Hannsett Aquarium isn’t incredibly popular in the winter, but it’s still one of our few local diamonds.
The aquarium doubles as a learning center for budding marine biologists, so it has a lot of interesting, hands-on displays about the local flora and fauna. As soon as we get our tickets and head in, Otto makes a beeline to the touch tank.
I follow him. “Pretty cool, huh?” I ask.
“They’re like aliens,” Otto says, his voice reverent. He shoves his whole arm in the tank, not seeming to notice when the water climbs his sleeve.
“Yeah, I guess they are pretty strange.”
“Touch the stingray!” he says. “It’s so weird!”
I snap off my cuff so I can reach into the pool. The water is lukewarm, and I graze my fingertips over the stingray’s back. Its skin is smooth but rough to the touch, like leather.
“Hey!” Otto says excitedly. “We match!”
“What do you mean?”
Then he sticks his arm at me, his small hand in a fist, forearm upward. He points to his wrist. The skin there is covered in small, angry pricks—scars from where doctors and nurses have broken into his veins again and again and again to get to the bottom of his ailments.
The scars on my wrist? They’re a little different. I like to think of it as an I Survived Adolescence and All I Got Was This Fucking Baggage souvenir.
Instead, I smile at him and say, “You’re right. We do match.”
Then I snap the leather cuff back over my wrist. Out of sight, out of mind.
“I want to swim with the sharks,” Jason announces suddenly as he and Kenzi finally catch up to us.
“Me too!” Otto says.
“Yeah? Come here, I’ll toss you in the tank.”
Otto laughs at that and darts away as Jason comes after him.
I fall in step beside Kenzi. She links her arm in mine, and this feels weirdly comfortable. The four of us on a family outing. We walk through a tunnel that’s built in the middle of a tank. On either side of us and above us, through the Plexiglas, small sharks and stingrays and multicolored fish jet back and forth.
“I guess the sharks were on the nice list,” Kenzi remarks, pointing to a faux Christmas tree installed in the bottom of the tank.
I groan. “I hate the holidays.”
Kenzi slips her hand over my chest. My body is unaccustomed to things like gentle touches, and instinctively I feel myself recoil.
“What’re you doing?”
“Checking to make sure you still have a heart.”
“You’re wasting your time. I took that out with my appendix. Just another useless organ holding me back.”
She knits her eyebrows. “You’re joking.”
“Yes. I’m joking. I still have my appendix.”
“No…” She stops us suddenly and stands in front of me, forcing my gaze to meet hers. “I mean…the Donovan I knew only wore black and was cynical, sure, but he had a big heart.”
I press my lips together. “Yeah, well. When you grow up as the island punching bag, you either give up and roll over, or you grow fangs.”
She frowns at that, then moves her hands to my face. She pushes my upper lip back, exposing the gums. “Hold still, vampire. Checking your teeth.”
“All the better to eat you with, my dear.”
