Fish Boy

by Chloe Daykin

  Solid

  I pull my hoody off and put the towel down on dry sand.

  I shine the panoramic goggle lens on my towel and stretch them over my head.

  ‘5.42,’ Patrick says, looking down at his watch.

  I look down at mine. ‘5.42.’ We’re all synced up.

  He high-fives me. ‘Megallas is stop,’ he says, ‘remember that.’

  ‘Okay, okay. I get it.’

  He pulls a set of dog tags out from his bag. ‘Just in case,’ he says.

  ‘Don’t they put those on dead people?’ I say.

  ‘They’re for luck,’ he says. ‘And they put them on living people in case they die.’

  I turn the tags over in my hand and see the words MEGALLAS stamped into them.

  ‘Forge Museum,’ he says.

  I think of the stamping machine there, where you turn the wheel and stamp out one letter at a time. I went in Year Five, for the Materials of Industry project. It must have taken him ages. ‘Thanks,’ I say and put them over my head. They jangle down on to my chest. Patrick is the best at preparation. They’re probably the nicest thing anyone has ever made for me.

  Neither of us knows what to say for a minute. We just stand there.

  ‘The navamax triumphs over the janulus,’ he says.

  I nod at his carnivorous sea slug reference and walk off to the sea. The water looks grey and cold. I let it wash over my feet, then I pull my goggles down over my eyes and run in yelling like Tarzan, ‘aaaaa iiiiii aaaa iiii aaaa,’ feeling all the fear come spilling out of my mouth.

  Ready

  I let the water swallow me up, my heart beating. My skin’s so glad to be back here. I soak it in and unshrivel.

  I shut my eyes for a bit and then open them. Nothing.

  No eyes. No fish.

  Just nothing.

  Bits of bladder wrack weed float by my fingers. Coal dust sparkles over my hands, settles on my skin.

  I breathe out and watch the bubbles bubble up to the surface. It might not happen, I think. Not today. Maybe never. Maybe it’s given up on me. I float on my back and look up at the sky. Then I feel it on my foot.

  I swing over on to my front and look down.

  My heart’s in my ears.

  The mackerel stares at me like a hamster waiting for a mealworm.

  ‘Hi,’ I say and try to smile, though smiling in water is tricky.

  ‘Kezdodik,’ he says, his voice sounds hopeful.

  I hold the dog tags in my hand and gather my breath in my chest, ready to push the word out hard.

  ‘Ketsz,’ I say.

  ‘Ketsz,’ he says, like he’s just been poked with a stick. If fish had eyebrows, I think they would be shocked right now. His eyes bulge. For a minute I think I might have got it wrong. That this is not the right answer. ‘Kezdodik,’ he says again and nods, and this is when it starts.

  Yes

  The mackerel darts under my hand, flicks round and faces front.

  He sways his body up, so my hand is resting on his back. It’s hard and strong. Bony. A long, slick, muscly bone. I touch him and when I touch him my lungs turn loose. As if I’m sucking air out of the water, as if it’s absorbing itself into me. I can breathe. I can stay down here. One touch and I’m not boy any more. He looks up at me. I grin. I am Fish Boy. Now I am Fish.

  He moves forwards. I jolt like a Reliant Robin on a tow rope.

  We’re off.

  He starts slowly, takes me through the shallows. He’s tight, good at turns. I’m not. We pull up to a rock, shoot off at the last second. My body makes it but my legs are too slow. My ankle hits the rock and bounces off.

  ‘Ow,’ I say.

  He stops and flicks round. ‘Ow?’ He looks confused.

  I point at my ankle, at the rock. ‘Ow.’ He still looks confused. I pretend to bang my head on my hand, in slow motion, through the water. ‘Ow,’ I say.

  He swims up to my face and slaps his tail on it.

  It is not slow. It is strong. And fast. ‘Ow?’ he says. His voice is deep like tunnels.

  ‘Yes. Ow,’ I say and rub my cheek.

