Teeth (21 page)

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, fucking Christ.

I bang on the door. “Diana, open the fuck up!
Open the fucking door!
”

She has to open the door. She has to fix this because I think she’s the only one who can. I don’t know how, but there has to be a way; she has to tell them she killed them or tell me I killed them because holy mother of fuck I need those motherfuckers because I cannot lose both of my boys and even if Dylan isn’t really mine Teeth really is and I know that now and I cannot lose both of them when everyone has been telling me for five months that I have to stay here, that I don’t have a choice, that I’m trapped on a fucking island by the fucking water and I can’t leave, and I have to stay here, I have to save Teeth a million times and I have to hug Dylan, I have to love Dylan even though he’s fucked and always has been and I don’t know him, and I’m never going to know him, and I’m never going to know me because everyone in the world who even sees me is fucking dying, and I will never know me until I’m done knowing people who know me, and I will never ever be free.

“Answer the fucking door!”

The door swings open and there’s Ms. Delaney.

I wipe my cheeks off as fast as I can.

And I have no idea what to say. With the possible exception of the fishermen, I’ve never been in front of an adult
I respect less, and this time, I can’t be polite. I don’t know if I’m ever going to be polite again.

“You’re going to kill him,” I say. “You and Diana, you’re killing him.”

She doesn’t say anything.

“He’s your son,” I say. “He’s your fucking son. He’s
family
.”

“You had no right coming into our lives,” she said. “God knows if my daughter is ever going to be all right.”

“He’s your son!”

Her hand grips the doorway. “You do not know nearly enough to barge into our bus—”

“I know him!”

“So do I.” And then, holy shit, she has me by the collar. “So do I. I know that boy. My little boy who could barely move. My boy who grew scales and cried in his sleep every night to go home.”

I stare at her. I’m breathing so hard that my chest keeps nearly touching hers.

“He was a fish,” she says. “Where would you have put a fish?” She lets go of me. “And you have a lot to learn about family, Rudy.”

“He can’t breathe in there. How can you pretend he belongs there?”

She looks away.

I’m getting my voice back. “He has lungs and a heart and he . . . he is just telling himself over and over again that
he is all fish because that’s what you wanted him to be.”

“I don’t regret what I did. A teenager in my doorway is not going to change that.”

Then why does she cry every week on the day he was born? But she knows that. I don’t need to say it.

“He’s my best friend,” I say.

“Considering the state of my daughter, I’d say it’s better for everyone if your friends are removed from you.” She glowers at me. “And you will now kindly remove yourself from my doorway.”

I take a few deep breaths and back up without turning around. My head feels like it might fall off.

“By the way,” she says as I’m going. “Give your brother my best.” And she shuts the door.

My parents’ room is dark and silent, but I can see the heap of my mother underneath the sheets. I’m still shaking and I can hear Dylan chattering on his rocking horse. I close the door. And then everything drains out of me and this quiet takes its place, heavy and hot. I don’t know how my parents’ room is always so warm, though I don’t think I’ve been in here more than once or twice.

“Mom,” I say.

She doesn’t move, but she isn’t asleep. I can tell by the way she breathes.

A loud wave hits a rock, and the house creaks. How did
we get stuck in such a shitty house? The whole place feels closer to falling apart with every single day.

But I guess we’ll probably move back home soon. Which doesn’t make me feel anything in the whole world.

I sit down on the bed, next to her stomach. She turns her head on the pillow to look at me. She has the same color eyes as Dylan, but hers are a lot thinner.

“Hey,” she whispers. Her eyelashes are matted together.

“Hey.”

She exhales for a long time.

“It’s going to be okay,” I tell her, because it seems like the only thing to say, and I need to say something that will make her sit up. But as soon as the words are out of my mouth, they feel mean, like I’m saying it just to hurt her. I’ve never been able to lie to my mother, and I don’t like the squeezing in my stomach that tells me I’m doing it now.

But she doesn’t laugh at me or start crying, both of which I was afraid might happen. She takes my hand and says, “I love you, baby.” She runs her thumb over my knuckles.

Her fingers are smaller than mine, thin and soft. I touch her engagement ring. I’ve always liked it. I used to try it on, which I guess is weird. Even when I was a kid, it only fit on my pinky. The diamond is shaped like a tear. She always says that when I propose to someone, I shouldn’t use a round diamond. Round diamonds are bad luck, she says.

She has spots on the back of her hands from when she was younger and she didn’t wear sunscreen.

