Teeth(50)

All we have is gooey residue on the gun’s handle.

I go down to the marketplace to try to barter whatever I can, to get out of the house, but nobody has any fish they’ll give me. And after ten minutes around the town square, I’m convinced Dad’s the only one who isn’t sure the sea monster is a murderer. I buy milk. Most of the shops are closed, and everyone is leaning against the booths and the doors of the nearby houses plotting rigs with the fishing nets and shooting sprees with hunting rifles. One man rests against the door of the rundown firehouse, sharpening a knife twelve inches long.

“You’re losing the ghost,” Fiona tells me. “Finally.”

“The ghost is with me,” I tell her, and she shakes her head. “He is,” I insist.

“The ghost is finished,” she says. And I get so freaked out by that that I run to the dock. But he isn’t dead. I see him floating on his back asleep under the dock, and I hang my head over the edge and watch his chest rising and falling. He isn’t gone, not even a little. I don’t wake him up, because I know he’ll want me to hang around, and I can’t stand to tell him right now that the whole island’s against him. I don’t know what I’m going to tell him.

And I need to be getting home.

We have three days of fish stored up, and then God knows what we’re going to do. Recovering Teeth to the point that he can catch fish isn’t even a semivalid choice anymore, since I honestly can’t picture him surviving much longer with everyone looking for him. Shit, I can’t think about this.

The truth is that we’re f*cked. I drank all the milk on the way home, but no one even notices.

“What’s wrong with Mom?” Dylan asks me.

“She’s just sad.”

“I have candy.” Dylan uncurls his fist. “I can give it to her.”

I roll my eyes. “You’re such a kid, Dyl.” I remember when I offered Teeth candy.

I’m watching Dylan and counting. I estimate he has about eight days, since he has a low fever and we have no f*cking meds.

I estimate Dad can last about four.

Mom probably five.

Me probably six.

Which means that, by the time he dies, he will have been functionally alone for two days already.

“I’m hungry,” Dylan says.

My stomach twists. “I need to go,” I tell him.

He sticks his lip out. “Where are you going?”

“Don’t pout.”

“Don’t tell me what to do.”

I figure out how to smile at him. “You’re such a brat.”

He smiles back.

“I’ll be back soon,” I say. “Gotta run an errand.”

“Earring?”

“Errand.”

“Oh.”

I kiss his forehead. “Take care of Mom and Dad.”

“I’m a kid.”

“I know, I know.”

I stop and throw up again on the way to the mansion. It hurts a lot this time, and I have to stay doubled over around my stomach for a minute. I can’t go up there now. I need to collect myself. I turn around and go back to the dock. I don’t know why I think this will help me at all.

I don’t see my fishboy. He’s probably under the dock again, out of the sun and out of sight. I don’t think he could swim very far away right now.

Then I start panicking that someone’s found him and killed him, and I have to peek under the dock to make sure he’s there. He is. Asleep. Breathing.

Even if he could somehow catch a fish, he couldn’t kill it. He has no teeth.

I wade into the freezing water. It cramps my calves. I have to stand still for a long time, but eventually a minnow acclimates to me. I try to channel Teeth when I grab it out of the water. It works.

The thing flops in my hand so hard I almost drop it. I don’t have any good way to slit its throat, so I hit it against the dock until its neck breaks. My father told me once that it’s the most humane way to kill them, but right now it feels anything but.

It stops moving instantly. I didn’t expect that. I don’t know.

I wonder how they’ll kill him.

I leave it on Fishboy’s chest and start to climb out of the water, but he stirs and goes, “Rudy?”

“You better hope so,” I say, with a little laugh, and he laughs too.

“Eat that,” I say.

“Okay.” He brings the fish to his mouth to rip it open, but it doesn’t work. His face doesn’t change when he starts ripping at it with his fingernails instead. I think he’ll get through eventually. “I’m feeling better,” he says.

“Good.”

“You leaving?”

“Yeah, I have to.”

“See you later?”

“Definitely. You stay here, okay?”

He nods. He got into the fish’s belly good. He starts sucking it clean. There’s a flyer floating in the water, drifting out to him. I’m glad he can’t read.

The posters are everywhere. The Delaneys’ front door is plastered. They used pictures of the Loch Ness Monster.

There’s a time and a date for a hunt, and it’s eight hours away, f*cking Christ.

I bang on the door. “Diana, open the f*ck up! Open the f*cking door!”