Teeth (6 page)

Diana is leading me down this wide hallway with walls stacked with portraits. They’re so old and dusty that they almost look velvet, like those hideous pictures of dogs my grandmother has in her house in Tampa.

Diana says, “I hope you weren’t expecting me to show you around our splendid homeland.”

“Why don’t you leave the house?”

“Occasionally I do. It isn’t usually an option.”

“Oh.”

“It makes my mother worry. And most of the time I don’t
want to. Everything worth it comes to me eventually. There are a lot of things out there I don’t need.” She looks at me, her eyes slightly narrowed. She reminds me of the fishboy for a second, with that look on her face. “You wouldn’t understand.”

No, after three months of dying to get away, I don’t think I would.

But then she says, “And everything I want to know I can read about,” and it’s like a string yanks out of me and ties itself to her. She nods toward an enormous library as we walk past. It’s so stupid, but the way our hands linger the same way on the door frame, for a minute I feel like I can understand everything about her.

Books. Books I haven’t read with spines I don’t recognize. I want to go in. I want to sink into one of the gold armchairs and smell the dust from all the pages. I’ve read our house’s measly collection of waterlogged paperbacks four times each. Please. Please can we stop.

But we keep walking. I try to pull myself together. I’ve missed both books and girls, but I don’t think this is the time to try to bargain my way into both.

I realize it’s warm in here. I shrug out of my raincoat. Diana takes it and drapes it over her arm.

I say, “Oh. Thanks.”

“’Course. I’ve always liked raincoats. I like weather-specific clothing.”

“And you don’t go outside.”

“I also like Turkmenistan and I don’t go there either.”

“I have a weird thing with Argentina.”

“The bottom line is, there is a world outside waiting to kill you, and my mother has experienced more than enough of it for both of us.”

Whoa. “What happened to your mother?”

“A horrible injustice,” she says. “But a fascinating one. My room is right through here.”

She leads me in and shuts the door behind her. There aren’t any chairs, so I sit on the floor, leaning against the bed. It’s thin and gray, just like mine. This whole room is blank and pale, and the only accents are the stacks and stacks of books.

She moves her hands to the top of her head, twists something, and all her hair falls down to her shoulders. I think there’s glitter in it.

Her room smells like peppermint.

“Overwhelmed” seems like the wrong word, but it’s all I can think of. And I think there’s something wrong with me that what I most want to know right now is more about her mother. God, Rudy.

But she walks to me and sits down next to me on the rug. “I find you very interesting, Rudy,” she says.

“You do?”

I find myself really boring, most of the time.

She says, “I haven’t seen a teenager since Elizabeth Danziger used to babysit me. And I didn’t pay attention then, and she moved away years ago. And I’ve never seen a teenage boy before.” She stares into my face. Her eyes are so light blue they almost look white. “I’ve only seen pictures.”

“You’re really freaking me out,” I say, but I whisper it. Because her lips are so close to mine.

She grins.

But then she’s kissing me.

Her mouth is warm and soft. This feels more like drinking hot chocolate than kissing. Her lips and her tongue are everywhere, filling my entire mouth, and it’s suffocating and it’s a little fantastic.

It’s not that I’ve been an angel, and it’s not that I don’t like Diana all right, but I don’t think I’ve ever kissed someone I cared this little about. Here in this room, we could kiss, we could have sex, she could kick me out, her mom could discover us, and it wouldn’t really mean anything. Nothing would change. It’s not as if my life needs her.

There’s something freeing about it, and no amount of thinking can change the fact that I’m sitting here, my hand on her waist, her hand in my hair, with the unfleeting thought that I want her to swallow me.

And it’s so warm.

We kiss for a few more minutes—hours, in kissing-time—but
I don’t get bored. I could keep doing this until we fall asleep. But she pulls away, rests her forehead against mine, and says, “Very good.”

Man, she’s a good kisser for a hermit. I say, “You must read a lot of books,” and she laughs.

“Just the right ones. I special-order them!”

God, I wasn’t supposed to get caught in this trap, she fucking warned me, and now all I’m thinking is that I want to bring her outside, somewhere farther than the bottom of her house or the marketplace. I want to take her off this island and run away with her to Argentina.

Christ, I’m so easy. A girl kisses me, and all of a sudden I’m making plans to elope with her or some shit. I need to cool down.

While I’m taking even breaths in and out, she says, “So far this is nice,” in a voice like she’s making the decision for both of us. Which is fine with me.

So I say, “Thank you.”

“Do you have a lot of experience with girls?”

“You sound like you’re writing a report.”

“I’d never read about sucking the bottom lip like that.”

“Yeah, one of my . . . My ex-girlfriend taught me that.”

“Hmm.”

“Did you like it?”

“I didn’t mind it.”

“Well. Thanks.”

I look around her room, at the stacks of books on the floor. Most of them are old ones I haven’t read. The only classics I’ve read are the ones for school. I feel like I should ask her how
Jane Eyre
ends, because I never finished it.

“You like books?” she asks. Kind of gently.

I nod. I can’t look at her right now, for some reason. I’m scared she’s going to ask me what my favorite is, or like she won’t believe me, so I say, “Roald Dahl.” I say, even though she doesn’t ask, because I can feel the question sitting between us anyway, because I feel like I have to prove myself. “I like Roald Dahl. Um. I read them to my brother.” Not true, but it’s easier than explaining that I like kids’ books more than adult books, or reality.

“
The Witches
,” Diana says, with a nod.

“
Fantastic Mr. Fox
.”

She stretches out on her stomach and puts her feet in the air, her ankles twisted together. I remember flopping like that when I was a kid. It makes her boobs look amazing. She says, “I like how his books pretend to be about something for the first third, then switch gears completely.”

