The Vicious Deep Read online

  “Did she let you kiss her?” Bertie raises his thick black eyebrows and wiggles his head, giving him the effect of a cartoon bobblehead.

  “I mean, yeah?”

  “How far did you guys go?” Bertie leans over Layla to ask me this.

  Layla’s body feels hot next to mine. I glance at her. I can’t say it. Not in front of her.

  “Don’t you dare say a word, Tristan Allen Hart,” she says, evoking my whole name as if it’s the ultimate command. Her eyes squint at me like she has lasers and they’re about to slice right through me. Oh god. I want to bang my head against the wall. I want to jump out the window. She knows. Of course, Maddy told her.

  The guys take it the wrong way. Even Wonder Ryan high-fives the other guys for me. I try to deny it, but they talk over me.

  “Look, she’ll get over it. It’s not like you’re going to be the only one.”

  “Plus, that friend of Samantha you made out with at the bonfire was ten times hotter than Maddy,” Jerry blurts out, emitting a round of manly man cheers.

  The bonfire. The night before the storm. The reason I was hungover the next day. I’m not a good drinker. I’ll have a beer and a half and be plastered. That’s why I don’t usually drink. I just nurse the same bottle the entire night and pretend like it’s always a new one. The Hot Mess that was with Samantha. She saw I was miserable. I was trying to avoid Maddy the whole day after she told me she was madly in love with me and then started undoing my belt buckle. I could’ve stopped her, but I wasn’t exactly thinking with my brain.

  Either way. The screwed-up part is that I don’t even remember the girl I was kissing. I don’t remember what she tasted like. I don’t remember her eyes. Nothing. I just remember Maddy walking around the big boulder and gasping. Then crying. Then throwing her beer in my face and then the empty cup at the Hot Mess. She slapped me and I let her.

  Maddy was the girl I wanted to take a chance with because I was tired of dating girls who couldn’t put a whole sentence together but knew their father’s credit card number by heart. It’s just—she wasn’t the right girl.

  And now sitting here, with all my friends cheering me for being alive, for being their idol, I feel lower than low. Because Layla gets up, shaking her head at me. I try to grab her hand, but she pulls away, and I don’t know what I can say right here, right now to make her want to stay.

  My head is pulsing. I tell Ryan that I’ll make it to the Wreck, but something doesn’t feel right. I know I’ll probably puke my guts out and go to bed. Layla and I take seats at the dining room table with our parents, who sip on red wine, and Coach Bellini, whose mustache is tipped in beer foam.

  I vaguely understand now how it feels to be a wounded puppy that wants to be left alone to lick his wounds. A very manly, strong puppy, that is.

  Mrs. Santos pops a cheddar cube into her mouth. Layla is a skinny version of her mother with her dad’s hazel eyes. Mr. Santos is a tall and broad Ecuadorian dude with a mustache who always smells like his cigars. He extends his arm and pats my shoulder. I tighten my body against the pain that spreads down my entire back.

  “Listen here, boy,” says Coach, pointing a finger at me. Why do grown-ups seem to do that, like if they’re not pointing in your direction, you’re not going to know that they’re serious. “What the hell happened out there? Don’t you ever go doing anything so reckless again. Think of your momma right here. Your friends. Your team.”

  “He was trying save someone,” Layla interrupts. She thinks Coach is right, but it’s her nature to take the opposite side. Ms. Contrary. “He was being heroic.”

  “Firemen are heroic. Marines are heroic. You’re just plain reckless.” I’ve never seen Coach turn so many different colors so quickly. I think even his mustache is twitching. Everyone laughs at his expression, and for this moment, it’s just a regular Saturday night with friends and family.

  “I think what Arthur wants to say is that he’s happy you’re well,” Mom chimes in, all smiles and bright eyes. She rubs my dad’s back, and everything is calm again.

  But then they all take a peek out the window, and we remember that something is changing and we don’t know what it is.

  I’ve started sweating. The rash at the side of my neck is getting worse. I want to crawl into my bed, but I know if I stand up I’ll fall right back down.

  My mom looks at me like she’s snapping out of a nightmare. “I think Tristan needs to get some sleep.”

