Surrounded by Sharks

by Michael Northrop

  “Can I keep this?” said the deputy. He was holding one of the flyers.

  “Sure,” said Tam. “Course.”

  “And how old is he?” said the deputy, folding the flyer.

  “Thirteen,” said Tam.

  “And a half,” said Pamela.

  “So almost fourteen?” said the deputy.

  Pamela just looked at him, like, Obviously. The deputy didn’t notice. He was jotting something down in his little notebook. Brando looked over. He squinted. He thought he could just make out the first —

  “What’s your name, little dude?” said the deputy.

  Brando looked up; the deputy was looking right at him. He was so startled that he nearly tipped his chair over backward. “Brando,” he said.

  “It’s Brandon,” said his dad.

  Oh my God, thought Brando. Did I just lie to the police?

  “He prefers Brando these days,” said Pamela.

  They were talking about him like he wasn’t there. He hated that. Also, he thought, did he just call me “little dude”? He didn’t feel guilty anymore. He felt mad.

  “And how old are you?” said the deputy. Now he was talking too loud. Brando hated that, too. He hated when adults spoke LOUDLY and CLEARLY to him. How was that supposed to help? He wasn’t seven — or deaf. His grandmother shouted at him, too, but he didn’t mind that so much. She actually was deaf.

  “I’M TWELVE!” he said.

  “All right, little dude,” said the deputy, jotting it down. “No need to shout.” He turned back to Tam and Pamela, so he missed the look Brando gave him. The deputy had a talent for ducking looks.

  “And when was the last time you saw” — Deputy Fulgham looked down at his notes — “Davey?”

  “Last night,” said Tam.

  “When we went to bed,” said Pamela.

  “What time was that?”

  “Around ten,” said Tam. “Maybe ten thirty. It was a long day.”

  “You got in yesterday? From?”

  “Yes,” said Pamela. “From Cincinnati. We live right outside.”

  “And you were all in the one room?”

  “Yes,” said Tam.

  “And you didn’t notice he was missing until this morning?”

  “No,” said Tam.

  “No,” said Pamela.

  And then everyone was looking at Brando. He felt his face getting hot. His stomach tightened up. Panic grabbed at him with a thousand sharp little fingers. But then he thought about the question, the actual words of it. The little fingers let go.

  “No,” he said. And that was true. He hadn’t noticed Davey was missing until this morning. The deputy hadn’t asked him when this morning.

  “And what time was that?”

  D’oh!

  “About eight thirty,” said Pamela.

  Brando was stewing in his chair again. The umbrella built into the table was keeping the sun off them, but he still felt like he was in a microwave. The deputy didn’t even look over at him, though. The microwave clicked off.

  “So he could’ve left anytime after ten thirty last night?” said Deputy Fulgham. He looked over at Marco, who shook his head.

  “There’s someone at the desk until at least midnight.”

  “That when the bar closes?” asked the deputy.

  “Yes,” said Marco. “Kitchen closes at ten, but the bar stays open at least that late.”

  It was quiet for a few minutes as the deputy scribbled furiously in his notebook. Finally, he looked up. “Who was at the desk last night?”

  “Debbie,” said Marco. “Debbie Reyes. You know her.”

  “Oh yeah … And?”

  “Nothing,” said Marco. “Already called her. She remembers checking them in, that’s it.” Brando remembered the lady who had checked them in: She was tall, and her hair was taller. “And she definitely would’ve noticed a boy wandering around by himself at that hour.”

  “Okay, so …” said the deputy. More scribbling.

  “Listen, Deputy,” said Tam.

  The scribbling stopped. He looked up.

  “Our son wouldn’t … I mean, he wouldn’t leave the room in the middle of the night. Where would he even go?”

  “Right, right, of course,” said the deputy. “Just trying to establish a time line here.”

  More scribbling.

  “So you think it was this morning?”

  “Yes,” said Tam.

