“What?” Heil said, alarmed.

Susan lip started to quiver. “I think something bumped me.”

“Where?”

“On the knee,” she whimpered. Had she been bitten? She couldn’t tell. “Does it hurt, when they bite?” she asked.

“I don’t think so,” Heil said.

She was breathing too fast. Hyperventilating. “I can’t catch my breath,” she said. She bent over, gripped her thighs with her palms, and tried to think of something besides dying. Song lyrics. Think of song lyrics. Load up on guns / bring your friends / it’s fun to lose and to pretend.

She could feel her breathing slowing back down to normal. She was okay. “I’m okay,” she said. “I’m okay.”

Heil didn’t answer.

She stood up. “Heil?”

He was studying his hand.

“What is it?” she said.

He looked over at her with a perplexed expression on his face. “My hand feels numb.”

Then he turned his head, leaned over, and vomited into the water. The vomit swirled and then sank, leaving an acidic tang in the air.

“I think I need to go to the bathroom,” Heil said. “I…” He took a couple of sharp, short breaths. “I can’t feel my hands.”

“It’s okay,” Susan said. She worked to keep her expression calm. It took every ounce of her willpower not to burst into tears. “You need to come to me. Before you fall.”

He looked up at her. The gun fell from his hand with a plunk into the water.

Susan held her arms out to him as if he were a child. “Come to me,” she said.

Heil was looking at the spot in the water where the gun had dropped.

“Leave it,” Susan said. “You don’t need it.”

He turned his neon-white eyes up toward her and stumbled forward.

She caught him under the armpits as he fell, so that his face was pressed into the front of her shoulder.

“We’ll be okay,” she said. “We’ll be okay.”

He was too heavy. She couldn’t hold him like this; he was already slipping from her grasp. She lowered him into the water on his knees and cradled his head against her hip with both hands.

“I know you can hear me,” she said.

Chapter 49

CHAPTER

49

The hatchetfish swam happily in their tank, their silver bodies shimmering like coins.

Heil had not taken a breath in a long time.

Susan still hung on to him.

“You’re okay,” she kept saying. “You’re okay.”

She hadn’t seen any more ripples in the water. But she’d stopped looking. She didn’t want to know. If she didn’t see them, then they weren’t there.

The hatchetfish seemed so content, not a care in the world. She hated them.