fish and I don’t care about you and I don’t care about anything! I’m strong!” He’s shaking like it’s the only thing he knows how to do. “I’m so strong! Nobody hurts me. Nobody can hurt me. This is my game and I didn’t do anything wrong and I’m just trying to help and it’s not my fault, I didn’t do anything, they hurt me, and I hate this.”

And then for a minute, just a minute, my brother fades from me, for one more minute I can’t spare, but I can’t help it. I know what I need to think about, and I’m not thinking about it. I’m thinking about Teeth. All I see is him.

This bruised, bloody boy I know too well.

And he’s staring at me like he knows everything in my entire head.

Maybe he does.

And maybe he has a right to be angry about it. Because he has been raw and I have been guarded, and all this time I thought he was manipulating me. Now look at us.

“I don’t feel anything,” he insists, his voice so weak.

So I’m crashing into him, and my arms are all the way around him, and he’s so small and shivering and I’m holding him as hard as I can, and just when I think he’s about to crack and say the three words I don’t know how to deal with, he whispers, “I hate humans,” and he’s crying as hard as I’ve ever seen.

And I feel everything.



In the morning I wake up not to screams, but to shouting from the marina. But most of the town, I find out, is gathered in the marketplace, swearing and crying and putting up posters calling for a midnight hunt of the sea monster who killed the fishermen.

Fuck.

She told.





twenty-two


MY MOTHER HAS RUSTED COMPLETELY OVER.

Dad is throwing things and screaming about what kind of world do we live in where there are sea monsters; why can’t we rely on anything—medicine, reality, morality, my brother—to be real, and what the f*ck are we going to do, how the f*ck are we going to go on?

Dylan is still totally healthy, hidden in his room, and we’re already planning his funeral. I’m sitting at the kitchen table with my eyes closed, thinking about colors of flowers.

And Mom doesn’t talk to anyone.

Dad eventually decides that the sea monster story has to be bullshit, that someone else killed them and is using the sea monster as an excuse. All we have is Ms. Delaney’s gun, the one she said she threw in the ocean years ago, next to the fishermen on the marina.