Wish by Joseph Monninger Read Free Book Online

all. The shark grabbed the carcass and shook it back and forth. Astonishing, really.”
    “Did it frighten you?”
    “No more than bad weather would. You wouldn’t want to come out here and do a slow breaststroke toward the island. The trick is to stay off the surface. That’s why whites sometimes mistake surfboards for seals. They see a shape and little flipper hands coming off and they surge up from the bottom. The island research team has a shed full of old surfboards that have been bitten by whites. Daunting to look at, believe me.”
    “Do you think we’ll see anything today?”
    “We might. The weather won’t bother them. The trouble is, we can’t stay very long. It will get too rough for the kids.”
    “Tommy will be crushed if we don’t see one.”
    Mr. Cotter nodded.
    “You look after him, don’t you?”
    I shrugged.
    “Taking care of someone can teach you a great deal,” he said. “It’s troublesome, and it’s easy to get annoyed, but your heart, well, it gets stronger. You do it for Tommy, of course, but you do it for yourself, too. I took care of my wife at the end and I wouldn’t trade that time.”
    “Was she sick for very long?”
    “For quite a while. More than two years. I learned to love her in a different way.”
    “I understand,” I said.
    “I’m sure you do.”
    Right then Captain O’Shay came on the PA system and told us we had a kill.
    TOMMY SHARK FACT #5: A great white does not chew its food. It rips off chunks of blubber and gristle and swallows them whole. A white has about three thousand teeth, triangular in shape and serrated along the edges. It uses the first two rows of teeth to grab and cut; the rows behind rotate in and take the place of worn-out or damaged teeth. After consuming a seal, a white may last a month or two before it needs to feed again.

    Captain O’Shay leaned on the throttle pretty hard, and the boat lolled and banged through the waves on a wild ride. We headed away from the sun, that was all I knew, and circled around the islands. I ran upstairs to find Tommy. By the time I reached him, he had his head inside the captain’s cabin, and had obviously engaged in a conversation and received a report. He pulled his head out a second later. He looked bright-eyed and happy.
    “The Sisters,” he said. “Mirounga Bay.”
    “The Sisters?”
    Before he could explain, the boat jammed on a waveand bucked, and Tommy nearly lost his balance. I grabbed him.
    “Where’s Mom?” I asked.
    “She was sick. She went below.”
    I grabbed the back of his life jacket.
    “Captain O’Shay said we want to be on the starboard side,” Tommy said. “Let’s go!”
    We scuttled around the back of the boat, then cut across to the starboard side. I kept Tommy inside me, away from the railing. When we reached the starboard side, I spotted the islands again. They looked crueler from this angle, more horrible to think about. Birds churned everywhere. A plume of gulls circled like smoke from a pile of leaves.
    “There!” Tommy pointed.
    His voice went up. He nearly came out of his skin.
    Blood. Bright red blood. Blood redder than any blood could be. Blood swirling away from a center, from a darkness in the water, from an ending you never want to think about. Blood like a flag widening on the sea as it traveled.
    “Ten o’clock,” Captain O’Shay said over the PA.
    Tommy had spotted the kill faster than the captain. The boat rocked along, still several hundred yards away from the blood. Some of the challenged kids came out with Mrs. Halpern. She pointed her finger at the blood circle.Whether the kids understood what she meant seemed impossible to say.
    “Do you see anything?” I asked Tommy.
    He shook his head.
    “Just the blood,” he said, his voice tight with anticipation.
    “What did you mean,
the Sisters
?”
    “The researchers call them the Sisterhood. About three or four females who hunt out here. They’re deadly.”
    “I can’t see the seal,” I