Aquarium by David Vann Read Free Book Online Page A

without end, but she left me at the curb of Gatzert Elementary, saying have a good day, sweet pea, giving me a kiss that barely touched my cheek. Her breath still heavy, still half asleep, each exhale a kind of sigh. And then she was gone, and I walked to the front doors where the janitor always let me in. In another hour, teachers would arrive, and during the half hour after that, the other kids. But I was always the first except the janitor, who seemed to live here through the night.
    I waited on the only bench, outside the principal’s office. All chairs were kept inside rooms, leaving the hallways smooth and clear, long tubes to direct the surge of each tide of students and teachers. The rooms rock pools, microcosms, left stagnant and then swept away again. A world with many moons, most of them invisible, the janitor and I the only riders at six thirty and nowhere to cling.
    At seven thirty, the next low tide, he unlocked the rooms, let each door swing free, and each room begin to fill with the returning sea, teachers brought in slowly by the current, sleepwalkers with papers and books and mugs of coffee, jackets dripping from the rain outside, every floor becoming a slick.
    I think most fish would not survive so many moons and tides. I think the current would exhaust them, and they’d become confused. The surge would pull them away from whatever anemone or rock or bit of sand or coral was home, and in all the cycles afterward they’d lose direction and never find their way back. What we’ve become is very strange.
    At twelve, I had only the sense of pressure, some premonition, riding each surge and waiting for the counterpull, believing, perhaps, that all would release at some point. Each day was longer than the days now, and my own end not yet possible. It was a simpler mind, more direct and responsive. We live through evolution ourselves, each of us, progressing through different apprehensions of the world, at each age forgetting the last age, every previous mind erased. We no longer see the same world at all.
    So perhaps I’m wrong about immersion. Not sensing the tank doesn’t mean it’s not there, and even loneliness must be in some way contained. The teachers nodded to me as they passed, mumbled hello, but I had sat there so many mornings I had become like rock or coral, no more than structure.
    Shalini was the one I waited for. She always arrived sleepy with her backpack and Tupperware, sat down on the bench and collapsed against me. I’m so tired, she said. She could fall asleep in a car, so I was catching her only minutes from dreams.
    I’ve been awake for three hours, I said.
    Shh, she said. I’m sleeping. She had her arms around me and I closed my eyes but then the bell rang, as it always did, and we rose and she clung to my arm. My mother said you can come over tomorrow for a sleepover, she said.
    Yay!
    Shh.
    Hello clump of Shalini-Caitlin, Mr. Gustafson said. Perhaps you can be two people today?
    Shalini always ignored him, but we did have to separate to fit into two seats. I was so happy about the sleepover, I couldn’t stop smiling, even through fractions and percentages. Having something to look forward to changes everything. I’ve always needed a future. I can’t live without one.

I didn’t know whether I would find the old man. As I approached the aquarium, I slowed down, despite the rain, because I was afraid I’d never see him again. The aquarium would be far too lonely now without him. Pier 59 only a building projecting out into the sea, another drab shape in the gray. The rain very cold, close to becoming snow. Day without light, the air hung in dark sheets and columns that swept in over the water.
    He was waiting in the first corridor, sitting slumped in a dark blue sweater, his hair rising up in thin fans, wild faint sprays from having worn a hat. Dark form of him otherwise camouflaged, head speckled.
    Caitlin, he said, and rose. I’m very sorry. Will you forgive an old man for his