He gestured above with a thumb and she looked up to see the mass of flopping fish above, floating over him like a bunch of strange balloons. She looked back down and grinned at him, then suddenly, wonderfully, she stopped smiling.
He noticed this and released the stringer, then allowed them to float freely, before flipping and twirling around her with some artful somersaults and crisp, tight spins.
She was laughing again, until he eventually curled around her like a snake, twisting up and down her body, which made her smile even more.
“You’re so stupid,” she said flatly. Then, when he stilled in midair, she placed her hands on his shoulders and brought him to her. Her lips were suddenly dangerously close.
Then, wonderfully, magnificently, just on the outskirts of the center of the Earth, Edgar and Shay Sinclair kissed deeply.
It was warm and soft and left him unable to discern the heat of her breath and the heat of the core. He could taste her tongue and suddenly, even when falling, somehow, he was dizzy.
When they parted Shay smiled sleepily. Edgar’s whole body pulsed with lust, and yearning.
It was his first kiss.
Fourteen
October came, and as the leaves turned orange and shriveled in the trees, the drought remained. Cloudless skies continued the assault on Mount Lanier as the epidemic stretched regionally: the second-worst drought in Northwestern history.
Still, the money flowed for Edgar and the Arteses. Ambercod sold as fast as Edgar could reel it in. Hard thighs and biceps had begun to develop on his overly-tanned body from all the hefting and pulling and lifting.
One day, his mother plopped two packages of Ambercod down on the kitchen counter, like two pieces of evidence from a murder trial. He saw it and froze, and for a moment, his heart skipped a beat.
“What’s . . . Ambercod?” he gulped, noticing Flounder’s handwriting conspicuously scrawled across the white wax paper like the signature on a death sentence.
“I thought you might know,” she said, “since you’re pretty close to that Flounder guy.”
“Yeah, well, we’re kinda close.”
She looked at him suspiciously. “Kinda? I talked to his mother for a while today and apparently this Ambercod is the greatest fish known to man.”
When he heard that, his chest swelled with pride, but he couldn’t let on.
“Better than bass?” he objected. “I doubt that.”
“Apparently it’s a lot like Amberjack.”
“Oh. Cool.”
She put the fish in the fridge and then poured a glass of water. “They seem to be very nice people, Edgar. I think your friend is a talented fish monger.”
“He’s alright,” muttered Edgar, limp with relief that she hadn’t seemed to gather anything on him. The Arteses must not have asked her about her fake brother too—Edgar’s “uncle,” the fantastical supplier of Ambercod.
“Hey,” said Edgar, “please tell me you didn’t call him ‘Flounder’ in front of his mother. Did you?”
She looked at him disdainfully. “Edgar. Do I look like the type to call people by their street names?”
At dinner that night, Mr. Dewitt chewed thoughtfully on the “Ambercod.” He rolled it around on his tongue and squinted, a self-professed connoisseur of everything seafood.
“Yeah, well, I guess this Yankee fish tastes pretty good,” he declared, flashing a smile at Edgar. Edgar was enthralled and watched his father eat a piece of fish that he, himself, had caught the day before.
“Henry, we don’t call people Yankees,” said his wife. Edgar’s mother was always trying to keep them civil.
“But what if they deserve it?” said Mr. Dewitt, as Edgar tried not to laugh.
__________
At school the next day, Flounder came walking up in a fit. “People are asking questions, man,” he said, nervously.
“What kind of questions. Which people?”
“The customers, Ed. They’re wanting to know about the Ambercod and what exactly it is. Like, they want to know about calories, nutritional information, mercury content—stuff like that, and they’re looking it up on the internet, too, trying to figure it out. What do I tell them? Some of them are refusing to buy any more until they know. What do we say?”
Edgar ran a hand through his stringy hair and tried to think.
It wasn’t good.
“Just—um—tell them it’s new,” he said. “Tell them that the fish is listed under its—uh—official name.”
“Well, what’s its official name?” Flounder asked.
“It’s . . .” muttered Edgar, looking around, searching for an idea, but he realized that he was suddenly out of ideas. He was tired. He didn’t have the energy to be brilliant anymore. “Man, Flounder, I don’t know what to tell you. Just sell the dang fish. Figure it out! Be a salesman.”
__________
At home, Edgar was running out of explanations for the fact that his skin grew darker and darker every other day.
“Flounder and I went hiking,” Edgar explained one afternoon. “We like to hike up on the hills.”
Mrs. Dewitt frowned. “Wasn’t Flounder at the fish stand after school today?” She studied him, closely.
“No,” shrugged Edgar. “Like I said, we went hiking. We hike a lot these days.”
Mrs. Dewitt sighed. “Well don’t get yourself a sunburn. And what happened to cross country training?” she asked.
“Oh that,” Edgar replied, panicking slightly. Think of a lie, quick! “Flounder said only dweebs do cross-country at my school. It would kill my image.” He waited quietly for her reaction.
“Huh. And what image is that, Edgar?” He could tell she was suspicious, but he’d already committed to the lie.
