Chapter Text
He came into awareness as Steven’s tear-streaked face blinked away in the reflection of the grimy fishbowl glass. Gus was floating belly-up in the stagnant water, dead as any of those mummies the nerd’s obsessed with. Funny how that dweeb can remember the lineages of Every Dead Famous Person who Ever Lived Anywhere Near Egypt and rattle off every step of scooping someone’s internal organs into jars of salt and was keeping Marc from failing Hebrew lessons, but he couldn’t remember to change the water. Now this bowl was a tiny tomb.
Oh well. He cast about for Marc-this wasn’t his fish, shouldn’t be his problem. He never wanted a fish. He wanted a dog, but Mom said no. And that’s just as well. You let him get this. You clean up after it. It was Marc’s fault-he entered that carnival ring toss at Steven’s insistence and brought home this sad little fish who was born to die, seeing no more of the world than the shelf in their bedroom.
He flexed one hand, then experimentally bashed it against the wall. Lately, he found that if he threatened their body, Marc would quit sulking and come back out to play. He came back in a panicked rage of adrenaline that time he held his hand over the flame of a stolen lighter. He winced-he was still sore from the things that Steven or even Marc’s fragile psyches couldn’t handle. Things had gotten Bad today. And on top of the badness, the stupid fish had died. Okay. He could do this-he handled things, that’s why he existed. Right. The first step was to hide the body. He scooped the limp corpse out with the net. He ought to flush it down the toilet, but for some reason, that made tears prickle at the corners of his eyes. Gus deserved a moment of silence or something, not that.
So he snuck out to their postage stamp of a yard, holding the dead fish at arms’ length in the net. He found a trowel from the bin by the back door. He crept under the rose bush and dug a carnival goldfish-sized grave, then plopped it in. He filled in the hole, smacked down the gravelly soil with the trowel, and stayed crouched down for a moment. Hm. Something had to come next-it needed a grave. Maybe not a freakin’ pyramid, but something.
He went back up to Steven and Marc’s room and retrieved a pair of popsicle sticks and a bottle of Elmer’s glue. He broke one of the sticks in half, then fastened it to the longer one with a dot of glue to make a cross. They were all Jewish, but maybe the fish wasn’t. They put up crosses on unknown soldiers’ graves, too. This one had lived like a prisoner of war in a disgusting bowl of water, so at least it earned this.
He went back to their room, preparing to dump the water down the bathroom sink and figure out how to throw away the bowl. But he caught his reflection in the glass again, and Steven resurfaced, sobbing.
“He’s not-dead, is he? Please don’t let him be dead.”
“I-I saw him move,” he lied. “He’s…resting. I put him in a cup, in a salt dip, and he’s looking better.” That was a thing people did for goldfish, right?
“Oh, thank heavens,” Steven breathed in that stupid Tomb Buster faux-English accent. One time, he’d come out at school and talked to the new kid from somewhere in the UK-maybe it was Scotland, actually. That resulted in a split lip for all of them and suspension for fighting. And Steven couldn’t even figure out why the other kid got so mad. Now, Steven wasn’t allowed to speak in public settings.
“I don’t know how I could go on if Gus just died! He’s my only friend. Besides Marc, but I don’t think he likes me sometimes.”
And that set off all the alarm bells in his head. If Steven died or disappeared, it would be him and Marc alone. And they’d fail all their classes in school plus the afterschool Hebrew, and never clean their room. That wouldn’t be good.
“What about me, buddy?”
“I hardly know you. I don’t even know your name! And you’re kind of mean sometimes, you get us into trouble. “
I don’t have a name, I never needed one.
“You’re a wuss,” he countered. “But the fish, yeah. He means a lot to you?”
“Sometimes, he’s the only person I can talk to,” Steven whispered.
Okay. They need a fish. Steven can’t go out into the world talking the way he does to actual people-he can only get into so many fights.
“I get ya, sometimes people suck. So, I’m going out. To get more fish food for Gus.”
“The canister of flakes is mostly full,” Steven pointed out.
“He needs…special fish food. He got sick. The new stuff will make him feel better, it’s got all kinds of vitamins in it. I read about it in a book.”
“Okay. Thanks, whoever you are. I was going to ask Mum what to do, but I couldn’t find her.”
“She’s busy. Don’t worry, I told her I’m going out, she gave me a list of other things to buy too.”
Steven relaxed. “Alright, bye.”
He grit his teeth, inhaled sharply, and his mind raced with ways to get on and off the subway with a whole-ass goldfish in a bag without anyone noticing. His friend Tomas from Math told him about this pet store in Queens-they had a giant parrot and lots of fish. One of them had to look just like Gus.