The ocean hated Jacqueline Morell.

The ocean didn't usually hate people. In most cases, the ocean regarded her human guests with indifference. She could kill them without a drop of remorse, but it wasn't that she wanted them to suffer. She simply didn't care. But from the very first moment Jackie put a single toe in the water, the ocean despised her. Maybe the ocean was in a bad mood. Maybe Jackie was one small child too many that day on that beach, but when Jackie stamped her tiny foot down, the ocean recoiled. This would not do. Water slid away from the sand, the tide going out when it should have come in. It refused to return until Jackie's parents packed the family up and went off in search of friendlier shores.

When Jackie swam, riptides swirled up out of nowhere. Boats she went on found themselves becalmed.

If the ocean had been an ex, her friends could have sat her down and pointed out he clearly wasn't into her, that he seemed a little unstable, and maybe he was more dangerous than she was willing to admit. That continuing to pursue him was a bad idea. Best to let sleeping fish lie. But while people will tell you to avoid a person who is cruel, no one thinks the ocean could be personal. Jackie's continual bad luck with the sea was an amusing story, nothing more, and most people believed it was almost certainly exaggerated. Which was how she ended up on the San Marino dock one Sunday afternoon, shrugging her way into a lifejacket.

"This will be so much fun," Sofia from work gushed. This had been her idea. Sofia had curly hair and grey eyes, and she fancied herself very good at parties. She bought cake for everyone's birthday and threw all the baby showers in her family, and when someone had to take on the job of organizing a team-building exercise, she was the natural choice. "I've always wanted to go fishing."

No one else shared her enthusiasm. One by one, the half dozen people who hadn't been able to find an excuse to do something else that Thursday trundled onto the boat. They nodded in pretend interest as the crew did their memorized spiels about local species and what they'd probably catch and told them not to forget the sunscreen.

Jackie wondered if the engine would give out and they'd have to row back. Or maybe the boat would spring a leak. It was quite possible there would be a freak, unseasonable storm driving them back to shore. It was impossible to predict, but she knew there would be something.

The water was like glass as the crew untied the ropes from the dock and coiled them neatly on deck. They pushed off, and the motors started, and Jackie stared out at the two tails of white that followed the boat. They passed a restaurant at the end of the dock, then big houses that grew small behind them, and then a rock outcropping with an automated light house. Jackie wanted to be anywhere but here on this reflective, perfect, still sea. When one of the crew said, "Water's not moving today," she got up and helped herself to a slightly warm soda. Refreshments were included and she might as well get the company's money's worth.

When the crew couldn't find fish at the usual spot and decided to go out further, she wasn't surprised. When the next spot was similarly lifeless, she opened a second warm coke and went out to the rail. Most of her co-workers were sitting on benches wearing assorted looks of boredom and resentment. "Wish I'd brought a book," Tom, who maintained the company website, muttered. Sofia was twisting the sleeve of her sweater and clenching her jaw as she looked over the ocean, and Jackie thought about how Sofia had made her soup when she had the flu and how Sofia had thrown a dog adoption party for Grace from accounting, and she felt a miserable, irrational sense of guilt. Today was going to fail and it was her fault. If she'd stayed home, the fish would be biting.

"I just wanted it to be perfect," Sofia said helplessly.

"It'll be fine," Jackie said because she had to say something. "We're out here. We're bonding."

"Doug said it was stupid," Sofia said, and a fat tear rolled down her cheek. "He said we wouldn't catch a single fish."

Jackie didn't care for Doug. He was the sort of co-worker who threw stuff away if you left it on the printer, and he'd once heated up something that made the kitchen smell like feet for three days. "Doug's a jerk," she said. Sofia sniffled and she remembered too late that Sofia had a thing for the jerk in question.

Jackie looked out over the ocean and sighed. When beautiful things hated you, you got good at separating personality from appearance real quick. Still, she hated that Sofia was starting to really cry now. It wasn't fair of the stupid ocean to act like this. She'd never done a single thing to it, never even so much as spit in it, but it was taking it out on poor, sweet Sofia anyway. "Would it kill you to let us have some fish?" Jackie demanded, like the ocean would answer.

