Not As We Know It Read Online Free

Leonard.
    “What are you doing, Jamie?” Mum called from the kitchen.
    I had planned my answer this time. “Ned got a puncture. Just fixing it.”
    “Yeah, I did, Mum!” Ned shouted over the sound of phasers shooting down an enemy spaceship.
    —
    There was no sign of Leonard in the tub. I shone the torch into every corner of the garage but still nothing.
    “Hello,” I said.
    No answer.
    I pulled open the bag and threw one frozen herring toward the tub. It hit the edge with a crack, then slid into the water. I shone the torch over it as it bobbed on the surface.
    Ned would have strolled in and peered into the tub. He was the brave one. In
Star Trek,
he would have been Captain Kirk. I would have been the doctor, Leonard McCoy. He was the cautious one.
    “Damn it, Jim. I’m a doctor, not a merman keeper,”
Bones would say.
    No away mission takes place without Kirk and now I was stuck without Ned. Like when you stand just beyond the waves’ wash and let your feet sink into the wet sand.
    I imagined my brother beside me.
“Boldly go,”
I whispered, and took one step, still watching the herring.
    A scuttle. A scurry. A splash. And Leonard was back in the tub, returned from his hiding place. A hand shot out of the water. It was just a flash and the herring was gone. Ripples spread out across the bath from where the fish had been.
    I nearly dropped the torch.
    I couldn’t go any farther. I needed Captain Kirk ahead of me. I threw two more herring into the bath, then I dropped the empty bag and ran.
    Outside, I made sure the latch was all the way across before leaning against the closed door and gulping in air.
    Ned was asleep when I got back. Mum had wrapped a blanket around him. Spock was warning Captain Kirk against fighting an alien with his bare hands. Kirk was ignoring him.
    “Right, Jamie, I want to get some writing out of you,” Mum said.
    —
    We didn’t make it back to the garage that afternoon. Ned slept the rest of the day, while I wrote about the storm. Dad got home early and was filthy. He was always filthy. But he set me some maths before his bath.
    When Ned woke, it was dinnertime. Then the rain came. Big, heavy drops; the kind of rain we knew Mum would never let Ned out in.
    “You boys have a good day?” Dad asked. He drank coffee. We had mugs of hot chocolate.
    “Yeah,” Ned said. “You can’t beat a big sleep.”
    “Did you get anything good on the beach?” Sometimes Dad came treasure hunting with us at the weekends.
    “Erm…,” I said, pushing down the urge to shout once more.
    “Just a shoe,” Ned finished.
    We all agreed that was pretty rubbish. We had too many shoes. Dad knew a man who collected abandoned buckets and spades and hung them off a tree in his front garden. We had enough shoes for a shoe tree.
    “Mum wouldn’t like that, though,” Dad said.
    “We could…
persuade her,
” Ned said with a grin.
    “Maybe one day.” Dad winked.
    —
    In our bunks—Ned on the top, me on the bottom—I told Ned about the herring. He wasn’t surprised.
    “That’s what mermen must eat,” he said. “We should get him some mussels too. I reckon Leonard loves mussels.”
    That was the first time I felt it. Not jealousy yet. Just a strange feeling that something was happening, something unknowable, between my brother and the fish-man living in our garage.

One of Granddad’s favorite stories was about the night he heard the whales sing. He’d been at sea for weeks. It’s not easy for sailors to get lost. Unless it’s cloudy. Then the stars are hidden at night and the sun is gone for most of the day. Before the whales sang, the ship’s equipment had broken and the clouds had been thick for three days and nights.
    “That’s the only time I’ve ever been truly scared at sea,” Granddad would say. “If a storm had come, we would not have had the foggiest where shallow water or rocks might be.”
    They put the ship at anchor and slept, praying for clear skies in the