Ripples of June by Cecilia Kennedy

The red berries in the backyard were too tempting not to eat. So, I told June, my friend next door, that they were magical. They’d turn her into a sleek blue shark with iridescent scales.

            “You like to swim, don’t you?”

            “Yes,” she said.

            “You’ll swim forever, never have to leave the water to eat dinner or do homework.”

June’s eyes grew big.

            “Blue shark seeds will flow through your veins—and you’ll be free.”

In seconds, the spindly branches of the red berry bushes were stripped clean, and June’s whole mouth turned bloody with berry juice. 

            “They’re sour,” she said.

            “That means they’re working.”

June lived. Her mother gave her syrup of ipecac, but June wasn’t the same.          

            “I need to go to the aquarium,” she said—almost every day after.

So, I’d find excuses to get a ride from any adult I could and visit the aquarium with June. She circled the tanks, round and round, staring into the water. She’d complain she was hungry—became a pescatarian—wouldn’t talk to anyone—wore fishnet stockings and shark’s tooth necklaces. In high school, everyone thought she was weird.

            “Hey, can you keep a secret?” she asked me one day after school.

I didn’t see why I couldn’t. We weren’t that close. She was embarrassing, a strange shadow on my heels, following me everywhere, ever since the day I told her to eat the berries.

            “I’m going to the aquarium,” she said. “You know—the one with the blue shark in the tank?”

            “Yeah.”

            “I’m going to catch it.”

            “And then what?”

            “Well, here’s the thing: Is it wrong to be hungry every time you visit an aquarium? To just want to devour everything in the tank? I mean, everything.”

I look at June and can only see the blood red juice dripping down her face, her eyes wild with adventure.

            “Nope. That doesn’t happen to me.”

I walk away, but she grabs my hand. Her palm is scratchy.

            “Well, it happens to me, and if I catch the shark and eat it, I’ll be fine.”

And then she tells me the berries worked. They flowed through her, planting the seeds, and she must have that shark.

            “You won’t tell anyone, will you?”

            “Sure. Knock yourself out.”

She didn’t come to school the next day—or the day after. But the blue shark in the tank went missing, and video footage went viral. It showed a teenage girl climbing in. The minute she hit the water, her flesh became fins. Her face elongated. Gills appeared around her neck. She unhinged her jaws, her teeth protruding, and her body whipped into a thrashing motion that tore the blue shark to shreds. And the girl—the one I knew as June—disappeared, except for unexplained waves, ripples, and the death of anything that got placed into the tank ever after. For months, authorities asked: Did anyone know this girl? And I’d never tell—because I promised—and because I blame myself for making her what she’s become.