The Great Christmas Bowl by Susan May Warren

what’s that briny smell? Oh, it’s freshly caught trout.”
    â€œGo away if you can’t be nice.”
    â€œI think you need me, my little tuna, because I saw you trying to wrestle out of your scales. Someone needs to pry you off the hook.”
    â€œSeriously, how long are you going to do this?”
    He took my fins and pulled them above my head, working the neckline over me until I slipped out. I shrank down and crawled out of my smelly tomb.
    â€œRemind me to pick up some tartar sauce. I think we’re running low.”
    â€œYou won’t be laughing when I cheer them all the way to the state championship.” I stood, gathering my new body into my arms.
    â€œOh,” Mike said, kissing me on the nose as my own words sank in and produced a groan, “I think I’ll be laughing long, long after that.”

Chapter 5
    I admit it—I longed, prayed, pleaded for rain. Or sleet. Or a blizzard the likes of which the county had never seen.
    Saturday dawned clear and crisp and even on the warm side. I started to wonder whose side God was on.
    Mike at least had pity on me. He had taken the canvas fish out to the garage and, very carefully, so that Bud could regain use of his costume intact someday (we were all still hoping, even though he hadn’t yet returned from the hospital), stapled the Trout at the waist, raising the hem about a foot. From a distance, it looked like our Trout had simply added yet another roll of belly fat.
    I thought it couldn’t get worse—until I tried on the head. I suppose I shouldn’t have waited until two hours before the game, but I simply couldn’t bear to pull it over my head, to encase myself in the smell and grime of a couple decades of unwashed hair pressing into the mesh. Probably I was being hard on Bud, but I could have made the same assessment about Mike’s state of cleanliness on a Friday night. I’m sure bathing wasn’t at the top of Bud’s list when he prepped for a football game, not with the cowbells and the pom-poms and the signs to create.
    I had created my own sign—“Go, Big T!” Coach Grant had delivered Bud’s cheering supplies, and I found a couple of cymbals from Amy’s old trap set and fitted them with handles.
    I kept staring at the Trout head, grimacing.
    Mike sat at the kitchen table eating his shredded wheat, hiding a smirk. “This is the perfect day to be a fish. Just do it already. How bad can it look?”
    What, in comparison to the body of the fish? I wondered if people might start speculating that I might be expecting. Surprise!
    â€œThere’s never a perfect day to be a fish,” I muttered.
    Kevin had left for the team bus early in the morning. I blessed my good fortune that the game was an hour out of town. Maybe people wouldn’t come.
    â€œWe need to get going soon. Let’s try on the head.” Mike dropped his bowl into the sink, then stood there in his EMS jacket, hands on his hips, as if he were a representative from the Game and Fish Department.
    I reached for the head and, closing one eye and holding my breath, pulled it on. When it dropped onto my shoulders, the weight of the eyes pulled my head forward, shutting the mouth and pitching me into darkness.
    â€œWhoa!” I said, tottering forward. Mike’s hands on my shoulders helped right me, yet as I took a step back, the top of the head overcorrected.
    Mike grabbed me again as I tilted backward. “I don’t think you’re going to be able to do this,” he said, his first words of doom since he’d discovered me on the bathroom floor. “Can you even see?”
    I held the head in place as best I could. The mouth drooped over my eyes, and I had a perfect view of Mike’s knees. “How does Bud do this?”
    â€œI think he might wear a baseball hat.”
    Yes! I remembered seeing that on him at the last game. I felt better all around. “Get me a