Siren's Storm

by Lisa Papademetriou

  But this was no epicure coming to inspect peaches. “Great,” Will said as long legs unfolded from the tiny silver car. “Another freeloader.”

  “Hey!” Angus called as he loped over toward them. When he saw Gretchen, he ran a hand through his bushy brown hair. “Where have you people been hiding?”

  “Angus!” Gretchen waved, and Angus’s face lit up like something that had just been plugged in. “You have to try one of these.”

  Angus was about to protest, but she popped a cherry tomato into his mouth. “You’re doing tastings now?” Angus teased.

  “Will never gives anything away for free, but these are mine,” Gretchen told him. “Have a blackberry.”

  Angus opened his mouth and let her feed him again. He smiled at her as he chewed.

  “We rinse off all the manure before we put the stuff out,” Will told him.

  Gretchen rolled her eyes, but Angus looked a little unsure.

  “Kidding,” Will told him. “We don’t rinse anything.”

  “Wi-ill.” Gretchen stretched his name to two syllables. It was her complaining voice. “Ignore him, Angus. Want more?” She held out the box of fat, glossy blackberries.

  “Um, no thanks,” Angus told her. He hopped onto the wide wooden table and sat down. “Listen, I actually came over to invite you guys to a party.”

  “Your mom is unbarring the gates?” Will asked.

  “No way, dude. Not after what happened last year—my place is in lockdown until graduation. But Ansell’s having a thing. Next Friday.”

  “On his beach?” Gretchen asked, and Angus nodded. “Sweet.”

  Harry Ansell was rich. Seriously rich. But his parents did a lot for the town, so the regular Walfangers didn’t completely despise them. Will knew Harry and didn’t think he was a bad guy. Not the brightest, but not horrible.

  “I’ll drive,” Gretchen volunteered, looking at Will.

  “I’m not coming.”

  “Yes, you are.”

  Will shook his head and glanced over at Angus, who was watching the argument with amusement. Gretchen didn’t seem to understand that Will wasn’t like her. He couldn’t just go to parties and act happy all the time. Sometimes, being near people made him feel like he was going to break apart. Okay, sure, he had to work at the stand. His family needed him. But he didn’t have to go to a party and pretend to drink vile beer and endure everyone’s sympathetic looks and sad murmurs.

  “You’re coming.”

  “No.”

  “Okay, I’m glad we’ve discussed this. I’ll pick you up at nine.”

  “Forget it, Gretchen.”

  Gretchen just smiled and took her tray of half-eaten blackberries, tomatoes, and lettuce. “Thanks for the invite, Angus. See you! And remember, Will—nine on Friday.”

  “Gretchen, I’m not—”

  But she was sashaying away, singing at the top of her lungs. Her long Indian skirt swayed as she walked. Her hair hung halfway down her tan back, barely skimming the top of her lavender halter.

  “She’s so freakin’ hot,” Angus said, half to himself. Then he sighed and turned back to Will. “Hey, dude, so I checked with my uncle.”

  “Which uncle?”

  “Barry.”

  “Right.”

  “The police chief. About the …” He dropped his voice to a dramatic whisper. “Dead body.” He stared at Will with wide brown eyes.

  “And?”

  “He wouldn’t tell me anything.”

  Will snorted and went back to shelling beans.

  “But don’t you think that’s weird?”

  “That the police chief wouldn’t tell the biggest gossip in town details of a murder case? Um, not really.”

  “Dude, he’s my uncle. I’m telling you—something’s going on. This is like that whole deal in Jaws where nobody wants to freak out the tourists, but there’s this giant shark just, like, out there. And it’s just waiting and planning and hoping for a tasty snack.”

  “Is it mechanical and made of rubber?”

  “Dude.” Angus shook his head. “I’m telling you. Something’s up. This town has secrets.” He hopped off the table. “And I’m going to find them out.”

  “Maybe your uncle is trying to protect you.”

  “Whose side are you on? I don’t need protection. I need answers.” He waved over his shoulder as he walked back to his car. The salt had gotten to it near the bottom, and orange rust was making its way up the car in a pattern that looked like a gentle wave. “I’ll see you at Ansell’s party, if not before!” he called as he folded himself up into his little clown car.

