Also, I really liked holding his hand.
“Why do you smell like fish?” I asked him. We walked slowly as we talked, making long circles in the main aisle.
“I was in a pond,” he said.
“Why?”
“I got thrown in.”
“Why?”
He shrugged and reached down to scratch at his legs, which were covered in Band-Aids.
“Why are you hurt?” I asked.
“Animalia Annelida Hirudinea.”
The words left his mouth like a curse. His cheeks flared red as he scratched more fervently. His eyes had gone all watery. We stopped at the tank.
One of the store employees came out from behind the seafood counter and, ignoring us, opened a hatch on top of the lobster tank. With one gloved hand, he reached in and pulled out Mr. Lobster. He closed the hatch and carried the lobster off.
And I got an idea.
“Come here.” I pulled Blue Eyes to the back of the tank. He wiped his eyes. I stared at him until he stared back. “Will you help me get the lobsters out?”
He sniffed. Then he nodded.
I set my Yoo-hoo bottle on the floor and held my arms up. “Can you lift me?”
He wrapped his arms around my waist and lifted me. My head shot above the top of the lobster tank, my shoulders level with the hatch. I was a chubby kid and Blue Eyes probably should’ve snapped in half, but he only wobbled a bit, grunting.
“Just hold still,” I told him.
The hatch had a handle near the edge. I grabbed it and pulled it open, shivering at the chilly blast of air that whooshed out.
“What are you doing?” Blue Eyes asked, his voice muffled by his strain and my shirt.
“Be quiet!” I said, looking around. No one had noticed us yet.
The lobsters were piled up just below the hatch. I plunged my hand in. Shock raced up my spine from the cold. My fingers closed around the nearest lobster.
I expected it to thrash its claws and curl and uncurl its tail. But it didn’t. I felt like I was holding a heavy shell. I pulled it out of the water.
“Thank you,” the lobster said.
“You’re welcome,” I replied. I dropped it on the ground.
Blue Eyes stumbled, but didn’t lose his grip on me. The lobster sat there for a moment, then started crawling along the tile.
I reached in for another. And another. And another. And pretty soon the entire tank of lobsters was crawling across the tile floor of the Meijer supermarket. I didn’t know where they were going, but they seemed to have a pretty good idea. Blue Eyes dropped me with a huff and we both landed in a puddle of cold water. He stared at me, his glasses clinging to the tip of his nose.
“Do you do this all the time?” he asked.
“No,” I said. “Just today.”
He smiled.
Then the yelling started. Hands grabbed my arms and jerked me to my feet. My mother was shouting at me, pulling me away from the tank. I looked past her. The lobsters were already gone. Freezing water dripped from my arm.
Blue Eyes still stood in the puddle. He picked up my abandoned Yoo-hoo bottle and waved good-bye. I tried to get my mother to stop, to go back so I could ask him his name.
She just walked faster.
Part One: The Tank
Chapter One
Sometimes I think people take reality for granted.
I mean like how you can tell the difference between a dream and real life. When you’re in the dream you may not know it, but as soon as you wake up, you know that your dream was a dream and whatever happened in it, good or bad, wasn’t real. Unless we’re in the Matrix, this world is real, and what you do in it is real, and that’s pretty much all you ever need to know.
People take that for granted.
For two years after that fateful day in the supermarket, I thought I’d really set the lobsters free. I thought they’d crawled away and found the sea and lived happily ever after. When I turned ten, my mother found out that I thought that I was some kind of lobster savior.
She also found out all lobsters looked bright red to me.
First she told me that I hadn’t set any lobsters free. I’d gotten my arm into the tank before she’d appeared to pull me away, embarrassed. Then she explained that lobsters only turn bright red after they’re boiled. I didn’t believe her, because to me they had never been any other color. She never mentioned Blue Eyes, and I didn’t need to ask. My first-ever friend was a hallucination: a sparkling entry on my new resume as a crazy person.
Then my mother had taken me to see a child therapist, and I’d gotten my first real introduction to the word insane.