I say, “He’s going to be okay.”

She looks away. “I wish there were . . . God, I can’t believe I’m saying this.” She clears her throat for a minute. “I wish there were an easier way. A way that wouldn’t be as horrible for him.”

“I know.” I remember learning about euthanasia in school. I thought they were talking about youth in Asia for so long. I don’t know why I’m thinking about this right now. Probably because this room is so quiet. I had no idea how hard it was to hear the ocean from in here. It’s much louder in my room. I wish this were my room.

I picture slamming my brother against the dock.

“Where’s your father?” she asks.

“On the deck. I brought him a peanut butter sandwich.” He wasn’t up for much more than crying. I don’t think he ate the sandwich.

He’s really upset because he went out to try to catch fish today, but all he got were minnows. He can’t figure out the bait for the Enkis. He tried waving a net around, and nothing. The fishermen knew something we don’t.

“And your brother?”

“TV. This cartoon about a time machine. His eyes were humongous. Kid’s a dork. He asked me if people can time travel in real life.”

She chuckles, just a little. “I wish.”

“Yeah, me too.”

I don’t even know where I’d go. Some time when I wasn’t alive.

Because if I went back to things that I’ve really done, I don’t know what I would do differently, which is probably such a stupid thought since everything is so fucked up. But I can’t pinpoint where I went wrong. I probably didn’t have to save Teeth when I found him with the fisherman that first time, but what difference did that make? He would have escaped eventually like he always did, and he would have felt like the battered war hero he wants to be. Or thought he wanted to be.

I had to save him that time he was drowning. That wasn’t optional. I can’t imagine standing there, watching him drown. Maybe I shouldn’t have been there on the beach to see him. Maybe I should have left the house at a different time and let him just go under the water, but I can’t even think about that without feeling like I can’t breathe, either.

If I could go back to when Dylan was born and know how sick he was going to get, maybe I would have done something. But I don’t know what I could have done. He was still just a baby. I don’t know how to be a different brother. I don’t know how to love him more than I do now, and that’s not the heartwarming sentiment it pretends to be.

And I had to save Teeth last night. I need to accept that
and let it stay, so heavy and hard I can feel it in my mouth. Because it’s true; I couldn’t have let him drown in those fishermen. I didn’t have a choice.

Or I did. I could have let my best friend die.

Though that would have been better. I would have lost him but saved the whole fucking island. My family would be fine. No one but me and Fiona would have noticed if the fishboy were gone. They would notice more fish and less worry.

I saved his life. I can’t let that be the wrong choice.

So I make a new one; except, really, it’s the same choice I’ve made four times since we’ve moved. It’s that same one.

I have to save him.

I have to save both of them.

There has to be a way. I didn’t die in that cave, and Dylan didn’t die when he was two, and Teeth didn’t die in the shrimp boat, because there is always a way. And I’m going to find it.

I’m going to be a good brother and a good friend, and maybe that means I can’t be a fully good person, and I’m going to have to lie, but I’m going in. Because this time there really isn’t any other choice.

“I’m going to fix this,” I tell Mom.

“Just be with us, honey.”

I say, “I’m going to make this okay.”

She’s looking at me. She doesn’t want to ask.

But she whispers, “How?”

I’m about to cry, so I laugh instead, like she did. “I don’t know.”

She sits up and hugs me tight. My head is against her collarbone. When did she get so thin? I feel like I should be holding her and comforting her, but I just want her to hold me. I want to fold my arms into my chest so she can get her arms all the way around me, and not a bit of me will be in the open air. I don’t want to be exposed to anything right now. And she lets me. She shields me with all of her. Maybe I understand more right now than I ever did.

She kisses my cheek. “Rudy. When did you get so big, huh?”

“I think recently.”

“My sweet boy.”

I can’t focus on her. I have my plan.

The ghost is finished.

Someone can always get out, but I didn’t really notice until now. Because the person isn’t me.

HE’S UNDERNEATH THE DOCK, STILL. HE GOT A MINNOW HIMSELF,
and he managed to break the neck, but this time he can’t get through the skin. He’s gnawing at it uselessly. I take the pocketknife I brought and slit open its belly. It doesn’t bother me now.

Teeth snatches it back. “I would have shared,” he says, with a bit of a grin. “You didn’t have to just steal it from me.”

“This is for you.” I hand him the knife.

He examines it and nods. “Until my teeth grow back.”

“Sure.”