by Lara Zielin
Dear Editor,
We forget sometimes that high school kids are just that: kids. They are impressionable and need guidance. How can any administrator put an out-ofwedlock pregnant girl who dresses like a vampire on the throne as a model for others to follow? That’s what the prom queen is, she’s a standard. And the more we let that standard slip, the more we’ll be doing a disservice to our children.—Janet Gilson
I took a deep breath. At least the editor chose to print a variety of letters, I thought. It could have been worse . . . I supposed.
“Aggie!” my dad shouted from the kitchen. “Come on! Let’s go!”
I folded the paper closed, then shoved it into the metal trash can next to my desk. Enough for one day, I thought, and gave it one extra push toward the bottom.
Chapter Twenty-eight
SATURDAY, APRIL 25 / 8:02 A.M.
At the start of the tournament, fifty boats pushed off from the shore and roared through the water, racing for the hottest bass spots on the lake, their wakes tearing up the surface.
There was something about those first few minutes of takeoff that were so freeing, it almost rivaled the fishing part. It was the time in the boat when the stress of too few casts, or too few fish, or all the wrong conditions hadn’t seeped into your mind yet, and when all that was between you and a fivepound bass was a liquid crust teeming with life.
I knew my dad liked the takeoff, too, but he didn’t even look over and smile at me as we whipped past other boats. In fact, he’d hardly looked at me at all since we’d left home, and he’d spoken to me even less. It was as if the more time passed since the conversation in the living room, the madder at me he got. Or the more mortified he got. It was hard to tell.
I stared at the water, trying not to think about the way my dad was acting, or how I’d seen Fitz standing among a clump of fishermen before the tournament started. He’d been staring at me, his hands shoved deep into his pockets. I wished I could have said sorry to him right then for the way we’d left things about prom, but he was too far away. Instead, we locked gazes until his dad emerged from the side of their new Triton and clapped him on the back. It was only then that he broke the stare and climbed into his bass boat for the tournament.
As the boat slowed, I figured my dad could be as pissed as he wanted, but I was going to enjoy what I could of this day. Whatever it took. I had screwed up and broken the rules, but that didn’t mean I was out of the game.
When the boat was finally still, my dad killed the gas motor and flipped on the electric trolling motor.
I looked up from where I was switching lures on my pole. “Dad,” I said, “do you think we should troll? Don’t you think we should just cast and drift?”
My dad didn’t say anything right away.
“I mean, the wind’s taking us in the right direction,” I continued. “We can just float with it.”
“We’re fine,” my dad said. He grabbed his pole, turned his back to me, and began casting off the bow.
If I hadn’t been holding a two-hundred-dollar rod, I would have snapped it over my knee. I thought it was enormously unfair that I was supposed to be so grateful for my dad taking me on this trip when, really, I was just the warm body he needed to compete in the pairs tournament. Just like I’d been the warm body Neil wanted. It didn’t really matter that I was me.
I flung my first cast into the water so hard, it probably scattered any bass that were lurking underneath. Dammit, I cursed silently.
The tournament was off to a bad start. And we still had eight hours to go.
By lunchtime, things had eased up in the boat a bit. My dad had hauled in a three-pounder, and I had a nice four-pounder, both of which were splashing around in the live well. In a tournament like this one, you weighed in your five biggest fish, which meant you could keep swapping fish out of the live well until you had your five best.
My dad, a little breeze in his hair, was fishing off the bow like he was trying to make friends with all the bass. He cast slowly, languidly, taking his time with each movement. I watched him for a second, then shook my head.
By contrast, I was breathing hard, trying to get as many casts in per minute as I could. I was always on the go, adjusting my lures and positions as the wind changed or the surface of the lake changed.
“Aggie, for heaven’s sake, slow down,” my dad said, shooting an irritated glance my way as I dove into my tackle box.
I looked up.
“This is how I fish,” I answered. And it was true. My dad knew our styles were as different as night and day, but we always gave the other bass boats a run for their money.
