The Boy Who Cried Fish by A. F. Harrold Page B

miniature unending game of tag.
    ‘What did you expect?’ asked Fizz, looking in the tank himself.
    ‘I thought they’d be asleep,’ said Wystan. ‘It’s getting late.’
    ‘Oh Wystan, Wystan, Wystan,’ Fizz said, shaking his head like Dr Surprise. ‘If you read the label here,’ (he pointed at the label by the side of the tank that he’d just read), ‘you’ll see that these fish are from Australia.’
    ‘So?’
    ‘What time it is in Australia?’
    ‘Same time as anywhere else?’
    ‘Australia’s on the other side of the world. So, instead of being half past eight at night, it’s actually half past eight in the morning there.’
    ‘Really?
    ‘And that means that these fish have probably just woken up. They’re chasing each other because they’ve just had their breakfast and are full of energy. For them, it’s just the beginning of another day.’
    Wystan muttered something into his beard that Fizz couldn’t make out.
    ‘Dad’s aunt Sycamore moved to Australia years ago. She sends us letters every now and then and they’ve always got the wrong time written at the top. And the wrong day, too. But it’s only the wrong time for us ; for her and everyone else in Australia, and these fish, it’s right.’
    Wystan gave Fizz another of his looks over the top of his beard. This one meant something like, ‘I’m not sure I believe anything you’ve just said, but I’m not going to argue with you right now because that would just take up precious time that could be used searching for our missing sea lion.’ (Wystan had very expressive eyes.)
    ‘So,’ Fizz said, taking Wystan’s hint, ‘which way?’
    The bearded boy pointed to the left, down the corridor, further into the Aquarium.
     
    They tiptoed past tank after tank after tank of purple fish. Some were small like the pipe-cleaner fish they’d already seen, and some were huge fat things that hung in the middle of their tanks, floating like lumpy balloons, staring at the boys with ugly pudgy eyes. They opened and closed their mouths as if they kept remembering something important to say and then forgetting it before they said it.
     

     
    To Fizz’s relief none of them looked remotely shark-like.
    Every now and then they passed one of those empty tanks, looking lonely among all the slowly swimming sea-life on either side, with a pasted-on sign saying things like STOLEN FISH: REWARD OFFERED or HAVE YOU SEEN THIS FISH: MISSING SINCE SUNDAY NIGHT?
    Hundreds of fishy eyes, small and large, black and yellow and red and orange, followed the boys as they walked. Occasionally the fish were extra interested and swam along in their tanks keeping pace with the boys until they swam head-first into the wall. Being fish of very little brain, they forgot Fizz and Wystan immediately and simply swam back the way they’d come, wondering where this headache had come from. (Had Unnecessary Sid, one of the more irritating clowns in the circus, been there, he would have made an awful ‘haddock’ joke, because ‘haddock’ sounds a bit like ‘headache’ and that’s his idea of fun. Luckily he wasn’t (he was at a different ‘plaice’), so we don’t have to listen to him ‘carp’ on.)
    When they reached the end of the purple corridor, Fizz peered round the corner into another corridor of fish tanks.
    This new corridor glimmered palely pink, like an underwater grotto a nine-year-old mermaid has been allowed to decorate all by herself. The sparse light from the ceiling reflected off the thousands of scales of the assembled pink fish swimming in their little glassy worlds lined along the walls.
    ‘At least there ain’t gonna be any sharks in here,’ Wystan whispered.
    ‘Why’s that?’ Fizz whispered back.
    ‘You’re not gonna find a pink shark, are you? Pink’s the most girly colour of all, and sharks ain’t girly fish, are they?’
    ‘Well,’ said Fizz, pondering the matter deeply, ‘I think some sharks must be girls.’
    Fizz wished he’d read