Teeth (9 page)

“Or maybe I picked it out on purpose. Best seaweed in the sea.”

“Stop fucking around. It’s not like you need it. You can’t even eat seaweed.” He stumbles around the word a little.

“Of course I can.” I eat a bite to screw with him. It just tastes like salt. “How often do the fishermen catch you?” I say. I’ve been trying to get him to talk about them all morning. He has this bruise around his neck in the shape of a hand. And his eyes are really red today.

“Most nights. They’re crafty.”

“I don’t get why you don’t swim away.”

“I just bite them. So you guys are going to stop eating the fish now, right? Now that he’s well.”

“We don’t eat them, really. Only him.”

“Is he going to stop?”

“I don’t know. I don’t want him to go back to how he was. And it’s not like he’s totally well.”

“I think it’s time to stop, Rudy. I mean, what if . . . what if he becomes whatever from the fish from eating too much?”

“Uh, allergic?”

“No.”

“Immune.”

“Jesus Christ, if I knew the word I’d fucking say the word, Rudy.”

“All right, kiddo, calm down. It’s not like we’re eating you.”

He sighs, really big, in this way that reminds me how much of him is human. I can hear all the air leaving his lungs.

“Stop being mean and give me that,” he says, pointing his chin at the seaweed. “All I ever do is skim the shit off the surface. Dead and slimy. The good stuff’s too hard to pick.”

“You’re really not adapted to your environment.”

I mean that as a joke, just more banter, but he kind of looks away and splashes a little with his tail.

I say, “Hey, I’m sorry.”

“I’m not exactly . . . whatever. A thing that was made for what I do.” He’s doing the
whatever
thing the more we talk, because I guess we’re venturing past the subjects he’s used to hearing about. He learned English from listening to the islanders, I assume, and if they don’t say the word
evolutionary
, he’s not going to know it. It’s not like there’s anything for him to read out here in the ocean. Really, he’s the opposite of Diana in every single way, ever.

“I’m a mistake,” he says. “Let’s be honest.”

I want to ask now about his mom. If he knows she’s still up there in the mansion. And how long he was with her. And if he remembers when she must have read him
Runaway Bunny
. And about how the hell one goes about having sex with a fish.

He pushes himself out of the water to try to get to my seaweed. He snaps at the air. His teeth are long and thin as needles. I pull my hand away before he can bite my fingers off, and he says, “I’m not going to
hurt
you.”

“I know, asshole.”

“Plus they’re sharp, not strong. I probably wouldn’t even break skin.” He bites his hand to test and examines it critically.

“Stop that. Like you’re not beat up already.”

“Didn’t break skin.”

“So your bullshit about biting the fishermen is actual bullshit, then. Do they just let you go?”

“Why the fuck don’t you ever get in the water unless I’m giving you a fucking lesson? You’re driving me crazy. Jesus. Get in and give me that.”

“I’m not getting in today. Water’s rough.” I remember when Diana said that.

“Then why are you wearing a bathing suit?” God, he sounds just like a bratty kid sometimes. All of the time.

I say, “Because somehow or another you seem to always get me in the water. But I’m not fucking coming in voluntarily. Go out and start choking again if you want me in so badly.”

He grins. “So many big words.”

“Sorry.”

“I liked it.”

“Not coming in. Will freeze.”

“Scared you’ll drown?”

I say, “Yeah,” before I process that he was probably teasing me.

But I am. Maybe not as scared as I am that every time I get in the water I will keep getting closer to
this is your life, this is your friend and you are never leaving
, but I’m not telling him that bit. Kid doesn’t speak English, he wouldn’t even understand. Yeah.

He looks at me for a while, then pushes off the dock with his fin and floats around on his back, beating the water with his tail. He has even more scaly patches on his chest than I remembered. I swear he’s the ugliest thing in the world. And the bloody hole in the middle of his tail is glistening.

He says, “What if I show you something cool? Something
life-changing
.”

I say softly, “Why do they put holes in your tail?”

He ignores that. “Something really cool, Rudy.”

“Can I fix it?”

“What?”

“Sick brother. I have the fix-it impulse.”

“Show you something.”

“Yeah, fine. How cool?”

