Page 37 of Midnightsong
The hazy sun hung overhead, making the calm waters, blue gray horizon, and bordering rocks and bluffs appear ethereal and surreal.
The scent of salt and brine, and occasional pungent stench of decaying seaweed and sea lettuce, filled her nostrils, and she found a flat rock to sit on.
Fortunately, the fetid stenches were passing, and Angie settled atop the rock, smelling the fresh, crisp scent of passing rain showers mixed with the salt breeze. She took a deep inhale, savoring it.
Mount Rainier’s shadow loomed in the distance, providing her with a perfect, peaceful backdrop.
Not ten minutes into studying, raucous commotion filled her ears.
Tian, why did people have to be so loud and obnoxious?
She tried blocking them out, but their laughter grew louder, followed by a loud, clear ‘hold it there! I almost got it’.
Angie’s head shot up and she dropped her pen. It wedged between two stones like a stake.
A group of two teenage boys, one tall and one shorter, and a girl were pulling a wiggling spiny dogfish out of the water, the small shark thrashing and writhing as they dragged the animal farther ashore. She jumped to her feet and bolted for them, careful to keep her balance on the rocky ground. “Hey! What are you doing?”
They ignored her, the taller boy holding the shark down on their back while the girl took pictures with her phone.
Angie quickly scanned the dogfish’s underside. No claspers, denoting a female. “Leave her alone.” Angie wedged her way into the group and grabbed the shark from his hands. The dogfish was as long as she was tall and she struggled to maintain a grip on her smooth, wet skin.
“What’s your problem?” the boy asked, throwing out his hands and glaring at her. “We’re not hurting anything! We’re gonna throw it back after we get like, one picture, damn.”
“Mind your own business.” The girl put her hands on her hips and widened her stance.
“My problem? How would you like it if someone came to your house and dragged you out so they could take pictures?”
“Like a stupid shark is going to drag me out of my house. Ooooo.” The taller boy wiggled his fingers at her.
“Okay, how about divers coming and dragging you out to the water, where they can breathe, and you can’t?” Angie made her way to the shoreline to throw the shark back in.Her gills were opening and closing, and she wasn’t thrashing so much anymore, as if she was giving up her fight.
She whispered, “No, no, stay alive.”
A hard shove struck her between her shoulder blades, and she lost her balance, falling to her hands and knees.
Did one of them push her? What the fuck.
The dogfish slipped from her hands, so close to the water, but too far from the receding tide an inch away from her.
She winced as her palms and knees slammed into the small pebbles, and a painful, electric jolt shot up the underside of her forearms and down her shin.
The tide came in again, brushing the dogfish’s tailfin.
“We’re gonna teach you a lesson,” he said with a blinding, pearly-white snarl. “Nobody messes with us.”
“Because I wanted to throw a,” she made air quotes with her fingers, “quote unquote, stupidshark back into the water, you’re going to assault me? Do your parents know about your anger problems?” Angie jerked, but the boy was bigger and stronger than she was. Come to think of it, they were all taller than her.
“My parents aren’t here right now,” the boy said from behind her. She grabbed a handful of pebbles and before he could react, flung it as hard as she could behind her, hoping to hit his face. One struck him in the open eye, the others bouncing off his forehead.
“Bitch hit me in the eye!” he hollered but let her go while his hands flew to his face.
Angie came eye-to-eye with the dogfish who watched her with unblinking eyes. A harsh scratch ran diagonally down her right eye.
So, this wasn’t the first time she had gotten into trouble.
Angie was going to get beaten up by teenagers for this dogfish. Just the way she wanted to end a perfectly good Monday evening otherwise.
From her peripheral vision, other figures approached. “What’s going on over there?” A faint yell from a deep male voice. She stood. Inches away from her feet, the tide pulled back.