Only, it did.

A single, slender silver fish flung itself out of the water and landed on the deck of the boat. For a moment, the scales glittered alone in the sun. "Oh, that's weird," Sofia said and sniffled again. "I didn't know they did that."

"They generally don't," one of the crew said, eyeing the water. A lot of sailors don't trust the ocean. They might love it, but it's a deeply dysfunctional sort of love, one laced with the knowledge that your beloved might swallow you whole at any moment.

Jackie didn't like the wary look in the man's eyes. It was a warning, that look. A premonition.

Then a second fish leapt on board. And a third.

Then twenty more.

All of Jackie's co-workers began to laugh because they hadn't figured it out yet, and one man scooped a wiggling fish up with his hands and held it above his head. "Behold," he said in delighted triumph. "I have caught a fish!"

Thirty more fish landed on the deck.

Forty.

The captain was scanning his sea-searching sonar. "Where are they coming from?" he demanded, but it didn't stop. There were small fish. Large fish. Silver fish. Golden fish. Hundreds and thousands and they still kept coming. It was an onslaught. A deluge.

And boats are only meant to take on so much weight.

The science of boats and floating is pretty straightforward. A boat will sink until it has displaced water equal to its weight. A thousand-pound boat will push aside one thousand pounds of water. If it's still floating after that, congratulations. Your boat didn't sink. And boats are designed with plenty of wiggle room. You've got gear, and people, and the haul to account for, and no one wants to cut it too close because sinking is bad. And most fish are small. One at a time they don't add a lot of weight.

A tuna — silver, gleaming, easily 500 pounds — landed on the deck. The boat wobbled at the impact, and Sofia clutched the railing, her knuckles white, her tears over worthless, beautiful Doug forgotten.

"Start shoving them off," the captain said grimly.

There was a moment's pause while everyone struggled to understand what he said. What he meant. Get the fish off the deck or else sinking, drowning, rescue in theory, but the sea around them was a churning mass of fish and no rescue boat would make it through.

Jackie moved first, grabbing a tiny grey fish and tossing it into the water. After that, everyone else joined in and they shoved fish and hauled fish and kicked fish and gathered fish in buckets. One of the crew pulled out a net, and they began to work together, throwing enviable catches of fish onto it and dragging them overboard.

The fish jumped onto the boat faster than they could be cleared away.

And the boat sank lower and lower into the water.

"I think that one is extinct," a crew member said in a hushed voice as a very alive, very spiny, very ugly fish landed at his feet. Jackie hadn't known fish could snarl.

She tossed the slimy, scaly, angry fish back into the water. She'd tried to like the water. She'd given it plenty of chances. And it was definitely magical. It was just that magic was terrible and deadly and far too fishy. "If I make it out of this alive, I'm never getting near the ocean again," she muttered.

Everything stopped. No breeze, no waves, but no more fish either.

"Never ever," Jackie said, and waited to see what happened.

Nothing. And nothing was beautiful. They still had to throw thousands upon thousands of fish back into the sea, and at least half of the ones Jackie touched tried to bite her — it was an unpleasant surprise that fish had teeth — but without any new fish adding to their catch, the boat slowly crept back up in the water.

"That sure was a work trip," website Tom said as the boat pulled back into the harbor.

"Great outing," Grace said as cheerfully as a person could while scrambling to get on land as quickly as possible. "Next year, I vote for bowling."

"I'm sorry," Sofia said.

Jackie stepped off the boat onto the dock. "At least we proved Doug wrong," she said. "I'm pretty sure this counts as a good catch."

Sofia brightened, probably at the thought of telling Doug all about the adventure, and Jackie turned back to look at the ocean one last time. It was beautiful. Long stretches of blue reached out until the sea and the sky blended into one. Maybe she could just go to the beach.

One last fish flung itself out of the water directly into her face, knocking her back.

"Fine," Jackie said, "I get it."

She'd stay out.

She nudged the fish off the dock. She'd lost, but there was no reason to be petty about it.

Maybe it was time she visit the desert.

© 2024 Stacie Turner