“Really, really cool. But you can’t tell the fishermen. Promise?”

“What? Do you really fucking think I’m having conversations with the fishermen?”

“I never know what you humans are gonna do. I’m not a very good spy, remember? Come on. I’m not going to let you drown, God, I’m a fish.”

“You’re not a fish.” I slide into the water as slowly as I can, feeling like all my limbs are going to snap off from the cold and my balls are going to jump up into my body. We’re past where the waves break, but the peaks still smack me in the face on their way to shore.

“Why do you keep saying that?” He waits until I’m halfway into the water before he grabs me by the shoulder and starts pulling me out to sea.

“Holy crap. You’re murdering me.”

He gnashes his teeth and laughs, and I can’t help it, I’m laughing too, although I’m still worried that while Fishboy is trying to show me something cool, the sea is going to swallow us both alive. And, in all honesty, sometimes I still worry. Sometimes he feels too charismatic to not be a bad guy. He’s a little too much like I was at school for me to completely trust him.

But then he’ll smile at me, and sometimes I don’t really give a shit whether he’s bad or not, as long as I’m not bored. And I haven’t been since the first day I rescued him.

He drags me over to the marina. “Don’t be seen,” he says, and he latches on to a rock and peers around it to the fishing docks.

“Seriously, let’s get out of here. This is bad.” Why the fuck does he even come here? Shit, I don’t want to watch them beat him up. Do they even beat him up during the day?

“Uh-uh. Come here.” He pulls me to a new cluster of rocks. “Okay, here, dive down and open your eyes.”

“I can’t open my eyes underwater.”

“Do it anyway.” And he dunks me under the water.

I take a few seconds to convince myself that I’m still alive, and then I open my eyes. It hurts. Of course it hurts.

But then, fish.

Hundreds of them, all around me, swimming and nudging each other and screaming—I can’t believe it, actually screaming—in the same high-pitched voice that has become my lullaby or my nightmare or something.

Teeth is beside me. He grins.

I stay down for as long as I can, and then I come up, gasping. Fishboy emerges a minute later, one of the fish in his hands.

“This must be like a colony or something,” I say.

“This is where they hide. The fishermen have no idea.” He pets the fish’s back. “Look at my little brother.”

“Brother?”

“Well,” he says. “Fine. My half brother. All of them. Half brothers and sisters.”

“You have no idea which fish are the parents of which fish.”

He brings his face down to the water and presses his cheek against the fish he’s holding. “It doesn’t matter. They’re my siblings.” Then he takes the seaweed he stole from me and feeds it to the fish, stroking its scales the whole time. The fish nibbles it up with the same teeth as Fishboy’s. “There you go,” Teeth says softly. “There.”

If I didn’t know better, I’d swear that fish was cuddling with him.

If I didn’t want to believe that these fish are totally not sentient enough to worry about eating.

“They’re not just any fish, you know?” Teeth gently lets the fish go. “I mean, eat the minnows. I eat the minnows. The minnows are stupid as fuck. They run into the rocks while they’re swimming. The ancho . . . what are they?”

“Anchovies.”

“Yeah. They’re just assholes. Eat them if you want. Seriously, I’ll even help you catch them. They taste okay.”

“The fishermen catch those too, sometimes.”

“Yeah, when one swims right into their net.” He shakes his head. “They’re hunting the Enkis. I know that. And I get that. But . . . we’re special.”

“The reason they want them is because they’re special. Anchovies aren’t going to cure anyone.”

“That’s not the special I mean.” He catches another fish and hugs it to his chest.

I’m trying to be gentle. “They’re only special to you because they’re yours.”

“I could say the same thing about that cute kid you were holding.”

Well, shit.

I look away.

His voice is quiet. “It’s not like I can have my own babies, you know? It’s not like there are girls like me. Or anyones like me. And I don’t even have the proper equipment. You know that. The fishermen sure as fuck do.”

Now I look at him again. “The fishermen just rip at you.”

And fuck, he lets them because he’s dying to be touched. I know that because I know that feeling.

So I put my hand on his arm, of course I do, before I even register that he might not want that this second, but he fucking leans in to it, then shakes his head a little.

