The Guardian

Hawkshaw shrugged one shoulder, as if what she said didn’t matter. “He’ll have breathing space here.”

He obviously didn’t understand, didn’t want to. “Listen,” she said, her voice brittle, “I’m not asking any favors for myself. But you might show a little sympathy for Charlie. He’s only a child, he has special needs, this is a horrible situation.”

“I happen,” he said coolly, “to be rather good with kids.”

I’ll bet, she thought. I’ll just bet.

The breeze tossed Hawkshaw’s hair, flapped the worn cloth of his shorts. He crossed his arms across his chest. He tilted his head in the direction of the stalker’s notes.

“Katherine,” he said, “you think I haven’t seen letters like that before? I have. Plenty of them. You can stop blushing.”

She didn’t want to hear more. She turned and took refuge in the quiet of his strange, disordered house.

CHARLIE’S EYES FLUSTERED open, struggled to focus. Mama leaned over him, smiling. An instant uneasiness swept over him.

These days Mama’s smile was different than it used to be, it no longer seemed real or alive. The smile was like a mask. Charlie could not explain this, he only knew it was true.

“We’re here, Charlie,” Mama said. Her voice was cheerful, but her eyes weren’t. “We’re in Florida. We got here last night. You were asleep—”

Charlie sat up, frowning and rubbing his eyes. She had told him yesterday they had to go to Florida, she had showed him meaningless shapes on a map, she had said a lot of words. Now she was saying them again.

You’re in Florida.

Florida seemed to be a room that was little and not very nice and smelled funny. He didn’t like it. He wanted to go home.

He rubbed his eyes harder, till he saw colored sparks whirl and swoop across his vision. Then he stopped. Warily he opened his eyes again.

Florida was still there, the whole room of it. And the scary thing about Florida was that it was different from all he knew. His bed was not really his bed. The walls were not his walls, the window not his window.

“This house belongs to a man named Mr. Hawkshaw,” Mama said. “Mr. Hawkshaw’s a friend of Mr. Corbett. You remember Mr. Corbett? He drove us to the airport—”

The mask of Mama’s bright smile made Charlie feel something was badly wrong. Her words beat against his ears the way moths beat against a screen at night. Like moths, the words wanted in, but they couldn’t get in.

Charlie stared at the curtains as if hypnotized. They were not his real curtains with the pictures of the Star Wars people on them. These curtains were ugly-brown with blue-and-white fishes on them. The fishes had little blue dots for eyes.

Mama was still talking, her words softly going bat, bat, bat. She had him up, leading him to a bathroom that was not his real bathroom. Her words couldn’t get inside his head. He was too busy looking at all the different things, all the wrong things, all the Florida things, in this bathroom.

The wallpaper was enough to make him dizzy. There were more fishes on it, silly pink-and-yellow fish on a watery green background. He felt as if he were underwater, that Florida had turned him into a fish-boy.

“Hello,” he called in his mind to the other fish. “Hello, I’m a boy who’s trapped here. How do I get back home?”

“Swim, you must swim very hard,” said a pale-yellow fish. “You must swim with all your might. ”

“Charlie, stand still!” Mama ordered. “Just brush your teeth.”

“I’m swimming home,” Charlie said around his toothbrush. His arms made wild windmill motions, as if he were swimming at a heroic pace.

He imagined he was friends with all the fish. He began to sing “Under the Sea.” He imagined himself singing and dancing with all the fish and a big red lobster and pretty little mermaids.

His mother told him to quiet down, but her words were only more moths flying airily around his head. “Under the sea,” he sang and did a fancy fish-dance step. “Under the se-e-a—”

Mama said something about breakfast. She pulled a clean shirt down over his head.

Help! thought Charlie. I can’t see! I can’t breathe! Mama’s a sea witch! She’s put me in a bag!

But he sputtered out of the neck hole of his shirt, safe again. “To the kitchen—” said Mama, opening the door into a hallway. From the first look, he didn’t like this hallway. It was long and narrow and different—it was more of nasty Florida.

But fat old Maybelline was up now, and she wanted out. She waddled down the hallway, her short regs chugging, her ears nearly trailing on the ground.

Charlie the fish-boy swam behind her, his arms churning again. “Glub,” he said. “Glub-glub.” He pretended Maybelline was a squid and that he was following her.

Then he was out of the sea and into a living room, and wow, it wasn’t his living room, it was really different—not all neat like Mama kept their place, and there was stuff everywhere!

He stopped to gape. His mind spun, trying to take it all in as his eyes danced from one object to another. Such a wealth of things! A cascade of things—fishing poles, a net with a handle, a tackle box, an oar, hooks, bobbers, flies, weights, a hundred things that he had no names for.

“Cool!” Charlie breathed. He felt dizzy with wonder. He looked up at a big fish stuffed and mounted on a wall. Was it a shark? It was, it was a shark, he was sure of it—what a paradise of stuff.

“Way cool!”

He reached toward a fishing pole, the biggest fishing pole he’d ever seen. Surely such a pole was used to catch whales!

“Charlie, don’t,” his mother warned, pulling his hand back. “That’s Mr. Hawkshaw’s. Come on. Let’s take Maybelline outside. Then we’ll find some breakfast.”

But Charlie couldn’t help himself. He picked up a colorful fishing lure with all sorts of bright mirror-things glittering on it. It had red plastic tentacles like an octopus—it even had little eyes!

“Charlie!” his mother said sternly.

But the lure was too wonderful, and he was turning it over and over until it bit him—

“Yow!” Charlie sprang back, dropping the lure. A bright drop of blood welled at the tip of his thumb. “I’m stabbed!” he cried. “I been stabbed by an octopus!”

“You should mind your mother, kid,” said a man’s voice.

Something in that voice paralyzed Charlie. A lion-voice , he thought wildly. I hear a lion-voice.

He turned and saw a big, tall man standing in the doorway. This man looked like a superhero to Charlie, except he was dressed strangely. All he wore were shorts and a black baseball cap. His skin was tawny-brown all over, like a lion’s. Charlie stared up at this wondrous being.

“Charlie, now you’ve hurt yourself,” his mother said, but he barely heard her. He was too busy looking at the superhero.

“Let me see your hand,” Mama fussed, but the words fluttered in confusion at his ears. They didn’t really register. He shook off Mama’s questing hand.

“Let’s see, Charlie,” the tall man said, kneeling beside him. He took Charlie by the hand and squinted at the bleeding thumb.

“I was bit by an octopus,” Charlie said, hoping to impress him. “Maybe I’ll die of octopus poison.”

“I doubt it,” said the man. “Come over to the sink. We’ll wash it and put on some antiseptic.”

“It hurts,” Charlie said, “but I’m not crying. See?” He pointed at his tearless eyes.