Teeth(7)

Mom kisses his forehead. “That’s right, baby. Great job.”

I hand the plate to my mom and say, “What can I do?”

“Oh, honey, thank you,” she says, like I caught the fish myself. Jesus.

“Dyl, you need anything? You have your dino—cool, you have your dinosaur. Okay. Cool.” I blow on my hands. It feels like so much air. “I’m gonna go for a run.”

Dad says, “It’s the middle of the night, Rudy.”

“No big deal. I’ll be back soon. Okay. Awesome.”

I just have to get out.

I’m just still so shitty at this.

I’m out the door without even putting on shoes. I’m running. The air has the rotted midnight smell of sea foam, and the sand is mushy underneath my feet. My socks are soaking through. I keep running.

I push closer and closer to the marina. There are no majestic sailboats here, just the dingy rowboats, one with a bell that I hear flapping in the wind on the most quiet nights, and the one corroded shrimp boat the fishermen must sometimes use. But I think they rely mostly on the big nets set up just off the shore that catch the fish as the current sweeps them around the corner, past the rocks. I’ve never seen anyone out in the boat.

It’s almost four a.m., and I guess I thought the two fishermen would be awake by now, thought maybe I could barter a fresh fish or two off of them, but I only see one from here, lit up by the swinging lamp on the shrimp boat. He’s . . . What is he doing? He’s lying in the sand and . . . Is he on top of . . .

The fishboy.

I run faster. There’s the fisherman. I can’t tell which one; they look the same unless you’re close enough to count the gold teeth. He has the fishboy just out of the water, in the sand, and he’s digging his thumbs into the top of the fishboy’s tail and biting his neck. I can’t hear anything over the ocean.

So I yell, “Hey!”


They can’t hear me, and now the fisherman is sitting on him, straddling his tail, rubbing his stomach. I’m close enough to see the fishboy’s webbed fingers and his flailing fin and his open mouth full of sharp teeth. He gnashes, and the fisherman pulls his fist back and hits the fishboy across the face. I’m close now, close enough to hear, and it sounds like the time I stepped on a jellyfish.

I scream, “Hey!”

And at first I still don’t think the fisherman heard me, but then in a second he’s up and he’s gone, disappeared into the shrimp boat without a look in my direction. And here I am, standing over the fishboy.

“Are you okay?” I say. And I feel stupid. I have no reason to believe this guy has a human brain in that human head.

He shakes his head hard for a few seconds and touches his cheek with his scaly hand. Then he sits up, balancing where his tail meets his torso, his fin curled behind him, and dusts himself off. “Thanks.”

His tail is skinny and silver, the same color as Dylan’s fish. All of his scales, especially the ones on his chest, look dry, like they’re about to flake off. His hair is short and uneven. Mermaids in fairy tales are never this ugly.

Mermen.

I say, “Hey. All right?” Because his cheek is bleeding now, and because I don’t know what else to say.

I should go.

“No. See, someone ripped off my head and gave me this stupid human one instead,” he says. He spits a mouthful of blood into the water.

“Oh . . . ”

“I’m f*cking joking. I’m fine. Those *s can never keep me forever, anyway. I bite. I would have gotten away. You didn’t have to do that.” He tries to scoot back toward the ocean, but it’s obviously hard for him to move in the sand. “Hey. Give me a shove.”

“I . . . ”

“I’m not f*cking contagious, I promise. And I won’t bite you. Even though I could.” He looks me up and down. “Yeah, I could take you.”

I don’t want to give him a push, because I don’t want him to go. But how the f*ck do I explain that?

I say, “What are you?” too fast for my brain to figure out what a completely shitty thing that is to ask.

But Fishboy just smiles and says, “I’m their dirty secret.” He wiggles around a little until he’s free, then gives me a nod and pushes himself into the ocean without my help.

I find a fish, already gutted and drying in the fisherman’s basket, and run it home.

I really think I’ll see Fishboy again. I can just feel it, in the hungry part of me.

So I’m holding my sick brother on my lap, keeping him busy while my mom fries up the new fish, and I’m thinking: My friends at home weren’t nearly this interesting.





four


IT TAKES TOO LONG. I DRAW, I RUN, I DO HOMEWORK. I OVER and over again think about going to Diana’s and asking about her books, or about . . . whatever. I chicken out and reread the bloated paperbacks I brought from home and watch the same five videos over and over again with Dylan.

I climb the cliffs by the house and think about climbing trees in my backyard. I can’t even remember the last time I saw a tree. I’m trying to smell them in my mind, but all I’m coming up with are the Christmas tree air fresheners. That’s not right.

I never pictured magic as this cold, gray, dead thing.

I climb all the way up to our kitchen window and tap on it until my mom looks up. I just want to scare her, just to get some reaction, like I’m a f*cking child, but she just waves like she was expecting me and, once I’ve hoisted myself onto the real land and through the door, tells me to sit down and do my homeschool work. Tricked.