My neighbor and longtime rival’s goldfish just died.
It was delicious.
To clarify: I, Lionel Honeycutt, did not eat the goldfish. In fact, I remain in good standing with the marine life community.
It’s my cat that’s in the proverbial doghouse.
That fateful day—yesterday, to be exact—Michaela “Mickey” Kyle and I could only watch in shock and morbid fascination as my cat preyed upon its wriggly victim. Mickey gasped as my cat pounced and pinned the just-purchased fish to the asphalt of our street. She made this weird, high-pitched shriek as Harry chomped down, her demeanor deflating like a three-day-old balloon as we both watched the scaly, unliving mass slide down his gullet.
I blame bad reflexes. She blames the cat. And my existence.
Mickey had just returned home with the fish bag as I was trying to corral Harry back inside for his bath. The cat slipped away from me and ran across the road and into her driveway. This startled Mickey enough that she dropped the bag. It burst, and suddenly Harry was indulging in the feline version of street food.
“At least it didn’t suffer,” I offer meekly.
“The only way it could’ve suffered more is if it were fried into a filet, wrapped in a toasted bun, and sold alongside a McFlurry,” Mickey replies.
And now I’m craving McDonald’s.
We exit the city bus, Mickey plodding off and me barely squeezing out behind her as the door closes. Mickey soldiers onto the crosswalk and cuts right into the grass buffering the street from the mall parking lot.
“Slow down,” I say, touching her shoulder. She heel-turns, her brown eyes somehow incandescent red.
“I’m gonna write a will someday,” she declares. “And the first sentence will say ‘I hate Lionel Honeycutt, and you must, too.’ Because I want to make sure my loathing for you gets passed down for generations to come.”
The Pet Emporium is on the far side of a mall on the far side of our town, Westlake. Both the mall and the town have seen better days. The mall is a relic of retail’s golden years, having survived three recessions, two renovations, and a mass exodus of the local customer base to a bigger mall two towns away. The store is inexplicably placed next to the perfumery, so the whole wing reeks of dog hair and chlorine with a soft undercurrent of cherry-lavender flower bomb.
It’s my favorite smell simply because it’s attached to my favorite memory: buying cat toys and a carrier the day I
adopted Harry—or, as Mickey has dubbed him, “the Butcher of Westlake.” He was a kitty then, and I, a kindergartner. So long ago that Mickey and I weren’t even sworn enemies yet. We were friends, actually. Best friends.
I’m ten steps behind as Mickey barrels through the mall’s side entrance. She makes no effort to hold the door open for me, and I almost trip squeezing through before it closes. Many of the same stores I remember from childhood line the corridor. The nail salon. The shoe place. The counterculture trinket store with the stylized neon sign.
The door chimes as she enters the pet store with me trailing her. A tall, thin rail of a guy behind the counter puts his phone down, scratches the stubble above his ring of neck tattoos, and cranks out a smile more laborious than his actual job. With a decidedly flat, unhelpful tone, he drawls out a “Hi, welcome to Pet Emporium. How may I help you?” The space above him is hazy, a wispy cloud of gray smoke yawning across the ceiling. Is he seriously vaping?
Mickey slowly glides over to the counter. “Yes,” she replies. “I’ve got this pest problem I need eliminated.”
“Fleas on the dog?” he asks.
Her head shakes. “Boy. Over the shoulder,” she tells him with a slight nod. Leaning on the glass, her words shift into a low, conspiratorial mode: “Can you help me . . . eliminate this problem?”
“Uhhh,” the poor guy says.
Mickey leaves him speechless as she barges toward the aquariums, me following close behind. It’s just us here, apart from a couple who look to be in their twenties. They’re holding hands, spouting color names and compliments as they point to the more ostentatious fish. The antithesis of us. Mickey approaches a tank next to the one that the couple stopped in front of, examining each fish as a doctor would a patient. I wander to the couple’s other side and peer into a different tank, figuring the more distance between Mickey and me, the better.
It’s not long before one of the fish catches my attention. It has long whiskers like an elderly graybeard. It’s sleek and unbothered by the others, and it doesn’t swim so much as mosey through the water. It’s mostly blue save a dorsal fin so wavy and silver that it looks like a feather cap.
While I watch it, a wave of sadness just barely touches me, as light and lingering as the prick of a thorn. Grandpa’s feather hat. The one he wore in his first starring role, Carnage at the Disco. I loved that hat. He’d let me wear it around his house when I was younger, mimicking his famous strut that he so often broke into while walking into a brawl or away from a climactic explosion. I used to try so hard to be like him. It’s weird thinking about how someone who once had so much life in him could have such a sullen and acidic ending.