  “Of course,” said Pamela.

  “Yes,” said Brando. “He took his book.”

  “He took his what?”

  But before Brando could repeat it, the loudest family on the face of the earth arrived. At least that’s what they seemed like to Brando. It was two enormous adults and a little girl in water wings.

  “Don’t go in the pool yet!” called the man.

  “Not yet, baby!” called the woman.

  “I wanna go in the water!” shrieked the child.

  “Now, you wait for Mommy!”

  The whole table watched them. There was a brief cease-fire in all the yelling as the family began to unload their stuff next to the lounge chairs on the other side of the pool.

  “Yes, this morning,” said Pamela, tired of beating around the bush. “Someone saw him by the boat thing…. By the … the dock.”

  “What was that?” said the deputy, suddenly all ears. “Come again?”

  “Yes,” said Pamela, taking a deep breath before proceeding. “It was an English family. They told us in the lobby.”

  Behind them, there was a splash, a scream. “Don’t go in the deep end!” called the little girl’s mother.

  No one paid them any mind. Deputy Fulgham was scribbling so hard, Brando was sure he’d tear the paper.

  Davey hated the way that his legs hung down in the water. He hated, hated, hated it. He wasn’t sure if he should keep his feet moving or keep them still. Specifically, he wasn’t sure which was more likely to get them bitten off. He thought about fishing, as if his legs were the line and his feet were the bait. Did people just leave the bait hanging there, or did they move it around?

  They did both. That was no help. He decided to keep doing what he’d been doing before he saw the shark: pushing his feet slowly back and forth underneath him. The bottle was enough to keep him afloat without that, but he had to hold on tight and pull it down lower into the water. He didn’t want to be any lower than he had to be, so he kept kicking.

  He looked down through the bottle almost constantly now. There was another little fish. It was bright blue, like a piece of candy, and seemed to come and go. The four silver-gray fish — his little guppy guys — didn’t pay it much mind. They’d settled into a patch of water between the bottle and Davey’s slowly churning feet.

  Davey looked down and waited for the little blue fish to come back. It reminded him of an aquarium. He really liked that idea, like this whole thing was just a show for his benefit. He’d been to two aquariums, the one in Cincinnati and the one in Cleveland. They were both pretty good. His favorite thing was that his parents would let him and Brando run around on their own. I guess they considered it safe, with all of the aquarium employees walking around in their rubber boots and short-sleeve shirts. It was probably his parents’ favorite part, too, now that he thought about it.

  This was back when he and Brando still did everything together — the lake, the aquarium, bikes. So they’d run all over the place, looking for the turtles. His little brother really liked turtles. He liked all kinds, but especially the big sea turtles. He’d wait by the glass until one came all the way around the tank. Then he’d just watch it, mesmerized. Sometimes it seemed like the turtle was watching him, too. At least that’s what he said.

  Brando and his turtles, thought Davey. He smiled, just a little. And then he remembered the hat. The last time they’d gone, Brando had spent all his money on a dumb foam hat that looked like a turtle. It had a little turtle head on the front and foam flippers sticking out from the sides. He’d worn it home, even
outside the aquarium.

  The smile fell away. It had been one of the first times he’d been really, truly embarrassed to be around his younger brother. How old had he been? He tried to remember. He’d probably just turned twelve, so Brando would’ve still been ten.

  Absolutely alone and miles from shore, he thought about that. A ten-year-old in a turtle hat … so what? Davey remembered how he’d quietly but relentlessly made fun of his brother in the backseat until he took the hat off. God, what was my problem? If Brando showed up right now, he could be wearing a turtle hat and a turtle skirt, for all Davey cared. Just so long as there was a nice sturdy boat underneath him.

  The little blue fish was back. It swam right through the other fish. They moved aside to let it pass and then regrouped. Below them, a shark cruised into view. It startled Davey, and his body jerked backward. He stopped kicking his legs. He was pretty sure it was the same one as before, but he wasn’t 100 percent sure. It’s not like they’d been introduced. He held his breath and stayed still. He sank down half a foot, pulling the bottle down with him.