  ‘Ow,’ he says, bouncy happy. Like a kid that’s just learned to say biscuit and got one. He whacks his head on a rock. ‘Ow.’

  ‘Yes.’ I nod. ‘Ow.’

  He looks dizzy, then snaps back under my hand. ‘Ow,’ he says, all proud. I think how fish never touch anything. Except maybe for eating. And that’s more sucking and biting than feeling.

  We go on, through the sparkly grey.

  The salt stings up my nose. I snort it out and feel like laughing. My body is frothing up with bubbles of happy.

  We head out into a kind of sea fog. Streaking through. We can see as far as my arms stretch. A space I can reach into. With no edges, just fading into foreverness.

  We flick left round the bone rocks, right over barnacle ridges rising up and down. Tough, skin-shredding edges. We go through pillar rocks and flats and steps and blocks. Slabs of grey. Rocks with wrinkles and lines worn in. Creases filled with snails and swaying, spongy green. Then pools, hollows rubbed by the water. Striped pink rock that sparkles.

  We go faster. Through a warm current like a blanket, a cold one that makes my goosebumps bump out. Kelp laps my stomach and flaps under my chin. The blue gets higher and wider, like the sea is opening up, like we’re swimming into its mouth. I can’t believe I’m seeing this stuff. That this is me.

  I glance up. The surface is fading away. We go deeper and darker, down and down, towards a light, a tiny silver speck.

  The speck gets bigger, brighter. I keep one hand on my fish and one on the dog tags. Tight. It makes me feel as if I’m not doing this alone, like I have an escape route. As we get closer my fish slows down and looks back at me. He cocks his head.

  He stops swimming and we drift.

  Slowly.

  Slowly.

  Flash, flash, flash, the light flickers, as if it’s trying to tell me something. We get closer and closer. Until we’re nose to nose with it and then we stop.

  The light is moving. A twisting, turning living thing. I look up and down. I can’t look away. There are hundreds of them, thousands, spinning, spiralling. Moving in and out of each other. A mackerel shoal. They go up so high and down so low I can’t see either end. Their bodies shiver round and round. The rhythm is hypnotic. It’s a DNA double helix. A cathedral lit up in the dark, a spire of silver. A grin bursts up from my stomach to my face. Sir David would love this.

  As we get closer I hear them.

  A buzzing. Not words. But signals. Thoughts like lights that pass between them. Never bumping, not even touching. Like music. A buzzy head zing. Sweet and high and low and loud, coming together like a hum. Like you can only just pick the voices out if you turn your ears into needles.

  I look down at my fish. He looks back at me.

  He takes me into the middle of the shoal.

  The fish stop.

  They turn.

  They look.

  Thousands of eyes focus on my face, on my black Speedos. Everywhere.

  My fish looks left and right, up at me.

  They stare. They tilt their heads.

  Then they all start.

  They say. Their voices come from all over, high and low and everywhere. They creep closer, heads one way. Heads the other.

  A small one shoots out.

  It says, heading for me. Like I’m something to nibble. Its mouth feels like a vacuum cleaner. It snaps back. Wriggling. Shaking its head.

  It looks like it just licked slime. I’m sorry I taste rubbish.

  The chant’s like a wristband at Water World that says you belong here. It feels good.

  There’s a thoughts buzz and they move finger snap fast. The water fills with froth. Bubbles pop over my chest, on the soles of my feet. Their bodies push past. Strong and hard. Past my legs, my face, up and around until everyone’s in a line.

  My hair flows over my head. I hold on to my fish.

  We’re a sho
al with me in the middle.

  There’s a pause.

  And then we swim.

  They say.

  We go up. We speed up towards the light, to the surface.

  The fish make a wall of silver either side and all around. I’m floating in free space, going with the flow. Through a chink in the bodies I see the silver. The shine that splits our worlds.

  A shadow buzzes on to the surface. Two black wings spread out in a V. A gull. It gets bigger. Bigger. Closer.

