Fish Boy Read online

  Sir David walks past one in the Amazon Basin and says, ‘The only thing that could give it away are its beak and its eyes.’ As he passes it bends its head and closes its eyes to become a broken branch.

  I shut mine and listen to the waves.

  Human Rocket

  Me and Patrick meet up at the top of Hope Street. Patrick has a Giant Escape Jr 24, I have a Flite Panic BMX. It’s a bit small. I’ve had it since I was nine. It’s got a gap on the handlebars where I took off the hamburger bell that Howard gave me.

  We look down at our wrists.

  ‘10.03,’ we say and high-five the watch sync.

  It’s the kind of day that looks like it’s thinking about getting hot. The sun hovers. A guy in red shoes walks by on his mobile and into a tree. He bounces off like he meant it and keeps going.

  I look at Patrick. ‘Where d’you wanna go?’

  ‘I dunno, it’s your town,’ he says.

  ‘It’s your life,’ I say.

  ‘It’s your death,’ he says.

  ‘What?’

  ‘If you wanna follow.’ He grins at me and scoots off up the street.

  I stick my feet on the pedals and go after him. He’s fast. He’s really, really fast.

  The trees at the edge of the pavement blur by.

  We go down Murray Street, past the bungalow houses with plastic stencil flower windows and empty stubby rose bush gardens. Up past Shoe Right and Cut the Cr*p hairdressers where the hill starts. You can’t go far round here without hitting a hill. My legs burn. I see Patrick like a fly disappearing into the distance. He does a left past Wok this Way, a right out of town and up. Left on to the small lanes. The cuts. He takes the corner fast, his knee goes out to the side. Like a pro.

  I take the corner and break before I smash into the fence.

  My handlebars are wet with sweat. My front wheel is in the ditch.

  I pull my chin away from the barbed wire. Up here there’s fields either side. Roads that no one uses any more cept bikers, joggers, tractors. The fields are full of corn stubble. Stalks left over from the harvesters. The Toro machines that suck up everything and spew it into massive trailers. Black fly are riding the thermals coming out my head. Patrick’s disappearing up the next hill.

  Sir David watches a springbok running from a leopard that’s just lost its cover. ‘He’s blown it,’ he says.

  ‘WAIT!’ I yell.

  I don’t think he’s heard but he stops and turns round. ‘WHAT?’

  ‘PLEASE.’

  He waits.

  He swoops back down the road like an osprey, an Iranian eagle owl. Easy.

  He stops. His brakes don’t even squeak. I’m still getting my breath back. He isn’t.

  ‘All right?’ he says.

  ‘Yeah,’ I say, ‘kind of.’ I wipe my sweat with the back of my hand. ‘Nice bike.’

  ‘Crystal Palace junior cycle cross champion.’ He grins back at me. ‘It’s not about the bike.’

  ‘Swap yer?’ I say.

  ‘Deal.’

  I take a long drink from my water bottle. We swap. We go.

  The bike is slick. I am still slow.

  Patrick is a human rocket on mine.

  We race up. The road dips after the top. We fly past the old farm, the outbuildings, the telescopic loader stacking pink wrapped bales. Past four houses, in the middle of nowhere, for no reason.

  At the top of Stag Bank he slows enough for me to nearly catch him and glances back over his shoulder. ‘Ready?’ he says.

  ‘For what?’

  ‘This.’

  He flicks right down a track. I follow through an open gate into a field. We bobble along through the cut down stalks like spring heads. The rattle goes through my hands and up to my shoulders. I’m desperate not to skid, to lose skin. The air rips past my ears. Patrick yells like an urban coyote, ‘Yeee haaaaaaaw.’

  I do a mountain lion. I’m grinning my head off.

  We stop at the bottom and lean the bikes into the bale stack.

  ‘Top speed 18mph, average 8.9.’ He reads the bike computer. The one on the bike I’ve been riding.

  ‘Is that good?’

  ‘Nope.’

  We climb up to the top of the bales. The plastic’s hot from the sun. It smells sweet.

  We look out over the town. Way below. So far away. Cars snaking through. Houses on the streets filling up the cracks. Big, small, packed in, spread out. Our town is a kind of collage. The wind cools my head down. My legs are covered in dust.