“Oh you know, the coolest kid in school. Obviously,” he laughed, hoping she’d take his joke and drop the subject. Mrs. Dewitt chuckled and turned back to the dishes, shaking her head.
Phew! That was close.
__________
Things were getting worse and worse at school each day. Edgar and Flounder were currently the sole targets of Chris Weedy and his gang, especially at lunchtime.
Food splattered across their table every day at lunchtime, always followed by laughs from across the commons.
When Flounder would turn around to look, Weedy would shout, “Turn around, jackass! Eat your lunch! Don’t look at us!” In surrender, Flounder would do as he was told.
Day after day it was the same. Food raining down on them, and subsequent cackling. As soon as they were seated—before they could even take a bite of their lunches—in came objects hurtling through the air, ricocheting across the table: food, drinks, even pinecones and textbooks. Edgar and Flounder quietly brushed the food from their clothing, waiting for the thunderous applause and laughter to subside, then tried to take a bite of their sandwiches.
“That guy is a douchebag. I hate him,” grumbled Flounder.
“Man, why don’t we just move somewhere else?” pleaded Edgar in a whisper. “This is stupid, Flounder! When Shay sits with us, it’s all good, but when she has Driver’s Ed, like today, we sit here and endure this? Why?! Let’s just go eat in a classroom or something. We could even go to Van Rossum’s room. He wouldn’t care.”
“No,” said Flounder, who flashed the jocks a glare from the corner of his eye. “To hell with that.”
And at just that moment, before Edgar could even launch a counterargument, a carton of cold milk sailed through the air and hit him directly at the base of his neck.
“OOOOOOOHHHHH!!!!!!!!” exploded the table of jocks across the walkway.
It was freezing. Edgar winced and thrust a hand to his back, and there, frigid milk streamed beneath his shirt. He tried to shake it away, but it was too late: his shirt was soaked.
Suddenly, uncontrollably, his face grew flush with rage, and humil
iation seized through him. The lack of sleep lit sparks in his extremities and suddenly he felt like the Hulk. He looked up at Flounder and Flounder stared back, and in Flounder’s eyes Edgar saw something that made him finally, irreversibly, irretrievably, lose his cool; he saw pity.
The howling laughter from Weedy’s table continued. It began to somehow climb up Edgar’s spine and ultimately burrow uncomfortably in the nape of his neck, like feeding worms. It reverberated through the channels of his ears like fingernails down a sidewalk, and with his eyes reduced to two angry, instantly ferocious slits, he slowly turned around in his seat and glared at the whole gang behind him
At one moment they had been barking like dogs. Now, they were silenced by his insubordination.
It made Weedy beside himself with rage.
“You better watch yourself, redneck,” he hissed, pointing a crooked finger at Edgar. Undeterred, Edgar stood and faced him. The students at all the tables around them suddenly fell silent.
Deep inside, the sensation of hatred continued to pulse through Edgar, lighting his belly on fire, like habanero chili. It trickled to his feet, stretched outward to his fingertips, and throbbed in his forehead: a rage so strong that he balled his fists without knowing it.
Losing control, with molten lava in his veins, and dark, delirious circles under his eyes, he squinted at Weedy with a blazing fury, squeezing and releasing his fists over and over.
“Calm down, man,” whispered Flounder, who half-stood to reason with his friend.
As if in response, Edgar lowered his arm down to the tabletop. Edgar swiped all the food away, sending it all tumbling across the commons with a quick slip of his forearm. Flounder jerked backward. Food and plates and cups and cans whirled into the air, ricocheting like buckshot, dancing among the feet of the upperclassmen of Mount Lanier High, most especially, Chris Weedy and his cohorts. As Edgar continued to glare at them, forks and spoons clanked across the polished brick and the students of Mount Lanier High fell to an even quieter hush.
Chris and his gang bristled and stood, glaring at Edgar. They studied him with mouths pursed in rage as plastic pudding cups and Coke cans halted at their feet. Like a gunfight in the old west, all eyes turned to Edgar.
Politely, he leaned down to a girl who sat at an adjacent table.
“Hey,” he said. “Can I have your apple?” She looked up at him for a moment, then shrugged at her friends and smiled, then lifted the green apple to him.
“Thank you,” he said, then polished the apple dramatically on his shirt sleeve. Then, to Flounder’s absolute dismay, he stepped forward and climbed on top of the girl’s table.
Standing above them all, he turned and squared up to Chris Weedy’s table, glaring down at him.
“You!” screamed Weedy. “Sit down, Dewitt!” He rose from his seat and pointed a threatening finger.
“Christopher,” said Edgar. “You will never tell me what to do again. Your time is over.”
And then Edgar bent and selected a few items from the table to go with the apple: a half-full carton of milk, an aqua-blue lunch tray, a half-eaten hamburger, an orange, a whole candy bar. Then, targeting with a licked thumb the terribly angry Chris Weedy, when Edgar was ready, he did his best baseball-windup routine and aimed the apple at Chris’s face.
“You better not,” hissed Chris, standing firm. “We’ll kill you, Dewitt.”
“There’s that word,” said Edgar, pausing his warmup. “We.” He grinned tauntingly at Weedy. “That’s the only word you know.”