  We shoot back down.

  No, their heads shake and shiver.

  Fast-dark, they say. We zigzag down. Twisting from every shadow. Avoiding imaginary fast-darks.

  They shout and split into two. Round a rock.

  Me and my fish shoot off left and meet back up on the other side.

  They clock back in as they join up. Their voices coiling round each other.

  They say and freeze. Sudden and sharp. They hang about, eyes flicking around. Freaking out.

  I don’t stop. I can’t.

  I would slam into the fish in front but they pop into a tunnel and I glide straight through, trying to stop. My hand slips off my mackerel. My arms and legs thrash about. I feel very pink and human.

  My fish swims down. Straight down. Into a barnacle shelf rock and bounces off. The shoal flinches and draws back.

  ‘Ow,’ my fish says, like he’s teaching a class of Year One’s. He stots his tail off the rock and bounces

  back up. ‘Ow,’ he says.

  They look completely freaked out. Fish never touch anything.

  The shoal look at each other, their heads and tails

  flicking together. ‘Ow?’ they say.

  Then they start dive-bombing the rock.

  I roll on to my back and spin. Their singing fills me up. A laugh bubbles out my nose.

  They don’t stop.

  They’d better stop though or they’ll knacker themselves. I feel a bit sick. And bad.

  I swim down to the rock. They streak past me. Head first. Their shadows scoot over my skin. I cover it with my body. The shells scratch my hands. ‘No ow,’ I say. I shake my head. They freeze. Heads like arrows. One fish stops by my belly button.

  ‘No ow,’ I say.

  I have no idea if they know what this means. I feel their eyes, dizzy and wonky, trying to stare at me. The sea creaks in the silence. I put my hands out.

  They shake their heads and wiggle backwards. As one.

  ‘Here,’ I say and point away into the emptiness. ‘Go,’ I say.

  This they get.

  I have a thousand echoes. My fish wriggles back under my hand. The shoal wraps back around us. I grin at him and we go. We fly into tails and blur.

  I stick with the Us. Sharp diagonals and crazy turns. They read the water, the currents, the thermals. Sun bursts through to light up the grey, makes passages into the unknown.

  They disappear into thick brown.

  They shout. I buzz my belly on a patch of bladderwrack weed. It’s a great soft-it.

  ‘Right!’ I shout.

  They say.

  We don’t go right. It doesn’t mean anything to them.

  I laugh and get a mouthful of rainbow wrack weed.

  I spit it out.

  ‘Left,’ I say.

  They say.

  We don’t go left either.

  We go down.

  Suddenly there’s a massive

  And we stop. I wish they would stop doing that. I bring my feet up just in time, bend my knees and bounce off a rock. It stings my toes.

  I look back at a thousand expectant faces.

  They say, all of them.

  I check my foot for blood. There is none. ‘Yes. Ow,’ I say and grin. They nod and wiggle.

  I look around. I have no idea why we’ve stopped. They look so excited.

  They say. Like this means something to me. It doesn’t.

  ‘Yes?’ I say.

  They all fly past, into the rock. But not to ow, not this time. They’re pecking at something I can’t see. Moving back and forth, sucking something in. We’ve stopped for dinner.

  My fish looks at me and nods. He pokes his nose into the ‘food’ to show me.

  he says

  He looks so pleased. What else could I want?

  I pretend to eat some. I imagine the microscopic copepods we’re sucking up.

  ‘Yes,’ I say. This is ridiculous.

  He buries himself in with the others and tucks in.

  And the shoal joins in till the sea is one massive chorus of

  I look at them stuffing their faces.

  I remember Patrick and his Doritos.

  How long has he been there?

  How long have I been here?

  I have to go.

  I tap my fish on the back. He flicks round.

  I look at the tags. ‘Megallas,’ I say. ‘Go.’

  he says.

  He points his nose back at the food.

  YES, he says.

