Page 28 of Keeping It Professional

“I don’t know,” said the kid. “Brock put it in my beer when I wasn’t looking.”

Sophie closed her eyes like she was trying not to roll them. “And which one of you fine young men would be Brock?”

A towheaded kid stuck up his hand.

“You’re Brock? Fantastic. What kind of fish was it?”

“One of those shiny ones? With the red stripe?”

“A neon tetra,” I said.

“Oh, God, those have teeth!” The kid clutched his belly. “I feel it biting. Ugh, get it out!”

Sophie stifled a huffing sound, maybe a laugh. “It’s not biting,” she said. “No, look at me. Listen. I can pretty much promise you that beer would’ve drowned it, or knocked it out at the very least. And, listen, okay. When did you call us?”

“A while ago.” Brock smirked. “You’re really slow.”

“So, say it’s been in there around twenty minutes, swimming around in a big pool of acid. You think it’d survive that?”

The kid turned greenish. “You’re saying it’s… dead?”

“I’m saying its biting days are over and done. Now, you might get some symptoms of?—”

“It’s dead? Oh,God.” The kid hunched forward and his whole body heaved, and Sophie stepped clear as he let loose. The rest of the boys broke out cheering like fools, but Sophie held up her hand.

“You think that was funny, making your friend drink a fish?”

Most of the kids shut up, but Brock was still smirking.

“I mean, yeah, kind of? Look at his face.”

Sophie didn’t look. She drew herself up. “Well, here’s something funny: animal abuse is a felony in the state of Massachusetts. You can be fined up to five grand, or seven years’ jail time. How does that sound?”

Brock laughed. “For a fish? Don’t make me?—”

“And some of the fish in that tank carry parasites. Bugs that could make your friend really sick. He got lucky this time, and he threw it up, but if he didn’t, that’d be on you.”

Brock glanced at his friends, who were backing away. His mean smirk had curdled into a petulant pout.

“My dad’s friend’s a lawyer,” he said. “He’d get me off.”

“Maybe,” said Sophie. “Or maybe not. Lawyers aren’t magicians, and a jury would hate you. We’ll go easy this time, and we won’treport you. But if we get called out again on any fishy business, you’d better believe we’ll be bringing the cops.”

Brock slunk off, still muttering, and we checked out the kid. Apart from his nausea, he seemed mostly fine, and he declined a trip to the ER. We left him sipping water without any fish, and headed back out into the night.

“You were pretty badass in there.” I flashed Sophie a grin. “Was that true about the parasites?”

She laughed. “Not a clue. I just hated that Brock kid, and—Ah!” Her feet skidded out on her, and she went flying. I lunged and caught her before she could fall, but my heel hit the ice and I skidded too. We spun like ice dancers and bounced off the fence, and went staggering backward into the gate. Sophie grabbed hold of me and I clung to her, cheek to cheek in a cloud of white breath. Snow powdered down on us from a scraggly spruce, and clung to her lashes and her fine hair. I reached up without thinking to brush it away, then froze as her cheeks went pink. Her blue eyes went wide.

“I, uh…” She coughed.

I stepped back. “No, right.”

“Thank you for catching me.”

“My pleasure. I mean…”

We tried to laugh at the awkwardness, but that came out strained too, like when someone’s just told a joke that’s less funny than tasteless. Sophie shook out the snow from her hair. I wanted to say something to break up the tension, but nothing good came to me, so I went with the weather.

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