In the last few weeks since it happened, completely random things—laundry detergent scents, snippets of old-school songs, and now this fish—have conjured feelings ranging from sad to celebratory. Looming over this swirl of emotions is the posthumous October premiere of what’s hyped to be his most prestigious film. The one advance reviews have raved about and the streaming services are expected to fight a bidding war to carry. The one my parents and grandma are inexplicably unexcited about attending, despite it being only a month away.
“Hey, loser, you’re gonna spook the fish,” Mickey says. I snap to attention, just now realizing the couple has walked away. She’s looking right at me. “Why were you staring anyway?” she asks.
I scramble for an answer. “Because it’s blue” is the only thing I can come up with.
“What?”
“Well,” I say, pointing to the aquarium in front of me, “they’re called ‘goldfish,’ right? Shouldn’t they all be gold?”
She shrugs, as if the answer is obvious. “They didn’t start out gold.” Her eyes settle back on her phone screen as it records the tank before her. I study Mickey as she studies her camera screen, capturing their movements with all the precision and perceptiveness of Spielberg. “It’s genetics,” she continues. “Goldfish derived from carp, which are kind of a dull greenish or olive color and—” She pauses, catching me staring her. “Well, you
asked. . . .”
The doorbell chimes again. I look back toward the front and see the top of a kid’s head bobbing along just beyond a high shelf. When he stops in front of a cage of chinchillas, I’m able to make out his face, slightly. I watch him for a while before turning my attention back to the blue fish. The Grandpa fish. But I can’t help but keep Mickey in my periphery. She’s so enthralled by the swarm of fish in her tank that after about a minute her phone and her nose are a few inches from the glass.
Why is she so into these things? They’re just miniature swimming fish. You can’t talk to them or take them for a walk. And the only time they’re paying you the slightest bit of attention is when it’s feeding time. I remember when I asked Dad for a goldfish in first grade. Grandpa happened to be there, and he scoffed at the request. “What’s the use of a pet you can’t even pet?” he asked. Then, turning to my dad, he said, “Them’s for lightweights and lazy folks. Get that boy something with teeth.” Despite my dad’s audible groan, Grandpa was right. Never again did I ask for a pet I couldn’t hold.
“Could you just pick a fish so we can go?” I ask.
“It’s not that simple,” Mickey says. She sidesteps, closing in on my tank. She starts snapping portrait-style photos of each fish before sifting through her work like she’s viewing art at a gallery.
“So weird,” I whisper, mostly to myself, but I also don’t care if she hears. I suppose I should expect this by now. Her being so extra. This is, after all, the girl who openly bragged about her mom’s documentary films on bird migration or the mating habits of tiger swallowtail butterflies, as if that were engaging lunchtime cafeteria conversation.
Even I, a simple six-year-old, knew she was a certified weirdo back then. She’s always been that way. Ten years later, guys still stay away, even though she’s grown to be what an objective observer would describe as cute—pretty, even, if you overlook the horns and forked tongue.
“I have my process” is all she says.
“Why does your process involve recording every fish you see?”
She doesn’t answer, but not in a purposefully-ignoring-me way. It’s more like she’s flustered. She sucks in her cheeks and kind of angles away from me just a hair, the slight movement rustling up the vanilla scent at her neck.
A moment later, she points. “That one.” I look at it. Nothing special. It’s orange with a white dorsal fin and what appears to be an anvil-shaped birthmark just above its mouth. It curls around a lighthouse before darting into the underwater castle, peeking out at us from the throne room.
She beckons the clerk over, and he opens the top of the aquarium as Mickey directs him to the exact fish she wants.
“Okay, so. One more request,” Mickey says, drawing my attention from the clerk. She shoves the phone into my chest. “Can you record this?”
“Record what?”
“The handoff.” I squint, and she quickly adds, “Don’t laugh.”
My first thought,
of course, is to bust out laughing, because what? How strange can she be? But I tamp down the instinct. For some otherworldly reason, this means something to her, so I gotta respect that.
I film as the clerk sets a clear plastic bag in the water and then dips a net into the tank. The fish easily dodges the first few swipes, making the clerk look quite incompetent trying to catch Mickey’s chosen fish. It seems to be predicting his moves well in advance, like it’s playing chess while the clerk is shoving the bishops up his nose. As the charade goes on, he gets more irritated, taking bigger swipes, grunting, even splashing water with his frantic thrusts. Mickey and I both grin as we watch.
And then we notice our shared grins and grin at that. A stark departure from our fates as archnemeses. So what if we share the same grim sense of humor?
