Black Tipped Reef Sharks

mackerel smith

I’m surrounded in gently shining blue and purple light, half from the water, half intentional on the aquarium’s part. This is one of the few places in the aquarium that is quiet; it may be because there’s no one else here. I'm left in blissful silence to sit in the nook in the wall between two sections of hallway, hunched into a circle but somehow comfortable. Before they all knew me by name, the security guards would ask me to move, to not sit in the wall. But sitting on the floor just doesn’t feel the same.

Most of the time, I just sit here, and watch the sharks swim their laps through the tank, watch them find new routes. The tank is absolutely massive and stretches over the ceiling and over the path to the next room, which also showcases the tank.

There are multiple kinds of sharks, along with stingrays and bowmouth guitarfish—a type of ray that truly does look like a guitar from certain angles. The place where I sit allows me to see both sides of the tank at once; it’s good for following sharks without having to move. I could die sitting here, and I’d be happy.

Tomorrow I have to leave for the weekend, to pace around a college campus for a few days. My mom is taking me. I don’t want to go. She says that I need to do something with life and that I can’t spend all my money sitting around this aquarium forever. I disagree. I could get a job here if I wanted to (I don’t). If I worked here then I couldn’t stare at the same black tipped reef shark all day.

☽ ❖ ☾

The college trip was agonizingly boring, as I’d expected it to be. It consisted of my mom dragging me around campus and asking me questions like, “don’t you think this is pretty?” and, “doesn’t this class seem fun?” The campus was pretty; I’ll give it that. But again, I don’t want to go to college. Moving to college means moving from the St. Louis aquarium, and I can’t do that.

After 6 hours of driving and two shitty motels, I’m so grateful to be back and return to my routine. It starts with the 1894 Café and a Cobb salad.

I’m sitting in the booth in the corner, where I always do, and I’m reading something off my phone, as I always do, when someone sits next to me. It’s Francis. I heard his workers' lanyard (and his stomping) approach before he sat down. I think his steps are so heavy because he wants to compensate for his short legs. It’s kind of funny how short his legs are. Francis works at the aquarium, taking tickets and tips. He occasionally picks up an extra shift teaching children about red-eared sliders. Francis has shoulder-length curly purple hair, which he is required to keep in a bun at the base of his neck while he works. He is also required to take out his nose piercings if he chooses to not wear a mask, which he usually does wear, for that reason. He’s seen me at the library I work at on weekends. I can tell he wants to be friends with me. I don’t care very much if we are or aren’t, I just wish he’d stop interrupting people that I’m helping at work to talk to me. But he’s never sought me out before, like now. He should be working right now.

“Hi,” he says.

“Hello.”

“What are you eating?”

“Cobb salad.”

“How is it?” He says it so genuinely, but I also see the hint of a smirk on his lips.

“Francis,” I finish my bite. “Why are you here?”

“I’m honored you remember my name.” He’s definitely smirking now.

I stare at him, unblinking. He looks away and clears his throat.

“I just wanted to tell you that, uh, the aquarium is actually, um, closing soon. Like, tomorrow’s the last day it’s open. I figured you’d wanna know—not be surprised—you know.”

What? I’ve been going to this same aquarium, watching the same sharks, for fucking years. The aquarium was my sister’s favorite place ever. Hell, I’ve named one of the sharks after her: Azalea. She’s the shark with the most prominent stripes. It can’t be closing. Why would it be closing?

Francis must see the look on my face because he says,

“It’s because one of the sharks went, like, crazy and killed itself, by the way.” There’s a pause. “And ‘cause the supervisor-guy for the touch pools is a dumbass and wasn’t paying attention, and so a kid ate a jellyfish and died.”

Both of us sit in silence for a solid minute before I say,

“How did both of those things happen in the singular weekend I was gone?”

“Well, the shark thing happened like an hour ago. But the jellyfish was yesterday. They’re trying to keep it pretty quiet—so they don’t have any more lawsuits. So right now, half the place is closed down, and honestly, I think you’re the only reason it’s still open right now. You could probably get in for free honestly- hey, what are you-”

Before I know what I’m doing, I’m getting 20 dollars out of my wallet, leaving it on the table,grabbing my shit, and leaving.

Francis nearly has to jog to keep up with me. I get to the entrance of the aquarium, and he’s right; there’s a piece of paper taped over the price board, saying tickets are free today in sloppy Sharpie print.

☽ ❖ ☾

It’s weird—the aquarium being completely empty. Usually, it’s pretty calm during the weekdays, but there are always a few people like me that have coming here set in their routines. There’s usually a mother, or maybe a nanny, with their small children, hanging around the touch pools and colorful fish. But there’s no one here today.

