Page 67 of How to Hide in Plain Sight
“Papa wants pike for dinner!”
For the previous hour, every glance I’d made in Manuel’s direction had felt like a violation. Like a failure on my part to keep a promise he didn’t know I’d made. But with everyone else’s attention squarely upon him, I was free to look. To ogle. I watched him shout and shift and reel. He cranked aggressively, angrily, as if he hated the fish even before laying eyes upon it. Sweat built on his brow until he had to remove his hat altogether. When he did, frenzied curls sprungoutward, falling into his eyes or sticking to his glistening forehead. Inchworm-sized things, damp and dark as soil.
Unfortunately, because I was busy studying my best friend, I missed the entire tutorial on how to reel in a fish. So when Manny turned to me and shoved the rod back into my hands, I realized that my entire family was counting on me to land this fish and I had no idea how to do it.
I started to reel.
“Not likethat,jueputa!” Manuel grabbed my wrists and pulled them upward. His big palms wrapped around my slender arms. This did not help my ability to pay attention to what he was saying. “Reel and yank! Reel and yank!” He let go of my wrists but stayed close to my side.
Tugging my attention away from the memory of his calluses on my skin, I homed in on those three words:Reel and yank! Reel and yank!
Yes. I could do that.
I reeled and yanked for several minutes. Whatever was on the other end of the line had no interest in joining us. Just as I started to worry the rod would snap, it disappeared from my hands.
“I’ll finish this off,” growled Clarence.
Manuel opened his mouth to protest, but I shook my head. My half brother clearly needed this.
Clarence’s fishing didn’t look like fighting. It looked like dancing. It took only a few minutes of reeling and yanking before he hollered, “Net!”
I spun around and snagged the tall metal pole.
“Get down in there and scoop him up,” he said.
I leaned over the gunwale and plunged the mesh into the water. The surface bubbled with angry white foam. Inside the chop, I made out a thrashing tail. I slid the net’s wide mouth over the tail until Ifelt the fish’s full weight under my arms. Then I tugged upward and nearly fell headfirst into Lake Huron.
“Christ.” My knees caught the gunwale, saving me from splashing into the drink.
“Pull, Eliot!” Clarence’s teeth were bared with the gleeful insanity of expectation. “Pull!”
I pulled. Nothing happened.
Something wrapped around my back—something soft and supportive. I glanced down and saw a pair of long sandy arms wrap around my own. Their hands grabbed the pole just above mine.
“We’ll pull it in together,” said Manuel. His voice was low. It came from just behind my ear.
He placed both feet against the gunwale, mirroring my stance. Manny’s thick frame held me upright as we inched steadily backward. Grunt by grunt, the pole made its way into the stern. Two dozen torturous seconds later, we heard a gleeful, “MINE,” and opened our eyes to see Clarence hauling in the single largest fish I’d ever seen emerge from the North Channel. For one moment, he cradled it with greedy tenderness, like a mother clutching a newborn child. Then the net tipped, dropping the fish—a forty-inch rainbow trout—onto the beveled white floor. It slid sideways, flopping and thrashing, leaving behind an erratic trail of slime.
Thus the scene came to rest: Manuel and me sprawled on the floor, my body tucked into his; next to our waists, a slimy being forced unwillingly into sunlight from the safety of its dark, wet home; and the rest of the family above it all, gazing proudly at the creature we’d pulled out of oblivion.
—
“THREE CHEERS FOR THE LEASTlikely fishermen on Earth,” said Clarence, grabbing our wrists and waving them about in the air. “Little Boose Beck and our Resident Harvard Genius!”
The family erupted into applause. My cheeks burned with pleasure as Clarence released our wrists so Caleb could pass us the official Fisherman’s Trophy. Manuel grabbed one side of the trophy. I grabbed the other. Together, we hoisted it into the air.
We did it, I thought as Karma and Shelly whooped and whistled.We won.
Granted, we didn’t win the entire Olympics; that honor went to Karma and Shelly. But we won the most important event—the one that would feed the entire island.
When the Closing Ceremony ended, everyone else dispersed to change out of their wet bathing suits, but Manuel and I stayed. In exchange for saving the day, we had the honor of cutting our prize open and yanking out its insides.
“Eugh,” said Manuel when I made the first incision in the trout’s neck.
“Scared of blood?”
“You know this.”
