Extract from Fish Boy by Chloe Daykin
In the zone
Since 1914 over one thousand people have disappeared in a 500,000 square mile zone, into nothingness, nowhere, off the radar, off this earth. In1964 the zone was called The Bermuda Triangle and the name stuck. I think we call it that because we feel better for calling it something. Like names make us feel in control, like we understand stuff we have no idea about at all. It could be called the Goopatron or the Shidozzle Pyramid. It could be a black hole, a portal to another galaxy, an alien forcefield. The only truth is that we’re just guessing, that we don’t actually know, we don’t know anything at all.
This is what I wrote in my Unexplained Mysteries of the World report in black Berol Fine liner in Mrs. Ahira’s Humanities class at 2.24pm. And this what I’m thinking right now, in the sea, when a Mackerel swims up to my to my face, blows bubbles into my Vista Clear Mask goggles and says…
Kezdodik
Kezdodik
Kezdodik
Run
What do you do if you find a talking fish? You leave it and run. And then you feel bad and come back. But then it’s gone and you don’t know if it was real at all, or maybe you imagined it? And now you’re standing on the beach and there’s no one else around. The sun’s going down and your towel’s gone missing and your clothes and your new Nikes. Maybe Daniel Watts took them or maybe it was the fish. All these questions make your head hurt. You want to run back into the sea to make them go away cos the water’s like a plunger on your head and sucks them out, like carbon dioxide into trees. But you can’t because tea’ll be ready, cos the sun’s gone and it’s Tuesday, which means pie and chips night and who would want to miss that?
I’m Billy Shiel and these are my questions cos this is me. Right here, right now, on Stepson beach. You can see me through the cliff railings. I’m the one with the goosebumps. The speck on the sand with the blue trunks. People call me Fish Boy. My skin goes up and down like the waves. My mind goes in and out like the sea. They say I’ve always got my mouth open, that I ask too many questions. But what’s wrong with that? Did I say they call me fish boy? Ha ha that’s just a joke. Actually fish have really good memories, even goldfish. They can remember sounds for up to five months. You can train a fish to swim back to you for its dinner, from up river, from the sea. You just play the sound and its comes right back like a boomerang.
So now I’ve got to run, before my chips get cold, up the cliff path, past Zadie Eccleston from class 7RH’s panorama-seashell-window, through the Hawthorn hedge with spikes like razors, over the ‘Look Out For Frogs’ sign and into the back door like the wind, like lightning, like the fastest no shoes and practically naked boy you’ve ever seen.
Hover
I’m in the kitchen in exactly eight minutes twenty seven seconds. My second best without shoes time. I can tell cos of my National Geographic watch, which is accurate above and below water up to ten meters. Dad’s standing at the table looking at me in my blue trunks.
‘You know the rules’ he says.
‘But the chips Dad?’
‘No trunks at the table’
‘Can I just put them in the oven?’
‘What, the trunks?’
‘The chips’
‘Right, I mean no. I mean get a towel.’ He’s already got the sauce on his, he’s picked his knife and fork up. He’s on a hover. I wish I was on a hover, I’m not even on a sit down. I’m on a drip and shiver.
‘What about a tea towel?’
‘I’m not having your never you mind on my tea towel,’ Dad takes a pride in his tea towels. He gets them for his birthday, for christmas. His favourite one says ‘I’m too sexy for this tea towel.’ It’s hung up in the kitchen, next to the one from the Heavy Horse Centre that says ‘Keep calm and eat cupcakes.’
‘Where’s your clothes?’ he says.
‘I don’t know.’
‘Where’s your shoes?’
‘I don’t know’, he looks at me right in the eyes. ‘Where’s Mum?’ I say.
‘In bed.’
‘Again?’ He looks away.
‘I’ll get your dressing gown son’, he says and ruffles my hair. He goes upstairs and gets my grey fleecy one. I’ve got three dressing gowns but the grey one is my favourite. I’m 12 and it’s actually size thirteen to fourteen but I like the way the extra length covers my hands. Sara Jenkins said that fleece is really made from plastic bags and I wonder how plastic bags can be so cosy. I can feel the heat prickling down my arms. Fleece is the best, it’s like putting on a radiator.
Dad makes me a little table, with a knee tray. We eat the chips and pies. They’ve gone a bit cold. Neither of us says anything. I eat mine like David Attenborough, award winning broadcaster and naturalist. Everyone loves David A, he’s the best, he knows what needs to be known. He’s asked all the questions and got all the answers. He knows what to be scared of and what not to be, when to get in the water and when to get out. My fork ducks under the pastry like it’s going in a bat cave, through the fissure, into the cathedral chamber, like it’s exploring for the first time. The bats fly out of the crack and away. My fork becomes the red tailed hawk, my knife the prairie falcon.
From the chopper David shouts against the wind, ‘the hawk needs all of its aerobatic skills and powers of concentration to snatch one of the confusing multitude.’ I prepare for the kill. ‘Don’t play with your food son,’ Dad says.
‘I’m not playing, I’m exploring.’
‘If you discover any meat let me know.’
I think, if my fork finds a piece of steak first no one will ever know about the fish and it’ll all be ok and Daniel Watts will give me my Nikes back. In my head I ask David Attenborough what he thinks and he leans into the rough desert scrub and whispers in his dead calm voice ‘and now the female is leaving the nest.’ He’s always switched on to nature is David. He’s a professional.