I laugh, even as it occurs to me that I don’t have any looks or moves.
I know that guys are supposed to have moves. Stuff that makes girls swoon, which is a word that Dad used to say when he was trying to impress Mom. “Am I making you swoon, honey?” he would say.
Mom would always smile and say, “Not one bit, my dear.”
Guys in the movies always have moves to make girls swoon. Sometimes their moves make no sense, like when that guy held up a boom box in that movie that Julia watches whenever it comes on cable. He blasted a terrible song about eyes to get the girl, and somehow it worked. But I’ve never even seen a boom box in real life, and no girl is going to hear my phone blasting through its tiny speakers from the street. Besides, that move is already taken. It would be like some guy telling a girl, “You complete me.”
You can only pull that shit off once.
I’m not exactly winning in the looks department. I’m not ugly, but I know that I’m nothing special to look at. I’m scrawny as hell and short compared with most of the boys in my grade. My head is way too big for my body. Mom says that I’ll fill out eventually, but “eventually” is the kind of word that adults use to try to make you feel better. It never works. “Eventually” might as well be forever, because that’s exactly how it feels to kids.
To everyone, really. No one in the history of the world has ever gotten excited over “eventually.”
I show Sarah how to cast and reel. Our hands touch as I teach her how to pinch the line to the pole. I show her how to make the lure move underwater. “Make it dance like the devil in the pale moonlight,” my uncle used to say, but I don’t. Some things sound good when they come out of an adult’s mouth but stupid when they come out of a kid’s mouth.
Sarah is about to cast for the first time when Julia shouts, “Got one!” Her red and white bobber disappears underwater.
“Big deal,” Charlie shouts. “Every squirrel has lucky nuts.”
Julia laughs. She may only be nine, but she understands all the balls jokes.
Sarah giggles, too.
“Even a blind squirrel can find a nut!” I shout. “You’re such an idiot.”
“Yeah. That’s what I meant,” Charlie says. He turns to Julia, who is pulling a small perch from the water. It flaps and twists at the end of the line. I love fishing, but there’s always a moment when the fish first appears above the water line when I feel terrible about what I’ve done. I can’t imagine being suddenly plucked from my universe into an entirely different one, and one without any air to breathe.
I told this to Dad once, and he said I shouldn’t worry. Fish have tiny brains. They have no language, so they can’t even think about what’s happening to them. “They experience life one second at a time, and none of those seconds are connected. They don’t even know how to be afraid.”
I wasn’t sure if I should believe him. I’m less sure today.
“We should’ve made perch worth two fish,” Julia says. “Since all you ever catch is kivers.”
“What’s a kiver?” Sarah asks.
“A sunfish,” I say. “A bluegill. They have a lot of names. But mostly they’re trash fish. Worth nothing.”
Dad called them trash fish. It feels weird using his words now.
“They’re so dumb that you can catch the same one over and over again,” Julia says. “And some people count that as a new fish every time.”
“It is a new fish,” Charlie says. “You can’t tell two kivers apart.”
“Yeah right,” Julia says. “I’ve seen you release a kiver and then catch it again five seconds later.”
“It’s not my fault the fish like my hook better than yours.”
“You’re just a big, fat cheater. But I’m—”
“Hey! I got one!” Charlie’s bobber disappears and his pole flexes slightly under the weight of the fish. He reels and grunts, pretending to fight with something that probably weighs less than a pound. A second later, the fish pops out of the water, flapping on the end of the line. It’s about the size of my hand.
“Kiver!” Julia shouts.
“I don’t care,” Charlie says. “It’s a fish. We’re tied!”
By the time the score is six to six (with Charlie catching the same kiver at least three times according to Julia), Sarah and I have moved to a rock on the backside of the island. Not too far away. We can still hear Charlie and Julia yapping at each other, but it’s a lot less annoying from this distance.
Sarah might be a stuck-in-your-head person, too. We sit for ten minutes, taking turns casting and reeling without saying a word. We fall into a routine, passing the pole back and forth like we’ve done this a million times before. I feel like I should pinch myself. Like today is an impossible day. Mom is replaced by another woman and Sarah Flaherty is fishing on Barracuda Island with me.
I’m not sure which one is less likely.
“Maybe we should switch to worms,” I finally say after Julia catches her seventh fish and takes the lead. We haven’t caught a single thing.
“No,” Sarah says, casting the line. She’s gotten good at it. She already has distance and aim. It’s a little annoying. I liked the idea of being the expert. I wanted to impress her with my skills, but she’s almost as good as me already. “I like this. It’s fun just to cast. Better than sitting, waiting for one of those stupid bobbers to move.”
“Okay,” I say. “But let’s switch lures. The sun is all the way up now. Something shiny might help.”
I show her how to tie the new lure on to the end of a line. “The hardest part is getting the line though the loop,” I explain. I hold the lure out in front of my face, close one eye, and slide the line through on the first try. “Here,” I say, handing her a lure from the tackle box. “Careful for the hooks.”
Her hands are small compared to mine. They don’t have all the scratches and scabs that mine do. They look brand new, except for the nails. Bitten to the nubs, just like Julia’s. It takes her a minute, but finally she gets the line to pass through the loop.
“Okay,” she says. “Now what?”
I show her how to tie the knot. She follows along, step by step, matching me loop for loop. I have to start over once, but that’s only because Sarah has to shoo away a bumble bee mid-knot.
“All right,” I say. “Don’t tighten anything yet. First, you need to wet the line before you pull it tight.” I place the knot into my mouth, only realizing once it’s beyond my lips how gross this probably seems.
“You can dip your line in the water,” I say. “It just needs to be wet before you tighten the knot. It helps it to hold better.”
Sarah opens her mouth and places her untightened knot inside. She smiles.
“You like this,” I say, “don’t you?”
“Yeah. I kind of do,” she says. “I’m surprised. When Julia asked me to come, I got excited, but I wasn’t sure why. I don’t even like to eat fish. Maybe just something new? I don’t know. And I can’t believe we came out to this island by ourselves. No life jackets or anything. If my mother knew where I was and how I got here, she’d kill me.”