Clownfish

There’s an empty spot in my mind. It radiates with pulsating blue energy, void of the insecurities and thoughts that charge every day, every night. I don’t live there--god, if I could I would become a recluse, more than I’ve already become. It’s a comfort to me, though, that there is this unlived space, one that I’ve wholly carved out just for me. 

In the day, I hide beneath the folds of a large gray fisherman’s jacket, intertwining my fingers with the unraveling gray cotton fringing at the sleeves. I don’t like being seen by everyone else, their judging eyes pressed into my back. But despite my best efforts, the girls at school always find a way to uncover my hiding spots--beneath the math building stairs, inside the art cabinets, the fourth stall in the gym locker bathroom. I imagine myself as a mole rat, tunneling into these spaces, waiting and praying that the exterminators don’t find me. It’s a hopeless plea; I leave tunnels everywhere I go.

Plus, I have a stink that sticks to me, the girls tell me. Evelyn, the most brutish of them, cornered me one time, in the hiding spot they uncovered me from and spat between my eyes. “Ever try bathing, Charlie?” she seethes between the gap in her otherwise pearly teeth.

They call me clownfish for that--destroying my sea anemone, one by one.

I live in the house on the fisherman’s dock. The smell, well, I can’t help it. It’s the breeze that whistles through my tangled hair, burrowing between the stitches of my clothes. Many people find the ocean an escape; if I could, I would run as far away from it as I could. I couldn’t be more of a fish girl if I damn well tried. 

I asked Dad one time what would happen if we left the house behind and traveled somewhere else away from the Pacific coast. He laughed, clapping me on the back with large, wrinkled hands. “Then what would happen to the fishing boat?”

It truly was hopeless--Dad has had his fishing boat since grandad, and it was the only thing the old bastard gave him before he died. I don’t remember much from the old fuck, only that he loved the “teach-a-man” to fish line. Even in his death, the old man’s will reflected his unshaking morale.

Secretly, I blame him for my constant hiding. 

It’s because of him that the only comfort I find is inside of me, underneath the worn gray cave of my jacket, the bridges and hollows of my salt-speckled bones. He’s the reason that I’ve set up curtains over my bed to create a fortress away from the rest of the world. When I sleep, the curtains are drawn, shrouding me in blue-gray darkness. Only me, in here, with the breath hitched in my throat and the hollow within me pulsating, do I find any sort of solace. Emptiness fills chasms, echoing in the spaces between the curtain’s pleats. I close my eyes, the fishy smell numb in my nose, and I soar. 

. . . 

A jukebox plays in the background. The grass tickles my bare arms, the gray fisherman’s jacket discarded on the ground next to me. It’s the grass that only exists in movies, the supple softness like the fantasy of clouds’ softness. Around me, the wind whistles in tune with the slow jazz of the juke, discordant and beautiful. 

I open my eyes, and the world is tinted a deep blue. Even the pearl sky, crystalline in its color, radiates a sapphire sheen. I roll over to my side, breathing in the fresh cut of the grass. This is what the ground smells like. Not the raw, salty scent of fishbones. 

I stand, and my bare toes sink deeper into the earth. I run without my feet leaving the ground, savoring the suppleness of the world below me. The song is my soundtrack, wild and beautiful, and my hair catches the notes as the wind billows it in the air. A sound escapes me, a laugh. 

Running down the hill, my feet leave the grass onto the sand of a stream. The Sun casts my shadow into the clear water, a looming silhouette over the beauty of this dream. Small fish dot the water, koi and orange guppies that resemble household goldfish. I peer into the water in awe. No trout or swordfish could compare to them. Father would call them unsellable-- “they’re too small!” he would complain. They’re impractical, the gemstones in the water.

But that’s not the point, is it?

I roll up the thick fabric of my jeans, sliding one foot after the other into the crystalline waters. The water’s cold sends shivers down my spine. I smile as the fish swarm my toes, brushing their fins against my heels. Their movement casts blue tendrils in the water as if they were radiating steam. I dip my fingers in the water, tracing the scales of the creatures. They exist in this chasm with me; they don’t exist without it. 

Up ahead, where the Sun paints the stream in a golden beam, ahead bobs out of the water. A faint catch of the light? Perhaps--but here, in the small space in my head, those instances don’t exist. Everything is real here if I choose to make them real. 

Icy blue tendrils extend across the stream, and I watch as the head emerges again, strong and graceful, out of the water. Long brown hair clings to her shoulders. A purple tail flicks behind her. A mermaid. 

My pant legs cling to me as I wade deeper into the water, the fish swarming me like the sequins of a dress. Squinting against the intermingling light, I realize with a start that she wears my face. 

She was who I yearned for, the fish girl unabashed from the sunlight. 

The mermaid smiles at me, extending her sun-speckled hand. As I wade closer, I realize her freckles are stars. 

I can never wash the smell from my skin. So why not let it be the thing I take the most pride in?

Our fingers touch and the world erupts in dark blue fog. It consumes my world, the dream I’ve built so meticulously. I want to scream, but the water enters my lungs in great bucketfuls. Someone turned off the jukebox, and the rest of the dream continues in slow, painful silence. 

My counterpart feels it too. Her dark eyes grow wide, her mouth forming a small O. Our touched hands separate as her fingers begin to dissolve in the smoke, penetrating her illusion. I can only watch in horror as she disappears, one segment at a time, in the all-consuming blue void. I cough up water, and it leaks from my eyes, my ears, submerging me until my head falls below the surface. 

And for a bleak moment, on the precipice of consciousness, I sit in the silent void, my head between my knees. I’m crying, the water silencing my racking sobs. It’s everywhere down here, the salty stain of the sea, hiding me in the wonder of my blue-tinted dreams. The ocean never leaves me; even in my dreams, it follows me everywhere I go. 

Here, I am forever the clownfish, indulging the wisps of falsified dreams.