Two Fish

seven || alaska

Alaska tried to get upstairs before her mother saw her in an outfit that definitely wasn’t hers. It was then that she realised she’d left the bag of soggy clothes in the foot well of Elver’s car and groaned.

“Alaska? Is that you?” her mother called from the kitchen.

She glanced between the bannisters and caught her mother’s eye through the open kitchen door. “Hi, Mum.”

“Come on down, I’m not talking to you if you’re all the way over there.”

She trudged into the kitchen and her mother’s hand flew to her mouth.

“What on earth happened to you?” she asked, a knife in one hand and a half-chopped lettuce on the counter. Alaska was a little wary of the knife.

“I fell in the pond, sort of.”

“Oh, honey, I’m sorry. Are you ok?”

Alaska nodded, though she rather wanted to cry. While not particularly traumatic for most people, she wasn’t most people.

“Whose clothes are those?”

That was what she had wanted to avoid at all costs.

“Well, I was kind of knocked into the pond,” she said, fiddling with a wet, lank piece of hair.

“By whom?” her mother asked, ever correct.

“A boy called Elver.”

“Elver? What kind of name is Elver?”

“He said the same about me.”

“But that doesn’t explain your clothes.” Her mother put the knife down, thankfully.

“Well I was soaked. He had his sister’s stuff in his car so I kind of borrowed it.”

Her mother sighed. “Give it all to me, and the wet stuff. I’ll run it through the wash.” She held out her hand.

Alaska shifted on her feet. “I left it in his car.”

“You went in his car?”

She nodded, biting her lip.

“Why on earth did you get in his car?” Her mother’s knife hand was now on her hip

“He was really apologetic and he offered me a lift and I was soaked and annoyed.”

“But you hate cars.”

“I know. I didn’t enjoy it.”

“And he’s a stranger. Alaska, I thought I brought you up better than this.” She shook her head and massaged her temples. “You shouldn’t be getting in cars with strangers.”

“He was only a kid, my age. He looked like he was going to cry, he was so sorry.”

“I’m not happy about this,” she said, getting back to her cutting. “But there are worse things. Are you ok?” She knew, though she didn’t really understand why, her daughter was so paranoid about anybody’s cars or anything that involved being unexpectedly upended in a pond.

“Fine. Just, you know, wish I’d never gone out. I wouldn’t be covered in pond slime and I wouldn’t have had to talk to that boy and go in his car.”

“Let’s not start this. You needed to get out.”

Alaska groaned and turned on her heels, dragging herself upstairs.

“You go and get cleaned up. Ok?”

“Ok.”

“Hold on a sec.”

Alaska stopped at the bottom of the stairs and her mother hurried over.

“You’ve got a little something,” she said, biting her tongue and squinting as she picked a long, thin strand of pondweed out of her daughter’s hair.

She stood in the shower with her eyes closed, gently massaging shampoo into her hair and letting the soap run over her face. She thought about Elver, about his weird name and battered car and the fact that he still had her clothes. And he knew where she lived. But he hated fish.

After drying her hair, she knotted a towel round her body and stood in front of Gordon’s tank.

“You’ll never guess what happened today,” she said, pressing her hand against the glass. He swam up to her fingers, inspecting each one. “I swam with the fish, the big ones in the park.”

Gordon’s mouth opened and closed and he stared at her, unblinking, slowly moving his fins but not going  anywhere. Sometimes he did that, just floated perfectly still for ages until she thought something was wrong with him, and he would then swim off through the plastic bushels in his tank.

She shook a little food into his tank. “There was a guy there. Elver. I think that’s some kind of fish, but I don’t think he’s the sort of person I should be around. He doesn’t like fish.” She patted Gordon’s tank as he gulped down the sodden flakes. “But I’ve got you, eh Gordy?”

The little orange fish just popped his mouth open and closed a few times and swam away. Alaska retied her towel and went downstairs. 

Elver was in the kitchen.