  ‘How d’you learn to do that?’

  ‘Just cos I can’t swim doesn’t mean I’m crap at everything.’ He headbutts me in the helmet. The plastic donks. I unclick mine.

  We both point into the air.

  ‘Falcon,’ we say together.

  ‘Jinx padlock.’

  It’s a draw.

  The bird’s shadow flickers on the stalk stumps.

  Patrick pulls out a bag of revels and opens it with his teeth. We try to avoid the coffee ones. They melt on my hands before they reach my mouth.

  ‘I’m not stupid.’ He bites a small one in half. Orange. It’s risky. It so easily could have been coffee. ‘l still get it.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Your fish thing.’

  ‘Oh.’ I take a malteser, they’re so obvious and un-risky.

  ‘I came back for you,’ he says.

  ‘When?’

  ‘Just now.’ He stares at me. ‘I could’ve left you.’ We both go for a raisin. ‘You’re slower than a Gila monster,’ he says.

  ‘A slug,’ I say.

  ‘A three-toed sloth,’ he says.

  I look down at the sea spreading out for miles, so big I just want to jump off the bales and right into it. I wonder what it must be like to have never felt that, to have never swum at all.

  ‘I could teach you,’ I say.

  ‘You could just tell me,’ he says.

  I get a coffee and spit it over the edge. ‘You’ll think I’m nuts.’

  ‘You are.’

  ‘Cheers!’ I take the last three minstrels, flop back on the plastic and tell him everything I remember.

  Bob

  ‘You have a pet shoal.’ He rolls on to his side. ‘That’s so cool.’

  ‘Actually I think they think I’m their pet. But they think I’m slow.’

  ‘You are.’

  I pull out a piece of straw from the bale and poke him with it. He eats the last revel.

  ‘Technically, that’s a YES,’ I say.

  ‘What do you call a fish with no eyes?’ he says.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Fsh.’

  ‘I think I might call him Nigel,’ I say.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Leader fish.’ I sit up. ‘I had a hamster called Nigel. He died.’

  ‘Hamsters die young.’

  ‘He fell down the back of the radiator.’

  ‘Oh. How about Sid?’ he says.

  ‘Pete?’ I say. ‘Sam?’

  ‘Patrick 2?’ he says.

  I poke my piece of straw in and out his mouth. ‘Star?’

  ‘Star?’

  ‘He’s really shiny.’

  ‘I don’t know any boys called Star.’ Patrick grabs my straw and chucks it. ‘How about Ding? It sounds shiny.’

  ‘Bob,’ I say.

  ‘Bob?’ he says.

  We sit there for a minute.

  ‘Yeah. He’s very, Bobby,’ I say and a cabbage white flies past and seals the deal. Bob it is.

  We stand up like the kings of the bales.

  ‘You can teach them anything,’ Patrick says.

  ‘Maybe. They don’t speak much really. They feel things. They’re amazing.’

  ‘Nature is amazing,’ he yells.

  ‘Houseflies hum in the key of F,’ I say.

  ‘Electric eels have enough electricity to kill a horse.’ He looks away. ‘When are you going back in?’

  ‘Tonight.’ I squat on the edge. ‘Coming?’

 
‘Get your bike averages up and I’ll think about it,’ he says and we slide bounce down the bales. We slip at the bottom and into a thistle.

  ‘Ow,’ we say in our best Fish.

  I try to pick the thorns out of my legs but they snap in my fingers. We climb back on the bikes.

  ‘Go, trusty steed, go!’ Patrick yells and we razz off, back up the bumps.

  We properly bomb it down Stag Hill and have to stop at the bottom for a man and an arthritic Labrador standing in the middle of the road. The Labrador’s legs are shaking. Its eyes are smiling. ‘Sorry, lads,’ the man says. ‘He just doesn’t have it in him any more.’ We pat the dog’s head. He lies down and wags his tail. We push our bikes round the side, careful not to bang his nose.

  ‘How fast was that?’

  Patrick checks the computer. ‘28mph,’ he says.

  ‘Cool.’ I’m relieved.