  Will didn’t even bother shouting that he wasn’t going to Ansell’s. Nobody listens to me, anyway.

  “So then I was like, ‘Nice wedding ring,’ and I thought he was going to die,” Trina said as she rubbed SPF 15 on her legs. “Gia just about fell on the floor laughing, and the guy just sort of crept away like a lizard. I kind of felt bad for him, but, like, don’t hit on seventeen-year-olds while you’re wearing your evidence, you know?” She spread lotion over her bronze arms and twisted her long brown hair into a clip. Trina was short, but she had lush curves, thick hair, and golden skin that attracted a lot of attention. “What an imbecile.”

  Gretchen made a small hm noise that she hoped would make it sound as if she was still awake. Trina went to her school, and they used to be close friends. But lately all of Trina’s stories seemed to revolve around partying and the guys who were desperate to get with her. Whenever Gretchen listened to her, she felt irritated, so she didn’t listen very much.

  Gretchen adjusted her sunglasses and looked out over the crashing waves. They were pretty large for the Atlantic. Their rhythm seemed to beckon to her cheerfully, but Gretchen wasn’t fooled. It was still early in the season; the water would be cold.

  Will could never understand why Gretchen refused to go into the ocean. She liked the beach, but not the water.

  Tim had always teased Gretchen for not even wanting to go into the bay near their house. Her nanny had frightened her about it when Gretchen was a child, and she maintained a superstitious distance from the calm water. Gretchen remembered the day—she and Will must have been about eight or nine—that they took a rowboat out onto the water. It was a battered old craft that had floated up onto their property from the bay during a storm. Tim had adopted it right away and spent time repairing it. He’d even saved up money to replace the oars that were lost. Before they pushed away from the shore, Gretchen had begged to be allowed to row. So Tim took one side and Gretchen took the other, while Will sat across from them, trailing a lazy hand in the water. Tim was bigger than Gretchen, and their oar strength was unequal. It was soon clear that unless one of them gave up their seat, they would do nothing but row around in circles all day. But Gretchen had refused to give up her seat, and Tim wouldn’t, either, since he had done all the repairs on the boat. The argument escalated until Tim—in a fit of playful frustration—had tossed Gretchen overboard.

  She’d thrashed madly, like a carp on a line, and Tim had laughed until Will shouted, “She means it! Tim, she means it!” Will had held out an oar, but Gretchen was so terrified that she batted at it, smacking it away from her with a dull thunk. Her screams were choked back by the salt water, her body white-hot with terror. “Shit,” Tim hissed, just before he kicked off his shoes and jumped in after her. Somehow he managed to get hold of her and wrap his long arms around her, pinning her arms to her side. “I’ve got you, I’ve got you,” Tim said as Will held out the oar. He pulled them both to safety. When a red-eyed Gretchen had slopped, wet and dripping, into the house, Johnny had called the Archers for an explanation. Tim had sheepishly confessed, and offered a sincere apology to Gretchen. But Gretchen wouldn’t even come to the phone. She didn’t speak to Tim for a whole week—even when, in a fit of desperation, he’d sent Will over to talk some sense into Gretchen. “Tim thinks it’s funny,” Gretchen had told Will. “But feeling scared isn’t funny.”

  Will
had made Tim promise not to make fun of her fears, and he swore he would never push her into the water again. And, eventually, that was good enough. After avoiding them for a week, one day Gretchen joined them as they scrounged for wild blueberries at the edge of the property. And the rowboat incident was never mentioned again. The boat washed away in a storm three summers later and wasn’t missed at all.

  Trina laughed, breaking into Gretchen’s thoughts. Gretchen forced herself to smile. “That’s funny,” she said, with no idea what she was talking about.

  “I know!”

  Trina babbled on, and Gretchen squirted a blob of white lotion onto her hand.

  Gretchen’s cell phone buzzed. She wiped the sun-block onto her thigh in a smear and picked up the phone. “Sorry, just a sec.”

  A text: Need help spreading that around?

