Fiendish by Brenna Yovanoff Page A

hook and a piece of liver and I followed her down along the bank, where the weeds grew thick and tangled and the ground sloped away.
    Shiny stood over me, watching as I made a mess trying to get the liver on the hook, before finally taking pity and doing it herself.
    Then she scrambled down the bank and pointed out into the creek. “You’re going to cast into the middle, over there where the water looks dark. I’ll go a ways farther down, and you stay here up by the bridge.”
    “Why?”
    “Because the big ones are all down in the bottom of the creek bend, and you won’t hold one if you catch it.”
    “How do you know?”
    She gave me that long know-it-all look she’d been doing since we were little, and it made one part of me feel safe and homey, and another part feel plain furious. “I just do.”
    I sat on the top of the weedy hummock nearest the bridge. The water was slow and clear, and I sat with my feet tucked under me, watching the crawdads skitter around in the shallows. Farther out, my bobber floated over a dark, uneasy shadow. The day was warm and mostly still, and there was an empty mason jar lying near the edge of the water, caught in the weeds.
    We’d been sitting for maybe twenty minutes when my line gave a jerk, so hard it almost took the pole out of my hands. In less than a second, the creek had gone so wild it looked like it was boiling, and then I saw the fish, shining like gunmetal, rising out of the water and thrashing down again.
    Shiny gave a shout, and then came crashing through the weeds behind me.
    “Hold it,” she said, her voice buzzing like an electric current.
    “It’s too strong! I think it’s getting away.”
    “
Hold
it,” she said again, sounding nothing at all like Shiny and everything like a girl with fire in her blood. “Keep the line tight—no, don’t pull on it! Just play it, play it!”
    I worked the reel, letting the line run slack and then catching it before it could spin all the way out, but the fish was wild, making the water churn up in a white froth. I saw a flash of spiny tail, and then it splashed under again.
    Shiny marched straight down to the edge of the water and peeled her shirt over her head. She did it in one fast yank, like there was nothing strange about skinning off her clothes on the side of the road. She had on a black bra with flowers embroidered on it and there were a pair of wings tattooed on her back, right over her shoulder blades.
    Then she was in the water, splashing down off the bank and wading out.
    She looked tall and tan following my line and when she got to the end, she ducked and grabbed the fish in both hands, then hauled it, flopping and wriggling, up onto the bank.
    I dropped the pole and ran over to her.
    Shiny sat down hard on the dirt, holding the catfish in her lap. The wings rippled on her back when she moved. I wanted to reach out and touch them. They were the most delicate thing I’d ever seen, each feather perfect, like every line of the picture had been loved into existence. Under them, the rest of Shiny was sharp and brown and kind of lonely.
    She stuck out her chin and clamped her fingers around the fish, never minding the spines. Its skin was a slick, awful green—an impossible green—with slimy whiskers and dull, milky eyes. The ends of her hair were wet, sticking to her arms.
    She was about to stick her fingers in the fish’s mouth and twist the hook out, when suddenly she yanked her hand up to her chest and we both froze. Its mouth was full of long, jagged teeth. Row upon row of them, and every one like a needle.
    The fish twisted and flopped, mouth opening and closing, and we sat looking down at it. Suddenly, the green skin seemed much greener and much, much wronger. Shiny had taken out her buck knife now but was holding it the way someone would hold a stick of butter, like she’d forgotten what it did.
    “Shiny?” I said, sounding much calmer than I felt. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen a catfish with