Quick Bright Things

It was a phenomenon Honey Gourami had noticed over the years, that the very students for whom she had the most affection were the ones whom Fourspine Stickleback, Head of AP Aquatics, could not abide. They sent his blood pressure up like a geyser and turned his fins a murky green, above which his dorsal spines rose like bayonets. Such was the case this Monday morning, shortly after water safety class began, when Ms. Gourami heard what sounded like a series of small explosions reverberating through the aquarium wall and swam over to investigate. There was Stickleback, hurling colored pebbles at the new porcelain castle with such displaced vehemence that bits of painted glass spit back at his astonished students. Jack Dempsey the shoal's big kahuna, worked feverishly through this distraction, already in hot water for overdue snail-work, and threatened as he was with another fish-egg zero that would knock his GPA egregiously out of whack in the penultimate term of senior swim. And while Jack’s electric blue, glimmering good looks dazzled most fish, Stickleback, whose motto, There’s safety in numbers!, was tattooed on the underside of his silver belly — remained impervious to Jack’s charms— physical, intellectual, or acquatic.

From the distance of the hornwort hedge, Honey Gourami, director of the shoal's Sharkspeare Repertory, observed a secondary drama unfold as Jack’s friends, Zebra Danio and Cherry Barb swam in circles to stall the inevitable collecting of snail-work that occurred at ten minutes before the Feeding. Normally, this ritual was performed by Stickleback alone, prowling the lateral line for deviations in the synchronized flow. This morning, however, he’d assigned the task to Jack’s willowy girlfriend, Betta Fish, who drifted ever so slowly, her long flowing fins pooling into a crimson halo as she fixed her gaze on Stickleback’s pointy spines, speeding up only when they twitched. Sensing Stickleback’s irritation through her pressure sensitive pores, Cherry Barb tried another tactic.

“Mr. Stickleback, before you collect the snail-work, I had trouble with #3, if you could explain?”

“Sounds fishy,” Stickleback said flatly, flipping around to scrutinize the questioner.

Cherry Barb, under appreciated for her strawberry hue and peaceful presence, read the problem: “Find the volume of a horizontal cylinder tank by first finding the area of a circular segment multiplied by its length and converted into cubic units.” Then, she blushed.

“And this basic computation confuses you how?” Stickleback asked, following Cherry’s furtive glance back to Jack.

“ I wasn’t sure how to conceptualize—“

“The probability factor?”

“Well, yes—“ Cherry answered unconvincingly.

“It’s 100%,” Fourspine Stickleback spat.

“100%?”

“100% probable that your irridescent friend over there will fail this shoal and your well-meaning but misguided attempt to delay the inevitable—" The Feeding bell rang. “Betta, the snail-work?”

Betta glided reluctantly into Stickleback’s wake and presented the shells she’d collected, Jack’s incomplete attempt on top. Jack slid out of the shoal, flexing the red tips of his turquoise fins and steering Betta, possessively, into open water.

“Tread exactly where you are!" Stickleback exploded.The shoal shivered in place, as he blocked the stream with his barbed back and nudged Jack into line.

“Mr. Dempsey, synchronize!”

“Or what?” Jack nipped at Stickleback aggressively.

“Or I’ll have you filleted and on a plate!”

“What’s a plate?” Jack said.

Honey Gourami, who had been eavesdropping from the sunken pirate ship tangled in hornwort, tried to intervene, "Fourspine! Don't take the bait! " But Jack Dempsey, already twice Stickleback's size, was feeling pugnacious.

“Get your little harpoons away from me!” Jack flipped him a fin.

Stickleback’s dorsal turned lobster red and damp with a discernible sheen.

“You won’t last a night out there on your own, Jack Dempsey. You may be the big fish on campus in here, but out there, in the real sea, you’re barely a snack for a sand shark.”

“ A LITTLE DECORUM, PLEASE!” Honey Gourami thundered, smoothing her ruffled orange fins. “Let us remember that we are a small, independent school in a fifty gallon tank. We are diverse, bright and blessed. Everyday, manna falls from the cosmic ocean above, which is to say, that fish flakes are falling and you are all missing lunch. Isn't anyone hungry?"

Honey Gourami turned her dorsal to the class and whatever it was that she whispered into Fourspine Stickleback’s smug and hairy operculum, caused him to bolt from the shoal into the castle ruins, after which she needed only to raise her temporal bones slightly and peer over her glasses to restore calm.

“Don’t be late for your next class,” she murmured so quietly that even the subtle hum of the air filter was noticeable as the students hushed out into the shoal.