CH.2 - Already Over Him
1254 Words
Anna's POV
I spent four months of fish-gutting money on this gift.
That's the part I keep coming back to as I stand in the doorway of the party, holding it in both hands like it might break. Months of cold early mornings on the water with my parents, scales under my nails, the smell of bait I can never fully wash off. All of it folded into one small wrapped box for one boy.
Leo.
He's by the window with his friends, laughing at something, gold light all over him the way it always is. Every girl at school likes Leo. I'm not special for it. But I told myself tonight that I'd actually hand it to him instead of chickening out, so I cross the room before my nerve runs out and hold it up to him.
"For you," I say. "Happy birthday."
He smiles. He really has a good smile, I'll give him that. "Anna. You didn't have to."
"I wanted to."
He takes it. Says "thanks" and turns back to his friends.
That's it. That's the whole thing I built a season around.
I take a deep breath in and tell myself that it's fine. It's more than fine. I quietly drift toward the snack table to give my hands something to do, and that's when I hear the girls.
"God, do you smell that?"
"It's fish. I swear it's an actual fish smell."
One of them fans the air in front of her face, slow and theatrical, making sure I see it. Her friend giggles into her cup.
I know that smell. I've known it my whole life. It's the sea, and bait, and honest work, and my mother's hands and my father's boat. It's the money that paid for the box now sitting in Leo's grip. I'm not ashamed of it. I won't give them that.
So I smile, sweet as I can manage, and say nothing. Letting them win a word out of me would be worse than the smell ever could be.
With my dignity intact, I turn to leave.
And just as I'm about to exit, there it is. My gift. In the trash can by the door. The wrapping paper I picked out and folded twice, sitting on top of a pile of plastic cups and napkins, like it was never anything at all.
For one second the whole room goes quiet and far away. I feel a sharp pain in my heart but ignore it as soon as it comes.
Then the heartbreak burns off and something better takes its place, which is good old-fashioned rage. He didn't even open it. He didn't even have the decency to wait until I left the building. He just dropped it in the garbage on his way back to being charming.
Fine. Good. I hope his birthday's terrible.
I'm out the door and on my bike before anyone sees my face or I do anything I'd be embarrassed about. I pedal hard the whole way home, cursing him with every push, cursing the girls, cursing myself for thinking a box of anything could change what a boy like that sees when he looks at a girl like me.
The wind dries my face as I go, which is the only good thing it does. Somewhere around the second hill the cursing runs out and something quieter takes its place, the kind of small mean ache. He didn't even open it. That's the part that keeps bothering me. Not that he threw it away. That he didn't even look at what was inside first.
I stand on the pedals and push harder, like I can outrun it if I just move fast enough.
By the time I hit the harbor road my legs are shaking and I still can't go inside. My parents are home. They'll take one look at me and ask what's wrong, and I'll have to explain, and I can't do that yet. So I drop the bike in the grass and head for the one place that's always been mine.
The boat.
Our boat, low and dark at the end of the dock, knocking gently against the tires we've nailed along the edge. I climb on and the whole familiar weight of it shifts under me, and finally, finally, I can breathe.
"You're an i***t, Leo," I tell the water. Loudly. Nobody's out here to hear it. "A gold-plated i***t with a stupid smile and not one real thought in your stupid head."
It helps. A little.
"And you," I say, pointing at nothing, at the dark, at myself, "are dumber for liking him. Four months, Anna. Four wasted months!"
The funny thing is I'm not even sure who I'm angrier at. Him, for being exactly what everyone said he was. Or me, for hoping he might be something else.
I sit down hard on the bench and let my legs hang over the side, heels knocking against the hull. For a second the anger slips and the other thing shows underneath it, the part that just wanted, for once, to be the girl somebody picked. To not smell like the sea. To hand a boy a box and have him hold onto it.
"Stupid," I tell myself, and scrub the heel of my hand across my eyes before anything can fall. I don't cry over boys who throw away wrapping paper. I won't.
The only answer is the water, slow and black, the lights of town small behind me. Out here I'm not the fish girl. I'm not the joke at the snack table. I'm just a girl on a boat she knows better than her own bedroom, telling off a boy who'll never know she did it.
I'm winding up for round two when the howl comes.
It tears across the water from somewhere too close, long and raw and wrong, nothing like a dog, nothing like anything. It goes straight through me and stops my breath in my chest.
The boat lurches.
Hard. Harder than the swell should ever move it, like something big passed under or beside or through, and my feet go out from under me before I can grab anything. The deck tips. The dark rushes up.
Then the water has me.
The cold hits like a slap, closing over my head, and for one stupid spinning second I don't know which way is up. Bubbles everywhere. My clothes drag. The sea's in my nose, my mouth, and the part of my brain that's panicking is louder than the part that's been swimming since before I could walk.
I kick. I always kick. My family didn't raise something that drowns.
My head breaks the surface and I drag in air that burns going down, coughing, blinking salt out of my eyes, treading water with my heart going like a hammer.
And that's when I see him.
A shape on the boat above me. A man, dark against the sky, close enough to touch and not moving, just standing there looking down at me where I thrash in the water.
I can't see his face. The light's behind him and the night's too thick. But I can feel him looking, the way you feel a stare on the back of your neck in an empty room, and something about the way he holds himself makes the cold go all the way through me.
"Who," I get out, between breaths, between coughs, "the hell are you?"
He doesn't answer.
- Writer
