a name: Grandma, Stompy, Steph, Hook, Crook, Elvis. – and Foggy Eye. They’ve all been named af ter their distinguishing physical features and character traits. Grandma is her first shark, her first hook. She’s always the first shark to appear. But today she’s nowhere to be seen. The girl is surprised and looks around trying to find her. Back on the boat she takes off the chainmail suit she wears on top of her wetsuit while feeding her sharks, and lies down on the deck. She spends her surface interval with her feet dangling in the water and her face warmed by the sun. When she goes back in with a new tank she swims to Ben’s Cave. She swims through shoals of little black fish, hearing echoes of howling whales in the distance. She’s a young woman who spends most of her days out at sea. Some days she dives four, five times. The time spent on the rocking boat is to get ready, wait out surface intervals, get some sustenance. She only heads back to shore as a way of guaranteeing her return to the ocean. On land people call her the Shark Girl. Some use fancier descriptions like Shark Dancer or Shark Whisperer. To her it’s all the same. It tells her what she already knew: that the sharks know her and the people don’t. The people talk about her with the fearful looks of
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