Teeth (23 page)

He would know that without him, none of us will be as good. Me, without a friend; and the fish, without a brother; and the island, without a story; and Diana, without her
something real, we will all be a little bit less than we were before we knew him.

So he wouldn’t leave. Not until I could come with him. And I have never been less able to leave than I am now.

But this isn’t a fairy tale, and he doesn’t appear. We stand here for a long time.

He really left.

Because it was all that we could do.

And I don’t know if it was the right answer. But I can picture him sailing away, lonely and scared and safe. And even though this isn’t the ending I want, I feel like singing when I take Diana’s hand and we stare out at the empty ocean.

IT ONLY TAKES ME A DAY TO FIGURE OUT THE BEST FISHING
spots and a couple weeks to get my technique down pat. Most everyone is still on the hunt for the fish who took the boat right out from under their noses, but every day more people give up and come here and try their hand at catching something real instead.

There are five of us regulars, though, and while the others catch a fish or two to bring home to their own families, we pool ours and divide them up and save a few a day for Tuesdays when we haul them down to the marketplace. We can just hide them under a tarp until then. Magic fish do a lot of things, but they don’t spoil.

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.

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.

How far is too far?

Break

by Hannah Moskowitz

THE FIRST FEELING IS EXHILARATION
.

My arms hit the ground. The sound is like a mallet against a crab.

Pure fucking exhilaration.

Beside me, my skateboard is a stranded turtle on its back. The wheels shriek with each spin.

And then—oh.
Oh,
the pain.

The second feeling is pain.

Naomi’s camera beeps and she makes a triumphant noise in her throat. “You
totally
got it that time,” she says. “Tell me you got it.”

I hold my breath for a moment until I can say, “We got it.”

“You fell like a bag of mashed potatoes.” Her sneakers make bubble gum smacks against the pavement on her way to me. “Just . . . splat.”

So vivid, that girl.

Naomi’s beside me, and her tiny hand is an ice cube on my smoldering back.

“Don’t get up,” she says.

I choke out a sweaty, clogged piece of laughter. “Wasn’t going to, babe.”

“Whoa, you’re bleeding.”

“Yeah, I thought so.” Blood’s the unfortunate side effect of a hard-core fall. I pick my head up and shake my neck, just to be sure I can. “This was a definitely a good one.”

I let her roll me onto my back. My right hand stays pinned, tucked grotesquely under my arm, fingers facing back toward my elbow.

She nods. “Wrist’s broken.”

“Huh, you think?” I swallow. “Where’s the blood?”

“Top of your forehead.”

I sit up and lean against Naomi’s popsicle stick of a body and wipe the blood off my forehead with my left hand. She gives me a quick squeeze around the shoulders, which is basically as affectionate as Naomi gets. She’d probably shake hands on her deathbed.

She takes off her baseball cap, brushes back her hair, and replaces the cap with the brim tilted down. “So what’s the final tally, kid?”

Ow. Shit. “Hold on a second.”

She waits while I pant, my head against my skinned knee. Colors explode in the back of my head. The pain’s almost electric.

“Hurt a lot?” she asks.

I expand and burst in a thousand little balloons. “Remind me why I’m doing this again?”

“Shut up, you.”

I manage to smile. “I know. Just kidding.”

“So what hurts? Where’s it coming from?”

“My brain.”

She exhales, rolling her eyes. “And your brain is getting these pain signals from where, sensei?”

“Check my ankles.” I raise my head and sit up, balancing on my good arm. I suck on a bloody finger and click off my helmet. The straps flap around my chin. I taste like copper and dirt.

I squint sideways into the green fluorescence of the 7-Eleven. No one inside has noticed us, but it’s only a matter of time. Damn. “Hurry it up, Nom?”

She takes each of my sneakered feet by the toe and moves it carefully back and forth, side to side, up and
down. I close my eyes and feel all the muscles, tendons, and bones shift perfectly.

“Anything?”

I shake my head. “They’re fine.”

“Just the wrist, then?”

“No. There’s something else. It-it’s too much pain to be just the wrist . . . . It’s somewhere . . . . ” I gesture weakly.

“You seriously can’t tell?”

“Just give me a second.”

Naomi never gets hurt. She doesn’t understand. I think she’s irritated until she does that nose-wrinkle. “Look, we’re not talking spinal damage or something here, right? Because I’m going to feel really shitty about helping you in your little mission if you end up with spinal damage.”

I kick her to demonstrate my un-paralysis.

She smiles. “Smart-ass.”

I breathe in and my chest kicks. “Hey. I think it’s the ribs.”

Naomi pulls up my T-shirt and checks my chest. While she takes care of that, I wiggle all my fingers around, just to check. They’re fine—untouched except for scrapes from the pavement. I dig a few rocks from underneath a nail.

“I’m guessing two broken ribs,” she says.

“Two?”

“Yeah. Both on the right.”

I nod, gulping against the third feeling—nausea.

“Jonah?”

I ignore her and struggle to distract myself. Add today to the total, and that’s 2 femurs + 1 elbow + 1 collarbone + 1 foot + 4 fingers + 1 ankle + 2 toes + 1 kneecap + 1 fibula + 1 wrist + 2 ribs.

= 17 broken bones.

189 to go.

Naomi looks left to the 7-Eleven. “If we don’t get out of here soon, someone’s going to want to know if you’re okay. And then we’ll have to find another gross parking lot for next time.”

“Relax. I’m not doing any more skateboard crashes.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“Enough with the skateboard. We’ve got to be more creative next time, or your video’s gonna get boring.”

She makes that wicked smile. “You okay to stand?” She takes my good hand and pulls me up. My right wrist dangles off to the side like the limb of a broken marionette. I want to hold it up, but Naomi’s got me in a death grip so I won’t fall.

My stomach clenches. I gasp, and it kills. “Shit, Nom.”

“You’re okay.”

“I’m gonna puke.”

“Push through this. Come on. You’re a big boy.”

Any other time, I would tease her mercilessly for this comment. And she knows it. Damn this girl.

I’m upright, but that’s about as far as I’m going to go. I lean against the grody wall of the Laundromat. “Just bring the car around. I can’t walk that far.”

She makes her hard-ass face. “There’s nothing wrong with your legs. I’m not going to baby you.”

My mouth tastes like cat litter. “Nom.”

She shakes her hair and shoves down the brim of her cap. “You really do look like crap.”

She always expects me to enjoy this part. She thinks a boy who likes breaking bones has to like the pain.

Yeah. Just like Indiana Jones loves those damn snakes.

I do begging eyes.

“All right,” she says. “I’ll get the car. Keep your ribs on.”

This is Naomi’s idea of funny.

She slouches off. I watch her blur into a lump of sweatshirt, baseball cap, and oversize jeans.

Shit. Feeling number four is worry. Problems carpet bomb my brain.

What am I going to tell my parents? How is this setting a good example for Jesse? What the hell am I
doing in the grossest parking lot in the city on a Tuesday night?

The feeling that never comes is regret.

There’s no room. Because you know you’re three bones closer.

From

S
he’s eleven!” Noah and I protest the entire time Melinda’s patting our sister’s face with powder and dabbing lip gloss on her baby mouth. “Too young for makeup,” I whine, and Noah drops his head onto Bella’s pillow so he can’t watch. But I can’t look away. Bella and I are riveted—Bella by how old Claudia looks, me by the length of Melinda’s fingers.

“I’m only giving her a little, Chasey.” Melinda traces powder over the tops of Claudia’s eyes. “Making her feel just as beautiful as she is.”