I’m left to walk myself through the aquarium, and when I make it to the otter/touch pool/ecosystem area, it really does look like a crime scene. I guess that’s because it is. There’s no access to the touch pools nor the ecosystem space. I guess the archer fish you can feed by holding out a stick with wet fish food on the end was deemed too dangerous, even for the two days it remains open. I walk past the otters, who are unbothered, if anything appreciating the lack of crowds. I don’t stop to look at anything, not even the blue lobster (Stanley), the aquarium’s mascot. It’s so quiet.

The tunnel into the shark cave is so dark. I think they turned off, or maybe forgot, some of the overhead lights. If I didn’t know every square foot of this exhibit I would be stumbling, but it still helps to drag my hands along the walls. I’m grateful for the darkness, though, because when I walk into the main room, I’m stopped dead in my tracks.

This tank is the single most beautiful thing in my life. I’ve considered it before, and now I’m sure. I’m so in love with this tank. The miscellaneous smaller fish that really convey the sheer size of the sharks and rays—the sharks themselves. Azalea. She swims past me, and I put my hand on the glass and follow her with my eyes. She glides under a rock formation and settles on the sand. As I feel myself begin to cry. I hear Francis run up to me.

☽ ❖ ☾

“Do you want to go? I’ll make you dinner,” Francis offers. I can’t tell his intentions, but I don’t have the money to get dinner myself, and I know my mom won’t cook anything, so I silently nod, and he helps me stand. We walk through the rest of the building together.

The trees have started to turn. I guess they’ve been turning, but this is the first time I actually point it out in my mind. I drag my toes with each step and a pile of leaves that goes up to my shins forms. I kick, and the two of us are showered in foliage. Francis giggles. I’ve never heard him giggle before.

I’m about to ask how far his house is when he stops and turns on his heel.

“Well,” he says, with his arms extended.

“Well?”

“This is it.” I think he expects me to have more of a reaction, maybe be happily surprised?

“Oh! Nice... nice house!” I say, nodding. He drops his shoulders in a way I think means that I wasn’t excited enough. To be fair, it really isn’t that nice of a house. It’s a thin, two-story house with no yard, and the front porch steps are falling apart.

We walk inside, careful to avoid the most deteriorated step, and I see that he’s obviously put a lot of work into making his house feel lived-in. There are mosaic lanterns and lamps, and I think he painted the walls himself; I can see where the paintings that likely used to be hanging are leaning against the wall haphazardly. The living room flows into the dining room, as does the kitchen.

His kitchen is cluttered and messy, with a sink full of dirty dishes and cupboards that are missing doors. His fridge is almost new, stainless steel, and with a pull-out freezer. Francis, suddenly embarrassed of the mess, rushes to the sink and starts to load the dishwasher.

“Sorry for such a mess. I don’t usually have people over.”

I don’t know how to respond, so I ask, “How do you afford this place?”

There’s a hitch in his breath. He says, “I used to live with someone.”

“Did you buy it together?”

“I guess.”

I watch him in silence for a few minutes. He’s so… fluid here. He has a rhythm. He picks a dish from the sink, maybe two, and passes them under the running faucet before placing them into the dishwasher. Sink, faucet, dishwasher. Sink, faucet, dishwasher. Break to rinse his hands. Sink, faucet, dishwasher. When I see him working at the aquarium, he’s rigid. Monotonous. Monochrome. He’s colorful here.

“What happened to them?”

He turns around. “Who?”

“The person you lived with.”

“They… they were sick.”

Does that mean they died? People that cover what they mean with what they say confuse me.

“Did they die?” The look on his face says that I wasn’t supposed to ask.

“Obviously they died, Azrael,” He says. I think he means to be angry, but the look on this face tells me he’s sad. Beyond sad. Heartbroken, really.

“I’m sorry,” I say.

He turns around and finishes loading the dishes.

☽ ❖ ☾

Francis made chicken parmesan sandwiches for us, not from scratch, but from frozen chicken patties and canned sauce. It was still really good, better than whatever I would’ve made at home. His dining room has been made into a library, with a table and chairs in the middle of the room. The table is so small we can barely fit our plates on it. Our knees are touching.

“Thank you for cooking,” I say.

“It’s no problem.”

Silence for a moment. Just to have something to say, I tell him, “My sister was sick, too.”

“Yeah?” He doesn’t look at me.

“Yeah.”

“What’d she have?”

“ALS. It’s this disease that slowly makes your brain stop telling your muscles to work.”

“Did she die?”