  He grins at me. ‘But we can do better.’

  Most of the way back is downhill. It’s a good buzz. I stand up on the pedals. The air screams into my face. We do our best animal noises and sound ridiculous. But it’s fun.

  When we stop on Watson Corner my brake blocks smell of burning. We swap bikes back. Patrick goes and I wave and watch him overtake a Mini Cooper.

  When I get in Mum comes down and looks at my sweat patches. I feel like a hag fish, producing slime.

  ‘Nice ride?’ she says.

  ‘Patrick is the Crystal Palace junior cycle cross champion,’ I say.

  ‘Okay.’ Her eyebrows look impressed.

  We melt some butter and sugar in the microwave, stir in some oats and raisins and stick it in the oven to make flapjacks. We sit out the back on the grass and eat ham sandwiches and hot spoonfuls out of the tin. The sugar and the heat burn my gums.

  ‘Billy …’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘You might wanna take a shower,’ she says.

  I shake my head. ‘I’m swimming.’

  ‘Now?’

  ‘Yeah.’ I prod my tongue into the bouncy bit of blister coming up in my mouth and run upstairs to get a towel.

  ‘Back by eight, Billy, okay,’ she yells.

  ‘Okay,’ I yell and am gone.

  A Bit Weird

  Halfy autumn wetsuit, check. Towel, check. Goggles, check. Out the back and past Zadie’s …

  Not check.

  She surprises me with her head out the window. ‘All right,’ she shouts.

  Music is blasting out.

  ‘All right,’ I shout back.

  The wind blows the hair over our eyes and the music off the cliff.

  I keep walking trying to look relaxed and trip over a pebble.

  Me and Patrick meet up on the beach steps.

  ‘Rope Tricks in Five Ticks.’ He taps the book under his arm and winks.

  ‘No provisions?’

  ‘Not yet.’ He pulls a head torch out of his pocket. ‘Just this.’

  It’s Saturday, so the bay is busier. Lorraine from our street walks up the steps with Whisky their Scottie dog and Martha who’s three. Martha stops and looks at Patrick. ‘Uni Kitty dances on rainbows,’ she says and holds up her horse, which hovers on a clam shell.

  Whisky does a squat wee.

  We step over it and go down. They go up.

  ‘What you gonna teach them?’ Patrick says. ‘The fish.’

  ‘I don’t know.’ We go over to the boulder side of the beach, out of the way of two kids with a kite. ‘I just want to be there, y’know.’ I climb up one rock and jump-step over the others. Arms out. ‘You could teach them French,’ he says. ‘You could teach them anything.’

  I put the towel down and spit into the goggles. ‘What are you gonna do?’

  ‘Read.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘And practice.’ He pulls a piece of rope and a pair of scissors out of his pocket.

  ‘Cool.’

  ‘Okay. See ya in a bit,’ I say. Neither of us knows whether to wave or not. So we don’t.

  ‘See ya,’ he says and opens up his scissors and a packet of chocolate planets.

  It all feels a bit weird. Like I’m invited to a party that he isn’t.

  I hop down off the rock. It’s tricky but I manage it without falling or twisting my ankles and walk up to the water.

  Us

  I run in and dive under. The water looks bright and blue. The wind and the shrieks and the sounds disappear when I stick my head under. The sea sucks them all up. When my ears tink I know I’ve entered a different world.

  ‘Hello,’ I shout into the nothingness. ‘I’m back.’

  I swim out a bit. Past the small rocks to the big ledges. The creases and cracks and pillars where the sand stops. I watch a shoal of teenies just sitting in the swell.

  I look up and see him coming. Zigzagging like a tail wag. Zipping through.

  He’s chanting like a song. He’s my fish. I’m his boy. Somehow. He reaches my goggles.

  He looks into my eyes.

  ‘Kesz,’ he says, his voice like echoes.

  I put my hand on his back, ease out my lungs into gill mode. ‘Kezdodik.’ I nod and we go.

  We go low. Down over a barnacle ridge. Nose to nose with sea snails, hermit crabs, starfish. Two transparent shrimp prick their antennae and scoot off. I pull my thoughts into my body and make it over the ridge. Skin on.