  Gretchen looked up, scanning the public beach. She was used to the deserted waters of the bay near her property and so she felt almost overwhelmed by the number of people nearby, even though it was only eleven in the morning and the beach wasn’t very crowded yet. A tall lifeguard chair towered over various groups scattered across the white sand in beach-blanket clumps. Here was a family with picture-perfect children, there were two thick older women in full makeup and gold jewelry stacked up their arms, a rowdy group of extended family, three tan girls in bikinis …

  Finally she saw him. The ice-blue eyes beneath the pale blond, almost white hair. He was tanned, and his defined muscles ripped down his chest, disappearing into a pair of low-slung, baggy olive trunks. Jason was holding a BlackBerry, and he looked just as good to her as he had last summer.

  He was there with a couple of his guy friends. She knew them vaguely—the one with the red hair was Kurt, the dark-skinned one with striking green eyes was Alex, the funny one was Josh. They were horsing around, making a big show of tossing a football, and glancing over to see if the bikini girls had noticed.

  Gretchen texted back: Don’t trust u.

  Jason grinned at her and tucked the BlackBerry into a bag. Then he stood up.

  Trina caught sight of the handsome specimen walking toward them. She checked out Jason over the tops of her sunglasses. “Who is that?” she asked.

  “My ex,” Gretchen told her.

  “Oh.”

  Jason dropped to the sand beside Gretchen. He touched her hair, weighing it in his hand like a measure of ribbon. “Hey, gorgeous.”

  “Hey.” Gretchen forgot everything she had ever learned about hair being dead tissue. She could have sworn that she had nerves in the tips of her blond strands—she could feel the weight, the warmth of his fingers. “Jason, this is Trina.”

  “Hi.” Trina flashed her man-killing smile. “Great to meet you.”

  But Jason seemed impervious. “Same,” he said, and nodded at her briefly. Then he turned his attention back to Gretchen. “How’s the city?” That was how everyone out here referred to New York. It was just “the city.” As if they lived in Oz, and there was only one city in the whole world.

  “Seems far away,” Gretchen told him. “How’s Arlington?”

  Jason picked up some sand, let it sift through his fingers. “Stupid.”

  “Yeah.” Gretchen knew what he meant. Jason lived with his father most of the year, and they didn’t exactly get along. He spent the summers in nearby Montauk, with his mother. She owned a well-known gallery in New York, and Jason would have preferred to live with her. But his dad was president of a popular gaming company, and he’d managed to hire better lawyers for the divorce. So he’d gotten custody. Jason and Gretchen made a good pair that way—both with absentee mothers.

  “I won’t be there much longer, though,” Jason went on. “I’m heading to Dartmouth in the fall.” He dragged his fingers through the sand.

  “Lucky,” Gretchen told him. “I’ve got another year.”

  “Yeah, but you’re in the city.”

  “Yeah.” She didn’t bother correcting him. It wasn’t that she dreaded living out here, going to the public high school instead of the all-girls academy she’d attended in Manhattan for the past eleven years. It was just that she didn’t want Trina to text the news to everyone in their class.

  Absently she smeared the lotion onto her leg, working it into the skin.

  Jason reached out a finger, tracing it along the outer edge of her thigh. Gretchen’s eyes locked with his. The heat from the sun made her dizzy.

  “Arlington? Isn’t that in Virginia?” Trina asked. “Close to D.C.?”

  Jason and Gretchen turned to her. Honestly, Gretchen had momentarily forgotten Trina even existed.

  “Yeah,” Jason said after a beat. “You’d think that would make it kind of interesting, but the place is all lawyers.”

  “My mother’s a lawyer,” Trina said.

  Jason laughed. “Then you know what I’m talking about.”

  That’s so Jason, Gretchen thought. He never held back. Sometimes it irked her, but mostly it amused her. She respected the fact that Jason truly didn’t give a damn what other people thought of him. I wish I could stop caring about stuff like that.

  Jason turned to Gretchen. “Hey, I’m dying of thirst. Want to come with me to that snack place?”