  ‘No,’ I shake my head, point at my chest. ‘Up. Big-shine.’

  He looks so sad.

  ‘Back,’ I say. ‘Tomorrow.’

  I have no idea if fish have days. If they just have moon and sun and dark? I don’t know.

  ‘Back,’ I say again. ‘Tomorrow.’ And I wave and kick up.

  I look down.

  His eyes follow me as I go.

  I break the surface.

  Hard-its

  My lungs splutter into life. Like I’m a body switching over.

  I suck air in and look for the shore. I have no idea what direction I’m facing.

  I use my brain like migrating spiny lobsters, who trek in convoys to lay their eggs. I find my instinct and trust it.

  I see the crocodile rocks. They’re not close, but not too far either. I’m so buzzed up, I could swim anywhere. The sun’s on the horizon. The light bounces off the glass of Tesco Extra at the top of town. I’ve got time. Just. Just enough before Mum and Dad start freaking out.

  I try to remember the feeling of the fish. The rhythm. The muscle. The way they read and rode the water. It feels wrong to be bobbing on the surface. Like I’m gonna get picked off by a fast-dark. Sir David says, ‘The most sensitive parts of lobsters are their stomachs.’ I dip my head with every stroke to be on the safe side.

  I reach the shallows and walk through the waves and onto the sand. As soon as I step out the water I feel heavy. My feet sink up to my ankles. The water pulls them back and doesn’t let go. I lift my leg and step out.

  Patrick looks up from his Zebracadabra book. ‘The magic comes from the hands of the magician,’ he says, ‘not the cards.’ He pops a queen of hearts into his palm, waves his fingers and it is gone. He snaps the book shut. ‘You look …’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Weird.’

  ‘Oh.’ I pick up his provisions kit and chuck it into the air. I have energy I don’t know what to do with. Patrick keeps staring at me. I catch the bag. He shoves me. We fight over it on the sand. He wins and raises the fingers of steel. I pass it over.

  ‘Your skin’s sticky,’ he says.

  ‘It’s the salt.’

  ‘SO?’

  ‘What?’

  He elbows me in the stomach. ‘Did it come back?’ He does a fish face. ‘What did it SAY?’

  The street lights fuzz on orange. ‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘He was there.’ The insects of the night lift. I think about everything. It feels too big to say.

  ‘What did it want?’ He hits me on the head with the book.

  ‘It’s kind of hard to explain.’ I stand up and rub the sand out of my hair.

  ‘Oh.’ He looks hurt. I feel bad.

  We don’t say anything for a bit.

  He sits up and puts his arms around his knees. ‘You wanna go cycling?’

  ‘Now?’

  ‘Tomorrow.’

  ‘Okay.’ I blow a daddy long legs away from my nose.

  ‘Cool.’

  I put my fist out. We bump knuckles.
I think of the fish. A grin takes over my face. ‘It was amazing,’ I say and knuckle him on the shoulder. ‘I think it was the most amazing thing I’ve ever done in my entire life.’ Patrick smiles too and springs aces out of his sleeves.

  We walk off. I look back at the waves coming in, creeping up the sand. I wonder what my fish is doing right now. Without me.

  We walk up the steps and on to the gravel with no shoes and my brain says:

  Ow

  Ow

  Ow

  There are many, many hard-its.

  The Most Undiscovered Place in the World

  I sleep-walk home, sleep-eat dinner and try to get to sleep-sleep dreaming about the fish. All of them. I don’t think about Mum. I don’t think about the tests.

  In the middle of the night I wake up. I don’t know why. I get out of bed and open the window. The street is silent. I see the rooftops. Even the pigeons are asleep.

  A cat jumps from a gutter and looks back up at me. Green eyes in the dark. We stare at each other. There’s no wind. The cat slinks off down the street.

  I hear the sea.

  I want to be there. To be back in the Us.

  I stand against the window ledge like a potoo bird, who can blend perfectly into the shape of a tree.