I took a big swig of the bottled water resting on the boat seat, wiped my brow, and kept going. It was tiring for sure, but I wanted to win. I wanted to prove I was as good as anyone. On the water or off.
But when we drifted into a shadowy bay, I did slow down a tiny bit. As breezes ruffled the tops of the lily pads, I dragged my bait slowly across the bottom of the lake, closing my eyes and trying to picture the underwater world in my head. The bait moved with the direction of the water, following the sun. I started to picture how—
Wham!
I opened my eyes and grabbed onto the pole as the whole boat rocked with the force of a gigantic bite.
“Dad!”
“Aggie! What do you have?”
Even from the bow I could hear the excitement in his voice. And no wonder, since my pole was bent in a huge upside-down U.
“Six, maybe seven pounds!” I hollered back.
I wrestled and pulled, eased off the reel and then cranked it, to get the bass closer to the boat. My dad dropped his pole and ran for the net.
I strained and lifted for what seemed like hours, though it was probably only a few minutes. I heaved the pole upward, bending my legs and grunting, to get the bass up to the side of the boat. And when I finally did, the entire animal erupted out of the murky water like a brown Jaws. My dad whooped in a funny heehaw way, and I felt my whole body tighten at the sight of it.
It was huge.
My dad quickly netted the fish and then lifted it into the boat, and there it lay, flopping, as we stared. Its slick, coppery skin was like a golden glaze on an exquisite piece of pottery, and its tail thumped out a rhythm that sent water droplets into the air. They caught the light, shimmering.
“It’s at least ten pounds,” my dad whispered. “At least.”
However much it weighed, it was the biggest bass I’d ever seen. With a catch like this, we’d have the tournament in the bag.
I sat down on one of the boat seats and watched the fish for a moment more.
“We should get it into the live well, Ag,” my dad said.
I nodded, and together we heaved it into the aerated container. I held the lid open and stared.
I saw the great fish’s mouth open, saw its gills working, and thought for a second that I knew how it felt. I knew what it was like to get yanked out of the world you lived in and to find yourself in a strange place you didn’t recognize, where life just wasn’t what it used to be. Sylvia dumping me, my mom getting cancer, Neil being an asshole, and now prom—they’d all heaved me from below the surface of whatever life I was living and forced me to cope in a new world where I wasn’t sure what was next.
“Dad,” I said, looking from the fish out onto the lake, “I want to let him go.” The words were out before I realized I’d said them, but I knew I’d meant every one.
My dad dropped the lure he’d wrestled from the fish’s mouth. “What?”
“He doesn’t belong in a live well. He belongs in the lake.”
“Well, it’s not like we’re going to eat him. We’ll put him back after we weigh him. It’s catch and release, Ag.”
Like I didn’t know that.
I reached out and almost touched the fish’s golden skin. “No. I want to let him go now.”
“Aggie, you can’t.”
“Yes. I can.”
My dad stood up and made his way over to me, grabbing o
nto the boat seats for balance. “Is this an attempt to get back at me?” he asked.
“What?”
“Are you trying to punish me? For the punishment you’ll be getting regarding your behavior?”
I closed the live well. “No. I just don’t want to keep him. He should be in the lake.”
“I don’t believe you,” my dad replied. “If you let this fish go, it won’t prove anything. It won’t change anything. You’re still going to be in trouble. And you won’t be hurting me, either. You’ll be hurting your shot in the tournament. That’s it. So think about it, okay?”
I just don’t want the fish to have to go through this, I wanted to say. We should just let him go home.
I put my head in my hands. We were going to use the fish to win the tournament, then set him free again. Just like Neil had used me to get what he wanted, then let me go. Just like Rod had used me and then left. Just like my dad had used me for the tournament but didn’t really want to be around me.
“Come on,” my dad said. “We still have a few hours left in the tournament. Let’s keep going.”
I nodded, but for me it was over.
It was the end of the tournament and I was helping clean up our boat when I looked over and saw Fitz standing nearby. “Hey,” he said.
