She crouched down in the weeds, pierced the scum of algae and sank her hands beneath the water. Futile, the shop would just get more of them. The tank flashed in her mind, the little fish doomed to be food, and she thought about bringing the whole school of them down here. She shook her head to ward off descending mosquitos, held her breath against the stillwater stink. Shawna walked back to her yard, down to the swamp. She considered putting it back in the tank, but it was covered in mud. But to take one out, to watch it suffocate? Death was death, no matter how small. A minnow.Īs a child, she too had dipped her arms into the tank outside the tackle shop across the street, fascinated by the soft brush of silvery fishy bodies swimming against her skin. She reached the brown water and knelt down, cupped her hands around the panicked movement and lifted it up. The graveyard shift had stolen her brother away tonight–he’d slicked his hair back and suited up in the casino’s signature gold and blue, headed out to the blackjack buzz. Her bare feet mashed down the giant prints of trucks, quads, she recognized Pete’s Jeep in there.
#How to surface when swimming underwater in the game scum cracked
Shawna slid down from her cushion and walked to the edge of the cracked asphalt. The trio scattered towards their yard and disappeared behind the bang of a screen door. “Michelle! Amy, Kevin, come here immediately!” A voice sharp from their porch.
The eldest, the boy, threw something down into the muck.
The kids from next door were gathered by the side of the road, giggling around a puddle from last night’s rainwater. Shrill laughter shattered the calm, as it often did. Everyone else from school was down on the boardwalk, flashing their first fake I.D.’s or getting their true love’s name airbrushed across a t-shirt, but she could only handle solitude, right now. The radio on her night table played Steve Miller and she spun the volume louder, leaned back against the window’s splintering frame. A breeze blew in from the ocean, a taste of salt in the air. Light splashed through the trees, down onto dandelions and patches of water.
The world was a wash of green outside Shawna’s bedroom window.
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