Fish in the Sky (12 page)

Then the nightmare starts for real. I’m paralyzed: glued to the bench. A huge, slimy tongue rises up from within the mouth and rolls out, stretching in a long arc over the room, closer, closer, until it touches my chest, cold and wet, and sticks to me like it’s glued. I open my mouth to scream, but there’s no sound except my trembling breath. The frog starts to pull me in; the tongue pulls and pulls and the skin on my chest stretches as if it’s going to rip off if I fight the pulling, if I don’t let myself be pulled up and into the dripping-wet mouth.

Then something snaps in my head with a loud crack, and a scream shoots out of my mouth. I scream with all the force of my body and my soul, and the tongue and the frog disappear at once. Sandra the shower warden stands over me, looking completely perplexed.

I’m still screaming, and the boys line up at the door to the showers with questioning looks on their faces. They stare at me and then at one another. I think I hear Sandra say something, but at the same moment, she reaches out to touch me and I finally get my strength back. I rip myself off her, snatch my clothes, and run out the door, out into the cold sun, wearing only my gym shorts.

I don’t stop until I’m on the corner, where I pull my pants up my sweaty legs, and I can’t hear anything and I can’t see anything but I keep running until I fall crying into our house, throw my schoolbag to the floor, and rush into the bathroom. I search the cabinet in a frenzy until I find what I’m looking for: the tweezers. I pull down my pants in a hurry, stoop over, and tear away my shame, and with every hair I pull out of my skin, I damn everything and everyone. I’m out of their jurisdiction. I’m not a part of this anymore. I’m gone and I’m not coming back. Never again, never again, never again.

I rest in the hollow of my rock, down by the sea, looking out over the bay. This my only shelter in all the world, a little hollow in a huge boulder, on the rocky beach. From here I’m invisible to the world and the world is invisible to me. In the bay, the distant island with the lighthouse, the oil tanks on the peninsula in the east, and the seagulls, circling over the sewage outlet in the shallow waters below. I haven’t been here for some time now. Long ago, a great chunk broke from this huge rock and left a gap, which forms my small shelter from the wind and rain. If I get too cold, I can light a little fire to warm my hands. I can watch the clouds gather or disperse and watch the seagulls hang in the air. I’m utterly alone here. Nobody ever comes here. At high tide, the foam from the waves almost reaches my feet, but at low tide, the rocks below are covered in seaweed, decorated with different types of shells, far below me. The sounds of the harbor behind me echo in the air: trucks driving, full of iced fish in large boxes that slide on the wet surfaces inside; the steady beat of the iron hammer from the steelworks far away; the air smells of rotten fish slime and seaweed and the sewage pump, oil and tar, and the salty nets lying in heaps by the fishing sheds.

And as this chorus echoes all around me, as the fragrances of seaweed and oil flare up my nostrils, as the seagulls circle in the air above me, as a group of eider ducks rises and falls on the waves of the bay, the tears begin to roll. Why doesn’t Dad ever call me?

My childhood has faded like a bright summer day in laughter and games on a sunny field under the blue sky. That day has now come to evening. Before me is the black forest of my grown-up years, full of monsters and insects and dangers with each step, bullfrogs, snakes, and poison spiders; a thick undergrowth that I have to fight through to move onward, but I don’t know where to. I’ve been pushed forward and there’s no turning back. I’m empty inside, like the curled-up skin from an apple. Is this being a grown-up? Or is this just being thirteen? To have no friend in the world, nobody who understands, nobody to take me in their arms. The only bosom where I can rest is the bosom of my rock. But I even hear the herring gull circling overhead, laughing at me and my misery. I wish I was dead and gone and would never have to see anyone I know. Why does God make all this happen? Maybe there is no God, no merciful Father and Jesus and angels and Mary. Is it all for show? Maybe you are utterly alone in the world. And when you die, you just disappear, vaporize, cease to exist. The herring gull glides over the rocks and laughs.

Once I read a story about a man who was going to throw himself off the docks and commit suicide, but then God sent an angel. The angel turned itself into a little child and jumped in the harbor, so the man had to jump in to rescue the child, and he decided not to kill himself. If this story is true, if God is really that good with those who are desperate, then why has he sent me a laughing herring gull? Am I worth nothing? Can’t he spare an angel for me? Maybe he just wants to get rid of me. Maybe I’m in the way. He obviously doesn’t want to rescue me; he just laughs at me and my sorrows. Is this how you clean up your mistakes, God? Eat the apple from inside me and leave the skin for laughing herring gulls? All right, you, I won’t be in your way anymore. I’ll disappear. I’m going to commit suicide.

A sharp trembling goes through my body, and my hands are cold. I wipe tears and snot from my face; my eyes hurt and my throat is sore.

I can just picture when Pinko, the stupid idiot, gathers everybody in the school auditorium; teachers and students alike stand silent and wait and listen.

“I have grave tidings for you all,” he says, and the room is utterly quiet. Everyone senses that something terrible has happened. Pinko rearranges his glasses, and his hands are trembling; his conscience is torturing him.

“Today, Heaven is richer by one angel,” he says in a shaky voice. “But we here in this little school have lost one of our most talented students, a lovely young man and a good student: Josh Stephenson is dead.”

