"Hey. What are you guys up to?" I asked.
"Marco! You're alive!" Cassie said.
"Yeah. And I brought someone for each of you to meet. Dive on in. It's hammerhead time."
the next day there was a huge headline in the newspaper. A terrible accident at the Ocean World Aquarium. Two guards were missing. Also several fish.
The one guard who did remain told a bizarre tale of a half-deer, half-human creature. The aquarium spokesman sort of implied that the guards must have gotten drunk and shot up the place, causing the tunnel to shatter.
It was on the TV news and everything. CNN even sent a camera crew.
On Monday I handed in five pages of pure, total babble as a book report.
I wrote it on the bus. On Thursday I got it back. D-minus. The teacher wrote, "Nice try, Marco. Do it over, and this time try reading the book."
What can I say? Some teachers buy it. Some don't.
We had decided we couldn't go back to the Royal Island facility until the weekend. Sneaking out at night was risky. If one of us got caught and grounded, we'd be out of business for a while.
I had stopped worrying what the others thought about my running from the sharks. I felt like my actions at the aquarium balanced that out. And I kind of felt like I'd gotten past my fear of sharks. More or less. I mean it's never a good idea to get casual about sharks.
Instead of obsessing over being scared of sharks, I found I was obsessing about the shark DNA inside me. I wanted to morph that shark. I wanted to be it. I wanted to know what it felt like to be so relentless, so unafraid. So totally without emotion.
Twice I dreamed about it. Both times in the dream I was a shark, only I still had my own face. And both times someone was doing something terrible. I can't remember what, I just remember thinking, Oh, man, that's awful. But in my dream I was a shark, and so whatever the terrible thing was, I was safe.
I wish I could remember what the terrible
thing was. I think maybe it was someone being killed. A woman's voice kept saying, "Help me, help me." I remember that much. But it was confusing because sometimes the voice would start yelling, "Help him, help him."
After school Thursday, I hung around for a while. I went to the gym. I went to the pool. To my surprise, it was empty. The swim team was somewhere else, I guess. Maybe off shaving their legs and heads. I don't know.
The pool is indoors. It smells of chlorine and mildew. It's one of those places that makes you think about athlete's foot, you know? It's white tile around the sides and dark blue on the bottom. There's a high board and a springboard. There are windows high up on one wall of the room, but mostly the light is fluorescent. There are lights like car high beams in the water itself. But still, it all manages to be gloomy, no matter how many lights are on.
I knew what I was going to do. And I knew it was stupid. But I knew if I didn't do it here, I'd do it in some even stupider place. Like my bathtub at home.
I went to my gym locker and changed into my gym shorts. Then I went back and checked the pool once more. No one. No one in the bleachers. No one in the water. Not a ripple.
I jumped in, feet first, around the eight-foot marker. I bobbed back up to the surface and said, "This is insane, Marco."
To which I answered, "So I'll be careful."
To which I countered, "You're talking to yourself, do you know that?"
"Oh, shut up," I said.
I began to do what I had been wanting to do since Sunday. I began to focus my mind on the shark. I saw it in my memory. Saw it chasing me down that plastic tunnel.
I pictured the moment when I touched the shark's sandpaper skin and brought it under the acquiring spell. And then, slowly, I felt the changes begin.
It started with the squishy sound of my own bones dissolving. See, sharks don't have bones. Just cartilage.
I could hear my bones. The bones in my arms. The bones in my legs. My hip bones, and even my spine, were all starting to dissolve.
I could see down through the water, down to my feet. They shimmered against the deep blue background. They began to elongate. The toes stretched out and out, till each toe was a foot long. My calves followed them, stretching like Gumby. It was a total shock when I realized I was touching the bottom of the pool.
Something was happening to my back. I felt
something growing there, getting larger. It was building itself out of my melting bones.
I reached behind me with my still-human fingers and touched something triangular. I was growing a dorsal fin!
I felt the inside of my mouth itching. Itching amazingly, almost like teething pain.
Shark's teeth were filling my mouth.
Then . , .
"Hey, wuss, get outta the pool!"
There was a loud splash, then another. I spun around. Two heads coming toward me. Two sets of powerful arms churning the water.
Drake and Woo. Two total jerks. Two abject, total bullies. They were also great divers for the school team. At least Drake was. Woo was a complete burnout. He had the I.Q. of cheese.
"Get out of the pool, punk!" Woo said.
"Don't make us kick your butt, Marco-roni," Drake added.
I should have been afraid of them. But I was only afraid they might dive beneath the surface. If they went down there they'd see that I wasn't exactly normal. But from the surface they'd probably just think my ultra-long legs and toes were a distortion.
I started to reverse the morph. I'd been an idiot! I'd left myself open for something like this. Jake would kill me. If he found out. I demorphed as fast as I could. I felt my toes lose contact with the pool bottom.
Then Woo lay back in the water, raised one leg, and kicked me square in the chest with his foot.
I didn't see it coming. Couldn't dodge the blow.
"Ooomph!" The air burst from my lungs. I clutched at my chest.
"Told you to step off," Drake said. "Now we're going to have to stomp you for not having any respect. Unless you want to get your skinny hinder out of the pool."