I nodded at him, surprised he’d sought me out. “Hey.”
“I hear you got a big one,” Fitz said. “That true?”
I tossed a coiled rope into the bow of the boat. “Yeah. Seems to be. Maybe eight or ten pounds.”
Fitz let out a low whistle. “That’s huge. Really big. Wow.”
We stood there for a second until Fitz cleared his throat. “I just, you know, wanted to make sure you were okay. I saw that article in the paper this morning. How you holding up?”
I blinked a few times to keep back the tears that were suddenly in my eyes. “I’m cool. It’s fine.”
Fitz nodded. “I read the piece, and I thought it was such crap. Your mom would never tell Mrs. Wagner to burn anything. And let me just say, if you need anything, you can—”
“How’s Becky?” I asked to shut him up. If Fitz kept standing there being nice, I was going to lose it completely. “I’m surprised she’s not here.”
Fitz crossed his arms. “Does that mean I should ask you about Neil? He couldn’t make it either?”
I shook my head. “He’s a dick,” I said.
Fitz rocked on his heels. “You finally figured that out, huh?”
I gave him a small smile. “Yeah. Well. I’m not the sharpest tool in the shed.”
“In case it matters, me and Becky never were anything. She liked me but . . .”
“You wouldn’t put out?”
Fitz smiled. “Pretty much. Also she smelled like onions. All the time. It totally grossed me out.” The laughter I snorted surprised me. “I think maybe it was the combination of her shampoo and lotion. But I’m not sure. She might have actually been part vampire slayer, and I never knew.”
I swallowed a giggle. “I think that requires garlic, not onions.”
“I like it when you smile,” Fitz said suddenly. “It’s like seeing a Discovery Channel special on Sasquatch. There are sightings, but you can’t be sure they’re true until you see it for yourself.”
“I don’t know, Fitz. You look like you might be part Sasquatch yourself. Is there something I should know?”
Fitz put a hand on his heart. “My father was a yeti. My mother was a mermaid.”
“Which makes you . . . ?”
Fitz’s expression grew serious. “To you? I have no idea.”
The tournament announcer’s voice suddenly came over the PA. “Will the team of Winchester and Winchester bring your catch to the weighing table, please. Winchester and Winchester, you’re up!”
Fitz reached out and grabbed my hand. I didn’t pull away. “I know you have to go, but I want to talk to you later. Is it okay if I call you?”
I nodded. “Yeah, that’d be cool.”
Fitz grinned. “All right. Go get your trophy,” he said. Then, of all things, he winked at me.
Feeling shaky, I went to go grab my bass from the live well to bring it to the judges’ table. But when I got to the tank and lifted the lid, all my limbs went numb. I would have screamed, but there was no way my voice was working. I poked at the bass, but it was arched and floating on its back, completely dead.
I stood up in the stern and started waving my hands. My screams of horror were still lodged somewhere deep in my throat, too buried to come out yet. The person closest to me was still Fitz, and my flailing caught his eye. Taking one look at my face, he sprinted back toward our boat and vaulted into the stern.
“Aggie,” he said, “what the hell?” I pointed to the live well, and Fitz fell to his knees and groaned. “Oh, shit,” he said, “what happened?”
I collapsed alongside him and reached out to touch the fish again. Please wake up, please wake up, I prayed silently.
Fitz was trying to check oxygen levels in the live well when my dad suddenly peeked into the boat. “Hey, Ag, I’ve been standing at the judges’ table—” His words were cut off when he saw the dead bass. He didn’t say anything for a moment, he just looked at me with what I’m sure was the same look of shock and sadness that was on my own face.
“The oxygen levels in the tank are solid,” Fitz mumbled, “so you must have lost him on the return.”
“The return” is the end of the tournament when all the boats speed toward shore to close out their entries and weigh their fish to determine the winner. With all the boats speeding across the water at once, it can get choppy and bumpy, and too many bumps can kill fish in a live well. My dad had been driving, and I didn’t think we’d endured more bumps than necessary. But the dead bass was proof to the contrary. The fish had been fine before the return, and now he was dead.