  We go up. Out into open water.

  He swings me left. And right. I try to hold on. We go right again. It takes me a while to get it. Then I do. He’s taking me walkies.

  ‘Hey!’ I yell and stop. Is my swimming not good enough? Do I need training? Makerel swim as 5.5 metres per second.

  Okay. Fair enough.

  ‘Hey,’ he says and swims off.

  I try to catch him and miss. He’s like slippery soap.

  ‘Hey!’ He springs out by my elbow.

  I wonder why fish can’t laugh. I wonder if they can cry.

  ‘Us,’ he says.

  He’s about to drag us off. I put my hand out. ‘Stop,’ I say. ‘No go.’

  No?

  He looks at me.

  We bob about. My hair sticks out either side.

  I want to teach him something, too. Like what?

  I want to teach him his name.

  I point at him. ‘You,’ I say. ‘Bob.’

  ‘Yes!’

  I point at me. ‘Fish Boy.’ I point at him. ‘You Bob. Me Fish Boy.’

  He looks totally blank. He darts into my armpit. ‘Us,’ he says. ‘Us.’

  I shake my head and point. ‘You. Me.’

  He swims into my neck and rubs up against it. ‘Us,’ he says really quietly. If he had eyebrows I think they would be really sad ones.

  ‘Okay, okay.’ We’re an Us or nothing. ‘Us,’ I say.

  ‘US,’ he says and pops out again and drags us off to the twisting silver speck in the distance.

  We’re a good team. We weave thorough the water and fly in there, right into the shoal. A long stretchy mesh of flashes and twisting.

  Bob takes me into the flow. I don’t let go. I start to spin. One of the fish winks.

  Their voices come from up and down and all over. They thought flash me. I don’t know what it means but I feel it from my rib to my ear bones.

  ‘Round,’ I say. ‘Us.’

  They nod. Thousands of heads.

  Us

  We spin.

  I think I’ll feel kind of dizzy but I don’t. I spin slowly at first. It feels nice. Then faster. I keep one hand on the tags.

  It’s amazing. I flow into it.

  Round and round. The water’s stroking my forehead. I watch the patterns on their backs, the scales on their bellies and let them carry me. The land-world’s so far away that I don’t even think about it. I don’t think about Mum or Dad or school or Patrick. I don’t think about anything.

  We spiral through kelp and weave back together.

  It’s so good to be in the Us.

  I’m grinning like mad, happy like a blown-up cris
p bag. I don’t want to burst. I don’t want to be anywhere else. Ever. We flow, round and round. Is there anywhere else? I don’t know.

  One of them swipes a copepod off my foot. I start laughing.

  Round and round. The rhythm of the water wipes my brain clean. White. Empty. Safe.

  The safeness of the Us is nice. Seriously nice. The water blurs. My hand loosens on the dog tags. My arms float, soft and free. My hair, my legs, my hands, my feet flop out. I let everything go.

  No

  A chink of light bounces from the metal into my eyes. I open them and see the tags drifting up and away. I snatch them back down and shake my brain awake.

  I think about Patrick. Waiting on the beach. For me.

  I press the light on my watch: 7.03. I’ve been down here for two hours and twelve minutes.

  I need to get back.

  My head feels foggy. What was the word, what was the word? I can’t remember anything. I start to panic, but the metal clanks on my chest. Yeah right, look at the tags, dimbo, I think.

  ‘Megallas,’ I say. The fish stop. Dead.

  ‘Go.’ I point at the surface.

  they say altogether, like a kid that’s been told to switch off the TV. They’re so loud I have to cover my ears.

  Their bodies point at me.

  They pull away.

  I’m not in the Us any more. I am completely, totally, out of it. I’m bobbing about on my own.

  ‘Sorry,’ I try to say.

  They chant. Bob turns to look at me. He gets nudged back into facing the front.

  ‘Wait,’ I say and reach out but I’m too late. They flick off into the grey.

  WHAM!

  The force of the flick pushes me back. My stomach sinks in. I curl my knees up into a ball. My lungs feel tight. I kick for the big-shine.

  My face breaks the water and I gasp air in.