Finally, the guy nets the fish and turns with a self-satisfied smile. “Got it.” He thrusts the bag toward her, dripping water on my shoes.
“Wow! Bassmaster, fish tank level: Achieved!” Mickey says, clapping.
The guy gets all in a huff, defiantly declaring, “It’s carp, actually.”
Mickey simply curls a lip and pats his shoulder. “Never change, dude. Never change.”
Actually, he should change. Both of us catch the smell of smoke from his clothes. Thin gray wisps float across my field of vision. But that can’t be right. He couldn’t have just vaped. He was just struggling to catch a freaking fish!
Mickey sniffs. “Dude, could you be a stoner off the clock, please?”
The guy starts to respond, but his words get entangled in a fit of coughing. He tries to wave away the smoke now descending like fog after a hard rain, but it’s not working. It’s covering the whole area.
“What is this?” Mickey coughs.
We get our answer a second later. A set of ceiling tiles collapses behind me, kicking up a cloud of dust. Each light pops as it goes out. Hot air singes our skin, and a hazy glow grows above us as tile after tile turns to peels of falling ash.
I point. “Fire!”
“No shit!” Mickey yells.
I hear shouting somewhere in the back. The couple. I turn to the store clerk. “There’s people back there!”
“And I wish them the best!” he says. “Shit, I gotta get all these animals out.”
A loud crack sounds out from above. I look up. A beam breaks. More smoke rushes down. The ceiling tiles are gone, and I can see the crisscross
of struts and joists buckling. The fire is spiraling around an HVAC duct, with flames jumping off every which way and sparking new blazes. I spot a nearby display catch on fire.
I hear another crash from the back of the store. I put Mickey’s phone atop a shelf and grab a pack of dog food. I hoist it over my head, thinking it might save me from falling debris.
We’re barreling toward the exit when a woman’s scream rings out. The couple. Why aren’t they escaping with us? Instinctually, I make my dumbest move yet. I start trekking toward the back. When water splashes my ankles, I realize Mickey’s following.
I glance over my shoulder, and she’s holding an aquarium. I’m about to lose my effing mind. “Why are you holding that?” I yell.
Her eyes plead innocence. “For . . . dousing!”
It’s obvious she’s trying to save the fish.
When we turn the corner, it becomes apparent why the couple hasn’t escaped. The man’s legs are absolutely buried under a mound of grooming products, topped by a whole row of shelving. I drop the dog food and Mickey sets down the aquarium, and we rush over.
The guy groans. The woman is frantically pulling his arm, but I see the exhaustion in her eyes and the sweat beads streaming down her soot-covered face.
“What should we do?!” Mickey asks.
“Get the stuff off him!” I yell. Mickey grabs as many shampoo bottles as she can and hurls them. There’s a huge whoosh of flame birthed by the chemicals. The blowback makes the area furnace-level hot. “Don’t throw it in the fire!” I yell.
We start grabbing bottles and setting them gently but hastily on the carpet. When we uncover more of the guy’s leg, I make the call to lift the shelf. I look to the woman still pulling him by the arm. “When we lift, you pull as hard and as far as you can!” I say to her.
Mickey and I crouch and try to grab the metal edge of the shelf before recoiling. It’s too hot to touch. I take my shirt off and put the top half into Mickey’s hands while holding the bottom in my palms. The metal’s still hot but bearable, just barely.
“Lift!” I shout. The smoke thickens as we attempt to raise the structure. The man grunts as his significant other pulls, and I feel the guy’s leg shift against my ankle that’s firmly placed near the side of the shelf. It’s working.
“I can’t hold it much longer!” Mickey says.
“Keep going!” I reply, but I’m fighting my own battle. The metal’s searing into my skin like a branding iron.
In the next instant, approximately a million thoughts crowd my head like bats in a cave. What if we can’t get this guy out? What if none of us make it? The nerves in my body surge and tingle as adrenaline courses through me. Through dark smoke, I see the face of a woman who won’t last ten more seconds, a girlfriend’s desperate efforts to save her love. A man in the vise grip of death. The metal is like fire in my palm. Mickey yelps, then grunts as I let it go.
But I can’t just let it go. I can be the hero here. Just like Grandpa.
My eyes shut. I try
again. I grab the metal, tighter this time. It feels like pure hell. I crouch even more, like a loaded spring. My muscles coil as my mind counts down.
Three. Two. One.