  “Do you need help cleaning up?” Layla offers.

  “No, Layla, honey.” Dad’s voice is tight, the voice he uses when he’s on the phone with his boss and trying to convince him he’s working on a project but really hasn’t started it.

  “I don’t feel so good,” I groan. It’s rude, but I wave at them and dash for the closest bathroom, which is my parents’. I shut the door and run cold water in the sink. I splash cold water on my face and all around my neck to calm the itching, which is spreading to my ribs. My mind flickers to a vision in my dream. The silver mermaid. The rows of teeth that don’t fit with the rest of her beauty. I know it was just a dream, because I’m still here. I’m still here.

  The faucet in the bathtub suddenly turns on by itself. The pipes squeak with the strong water pressure. I pull the sheer white curtain open and turn the water off.

  I take off my T-shirt and soak it in the sink, then wrap it around my neck like a towel.

  The knob jingles, but I’ve locked it. “I’m fine!”

  “Tristan, let us in.”

  “I’m fine, Mom!”

  “Everyone is gone, honey. Just let me in.”

  “Son.” Now it’s Dad. He pushes against the door with all his weight. “Don’t make me break down the door.”

  “Something’s happening.” I want to say it, but I can’t. I can hear the water in the bathtub making its way through the pipe. It smells like salt, even though it shouldn’t. The tub faucet comes back on, and it’s like a fire hydrant during the summer. I’m turning the knob, but the water doesn’t stop coming.

  In the sink, a tiny rainbow fish squeezes its way out of the faucet. I close the drain so that it doesn’t get pulled back into the pipes. It jumps in the water until there’s enough that it can swim in circles.

  My stomach contracts. I can feel my insides shifting, moving apart, something inside of me breaking. My skin is on fire. My feet give out under me. I hold on to the edge of the sink on my knees, but I’m too heavy.

  Dad has his drill out, undoing the doorknob. Two screws are out. He stops and jostles the knob, but he has to take them all out.

  Pain. Pain like I’ve never felt, and that’s now all I can think about. The water overflows from the sink, soaking the bath mat and spreading over the entire bathroom floor.

  My mother is shouting my name. She’s not asking me what’s wrong. She’s just repeating my name. Tristan, like a mantra, a prayer, a wish that I’ll stay with them, so I say it too. I am Tristan Hart. I am Tristan Hart. I am Tristan Hart.

  “Mom.” I can hear myself whimper. Dad pulls the door open, dropping the doorknob and drill on the floor. The tiles crack where they fall.

  The pain is going away, the fire subsiding. I don’t want to try to move.

  They stare, but not at me.

  At my legs.

  I know what’s happened before I look down. My ripped shorts are in my mother’s hands. I cannot read her face, but it isn’t surprise like it should be. It’s worry. The scent of bad lemon pie lingers around the both of them.

  “What’s happening to me?” I don’t know if I’ve actually managed to say it aloud. I sit up on my elbows and look down. Even though I know what I’m going to see, I still shut my eyes for a little while. And when I open them, it’s still there—

  My great blue fishtail.

  I have this memory of my first time in water.

  It’s insane, actually. There’s no way I should be able to remember something like that, and I’ve convinced myself that it’s a dream I made up.
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  Still, I remember. I remember my mom’s face staring down at me in her arms. I remember being mesmerized, the way little kids are by such things, by the blue of her eyes. Her sitting me in the kiddie pool. I must have been a week old. And I remember swimming.

  Sometimes during a meet, the memory would flash in my head. Then I’d push it away, because things like that just aren’t real. But now I know they are, and some part of me has known it all along.

  “Can you bring in the fan or something?” It might just be hotter than body building class at the end of summer. I’m slippery. Wet. Sweating.

  When I try to sit up, my tail comes up and knocks my mom off her feet. She lands on her butt and grabs hold of my fins. I have fins.

  “Let’s put him in the tub.” Dad’s voice is calm. I know he’s always Mr. Calm-and-Collected-and-Ready-to-Analyze, but all I want is a little bit of panic. I want him to scream, to run away from me, because I’m a freak. I’m beyond a freak. I’m unnatural. I want to bang my head against the tiles. I want to find a shrink who’ll medicate me until I’m no longer a hazard to myself and others.