Dead fish didn’t qualify for the weigh-in, which meant my dad and I were no longer even close to being the tournament winners. Besides that, we’d killed probably the greatest fish in the lake. But the worst part about it all was that I knew I’d wanted to let him go in the first place, but I’d let my dad talk me out of it. I hadn’t listened to my gut, and I hadn’t spoken up. The fish was not only dead, he was dead because of me.
My voice still hadn’t come back when I began crying. My tears plunked into the live well and hit the now-dead bass, which bobbed lifelessly, his tail hitting the side of the tank every now and again.
I sobbed silently for a few minutes, and when I felt an arm around me I leaned into it, thinking it was my dad. When I realized it was Fitz instead, I didn’t pull back.
“I’m sorry, Aggie, so sorry,” he said over and over. His words on top of words were like a lullaby. I never wanted them to stop.
Chapter Twenty-nine
MONDAY, APRIL 27 / 7:42 A.M.
I arrived at school on Monday to find a mass of protesters outside the front doors. They marched like angry ants in a circle, carrying makeshift signs. Some said things like PUT SYLVIA ON THE THRONE and PREGNANCY IS NOT A SIN. Others said BRING STANDARDS BACK TO OUR SCHOOLS and CROWN MARISSA, CROWN MORALS. The marchers’ sharp voices sliced through the cool Minnesota morning, rising above the din of school buses, cars, and students.
A tall woman with black hair stared at me when I walked past. I’d toned down my Goth look a little, since I didn’t really want to look like Sylvia’s twin anymore, so I wasn’t sure why she was eyeballing me. Then, suddenly, I recognized her. She’d been a babysitter of mine a million years ago, back when I was in first grade. Tammy something or other. I might never have put it together except for her eyes, which were set apart like a goldfish’s. They were unmistakable.
The problem was, she recognized me, too. “It’s the principal’s kid!” she cried. “Tell your mom to step down, or we’ll get the school board to fire her!” Voices rose up all around her.
“Fi-re Gail! Fi-re Gail!” some started shouting.
Someone else started shouting, �
�We support Ga-ail! We support Ga-ail!”
I shook my head, trying to clear the jumbled sounds. I willed myself to think of a salmon fighting its way upstream, lashing its tail and struggling forward with all its might.
I put my head down and elbowed my way through the crowd.
Tammy tried to block my path, her fish eyes bulging and angry, but I turned my body quickly and let the momentum of my backpack land squarely on her left arm.
“Ow!” she cried angrily.
With Tammy distracted, I sprinted full force toward the doors, wondering why I was fighting so hard to get to the last place I wanted to be.
Jess caught up with me on the way to first period. She took one look at my face and said, “You trying out the natural look or something?”
My eyes itched with weariness. “I just felt like toning my makeup down a little.”
Jess nodded. “Are you okay?”
“I had some trouble getting here. I ran into the protesters.”
“Yeah,” said Jess. “They piss me off.”
The hallway was starting to fill up, and I looked around, wondering if I’d see Sylvia.
“Where were you all weekend?” Jess asked. “I couldn’t get a hold of you. I was worried.”
With the protesters screaming at me, and my mom and dad being so pissed at me, and Neil acting like an asshole, I was so grateful to still have Jess. At least one person was still nice to me.
“Look,” she said, “if you’re worried about Sylvia and you’re just laying low, you’re in the clear today. She’s out in New York, left on Sunday, and I hear she’ll be back on Tuesday. She’s doing a taping for the Martin Pollock Show, I guess.”
I started. The Martin Pollock Show was a daily talk show, like Jerry Springer only with less chair throwing. But not much less.
Jess nodded. “Yeah. And after that, I heard Pregnancy Today wants an interview with her.”
I looked at the floor. So the prom story had made national headlines, and now St. Davis, Minnesota, would stand out like a media zit on the nation’s chin. Great.