I suppose, in retrospect, I should’ve stretched after PE earlier. Or drank more Gatorade. Whatever I’ve done that’s bringing on my leg cramp during this harrowing moment, it couldn’t have come at a worse time. My legs buckle, and I grab my calf. Mickey coughs out a “What the fuck?” as the woman screams and the guy cries out in agony under the dropped weight of metal shelving.
I start limp-crawling backward. Then everything goes black for who knows how long. Suddenly I wake, my eyes springing open, my lungs gasping for the “good air” driven low toward the carpet. Seconds later, someone who I suspect is Mickey staggers toward me, tripping over me. My hunch is confirmed when water from the aquarium she was carrying earlier splashes my face. Miraculously, I have the awareness to follow her, rolling onto my stomach and army-crawling toward the front of the store. Dozens of chinchillas and ferrets and guinea pigs stream out alongside me. Me, imploring Mickey not to drag a fish tank out with her. Her, of course, ignoring me. The nearby sound of sirens as we struggle into the fresher mall-corridor air beyond the threshold.
Dazed, I watch as firemen run toward the flames, and it takes a few seconds to register the two people they pass to get there. The couple. I look on as someone drapes a blanket over them and points toward us. They look our way, their nods tired but appreciative. I notice Mickey a few feet from me. She’s bent over the lip of the fountain, splashing her face and wiping black ash from her cheeks. She sees me looking. Her expression softens. I think she’s about to make a witty joke or even give a compliment. I let my guard down, a hesitant smile dawning on my lips. All she says is “You still owe me a fish.”
Two days later, I still can’t piece together everything that happened, but that doesn’t stop my friend Theo from filling in the details like spackle into wall cracks.
“I bet you it was some voodoo shit that started that fire. You know that store is cursed, right?” he says as the bell rings.
My stare disengages from the poster I’m taping to the wall and redirects on him. “No, I—wait, what?”
“Mm-hmm,” Theo says, nodding. “Some of the clerks was secretly hawking exotic Siamese kitten litters in the back of the shop a couple years ago. God don’t like liars or pet killers. Probably saw you and the clerk in there and went for a two-for-one special.”
I pivot until I’m square with him. The calmness in my voice doesn’t mask my agitation by a long shot. “For the last time: I didn’t kill Mickey’s fish. My cat ate it.”
“Yeah, and my dog ate my homework. Right,” Theo says. “Besides, you ain’t gotta convince me. Convince God. He’s the one who tried to kill you.”
I don’t know about convincing God of anything, but my friend has officially convinced me that sniffing Sharpies to see if the colors smell different is not conducive to logical thinking. My eyes drift away from him to the other end of the hallway, where a pack of girls climbs the stairwell.
I wonder when my friend got so maddeningly opinionated. In retrospect, perhaps the first clue to fellow junior Theo James’s descent was his decision to run for next year’s student body president. He announced early. Like, way early. It’s September now, and voting isn’t till spring. He figures campaigning for months on end will win him more than strange looks and translate to actual votes. So he’s done what any good guy with an astoundingly bad idea would do: He’s roped his best friend into it. Me. I’m his campaign manager. Keeper of the posterboards. Since we finished our history test early, Mr. Kendall let us leave to hang said campaign posters in the hallway. It feels weird hanging placards for an election that’s several months away right beside advertisements for more immediate events, like the homecoming Fall Ball dance two weeks from now. But Theo’s always been forward-thinking, I guess. The posters feature Theo dressed up as an eagle-eyed, stern-faced Uncle Sam, but instead of pointing, he’s holding up a can of Axe body spray.
“Say no to B-O, vote for Theo!” he shouts at the incoming crowd. He nudges my shoulder. I call out listlessly as people pass. One of his campaign promises is to use excess funds to buy the school’s freshmen two cans each of deodorant.
Most kids ignore me as they walk by. One gives a sort of bemused glance you might give a street mime or a sidewalk magician. “A little more oomph,” Theo critiques.
I repeat the slogan. Oomph-full this time. Still get ignored.
I look back down the hallway, my eyes tracking that same group of girls who just exited the stairwell onto our floor as I contemplate his long-shot campaign strategy to cater to the babies of the Westlake High family. Freshmen. I suppose it’s admirable to care for the least of us. And that’s the type of person Theo is. Kind. Charitable. Empathetic. All the adjectives that draw out soft smiles from friends’ mothers and compel them to say well-intentioned but vaguely awful things like I wish my kid were more like you. But why center a campaign around freshmen? Why not puppies with three legs? The unhoused? That group of stoners who hang out under the oaks in the courtyard? Any group would be more sympathetic, really.
“You think our target message needs tweaking?” I ask.
He considers it for a moment as he takes a swig of his water bottle. ...
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