Teeth(56)

We don’t make a lot of money, but it’s enough for me to buy everything we need. And I usually get at least five fish a day to bring home, and that is enough.

My favorite on the team is Mr. Carlson, whose wife has MS. We trade secrets as we learn them. I was the one who figured out the bait. Well, it wasn’t me, really. I knew this fish once who really liked seaweed. I just put the pieces together.

Mr. Carson and I share our seaweed. We got here earliest today, at about four-thirty this morning. I don’t have much time to draw anymore. And it’s too cold to think about swimming.

It’s fine.

It’s whatever it needs to be.

Maybe Diana will come and bring me lunch. She never has, so far, but I haven’t given up hope. I still think she’ll leave the house again. Someday. She can take her time. It’s not like I’m going anywhere.

Sometimes I write her letters.

Sometimes I wish I cared, but mostly . . . mostly it’s fine.

Mr. Carson has a huge pile already. It’s been a slower day for me. “You gotta focus,” he says. “Be the fish.”

“Be the fish. Okay.”

By the end of the day I have fifteen fish. That’s enough for everyone to nod and say I did okay, but I still feel bad. I need to figure out how to rig up the net. Hand-fishing alone isn’t going to cut it, but it just feels less brutal. Everyone already thinks I’m stupid because every time I catch a fish, I pause and hit it against the cliff to break its neck. “Just leave him,” they all say. “They die on their own, y’know. It’s not like they breathe.”

“I know,” I say.

Our lures bob easily in the water as we reel in our lines. The ocean has been calmer lately, almost still.

The sun is starting to go down, so I sling my basket over my shoulder and go back up to the house. Dad’s always there, cooking, to grin at me when I get in. “How’d it go?”

“Eight,” I say, and I smack a kiss on his cheek.

We sit down and eat together at the table. Mom and Dad and I eat bread and milk. Dylan is going on and on about this new girl with cancer who’s about his age. Ever since he saw her at the marketplace a few days ago with Mom, he can’t shut up about her. He thinks she’s just the best thing in the world.

I smile like I’m listening, but I let myself drift off a little. I get like this in the evenings now. I stop fishing, and nothing seems real until I give everyone a weak smile good night and go up and touch the glass of my window, so cold.

And something small and insignificant inside me shatters, just like every night, and feelings hit too hard for me to stand. I bend at the waist and cling to the windowsill. I won’t scream. I won’t throw myself against the walls until the supports give and we fall into the ocean. I won’t think about swimming as hard as I can.

No. I’ll sit here with a pencil in my hand, pretending that I will draw instead of spend hours staring at a blank page. I’ll think peaceful, practical thoughts about baiting hooks and making idle chatter with the townspeople.

I close my eyes and listen to the ocean.

I’m thinking about sailing, to England or maybe France. The way the wind would feel on my face and the sound of his voice screaming my name through his laughter. The waves would crash like applause. God, I remember when I used to be afraid of the ocean.





acknowledgments


As always, I’m infinitely grateful to everyone at Simon Pulse, particularly my absolutely incredible editor, Anica Rissi, and her lovely assistant, Michael Strother. That Anica continues to let me write these weird little books is one of the strangest and most awesome parts of my life.

Suzie Townsend and the crowd at FinePrint believed in Teeth from its inception, and John Cusick has been a very lovely stepfather to the thing. The Musers encouraged me from the start, which is quite a feat when the start in question was “I want to write a book about magic fish!” Thank you, thank you, thank you.

My incredible magic gay fish, who were named for this book and who pushed me through draft after draft, deserve metaphorical fish food galore and the world’s largest metaphorical fish tank, particularly those who did reads for me. A thousand additional thank-yous to Leah, Kat, Gwen, Mikaela, Jen, Nicole, Rachel, and Erin, for loving my characters like they were their own and gently coaxing me away from many a Supernatural marathon when I should have been writing. Sometimes it worked. To my family, Seth, Madeleine, Alex, Galen, and Emma, for loving me.

And to everyone else I have whatevered, and to everyone else who has whatevered me.