Siren Sisters

by Dana Langer

  “Totally,” Jason agrees, although I’m not sure he knows what my dad is talking about. I’m not sure I do either.

  “Well, here you go.” Dad smiles shyly as he hands us our food. “I hope these turned out okay.”

  I smile at him. “Thanks, Dad.” You see, I think, it’s not that he doesn’t care about being a parent. It’s more like he’s just never sure he’s doing it right.

  We pour ourselves sodas and assemble our straws and napkins and go outside to eat at our picnic table under the pine trees. After Mr. Bergstrom’s chicken, this sandwich tastes like the best thing ever. The bread is soft, the eggs are fluffy, and the cheese is perfectly warm and melted. I think that if Emma and Alice and Mr. Bergstrom could just taste these sandwiches, they’d take back every bad thing they ever said about my dad.

  “I wonder what time it is,” Jason says. “It must be late.”

  “Can I have a sip of your soda?”

  “Why don’t you just get your own orange soda?”

  “Because I don’t want that much. I just want a sip.”

  “Fine.” He pushes it across the table.

  “Are you sure?”

  “It’s fine.”

  “But are you still going to drink it after, or are you just going to dump it out?”

  “I’ll drink it.”

  “You’re totally gonna dump it out.”

  “I won’t.”

  “Fine.” I open the plastic lid and take a sip.

  “Use the straw!”

  “Why?”

  “You’re, like, infecting the whole cup. It’s full of germs right now.”

  I put the lid back on and push the soda across the table, and it sits there between us. Jason looks back and forth between me and the cup for about four seconds before he grabs it and dumps it out all over the grass.

  “I knew it.”

  Jason takes the wrapper halfway off one of the straws, and he aims it at me and blows. The wrapper flies off the straw and hits me in the face.

  “Hey!” It’s something we all used to do when we were kids, when we were hanging out at the diner after school, waiting for our moms. We’d started some major food fights that way.

  I pull the lid off my own soda, dip my fingers inside, and pull out a dripping handful of ice cubes.

  Jason jumps up and starts running, and I chase him around the table, throwing the ice. He grabs a squeeze bottle of ketchup and aims it at me.

  “No!” I drop my cup, spilling the rest of the soda on the grass, and hold my hands up in surrender. “We’re even!” That’s what we always used to say to stop the food fights when we were kids. Those were, like, the magic words. “Even! Even! Even!”

  Jason hops up on the table and sits with his legs dangling, thudding his heels against the bench.

  I sit on the bench and lean my elbows on the table. “What happened to marine biology?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, I thought that was your dream. That’s what you always wanted to do.”

  “I am still interested in marine biology. But I’ve been looking at old pictures and stuff from my real dad. Some stuff my mom keeps hidden in her closet. He was a lobsterman. And so was my grandfather. And lately I’ve been thinking maybe that’s what I should do too. I don’t know . . . that probably sounds stupid.”

  “No, it doesn’t. It makes sense. I mean, I think it does.”

  “Are you sure you can’t come to the dance, Lolly?”

  I tilt my head up so I can see his face upside down. It’s pretty dark out, but there’s a thin sliver of light coming through the kitchen door, and I can hear my dad cleaning the pots. “Is Emma going?”

  “Of course. She’s captain of the sailing team. Why?”

  I slide a little way down the bench and pick up an ice cube from the grass. “I guess she’s, like, your really good friend now.”

  “You know, people can have more than one friend.”

  “But did you tell her stuff about me? I mean, did you tell her things that I said?”

  “What did you say?”

  “Nothing.” I toss the ice as far as I can, and then I swivel back around so we can face each other. “I didn’t say anything. But she said that you said that I did.”

  “Well, I didn’t.” He pokes my shoulder with his straw. “Why do you care so much about Emma?”

  “Because she’s mean to me. And she thinks she’s better than me. And she is better than me.”

  “Better at what?”