“The real plot doesn’t show up until the middle, yeah. And usually the real characters.”

“And everything before that is completely dropped.” She smiles and rolls onto her back. She’s basking in this conversation. “It’s like a little story of its own that’s never finished.”

“Only Roald Dahl could get away with that shit. I mean, they let him write
The Magic Finger
.” I take her copy of
Runaway Bunny
off the bookshelf. “I like that you have this in here.”

“Picture books are my favorites.”

I am so warm. “This is a war metaphor, my mom told me.” I look at all the illustrations, the rabbits with their soulless eyes. “Like, sending your kid off to war.”

“It’s about sending them off anywhere, really.”

I don’t know how she got so close to me. Her lips are right against my cheek, all of a sudden, and I turn and kiss her because I don’t know what she’s going to say next, but for a second, I can feel all her thoughts about books, all these possibilities, hovering between her lips and my cheek. And I want to taste them.

Like sandalwood and dust.

She pulls away faster this time, but she smiles at me more.

“We’ll do this again,” she says. “But my mother will be recovering from her crying jag soon, and I don’t think she wants to see you after she humiliated herself in front of you at dinner.”

“Why’s she afraid of that boy I saw?”

“So it is a boy.”

“You know about him.” It’s a statement, not a question.

“As much as I care to know about anything in . . . the ocean.”

God, the way she says “the ocean,” I half expect to hear lightning crashing in the background.

She says, “My mother doesn’t talk about him, but I know things she doesn’t expect. And I’ve seen your boy a few times. I don’t think he knows I can see him.”

“He stays by the dock, I think. He’s not my boy.”

“I can see the dock if I angle myself just right on the balcony. I don’t think he hides as well as he thinks he does. But I wasn’t quite sure he was a boy, with his skin. I couldn’t tell what he was. A boy?”

I shrug a little. “He’s not a fish.”

“He doesn’t have any legs.”

“Why was your mom humiliated?”

Diana rests her forearms on each other. “Long before I was born, my mother liked to consider herself the kind of person who would try anything. I’ve stumbled across tales from her wayward youth. All these men she’s bedded.” Diana looks over her glasses at me. “All these nonmen she’s bedded.”

“Your mom’s big secret is she slept with women?”

Diana coughs in the back of her throat until she turns it into a laugh. “Broaden your mind, Rudy. You just saw a half Enki, didn’t you?” Then her face gets a little more serious. “Why do you think we’re afraid of the ocean?”

“You don’t seem afraid.”

“Do you ever see anyone swimming?” She shakes her head
and plays with the pristine cover of
Runaway Bunny
. “We can’t kill off those fish fast enough, really, if you ask me.”

“Wait. What are—”

She smiles. “If I tell you everything now, what will make you come back?”

Well.

You will, for one.

THE FOURTH TIME I SEE FISHBOY, HE SCARES ME OUT OF MY MIND.

Except it might not really be the fourth time. Ever since he cut our fishing line, I’ve thought I’ve seen glimpses of him every time I step outside, and a few times I’m sure I’ve seen the tip of his fin or a bit of blond hair poking out of the water. Even when I look through the thick bottle glass of my bedroom window, the ocean so blurry I can’t make out the peaks of the waves, I think I can see a hint of a tail weaving in and out between the rocks. Diana’s right. He’s a shitty hider. It’s almost like he’s trying to be seen.

Although, now that I think about it, I don’t know why he really cares if people see him. He’s clearly not hunting
the fish—he’s the very opposite of hunting the fish—so I don’t know why everyone would be so bothered to know he’s in the water. And if he’s eavesdropping on us all the time, he must get sick of people calling him a ghost. It must suck for people to think you’re already dead when you’re not.

He must get so fucking lonely.

So why does he hide?

And why didn’t he hide from me?

And if he doesn’t want to reveal himself to us, I don’t know what he’s doing here. If I were him, I would swim so far away from this island. But he’s always here, lingering by the dock and the cliffs.

He still ducks under the water or underneath the dock when he sees anyone approach, so he’s clearly not waving his presence around like a flag. But now that I know he’s here, I don’t understand how I lived here this long without seeing him. I don’t understand how he’s only a legend to everyone on this island, why they don’t try to talk to him, or catch him. Not to hurt him, to touch him.

Except then I go to the marketplace and see them obsessing over any new rumor they can imagine up, and I get that they don’t spend more time trying to verify them. They move from thing to thing too quickly. Last week a rumor went around that Ms. Klesko cheated on her husband, and it swept us all up like a hurricane. Even my parents were
talking about it. For the week it was like Ms. Klesko’s affair was the only thing in the whole world.

How could they really care about a fishboy when they’re worn out from caring about each other?

So what’s wrong with me?

I don’t want to make this corollary.

The fishermen know he exists. There’s that. And for some reason they haven’t told anyone. They shrug their shoulders when they don’t bring enough fish to the marketplace, but they never try to blame the ghost. I listen to the fishboy scream at night and don’t know why they don’t kill him. They’d rather catch him and beat him up every night than be through with him for good?

The only person who seems to really want to know anything about our little ghost is Diana, and I haven’t seen her lately, because we haven’t had a Tuesday, and she hasn’t sent another letter.

The real fourth time that I see the fishboy, the time that counts, I’m looking for him, under the guise of looking for sea glass, when I find him a million or something feet away from the shore, just a blur in the distance. But I can see him struggling in the water, panting, coughing. Coughing hard.

I drop my sea glass and stare at him. I can feel my heart all the way down in my bare feet.

He coughs something into the water, something that my
experienced eye tells me is blood. His shoulders heave down as he’s breathing, and I can see his bottom half moving frantically to stay above water as he coughs.