  Mom grabs a towel and wraps it around my tail.

  I. Have. A. Freaking. Tail.

  Dad pushes his glasses up the bridge of his nose and hooks his arms under mine. They count to three and heave me into the tub with a splash. I’m suddenly nauseated, because I think of the times we’ve been fishing and we unhook the fish and throw them back in the water.

  The water overflows with my weight. The tub is one of those grand claw-footed kind. It’s big enough for two people, which by the way, since it’s my parents’ bathroom, is gross.

  I let myself sink up to my shoulders and dangle my arms over the edge. My fins hang out over the brim, curling and uncurling. I wonder where my feet go? I wonder where my dick does! Holy crap. I’m about to start flailing around when my mother kneels at the side of the tub and dips her hand in. “Is the water okay?”

  “Is the water okay? How about if I’m okay?”

  “Don’t you talk to your mother that way.” Dad never uses that tone with me, because other than having shown up home at the ass-crack of dawn a couple of times, I don’t do anything to give them heart attacks like my friends do to their parents.

  Mom leaves the bathroom, and I’m afraid I’ve hurt her feelings. The water helps the dryness that’s making my skin feel like I’ve been lying out in the sun all day. I submerge myself completely. I hold my breath, but it doesn’t matter, because I’m still breathing. The shock of it makes me miss a beat of air when I sit upright.

  Dad notices my surprise and finds Mom’s mirror that magnifies pores three times. He hands it to me. I used to sit in this tub for hours playing with that thing. On my pores, I mean.

  I hold it up to my neck. It’s a hard angle, but there they are. The slits are shut now, lined by clusters of translucent metallic-blue scales. I throw the mirror to the side. It hits the wall and shatters.

  “Bad luck, Finn,” he says, trying to joke.

  “Everything about that statement is unfunny.”

  My fins uncurl and knock the tray of bubble soaps into the tub. Under the water pressure, the bubbles fill the bath in seconds. I can smell the minuscule specks of metal in the water from the pipes it’s traveling through. I can smell the chemicals in the soap more than the rose scent it’s trying to mimic. I can smell Dad’s amazement mingling with something like regret, like fireworks after they’ve all exploded.

  “Say something,” he tells me.

  “Something.” I chuckle.

  He’s quiet for what are probably seconds but feel like forever.

  “Do you remember when I was ten,” I start, “and Vicky Millanelli had that birthday pool party?”

  “You kept wanting to leave,” he says, “because you were the only boy who showed up.”

  “She only invited people she liked, and she didn’t invite Layla. So all the girls started chasing me around, trying to kiss me. They were all wearing these matching pink-and-purple arm floats. So I jumped into the deep end of the pool, where they couldn’t follow me. I just sat there at the bottom with my legs crossed, watching them scream and freak out. I don’t remember wanting to come up for air. Vicky never invited me to her birthday parties again.”

  Dad pulls off his glasses and rubs the bridge of his nose. “Her dad called me to get you. You didn’t even notice what you were doing.”

  “I never liked her much anyway.”

  Mom comes back with a Mason jar of sea salt. She runs her hand on my forearm, which is scattered with slick scales a few shades of blue lighter than the ones on my tail. She empties the Mason jar in the tub. We listen to the salt hiss when it meets water, the bubble bath deflating, and the careful intake of our breaths. Dad takes the jar from my mother and fills it. He picks up the little rainbow fish that’s flopping on the wet floor with not enough water and drops him into the jar.

  “Is he for dinner too?” I go.

  We chuckle briefly. I want to fix the dark cloud that’s hanging over all of us. Fix this. I can’t remember us ever being this quiet, this careful of what we say. I know everyone says their family is different, happy. When it comes to my family, I really mean it.

  Mom and I look at each other. Her cheeks are flushed red, but the rest of her is still the same porcelain pale she’s always been. Her eyes are impossibly turquoise. The corners of her mouth tilt downward, and she’s all trembles. Her lips, her chin, her hands. She wipes at her forehead with the back of her hand and breathes through her mouth. I can smell her regret, anxiety, fright. It’s bitter, like dried lemons.