  I look back at him and roll my eyes. “Better at, like, everything.”

  He shakes his head. “But I mean, so what? Who cares?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe you do.”

  He thinks for a minute, and I keep my eyes on the sky and the way the stars stick out in these little glowing clusters between the pine trees. No clouds tonight. No storm.

  “I just like hanging out with you because you’re . . . you. Why do you always think that’s going to change?”

  Because it is going to change! All sorts of things I can’t say clamor in my head. Everything’s changing! I fold my arms across my chest and look at the ground. “I don’t know.”

  “Why don’t you come to the dance too? I mean, I want you to be there.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I like you.”

  “You do?”

  He tosses a wadded-up napkin at me. “I’m not saying it again.”

  Jason and I have been friends for a long time, but we don’t normally say stuff like that to each other. I mean, of course we like each other. But we like each other because we’ve always just been together and we don’t know any other way. Because I was there the time he got food poisoning and barfed on my bedroom rug. And because he was there when Lula gave me a really ugly haircut with bangs. Because we won a goldfish together at the town carnival by throwing Ping-Pong balls into fishbowls, and we rode together on the Cages ride that flips upside down, even though I didn’t really want to. And because I was there when he got cut from the Little League team and cried. And because our parents were friends before we were ever born.

  But this is different. Hearing him say that, I kind of feel happy, and I kind of want to get up and run away.

  I look over at his sneakers, the ones he’s worn for so long that the treads are smooth and the rubber is pulling away from the canvas. And yet they still don’t have a speck of dirt on them. I would know those shoes anywhere. It is him, after all, I remind myself. He’s still him. And I’m still me. Sort of. And if I go to that dance and the Sea Witch calls, well, what if I just ignore her? I mean, what’s the worst that could happen? I’m not even officially a siren yet.

  I pick up the napkin and toss it back at him. “Okay,” I say. “I’ll go.”

  * * *

  I. Deposition of Bernard Peach: http://salem.lib.virginia.edu/texts/tei/swp?term=Bernard%20Peach&div_id=n92.12&chapter_id=n92. ( Essex County Archives, Salem—Witchcraft Vol. 1 Page 65 )

  Chapter

  3

  Now the Sirens have a still more fatal weapon than their song, namely their silence.

  —Franz Kafka

  That night, I wear Jason’s Little League T-shirt to bed and sleep better than I have in a long time, and the next day, after school, I’m ready to serve my detention. I find Ms. Cross back at her desk, this time reading a book, her glasses dangling around her neck on a chain. The classroom smells different without a bunch of kids crowded inside, like dust and lemon soap.

  “Is that new?”

  She puts her glasses on and looks at me. “What?”

  “The chain. I’ve never seen it before.”

  “Oh,” she says. “Yes. It was a gift.”

  “That’s a good gift for you,” I tell her. “I mean, you take your glasses on and off a lot.”

  “Yes,” she says. “Well.” She opens the bottom drawer of her desk, pulls out some whiteboard cleaner and a roll of paper towels, and hands them to me. “Here you are, dear. You can clean th
e whiteboard.”

  The notes from the day’s classes are still up, messy and smeared in places where kids’ backpacks rubbed against them: Salem, 1654, perspective, critical thinking, fairness. I spray the cleaning solution, trying not to breathe it in, and pull a few paper towels off the roll.

  “You don’t like history,” Ms. Cross says suddenly.

  I look at her over my shoulder, but she’s still looking down at her book.

  “At least that’s what your tardiness and skipping seem to suggest.”

  “I do like history,” I tell her. “There are just some things about this class that bother me.”

  She plucks a pen from the mug on her desk and starts chewing on the cap. “Like what?” Nobody likes borrowing pens from Ms. Cross because they’re all covered in little bite marks.

  I turn back to the board and spray some more cleaning solution. “I don’t know.”

  “I think you do,” she says. “And I’ll tell you something else, I’m not letting you off the hook so easily this time. I’d like to hear what you have to say for once instead of just watching you scowl at me from the back row.”