“Obviously she died, Francis,” I say, grinning a bit. He doesn’t notice the joke. “It’s, uh. It’ll always kill you, no matter when you catch it.”

“Sucks that she died,” he says. No shit, Francis. “Were you close?”

“Yeah. We’re twins.”

He nods and after a moment, gets up to get a drink.

“Is that why you’re so upset about the aquarium?” He says when he sits back down.

“What?”

“Your sister, her death. Is that why you’re so upset about the aquarium?” He looks at me like he thinks I’m stupid. I don’t know why.

“I guess. She really loved the aquarium. We’d go there for every birthday, every possible chance to be with those damn sharks.” I laugh a bit. “Our parents even took us to the actual ocean one year, on a whale-shark-spotting trip. It just wasn’t the same, though. Both of us were so nauseous the whole trip, we were miserable. They felt so bad that they gave us each a hundred dollars to spend in the gift shop.”

“At the aquarium?”

“At the aquarium.”

We eat the rest of our meal without a word. When I leave, he says, “I’m really sorry about your sister.”

I say, “It wasn’t your fault.”

“That doesn’t mean I can’t be sorry.” He chuckles. I know what he means.

☽ ❖ ☾

That night, I dream of the aquarium. I have before, right after Azalea died. It’s always the same, too. In this dream, I walk through the tunnel at the start of the shark exhibit, but instead of the opening, it’s a hatch door. I open it and walk through, and I’m at the bottom of the Indian Ocean, near the coast. On the floor of the ocean is my sister, sitting at a school desk, writing in a notebook. Zebra and tiger sharks are circling her, not out of malice but curiosity. They look at her, so focused on what she’s writing that she’s seemingly oblivious to them.

She finishes her line, shakes her hand out, and stands up. She walks over to the closest shark, a small black tipped reef shark, and it nuzzles into her. She smiles.

This whole time, I’m frozen, maybe with grief, maybe bliss. Outside of dreaming, I would do anything to see Azalea happy again.

Suddenly, her knees buckle, and she collapses.

I wake up drenched in sweat.

☽ ❖ ☾

Again, there is no one else in the aquarium. Francis isn’t even here. There’s a deficit of security guards now, too, which is how I notice that no one’s guarding the maintenance door of the shark exhibit. It’s unlocked, too.

There’s less metal in here than I thought there’d be. Yes, the entire room is made of cement, and there are pipes going everywhere, but I always imagined that this room would be similar to a boiler room, with large tanks of water being filtered and heated, or maybe cooled, but instead, there are just a few tanks on the ceiling above the tank itself, with pipes going in and out of it. From where I stand, the tank seems about fifteen feet high, but I know it goes deeper. There’s a ladder leading up to the tank. It’s black and made of metal. I want to climb the ladder. There’s a small platform at the top of it, leading over the water. This must be where they feed the sharks. I wonder what they feed them. Probably crustaceans and small fish, what most aquariums feed all of their animals.

I sit and dangle my feet over the edge and into the water. My boots fill with water and the cuffs of my jeans soak. It’s cold, but it’s nice; it’s refreshing. Stingrays swim up to me. They probably wonder what I’m doing. I don’t expect anyone ever stuck anything more than an arm in here before. I notice the barbs usually on the ends of their tails have been cut off, like the ones you see in touch pools. What I think is ten feet below me, I see a black tipped reef shark swimming laps, circles around the coral that’s been landscaped to seem natural in the tank. I turn around and lower myself more into the water so that my arms are resting on the platform, and I’m in up to my chest. I wish I had taken my boots off, so I could feel the water more. I lift my leg to try to untie my laces and reach my hand into the water and I slip.

My remaining hand falls from the platform. I can barely breathe in before I’m plunged down. I float for a moment in darkness, curse myself for hitting my hand so hard on the platform on the way down, and soon I muster up the energy to open my eyes. Initially, the saltwater stings, but I get used to it. It’s almost like I’m a fish myself, slowly floating through the water, peacefully. A black tipped reef shark swims up to me, and I recognize that it’s Azalea. She’s facing me, almost touching my chest. I reach out and run my hand over her back, and she has the most reassuring feeling. She looks at me like she expects me to be here, almost like we’ve reunited, as cliche as that is. The entire scene is so beautiful. I can’t even tell I’m underwater. I’m swimming with Azalea again, finally, and she’s taking me through the water, showing me her home, leading me through the nooks in the rock walls. With her, I feel content enough to close my eyes, and take a deep breath, and relax.

Mackerel Smith is a junior at Interlochen Arts Academy from Detroit, Michigan. They have won a Gold and two Silver keys in the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards. They enjoy writing fiction works about marine biology, and strangely intimate yet mundane poems.