  The shark curved slowly off to the right. He followed it just with his eyes until it reached the edge of the bottle. Then he took a breath and moved the bottle with his arms, just enough so that he could still see it. At first he thought it was moving away, but as he kept moving the bottle it kept reappearing.

  It was moving in a circle. Both of the aquariums he’d been to had sharks. They’d moved in circles, too, but they had no choice. That was the shape of the tanks. This one had a choice.

  There’s a shark in my aquarium, thought Davey, and it’s circling me.

  It came close enough for him to get a good look at it through the plastic even without his glasses. It was a blue shark, long and thin, like the kids on the junior high basketball team. It was a dark blue shape in clear blue water, hard to keep track of. Its head came almost to a point, like a shark pen you’d buy in an aquarium gift shop. As it circled, Davey could see the large eye on the right side of its head. It was wide open, unblinking and black, like a hole in the sea.

  When it began its second time around — or at least the second one he was aware of — Davey began to churn his feet again. It made it easier to follow along and keep an eye on the thing. The little gray fish scattered and regrouped, scattered and regrouped, annoyed by the activity. The bright blue one skittered back down into the deep. Davey just looked past them.

  He followed the shark twice more around, the circle getting wider, then tighter. When it got wider again, he gave up. The shark could keep this up a lot longer than he could. It was exhausting, and he was already spent. He’d begun to shudder now and then. It was less from fear than from his dropping body temperature. A deep, feverish chill passed through him.

  He hugged the bottle and pulled his legs up so that his thighs pressed against the flat plastic bottom. He sank down again. He used his arm muscles to try to keep the top of the bottle pointed straight up and the back of his head pointed at the warm sun overhead.

  But his arms and shoulders ached. He couldn’t keep this up, either. He thought about the sharks at the aquarium, how they circled and circled. How there were other things in the tank with them: little fish, rays, and smaller sharks. They didn’t even seem to notice. And a ray — how easy a meal would that be for a shark? They just glided by like floating pancakes, and still none of them got eaten.

  Davey thought about the little fish, completely unconcerned with the shark and just waiting for him to get his stupid legs away from their beloved floating bottle. Maybe this shark was like the fish. Maybe it was just curious about this strange thing on the surface, this Unidentified Floating Object. That made him feel a little better. It even allowed him to breathe a little more normally and let his legs relax down away from the bottle.

  He chose not to think about the other part of that: that the first thing the little fish had done to check him out was give him a good nibble. He was pretty sure that if the shark did the same, he was done for. There’d be blood in the water, and then they’d all come.

  He looked down through the bottle often. Sometimes he could see the blue shark, sometimes he couldn’t. He looked back over his shoulder, he worried, but he told himself the same thing over and over: They’ve been looking for me for hours now back on the island. That’s plenty of time to find my stuff. And now that they’ve done that, he told himself, it’ll be easy for them to figure out what happened. Maybe there’s even a chart of the currents.

  He took another long look below, waiting until the shark came into view. Then he forced himself to go back to his old routine: scanning the horizon and checking the sky before finally letting himself look back down into the water.

  Maybe the planes are already in the air, he thought.

  Maybe the boats are already out searching the water.

  But back on land, they were still sitting around the pool and talking.

  Still just talking.

  “Did you get his name?” asked Deputy Fulgham.

  “No, we didn’t get his name,” said Pamela. “He was a big, huge Englishman and he came up to us and said he saw a boy alone by the boat dock.”

  “But you didn’t get his name?”

  “How many gigantic Englishmen can there be on this island?” said Pamela.

  “I remember him,” said Marco. “Asked me what time the restaurant opened for breakfast. It’s him and his wife and a daughter, I think. Suite on the fourth floor.”