  Picturing myself from Ms. Cross’s perspective is alarming. I guess it’s like when customers complain about us at the diner while we’re standing right there in front of them. It’s like they think as long as we’re behind the counter, we can’t hear them. Like we’re invisible.

  “I don’t mean to scowl at you.”

  “Well, go on, then. Let’s hear what you’ve been thinking about all this time.”

  There’s so much I could tell her. I’ve been thinking about shipwrecks and losing my best friend. I’ve been thinking about my mom. “I don’t like our textbook,” I tell her. “The American Vision or whatever. I don’t—I don’t feel like I’m included in the vision.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, my mom was born on the reservation near Old Town, not too far from here, but we never learn anything about that.” I glance at her. “In fact, there’s nothing about reservations in the textbook at all.”

  “I see.” Ms. Cross nods and folds her hands on the desk. “That is . . . true. I’m sorry about that, Lorelei.”

  She’s never called me by my first name before.

  I look around the room, at the lanterns and the cupboards and the sink in the corner that’s always leaking. Before Starbridge Cove was made part of the Sunrise County school district, this room used to be a chemistry lab. But then a whole new science wing got added on, and now Ms. Cross just uses the sink to make tea. She has an electric kettle and an assortment of multicolored teacups hanging on hooks above the counter. I like that none of them match. I know my mom would like it too.

  I stand on my toes and start cleaning the top corner of the board. “My mom didn’t talk much about her family, so I don’t know a lot about them either. But I want to.”

  “You never met them?”

  “No. She was taken from her home when she was little, put in foster care on the mainland, and then she ran away from there when she turned sixteen.”

  “And she never tried to go back? To her parents?”

  “I don’t think so. My sisters say she felt ashamed and out of place, like she didn’t quite belong in either setting. Like, she was an outsider wherever she went, you know?”

  Ms. Cross takes her glasses off and starts cleaning the lenses with her scarf. “I do.”

  “My sisters say a lot of bad things happened to her biological parents too. And their parents. And their parents’ parents. They say there were just so many layers of sadness, it was like they couldn’t get out from under them all.”

  Ms. Cross is quiet for a moment, and then she clears her throat and gets up from the desk. “Excuse me for a moment, would you?” She takes a plastic spray bottle from under the sink and walks to the tangle of assorted plants on the windowsill. “I’m noticing now that some of these are in dire straits.”

  With her back to me, Ms. Cross plucks a few dead leaves and crumples them in her palm, and then she checks on the others, lifting individual leaves before misting more water on each plant. “Yes,” she says, and I’m not exactly sure if she’s addressing me or the azaleas. “It’s a real—it’s an awful mess, isn’t it? It’s hard to look too closely sometimes. One starts to see how bad a situation really is.”

  I turn back to cleaning the whiteboard, and for a while, all you can hear in the room is the two of us spraying and tidying. The four o’clock sunlight starts to spill like syrup through the smudges on the windowpanes.

  Then the bell rings, and we both jump. “Goodness.” Ms. Cross shakes her head and mists her spray bottle at the loudspeaker. “That bell is an act of violence.”

  She sets the bottle down by the sink and starts washing her hands.

  I pass her a paper towel.

  “Look, it’s almost time for you to go home now, but, speaking of music, there’s something I’d like to show you.”

  With surprisingly good aim, Ms. Cross tosses her crumpled paper towel into the wastepaper basket, and then she goes to the little shelf behind her desk, where she keeps what I’ve always assumed are her really important books. She runs her fingers over the spines. “Aha! Here we are.” She holds the book above her head for a moment and then places it faceup on the table. “Why don’t you have a seat?”

  I take a seat.

  Sure enough, this is no ordinary textbook.

  This book is bound in leather, stamped in gold, and handwritten. Intricate maps, odd symbols, and detailed illustrations crowd the margins.