He says, “The fishermen just rip at me, but we’re not talking about that right now.” He holds up the fish in his hand as much as he can while still keeping it in the water. “You see him, this little thing, this trusting little thing? These guys are sort of . . . all I have.”

This would probably be a good time to say,
You have a sister, and I made out with her.
But I can’t tear myself away from that fish in his hands, its empty animal stare. It sees
just as well as I do, but I don’t want to think about that. But I am.

But then Teeth is looking at me with these swamp green eyes and going, “So it’s time to stop eating my siblings, okay? Please. I’m saying please.” He swallows. “Magic word and all that.”

“JUST MAYBE WE CAN START WEANING HIM OFF, IS ALL I’M
saying.”

Mom picks up a cabbage and examines it. “Will you eat cabbage?”

“If you fry it in bacon.”

She makes a face, but she puts it in her basket and pays anyway. I wonder what happens when we run out of money. We’re going to have to find something to sell.

“Weaning him off, Mom.”

“It feels too risky right now, Rudy. We’re seeing so much improvement.”

Mr. Gardener, the fat old man who lives closest to us,
bumbles past on his way to the homemade newspaper stand and shoves me stomach-first into the desk of the produce booth. I wince. Mr. Gardener ignores me and starts yelling at Mrs. Lauder, the produce lady, “I’m not paying fifty for that!” but he will, we all know he will, because every week he does. Eventually.

Sometimes it’s like we’re all playing these small parts in a play, and our job is to show up every Tuesday and say the same two lines, and go home.

My role is to scan the ocean for the fishboy until Fiona comes and handles me. I already see her watching me from her standard spot on the edge of the cliff. I think a strong wind could push her off. She winks at me. She always does.

I turn back to Mom. “So why would he go back to being sick once he’s well?”

“The same reason we couldn’t take him off medicine on good days. It’s for maintenance.”

“The medicine didn’t work.”

She laughs like she doesn’t mean it. “That’s pretty much the point, Rudy.”

“Yeah, and now he’s better than he’s ever been.”

“Exactly why we can’t risk halting his progress now.” She picks up one of the fish we bought with both hands and tips it back and forth, checking its weight. It’s facing me, eyes round and smooth as marbles. I have to keep reminding myself that it’s dead, and it can’t see me.

I say, “I’m scared I’m becoming a vegetarian.”

“You had three hamburgers yesterday.”

“No, like, mentally becoming a vegetarian.”

“And why’s that such a bad thing?”

“Because vegetarians annoy me.” I’m watching her put that fish into her tote bag, and I can’t stop feeling like I’m going to throw up. I wish that one had swum away. I don’t know.

Mom says, “You sound just like your father sometimes.”

I wish I had a reason to think that it’s more okay to eat them than it would be to carve up the fishermen and suck at the insides. I wish that was the cure Dylan needed.

No. I don’t care about the fish, end of story. I haven’t lost my knowledge that fish are fish, and whether or not they hug themselves against Teeth’s slimy chest, they’re fish. Teeth isn’t interesting because he’s half fish, but because he’s half human. Or because he’s just mine or whatever.

But . . . “But they’re magic fish,” I tell Mom. “Maybe they’re more like . . . like mammals or something than we think. You know. Sentient. Maybe they’re like dolphins.”

“Oh, honey, don’t say that.”

“Just because we don’t want to think it . . . ”

It’s so stupid. I would feed my brother dolphins if it would save him. I’d feed him babies if it would save him. Just . . . Dylan, okay?

It hits me for the first time that that might not be an okay thing to feel.

“We have no reason to believe that’s true,” she says.

“They’re different from minnows and anchovies and stuff.”

Mom says, “And minnows and anchovies don’t save your brother’s life.”

I pick out apples. “I know.” I’ve had this conversation before. Clearly I suck at arguing either side.

She squeezes a nectarine and lets it go. “He still has a long way to go, Rudy. Don’t get me wrong, I’m so excited about all the progress he’s made. But this isn’t something to mess around with.”

“So what’s the endgame? It’s not like there are schools here.” There is no real life here.

“We’ll go home someday,” she says, but even she doesn’t sound like she believes it anymore. How can she talk about going home in the same breath she admits the fish are tying us indefinitely here?