The sighs and groans go through the crowd; teachers bow their heads, and boys and girls look desperately at one another. Raxel covers his face with his hands, and Sandra clings to him in speechless fright. They realize they’ll never work in any school gym again. Peter cries bitter tears: he has lost a trusted friend. And my Clara, she can’t believe what she’s hearing. Now she realizes that it was me she loved with all her heart, that it was me she saw in her dreams. But now it’s too late. She stands up and looks over the crowd.

“You killed him!” she shouts, and points an accusing finger at Pinko. “You and your uncompassionate, loveless, cruel heartlessness! You’re all murderers!” she shouts. “He lives on, yes, he lives on in the hearts of those who loved him. You can’t get to him there!” Then she runs out, overwhelmed with grief.

Everybody is thinking the same thing:
if only I had been nicer to him, if only I had been more understanding, if only, if only.
But now he’s gone and it’s too late, nothing left but a black hole of guilt in the souls of the wicked, but a sweet memory of a good boy in the hearts of the others.

I tremble and shake from the exhilarating sorrow, the tragic ecstasy, exhausted from my imagination, from thinking about the impact my death might have on the world. But what about Mom and Dad? I expect they’d be relieved. At least Mom could stop working so much, and Dad doesn’t care about me anyway. What the hell was the meaning of giving me a stuffed falcon? He is a stuffed idiot. He probably didn’t get permission from Floozy Suzy, his girlfriend, to keep it, and so rather than just throwing it away, sent it to me.

The herring gull chuckles as he flies in circles high in the sky. He probably can’t wait to pick the meat from my corpse.

In the cupboard under the kitchen sink, there is a plastic bottle marked with three crosses and a skull. Poison. Many have taken poison and died immediately, although I suspect it’s rather painful. I kneel on the kitchen floor, unscrew the top, and sniff carefully. It’s like a punch in the face. I jerk back and throw the bottle into the cupboard. I could never drink that.

In the kitchen drawer, the blades of knives lie side by side. They fillet fish, carve meat, or slice bread; they have this innocent look about them, in spite of their malicious potential. Their sharp blades gleam at me. I take one of them, the one with the long, thin blade; it could easily go through me. Maybe I lack the strength to push it all the way in or the courage to cut my wrist. I place the blade on the thin skin of my wrist and press lightly on the blue veins. The skin turns white under its edge. I get butterflies in my stomach as if I’m standing on a high cliff. I throw the knife back in the drawer and shut it.

I could jump into the ocean and swim out until I get tired,
I think as I wander into the living room. They say that drowning is like falling asleep; you don’t feel a thing. The curtains flicker in the breeze from the half-open window. The dim afternoon light filters into the living room, casting an eerie glow on the walls. What if my corpse drifts out to the ocean? I’ll be like those people you hear about who disappear and are never found. Maybe someone would be accused of killing me. If my body was never found, then nobody would ever know for sure whether I was dead or not. The magnificent influence of my death on society is starting to fade in my mind. It’s not easy to take your own life. Maybe I don’t have to die right away, not today or tomorrow. Maybe the day after.

Dear Mr. Pickard,

Because of an uncontrollable situation, my son, Josh Stephenson, cannot come to school for some time. I will see to it that he does his homework as possible, but due to a family situation, it is not possible for him to attend school. I do not wish to discuss this with you at this point, but hope that this letter is enough to explain his absence. I ask you sincerely to do nothing until I make contact with you.

Yours sincerely,

I print the letter from Gertrude’s old computer and read it over and over, the letter that will secure my amnesty for as long as I care to stay alive. Now all I need is Mom’s signature, and then I can mail it and not worry about school anymore.

I sit for some time at the desk in my cousin’s room and look out the window. From here, I can see through the window and into my own room, my desk, where the falcon stands high, and into the corner where my fish tank is all lit up on my dresser. My earthly belongings are few and insignificant. Before too long, Mom will have rid herself of those things. And the only thing that’ll remind the world of my existence will be a photo of me in the living room, in a beautiful frame. And every night she’ll light a candle by that photo. But after many, many years, when she too is dead, then nobody will know I ever existed.

My head slowly bows down to my chest where I sit in Mom’s TV chair. The dark-blue curtain in the living room by my side moves slowly in the twilight. I yawn. I’m tired and sleepy. It’s so nice to let your eyes close by themselves. Maybe, if my sleep is deep enough, I’ll never wake up again. I picture the obituaries in the papers, one after the other, with a photo of me and a small black cross next to my name.
Those whom the gods love die young,
they all begin, then everything turns hazy and I fall into the long sleep, without any pain.

Sudden noise in the kitchen jolts me awake. I open my eyes wide and jump to my feet as if woken from the dead. There’s a buzz in my head, pins and needles in my arm, a pain in my throat.

“You were sleeping so soundly,” Mom says when I enter the kitchen. “I didn’t want to wake you.”

I don’t say anything, still half in the land of the dead, trying to figure out what’s going on. Mom is making dinner. She skins the fillet with the knife I was going to stab myself with, cuts the fillet into pieces, dips them in beaten eggs and milk, and puts them on a plate with breadcrumbs and rolls them on each side. My head feels heavy, and I’m bursting for the toilet. If I’d dared to do what I was going to do, I’d be lying on the kitchen floor by now, either with a bottle of poison by my side or soaked in blood. And Mom would be crying her eyes out over my body, ambulance outside, doctor, police, a stretcher, and a white sheet over my face; the blinking lights would be falling through the kitchen window, hitting the white walls at regular intervals; red spots forming on the sheet where I stabbed myself.