  I don’t know how, but I do. Now, I may be the fastest swimmer in Brooklyn, but that’s about where my talents stop. Unless dating is counted as a talent, and recent events are proving me wrong.

  “This wasn’t supposed to happen,” she says. She absently dips her hand in the water, like we’re at Aunt Sylvia’s pool and she’s lying on the ledge. I’ve never seen her so sad, and my body flushes because I know this is somehow my fault.

  “What was supposed to happen?” I don’t mean to sound so bitter. I can’t help it. “Why is this happening to me? Why now?” And before I can think to stop myself, “Who are you?”

  She’s Maia Hart, married to David Hart. Who was she before that? We’ve never met anyone from her side of the family. I’ve never asked, because I’m so used to it just being the three of us. New Year’s we spend with friends; Christmas is the three of us; Thanksgiving, it’s with Layla’s family; and Independence Day is with the rest of Coney Island. Even if my grandparents were dead, there would be someone, wouldn’t there? There would be pictures, no matter how old. People keep pictures of those they love, right?

  “From the beginning,” Dad says. He sits on the toilet with one hand under his chin, staring at my fins, like that statue of the thinking guy. “I met your mother when I had just graduated from Hunter and had moved back to my parents’ apartment. I spent that entire summer on a little boat off Brighton, hating the world and wondering if I should take the job with Techsoft. That kind of post-college thing.”

  Mom lets herself chuckle. “It was on one of our visits to Coney Island. Every fifty or so years, we come back here. That’s what we do. We spend most of our time visiting beaches all over the world. That’s why it takes so long between visits.”

  I sat it slowly. “We?”

  “The Sea People. The Beautiful Deadly Ones. The Fey of the Sea. Children of Poseidon. Dwellers of the Vicious Deep…” She pauses as if I don’t already know I’m a moron. I just want her to say it. “Merfolk.”

  “Of course,” I say. It’s not enough that I’m in my parents’ bathtub up to my gills in rose-scented bubble bath, that my entire world has quite literally slipped right out from under my feet, that I don’t know anything about the changes in my body—if they’re permanent, can I eat fish? Is that like semi-cannibalism? That my parents have been keeping this from me since I was little, which means they’ve been lying to me
my entire life. I can forget all that. But of all the creatures in my mom’s fairy-tale books, she had to go and be the girliest? Come on!

  Dad’s voice snaps me out of my thoughts. “I’d always wake up with a bottle of funny-shaped glass seashells or broken pieces of jewelry on my deck—”

  Doesn’t sound much different from the stuff she still collects in those trunks in their bedroom. “Let me guess. Mom would have her trusty but endearingly clumsy seagull friend deliver them to you? Am I right?”

  Dad snorts, but Mom doesn’t appreciate my humor. She folds her arms and sniffs. “Absolutely not. Seagulls are vile, nasty things. And back then I could control the water.”

  “You can’t anymore?”

  She shakes her head. “I showed myself to David. I didn’t usually do that sort of thing—”

  “—that’s what all the mermaids say,” he winks.

  “—I didn’t! My sisters were the ones always revealing themselves to humans. It was fine if they wanted to take humans as mates—for a short while—but they were careless. They always let them drown, and then Father would be furious at me because he always put me in charge to watch over them.

  “On this last trip, when it was time to leave, I didn’t want to go. I begged my father. He granted our wish to be together. He stripped my tail. Then I had you.”

  “That’s the SparkNotes version, right?”

  “Yes,” she says, “it’s a long story.”

  “What’re you, like, a hundred? You’ve got plenty of time to tell it. Plus, it’s not like I’m going anywhere, unless we toss me back into the Atlantic.”

  They’re both about to protest, their fingers pointing up at my face, all don’t-you-talk-to-us-like-that. But the faucet comes on by itself again. Water sloshes everywhere. There’s a soft light coming from the faucet in the bathtub. Dad keeps twisting the handles to turn it off, but that doesn’t work. There’s a loud popping sound, followed by a tiny fish that flows right into the tub. “I hope this isn’t a regular thing, because the downstairs neighbors are going to complain.”