There are not a lot of places to sit at the end of the pier. Without anyone to clean it up, it’s become a bathroom for seagulls and pigeons. Birds are sort of disgusting. Not only do they empty their bowels all over the place, they use it as a dinner table too. There are thousands of crab shells up here, scooped up, tossed onto the planks, and then devoured. I can’t take a step without hearing a crunch.
I kick some aside and lean against the railing, then think better of it. If no one’s cleaning it, no one is maintaining it either. The whole thing might collapse under my weight for all I know. Why does Fathom want to meet here?
I wait for ten minutes, watching my father pace back and forth on the beach. I wonder where Fathom is, if he’s pulling the “I’m royalty” card, which he believes entitles him to be rude. Then again, he might have bled to death after the fight.
Suddenly, I hear a splash below, but before I can investigate I watch Fathom shoot into the air, a rocket with a trail of ocean water behind him. He soars high above the pier, three stories above the water below, and then comes down a few feet from me, where he lands as nimble as a cat. He’s still wearing his armor and is glistening wet.
“Hello, Lyric Walker.”
“Oh” is all I can think to say.
He kicks some shells from beneath his bare feet and turns to me, his armor clinking against itself with every twitch of his muscles.
“I’m sorry I am late. Those who fall before me in battle are entitled to make amends.”
“So he apologized for beating you up?” I ask.
He shakes his head. “He apologized for believing he could.”
“Are you ever scared?”
He looks at me for a long time, as if I’m talking gibberish and he’s too polite to ask me to repeat myself.
“I know, I know. The Triton aren’t afraid of anything. But down deep, aren’t you ever worried that one day one of your subjects is going to get the best of you?”
He shakes his head.
I shake mine, too, in frustration, then gesture toward the shore. “Just do me a favor. When you’ve got open wounds, can you not go swimming? That brown muck you call an ocean has been a toilet for drunks and toddlers for two hundred years.”
He dismisses my medical advice. “Did you bring books?”
“Fine, but if you’re dead by the weekend, don’t blame me,” I say, and open my bag. I brought Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day; The Very Hungry Caterpillar; Each Peach Pear Plum; and The Giant Jam Sandwich. He snatches them and quickly flips through the pages. I step closer and notice his finger is pointing to a word.
“This is the word the—correct?”
I’m amazed. “You learned a sight word!”
He tries to stay stony faced, but I can see the spark of pride in his eyes. He flips through and finds another. “This is and?”
I laugh and throw my hand up for a high-five. He leaves me hanging.
“You’re picking it up very quickly,” I say.
“You are a good teacher, Lyric Walker, like a Daughter of Ceto.”
“That’s not what you said the other day.”
“I said a few things I did not mean the other day,” he says. “And I let you leave before I could correct something I led you to believe.”
“What’s that?”
“I do not find you disgusting,” he says. He looks away, but I’m sure I saw a little pink in his cheeks.
“Good, because I can’t be friends with people who think I’m disgusting. It’s kind of a rule,” I say.
“Friends,” he says slowly, as if he’s trying the word out before committing to it. “It appears that Doyle has gotten his way.”
“I guess, but there’s no way in the world I’ll admit it to him.”
He nods. “Our secret.”
We read the books, and I try to explain to him what jam is, and why human children are not thrown into the Great Abyss for being grouchy and disrespectful to their parents. Alexander would never make it as an Alpha. Fathom confuses a caterpillar for a shark, which according to him is just as ravenous.
When the hour is up, my father and Foster march down the pier to retrieve me.
“I don’t find our meetings as distasteful as I once did,” Fathom says while we still have some privacy.
“When I finish teaching you to read, I think I’m going to teach you how to talk to a girl,” I say, but inside I’m fighting back a smile.
He studies me, perplexed, then suddenly loses a battle with a smile of his own. I’ve never been shocked by one, but there aren’t any smiles like his. It’s so unexpected, like a comet streaking across the sky. Before I can fully process it, he leaps over the railing and down into the water.
“I hate when you do that,” I shout at him, but I’m glad he did it, because an ache was coming over me to stretch on tippy-toes and taste that smile.