Then, letting his rage consume him, Edgar wound up and hurled the apple directly at Weedy’s face, launching it with everything he had.
The apple whizzed through the air like a blur, missing Weedy’s face but knocking him thunderously in the chest with a violent, hollow thud. Weedy crumpled over in pain and withered to his seat, as the commons erupted in outright jubilation.
“Oops!” called Edgar. “I missed. I was aiming for your face!” But he was drowned out by the thunderous laughter.
“Edgar!” pleaded Flounder. “Please! You’re gonna get us both killed!” But Edgar ignored him, and fitfully—with Weedy on the ropes—began to launch other things: a lunch tray, that he slung through the air like a Frisbee, that just buzzed Weedy’s head but slammed into one of his goons, right in the neck. Edgar laughed.
It felt so, so good to see them scurry.
Then he hurled an orange that smacked the side of Chris’s head like a fist. Weedy ducked and placed his face in his hands, rubbing at the spot where he’d been hit.
“You bastard!” he screamed into his hands. “You’re freaking dead!”
Edgar then called upon all his years of little league baseball. Revenge-crazed, he let all of the objects fly, one by one, as fast and as hard as he could throw them, striking Chris Weedy with most of it. And, once the objects were depleted, he strode briskly across the table and snatched up even more things—another tray, another fork, a book—anything he could get his hands on. With his mouth peeled back into an enraged snarl, as each object left his hand and sped across the commons with the greatest amount of force, he cackled as he realized the adjacent jocks were being peppered with food as well, who disdainfully shook food from their lettermen’s jackets and cursed him violently, but he didn’t care.
“You’re dead!” one of them hissed, who pointed to a ketchup splotch on his Letterman’s sleeve. “You dumbass, Dewitt!”
But Edgar didn’t stop. He couldn’t stop throwing for anything, especially because they deserved it. He hated them. It was for all they’d put him through since the first day he arrived—since the first day he saw them—when they’d made fun of his jean rolls and called him a redneck.
And plus, it felt really, really good.
As he threw, for just a brief moment, a small, reasonable voice inside told him to stop.
What are you doing Edgar? Stop it!
“Shut up,” growled Edgar, who chucked another unpeeled banana, and reached for a full can of Coke.
Calm down, said the voice, but Edgar wouldn’t listen. He reared back to throw the can of Coke, and suddenly, he was yanked completely off his feet by two large hands, from behind.
Nothing but clear sky spun above as he was whisked away kicking and fighting.
It was Van Rossum beneath him.
The teacher had been the voice of reason talking to him from below.
“Calm down,” grunted Van Rossum again, and suddenly Edgar was being carried across the commons. As they went, students from all the tables cheered for Edgar.
“Let me down!” cried Edgar, squirming with rage, but Van Rossum did not let him go. Instead, he thrust Edgar through the two large, red, double doors and into the locker well. As Edgar was being carried, he caught one last glimpse before the doors closed of Weedy and his boys.
“After school,” shouted Chris, his white teeth snarling like a rabid dog. He shook a balled fist at Edgar as he rose from the ground where he had been ducking and behind him, his gang nodded with him in vigorous agreement.
Inside the hallway Dr. Van Rossum placed Edgar in front of the lockers and towered over him, glaring down from above until Edgar finally stilled.
“Are you crazy?” asked the teacher.
“No!’” said Edgar, his voice full of hurt. “They started it!”
“So?” said the man. “Who cares who started it?”
A moment of silence ensued. Van Rossum studied Edgar with a piercing glare, as Edgar lifted his hands to wipe away beads of sweat that formed on his brow.
“Let me ask you something, Edgar,” said Van Rossum. “And please don’t tell me any lies.” He bent to Edgar’s level and looked him in the eyes. “Why are you flunking my class?”
It made Edgar completely unravel. His tense muscles loosened and he slumped over. Van Rossum’s question had sent the adrenaline flowing from him lik
e a rushing tide. Suddenly he fought the urge to outright weep. His life had been falling apart—he was falling apart under the strain. Edgar looked up at the man and peered into his kind face, wishing he could go back to the beginning, to the day he found the hole.
Maybe he would have brought his mom and dad. Maybe he would have done everything differently.
“I’m not trying to flunk your class,” he answered softly.
“Yeah, well,” said the teacher, “you’re doing it anyway.”
Edgar continued to hang his head until Van Rossum leaned down and took him gently by the shoulders, then gave him a friendly shake.
“You must,” said the teacher, “get control of your life, Edgar. You’re down-spiraling, son. You’re far too smart for stuff like this.” He caught Edgar’s gaze and smiled.
Edgar smiled back.
“Right?” said Van Rossum.
“Right,” said Edgar.
“OK then,” said the man, letting Edgar’s shoulders go.
“Wonderful,” he said, straightening. “Glad we had this talk.” Then he turned and made for his classroom, just down the hall, but not before saying over his shoulder, “No more food fights, Edgar, you hear me?”
“Yes, sir,” he answered.
“That’s not your style, boy. Throwing food like a monkey. For shame!”
The Secret Island of Edgar Dewitt Page 11