  Ms. Cross turns a few pages and stops at a pen-and-ink drawing of a girl with long wavy hair and feet like a bird’s.

  The Seiren of Starbridge Cove

  Oh no, I think.

  “Lorelei,” she says. “I have to ask you something.”

  “What?” I’m already climbing out of the chair.

  “Are you one of them?”

  “One of what?”

  “Don’t be afraid,” she says. “It’s just that I’ve worked at this school for a long time, and I believe I can spot a girl who’s becoming a siren. They are the restless ones, the ones with their hands pulled into their sleeves and their hair in tangles. Dark circles under their eyes. You are not the first. On the contrary. I once knew a whole group of girls like you. Girls who disappeared.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I mean, they started out like you, skipping class, showing up late, always losing things. Meanwhile, there was an increase in violent storms, strange weather—tornadoes one day and hurricanes the next. And shipwrecks. Terrible shipwrecks. Several people lost their lives. And then, one day, the girls all disappeared. The storms stopped, and the whole town seemed to forget.”

  “Their own families forgot about them?”

  “Well, there was a group home here in town, a sort of orphanage, although I don’t care much for that term. Most of the girls came from there. But the home was shut down years ago, and I haven’t seen any others like them since. I’ve been thinking about them all this time, though. Wondering what happened.”

  “But how did you know—I mean, why did you think they were sirens?”

  “One can’t live in Starbridge Cove long without knowing something of the old siren lore. You know that. I discovered this diary years ago, doing my graduate research on the trial of Hannah Martin. I believe it belonged if not to Hannah herself, then to a woman who experienced a similar ordeal.” She points to the book. “Many of the entries mention sirens, and I always suspected that they were real. I thought of it again when those girls disappeared. And then you showed up in my class this year, and you just . . . well, you seemed so much like they did.”

  I shake my head, but there are tears burning behind my eyes. “I’m sorry,” I tell her. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “I see.” She looks away. “Well, nevertheless, borrow the journal, Lorelei. Please. I’d like you to read it.”

  I tuck the book
carefully under my arm and look up at the clock. “I think it’s time to go.”

  “You know, often it’s guilt that makes people act in a way they shouldn’t. Or not want to face the things they should.”

  “Have a good night,” I tell her, and pull the door shut behind me.

  That night, I curl up in Lara’s bed with a flashlight and Hannah’s journal. Lara’s already fallen asleep, with her golden hair spread across the pillow and her arms flung above her head. She always sleeps sprawled out like that, like she doesn’t have a care in the world. Lily and Lula are downstairs with some kids from school, but they’ll be kicking them out soon, before it gets too late. Nobody is ever allowed to stay.

  I want to tell them everything Ms. Cross said, about the journal and the girls who disappeared, about Mr. Bergstrom and how he asked Alice about us. But I’m sure they’ll just tell me to stop worrying again. They’ll tell me we’re more powerful than anything now, and that we don’t have to be scared anymore. Not as long as we’re together.

  June 28th, 1694

  It is a witch they want, and it is a witch they believe they have captured. Well, if this works, this dark magic, they will come for me in the morning, and there will not be anybody here resembling the terrified young girl they locked in this cell two nights ago. Her soul will have flown free through the bars on the windows, and she will look down on this town as birds do, on the prisons, and the graveyard, and the harbor, and the ships. And she will hide away, in that distant land beyond the horizon, between the ocean and the stars. And here, in this cell, they will find only what remains: a woman changed, stronger than before, more powerful, and accompanied by a starving wolf. They will have their witch. And they will not have the courage to hang her, no matter what the witness says.

  With shaking fingers, I turn the pages until I get to a part near the end, the part about sirens.

  The new seirens seem frightened by their power and changes to their physical appearance. At night, they cry themselves to sleep. I suppose it’s only normal for a girl to wish she could go back in time and reverse the spell that changed her from an ordinary child into an otherworldly temptress.