  “Remember his name?” said the deputy. His pen was poised over his little notebook.

  “I can get it,” said Marco.

  “Who cares about his name?” Pamela said loudly. Her frustration was quickly turning into anger.

  Brando flinched, remembering the times she spoke to him that way. He watched the deputy, interested to see how he’d respond. Fulgham put his pen down on the table and looked at her. “I’d like to ask him some questions, that’s all,” he said. He had a little smile on his face, as if she’d just told him a mildly amusing joke.

  Brando was impressed. He knew it probably made his mom even madder, but it gave her no good reason to show it. That was so much smarter than getting mad back, which was what he usually did. Maybe he’d underestimated this Cub Scout leader.

  Tam had seen the whole thing, too. He knew his wife was getting angry and tried to step in. “It seems like the important thing is that Davey was by the docks early this morning,” he said. “This guy — whatever his name is — told us that plain as day.”

  The deputy considered it. He had no reason to doubt him.

  “All right,” said Fulgham, “so you think he got on one of the boats and headed over?”

  “Yes,” said Pamela. She was calmer now, happier with where the conversation was headed.

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know!” So much for her calmness. “He probably wanted to buy something else to read — he likes fantasy books and graphic novels. Or maybe he just wanted to take the boat back and forth. He probably just woke up early and was bored!”

  “Okay, okay,” said the deputy, putting his hand up in a stop sign. “I can see you’ve thought about this. And he’s thirteen, right? I know I did some crazy things when I was a teenager around here. Island life, man.”

  That last part didn’t seem very helpful to Brando. And he didn’t think his brother would do something like that, anyway. It’s not that he hadn’t changed now that he was a teenager; he just hadn’t changed in that way. And he’d never been the hop-a-boat-to-party-city type. Brando decided to say something, but all he could come up with was: “He already has a book.”

  The deputy looked at him but didn’t even write it down. He still had a far-off look on his face, thinking about that “island life.” Finally, he snapped out of it. “Okay, okay,” he said. “Hey, Marco, how much does Zeke charge for a ride these days?”

  “Five dollars a head,” said Marco. “But sometimes the kids slip on for free. He doesn’t pay much attention.”

/>   “Well, there you go,” said the deputy. “Did he have any money on him?”

  “Yeah, sure,” said Tam.

  “He gets an allowance for his chores,” said Pamela. “Extra for big ones.”

  “Not that much extra,” said Brando. The deputy chuckled. Brando was starting to get as angry as his mom. They weren’t listening to him. He wasn’t complaining about his own allowance. He was saying that Davey wouldn’t blow ten bucks for a round-trip boat ride.

  And then Marco surprised everyone, himself included, by saying, “I met the first boat when it came in.” He was thinking it so hard that it just popped out of his mouth.

  “Oh, yeah?” said the deputy, sitting up in his chair.

  “What?” said Pamela.

  “Yeah,” said Marco, but what he was thinking was, How am I going to dig myself out of this one?

  “Well,” said the deputy, “did you see the kid?”

  Marco let out a long breath. He picked one of the flyers up off of the table and looked at it. “I don’t know,” he said.

  “What do you mean, you don’t know?” said Pamela. “You either saw Davey or you didn’t!”

  Marco looked at her. He still didn’t like her. “What I mean by ‘I don’t know’ is I don’t know, all right, lady? It was early, and there were definitely some boys there. Maybe a little younger, maybe a little older. I was looking at their hands more than their faces, just helping Zeke collect the fares.”

  “But you must’ve —” started Tam.

  “Believe me, I’ve thought about it. I’ve looked at this picture about four hundred times now, and I want to say, yes, he was there. But I don’t know if his face looks familiar because I saw it this morning or because it’s been on every frickin’ door I’ve walked through since you taped those things up.”

  “Unbelievable,” said Pamela, waving her hand at him.

  Marco shrugged. He was just telling the truth.