The Boy Who Cried Fish by A. F. Harrold Read Free Book Online Page A

they’re a bit precious about it. Like to look their best all the time. Tigers though, they don’t care, they look good wet or dry, I guess. They love to swim. In fact, this book said that you’re more likely to get killed by a tiger when you’re swimming than by a shark . Although I suppose,’ he added as an afterthought, ‘it probably depends on where you’re doing the swimming.’
    ‘In the tiger enclosure at the zoo?’
    ‘More likely to be a tiger.’
    ‘In the shark tank at the Aquarium?’
    ‘More likely to be a shark.’
    Wystan stopped walking. Fizz stopped too. (It only seemed polite.)
    ‘Fizz?’
    ‘Yes?’
    ‘Why did you have to say that about the shark? I’ve got pictures in my head now.’
    ‘Well, it was you that said about the shark tank and the Aquarium.’
    ‘Yeah, and it was you that said about sharks eating people .’
    Now Fizz was getting pictures in his head too. He’d been concentrating on the tigers. He got on well with big cats (or at least with Charles, who was the only one he knew), and although they were dangerous he had a good idea of how to be safe around them (keep on the outside of the bars, for instance), but now he had a shark swimming round in his head in a huge tank at an Aquarium just like the one they were walking towards, and Fizz had never learnt to swim. In his mind’s eye he was splashing about desperately trying to learn (learning’s a good thing, you usually know more at the end of it) and that huge fin was heading his way.
    ‘They don’t have sharks here, do they?’ he said, trying to push the picture away with common sense and knowledge.
    ‘I don’t remember none,’ Wystan answered, ‘but that don’t mean nothing. It was pretty boring in there and I weren’t looking too close.’
    ‘No, me neither. But . . . well, they would’ve been in with all the grey fish, wouldn’t they? Right at the beginning?’
    ‘I suppose. You’re the one who knows stuff. You read books. Have you read what colour sharks might be?’
    ‘I think . . .’ said Fizz, racking his brains. ‘I think they’re all grey. Aren’t they?’
    ‘I guess we’re gonna find out,’ Wystan said glumly.
     
    Just a minute or two later they were stood in front of the Aquarium. The glass doors at the front of the building were locked and, peering through them, they could see dim lights on inside. Grey shapes swam in tanks. Fizz hoped that none of them were sharks.
    He hoped none of them were tigers either.
    ‘Now,’ he said, ‘let’s find a way in.’

Chapter Six
    In which some boys attempt to break into an Aquarium and in which, eventually, they do so
    The boys skirted round the outside edge of the Aquarium (not in real skirts, which flap about in the wind and get caught up in machinery, but in a metaphorical sense).
    The plan was, instead of walking in through the front door (which was locked anyway), to sneak in round the side. When they were watching the show that morning Fizz had noticed that there was a place where the arena’s wall dipped down low. He could see over it from his seat and out to sea. If they could make their way round the outside of the Aquarium to there, they’d be able to climb over. Then, from the pool, they could slip through the curtain that led backstage and find a door. Maybe, if they were really lucky, Fish might be in the pool when they got there, and they could all just slip back over the wall and away. Easy.
    ‘Yeah, easy,’ Wystan had grumbled sarcastically. But since he couldn’t think of a better plan of his own, here he was, edging carefully.
    To the seaward side of the Aquarium a path ran along beside the beach. Fizz had pointed at it, since it led the way they wanted to go, but as they’d rounded the corner it had narrowed. They had to walk in single file. Below them the waves splashed up and down the beach, crunching the hard shingle noisily.
     

     
    They went as carefully as they could, the only light coming from the now vanished sun