Two Fish

nine || alaska

Alaska lay on her bed with Elver’s number flattened out on floor. She blew and it disappeared under her bed.

“Alaska?” Her mother knocked on the door and came in before her daughter could respond.

“What?”

“Your behaviour in front of that young man was rather appalling,” she said, frowning at the girl. “He was just being nice and you were nothing but rude.”

“He’s just a weirdo.”

Her mother came in and closed the door behind her, standing in front of Alaska. “Why can’t you just be a little pleasant? He did nothing to offend you and you can’t even smile.”

“He pushed me in the pond, Mum. Don’t you get that? Why should I be nice?” she said, through gritted teeth. Fighting with her mother always stirred up so much anger that she usually ended in tears.

“Jesus, Lassie, are you serious?” She put her hands on her hips. “Won’t you learn? He was being nice, a true gentleman and you couldn’t even say thank you.”

“Whatever.”

“No, not ‘whatever,’ you owe that boy an apology. I don’t know what your father and I could have possibly done wrong for you to turn out like this, but I don’t like it one bit. You need to change your attitude, missy. I don’t even know what to do with you.”

Alaska sighed and ignored the part of her that screamed guilty. “You could just leave me alone.”

Her mother scowled, wanting to screech at her daughter. “You need to think about the way you act. I don’t want to see you again until you agree to apologise.” She stormed out of Alaska’s room and pulled the door shut, hard.

Alaska, the blind fool, couldn’t see what was wrong when, of course, it was her. Anyone could have seen that she was out of order but it took her mother to tell her so.

She languished in the bath that evening, slipping down until her face was covered and she held her breath under the water. At first, she thought of how she wished she was Gordon, forever underwater and deaf to her mother’s lecturing. She could just swim away from conflict and forget about it in seconds.

She was interrupted by a knocking on the door.

“Lassie?” It was Noah. “Lassie?”

She sat up and wiped her eyes.

“Lassie? Lassie?”

“What?”

“Supper’s ready,” he said in his droning, monosyllabic voice.

“I’m not hungry.”

“Ok.”

She heard his footsteps disappearing down the hall and dunked her head under the water again and her mother’s words floated back to her. In that moment, she felt terrible: she was a disappointment and she had hurt Elver, let alone her mother’s pride. The pressing threat of tears forced her up from her watery solitude and she gasped for breath, blinking away the soapy water infiltrating her eyes.

The scrap of paper seemed to have disappeared in the clutter under Alaska’s bed, victim to the dust mites and whatever other creatures had taken up residence under there.

“Damn it,” she muttered to herself, lying flat on her stomach with her arms and head under the low bed. The dull light of her phone wasn’t nearly enough to light the gloomy cave so she was fumbling with long fingers where she hadn’t dared to go in a long time.

After what felt like forever but was probably only ten minutes, she surfaced, triumphant. She had been so focused on finding what she’d been looking for that she had forgotten how much she didn’t want to call Elver, or see him again, but it would keep her mother quiet and a little less nosy. 

Minnie came in without knocking and Alaska, in just her underwear, dived for a towel.

“Why didn’t you have supper?” she asked.

“I’m not hungry.”

Minnie looked her up and down. “You’re acting weird though. And you kinda made Mum grumpy.”

“Well, whatever. She doesn’t want to see me.”

“She does, actually,” Minnie said. “If she sees you, that means you’ve quit being a spoilt, stuck-up brat, or something along those lines.” She maintained a completely neutral expression throughout the exchange.

“Mum said that?”

Minnie left without a word, leaving the door open, the sort of thing that made Alaska furious. She bottled her rage though, kicking the door shut with her heel and lying on her back across her bed.

Elver’s handwriting was small, a tight and almost unreadable scrawl. Its hour under the bed was already showing, the pencil script a little scuffed and the paper grimy to touch.

She laboriously typed in the number, holding still for a moment before she pressed the green button. Breath held. Lying still. Phone ringing, that wonderful dialling tone.

“Hello?” It was Elver. Of course it was Elver; it was his phone.

“Hi. It’s Alaska.”

“Alaska? Hi, hi,” he said. She kind of wanted to laugh, or put the phone down.

“I, I thought maybe I should, I mean … I’m sorry.” She hated to be a hypocrite, uttering the one phrase she had so teased him for.

“What for?”

That upended her. “For being a bit of a, well, you know. And I owe you an apology.”

“No, you really shouldn’t. It’s fine,” Elver said.

“No, I do.” She paused, fingering the thick hem of her towel, kicked her feet up against the wall. “I shouldn’t have been so rude.” Something Alaska had never noticed before: being nice to someone, especially this fish-hating apology-mumbling oddball actually felt good.

“It’s ok, you had reason to be.”

“Stop being so nice, Elver,” she said, a hint of a smile in her voice. She took a deep breath for what she was about to say, something nobody ever would have thought would pass her lips. “I was thinking, maybe we could meet at the park tomorrow?”