  Gretchen read his gaze. The snack shack wasn’t far. It was a large, tasteful building that also had showers and restrooms. It was on an elevated wooden platform, which made it easy to get below the building, where it was cool and dark, and lined with soft sand.

  She could already feel his warm hands skimming her sides, sliding over her flat belly. She remembered the way his fingers would twine through her hair. She knew the salty taste of his lips. He hadn’t called since last summer, although he’d texted a couple of times and sent her a couple of Facebook messages. But that was the way summer flings went, right? It wasn’t like she was looking for true love.

  “Sure,” Gretchen told him.

  “Hey, get me a Diet Pepsi, would you?” Trina called as they started off. A smug little smile curled on her lips, and she looked down at the book in her lap.

  Jason and Gretchen exchanged a look. That wasn’t exactly the sort of snack they were going for, and Trina probably knew it. Gretchen blushed and looked away.

  “Sure, Trina,” Jason said smoothly. “No problem.”

  Will checked the time on his cell phone. This was typical Angus. Twenty minutes late, and no call, no text.

  And he’s the one who wanted to go to this stupid show. Will looked up at the brick façade of the Miller Gallery. He’d made the mistake of mentioning that Gretchen had said this “Gifts of the Sea” show was really amazing, and of course Angus had jumped all over it. “We have to go, dude!” Angus had said. “Dude, I love art!”

  Even at the time, Will knew that Angus was only saying that because he was digging on Gretchen. Still, Will had been curious about the show. The way Gretchen described it made it sound really interesting. It was by a bunch of different artists, so it wouldn’t just be the same beach scene over and over. So he’d said, “Okay. Sure, Angus, let’s go.” And now Angus was nowhere to be seen.

  Will’s cell phone buzzed.

  Dude, read the text, stuck at Gaz rewriting story on town dump. Got to skip art. Sorry, A.

  Will sighed. This was why nice guys always got screwed. He texted back, I’ll bring you a seashell. What was the point of going ballistic on Angus? The guy wasn’t going to change.

  Now what? Will hesitated. Am I really the kind of guy who goes to an art show by myself? he thought. There was something that seemed kind of pretentious about it. Then again, he’d rather be the kind of guy who looked at art than the kind of guy who didn’t look at art because he was worried about what it said about him. I’m overthinking this. He started up the marble steps.

  The glossy dark wood floorboards creaked beneath his sneakers as he walked in. Large skylights sent light pouring onto the white walls and gray trim. Admission to the gallery was free, but Will shoved a few dollar bills into the waist-high Lucite box near th
e entrance. The gray-haired volunteer behind the counter nodded at him in approval as he passed into the gallery.

  There was one other figure inside. She was in profile, and as the bright skylight illuminated the fair skin and dark hair, for a moment Will mistook her for part of the exhibit. Asia seemed carved of stone. Could someone that delicate scale a bunch of rocks like a human spider?

  He hung back a moment, unsure whether to join her. She hadn’t been warm toward him the other day, and she’d bailed when he started asking questions. Part of him wanted to turn and scurry away. But another part of him had clearly already made a decision, because he found himself moving across the squeaking floorboards toward her. He felt like an elephant galloping across a field of tin cans, and was almost surprised when gazelle-like Asia didn’t dart away in surprise. In fact, she didn’t even tear her eyes away from the painting she was studying. Instead, she just waited a moment for Will to settle beside her. “There’s something about this one,” she said at last.

  Will took in the image—an old-fashioned painting done in classical style. It was of a bird with a woman’s head. She was diving toward a ship, talons extended, a look of rage twisted across her beautiful features. Her hair was wild, and the men on the deck of the ship cowered in fear before her. Will checked the information plate beside the painting. Siren, it read. MacDougal, Joan. American. 1851–1927. “I thought sirens were mermaids,” Will said.

  Asia cocked her head. “Some say fish, some say birds.”

  “Tomato, tomahto,” Will joked.

  Asia looked at him, a smile playing at the edges of her lips. Will wasn’t sure if Asia thought his joke was amusing … or if she thought Will was an idiot. Say something smart, he told himself. “I like the way this wing is painted here.” He gestured to the extended wing, where every feather was rendered with precision.