The Shark Curtain - Chris Scofield

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miss a dead deer.

      “We’re not coming back,” Mother announces. She lights a fresh Kent off the one she hasn’t finished yet. Her hands are shaking.

      “What . . . to the lake?” Dad asks.

      “Of course to the lake. What else would I be talking about?”

      “No, Mom, no,” Lauren whines. “We love Peace Lake. It won’t happen again.”

      “Damn right it won’t,” Mom mumbles.

      I know I should say something, but I can’t. I’m still in the lake, still staring at Mrs. Wiggins’s milky eyes, still breathing her cancerous breath when she said to me, “You didn’t do anything.”

      But I did.

      Dad pats Mom’s leg. When she looks at him, he smiles weakly. “I’m serious, Paul. I’m done with this place; it’s dangerous. I should have listened to Jamie when she said the lake was haunted.”

      “Haunted? I thought you were the sensible sister.”

      “You remember the story about the Indian children drowning when their canoe capsized, don’t you?”

      “A cautionary tale, Kit. It’s probably happened in every lake in America.” Mom looks out the window. “No comment, kemo sabe?”

      “Lily nearly died out there.”

      “Kit . . .”

      “No, Paul. We’re not coming back, and that’s that.”

      “But Mom, we love the lake!” Lauren cries out. She scowls at me. “You ruin everything,” she says, pinching me. Hard.

      “Lauren . . .” Daddy warns. “Kit, listen. You know who should stop coming up here, don’t you? Jamie. Driving four hours twice a week just to swim up here, alone. It’s dangerous. And crazy. Think of the relationships her swimming has cost her. But Lily? Lily just bit off more than she could chew today, that’s all.” He catches my eye in the rearview mirror. “And Mrs. Wiggins did what came natural to her breed. She was a good dog.” He pushes the button on his wristwatch; a small green light briefly colors his face. “It’s been a long day but we’ll be home by ten.”

      “Good!” Lauren says.

      Jesus races by in the bright red jeep I saw earlier; a raccoon tail waves from the radio antenna. He’s alone this time, and it’s dark, but I know it’s Him. “Woo-hoo!” He yells as He passes, then He really hits the gas.

      What happened to the boat? Did He leave Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head tied to a tree and steal their car?

      Why didn’t he save Mrs. Wiggins?

      Don’t my prayers mean anything?

      Mom throws her cigarette butt out the window, checks her lipstick, and snaps back the visor.

      “Imagine what the kids will write when they get back to school next week,” Dad chuckles. “‘What I Did on Summer Vacation.’ Let me see, Lauren fell into the quarry pit, Lily nearly drowned . . . and all that in a couple of weeks. Quite a summer.”

      * * *

      Lauren’s right.

      I ruin everything.

      Mrs. Wiggins is buried at Peace Lake but her heart, inside the tooth in my pocket, beats all the way home.

       Chapter 4

       Lickety-Split

      Mom stops painting, rinses her brush, and dabs it on her shirt. She’s barefoot and her nails are red as valentines. “We’ve talked about it before,” she says. “They’re growing pains, Lily.”

      Over her shoulder, Sherman presses his stupid ten-year-old mouth against the sliding glass door, inflating his cheeks and crossing his eyes, before running off. It leaves an impression that instantly evaporates.

      “Lily, are you listening? You said your body hurts sometimes, right?”

      I shrug.

      “Of course it does,” she says. “Mine did. You just turned fourteen. It’s puberty. You’re going to feel strange for a while, but you’ll get used to it.”

      It isn’t puberty, it’s the tail. I felt it before Peace Lake, but since I killed Mrs. Wiggins, it wakes me up at night with bad dreams. Sometimes I feel it all day long.

      “You’re growing breasts, aren’t you?”

      Not that again.

      “Yes, but—”

      Frieda said I was born with a calcification at the end of my spine. She said the baby doctor shaved it down, or cut it out, or off, or whatever he did, lickety-split. In fact so lickety-split, I didn’t even miss a nursing. “Maybe it’s . . . growing back,” I say, and swallow hard.

      “There’s nothing to grow back, sweetheart. Your grandmother is a wonderful woman—sometimes anyway—but she’s a storyteller. You like telling stories too, don’t you?” I do? “Remember when Frieda told you and Lauren that we’d found you under a cabbage leaf?”

      That doesn’t count. That’s not the same thing at all.

      Mom smiles and motions me to her stool. When she hugs me, her heavy, tanned boobs push into my stomach and leave indentations like I’m made of clay or wet papier-mâché. She smells of perfume and cigarettes, wine and turpentine. She’s beautiful in her paint-speckled toreador pants and baggy work shirt. I want to look just like her when I grow up.

      “I guess it’s okay if it hurts,” I say. Then, remembering my first day at Frieda’s church, I add, “God doesn’t give us anything we can’t handle.”

      Mom stiffens. “Listen,” she says, “if you really want me to, Lily, I’ll take a look.”

      Yes. No. “Yes.”

      It’s weird to feel something growing inside you; something that’s attached but still wants to get out. What if it keeps growing? Caesar, the biggest German shepherd in a three-block radius, got Judy’s poodle, Fifi, pregnant. Even though Judy is three years older than I am and says she doesn’t believe in magic (or God), we’ve been burning candles, making up spells, and saying prayers in Pig Latin and Spanish (Judy’s taking Spanish in school) so Fifi won’t die giving birth to oversized puppies.

      Good thing Lauren isn’t around. She’s a blabbermouth and would tell all her friends at school about my invisible tail.

      I shake as I follow Mom to the bathroom.

      What if she pulls down my pedal pushers and my tail plops out and she screams bloody murder until the neighbors call the police? They have to, don’t they? Dad said you should never be afraid of calling the police. “That’s what they’re there for.” Maybe it’s even written on the side of their cop cars when they squeal into our driveway and wrap bright yellow police tape all over our house. Danger. No Trespassing, it reads. Our neighbors stand together in their front yards watching while Mom is led out of our house, crying and shaking, by a nice policewoman who looks like Ethel Mertz on the TV show I Love Lucy. I watch while the police put on gas masks and pull bats and shields from the back of their cars before entering the house where they look for me.

      I’m a freak like Lawrence Talbot in the old werewolf movies, half-man, half–murderous dog.

      A horse-drawn wagon appears in our driveway. An old gypsy woman slips a feedbag over the horse’s nose and waves at me standing in my window.

      I stop at the threshold to the bathroom. Inside, Mom sits on the edge of the tub, waiting. “If you don’t want me to look, Lily, I’ve got other things to do.” After I pull down my pants, she tenderly presses the skin around my tailbone. “Does that hurt?”

      I grit my teeth. Yes, I’m growing a tail, why

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