by Dana Langer
Yes, I think. Exactly.
The diary continues:
But wishing for such things is foolish and a waste of energy. Reversal of a seiren spell is, in most cases, impossible. Soon they will abandon all hope and accept their fate as protectors of the sea, for their souls are not their own.
Beside me, Lara murmurs something and rolls over in her sleep, and I shut the book and set it back down on the floor. I feel like throwing it across the room. Instead, I tuck my knees up to my chest and wrap my arms around them to keep warm. Through the half-open window, I can hear Lily laughing, and the wind, and the melancholy music of another folk troupe rehearsing in the moonlight on the outdoor stage.
The rest of the week passes in a blur. Even more of a blur than usual. Dad switches the diner over to the winter menu, which involves more chowders and comfort foods like chili and macaroni and cheese. The Sea Witch calls for us at two o’clock one morning and we wreck another trawler. In English class we read an excerpt from Macbeth and the main character tells us that his mind is filled with scorpions. Me too, I think. My mind is filled with scorpions. I’m afraid of becoming a siren, and I’m afraid that Mr. Bergstrom is going to make us disappear like the girls in Ms. Cross’s story, and secretly, even though I know it’s not the same, I’m afraid of the promise I made to Jason. I’m afraid of attending my first middle school dance.
Friday afternoon I spend about three hours walking back and forth between all our closets and the full-length mirror in the hallway, trying different outfits. At last I settle on silver sandals and a floaty sea-foam dress that Lula wore to her first prom, a prom she attended while still in eighth grade. At the time, Lula’s prom debut was like the small-town scandal of the century. Our mom used to complain that she couldn’t even get down the aisle at the supermarket without people whispering about her parenting skills and “the sort of girls” she was raising. But then, our mom didn’t spend much time at the supermarket anyway.
I twist my hair up into a knot so the platinum streaks won’t show, and then I use some of Lily’s lipstick and blush that I assume is the right shade. Finally, I pack Lara’s silver purse with all of my makeup and a nail file, just in case, and head downstairs.
My sisters are sitting at the kitchen table, drinking Lara’s famous spiced hot chocolate from the mismatched seashell mugs and playing cards. Lula is sitting with her legs tucked underneath her, studying her cards and drumming her perfectly manicured nails on the tabletop. Lily has her bare feet up on the table, and I can see her turquoise scales shining in the light. I cross my fingers and hope they won’t see me. Maybe I can just sneak right out the door. But that’s impossible with Lara around. She has some sort of sixth sense where all of us are concerned.
Sure enough, Lara sees me standing in the doorway and sets down her cards. “Lolly? It’s late. Why are you all dressed up? Where are you going?”
“To see Dad.”
“In that dress?”
Lily leans forward. “Are you wearing makeup?”
“Doesn’t he have a gig tonight?”
“Yeah, but he invited me.”
“We were going to watch a movie on TV, Woman on the Run.”
I’m a woman on the run. “I don’t know, Lara. I promised Dad.”
“If she calls for us tonight—” Lula starts.
Lily finishes the sentence for her. “You’re going to be in big trouble.”
I shake my head. “She never calls us before midnight. Those cargo ships always come into port at, like, four in the morning.”
Lula shrugs. “That’s true. And even if she did call, Dad probably wouldn’t notice.”
Lily looks at my feet. “You’re wearing sandals?”
“Yeah. So?”
“So I think I can see your scales.”
I look down. “Not really. I mean, you barely can. Plus, it’s gonna be dark.”
“Well, enjoy it while you can. They’re going to grow longer soon.” She wiggles her toes. “Like mine.”
“Okay, Lily. But not right this second. So just leave me alone.”
Lily raises her eyebrows. “Ew.”
“All right, little lady.” Lara picks up her cards. “Go see Dad. But be careful.”
“I will.”
“And take a coat!”
Our house is one of the oldest in Starbridge Cove, and we don’t have a view of the ocean or private beach access like Emma and Jason. But we can still hear the ocean, the waves breaking on the rocks, and the seagulls; and the air has the same smell of pine needles and salt. I walk the long gravel drive that connects our house to the diner, keeping my arms wrapped tightly over my chest because the nights are already getting cold and I didn’t listen to Lara and take a coat.
Our driveway is lined on either side by a dense pine forest, and it floods every time it rains. I used to hate getting rides from people because nobody ever believed we actually live here. “Are you sure this is the driveway, Lolly?” they’d always ask. “Is it possible you’ve got the directions wrong?” We kept asking Dad to pave the road and install more lights but he kept on forgetting. Of course, now that I don’t do gymnastics anymore, I don’t ever need rides from people anyway, so, as Ms. Cross always says, “the point is moot.”
The driveway winds all the way downhill and ends at Seawall Avenue. From there you can see the ocean, and the diner is just ahead. Dad has the light on in the apartment upstairs, and I recognize his silhouette through the window. He should probably get himself some curtains, but maybe that would be too much like admitting he actually lives there.
Contrary to what Emma thinks, Dad didn’t just wake up one morning, decide he was too cool for us, and move out of our house. What really happened is that he slowly detached and peeled himself away, much like an octopus I once saw in one of Jason’s documentaries. I’m not sure Dad himself was even fully aware of what was going on. First, he moved out of his bedroom and down the hall to the guest room. We probably wouldn’t have even noticed except that his snoring normally woke Lula, whose bedroom was on the other side of the wall.
Weeks later, he migrated downstairs, setting up camp on the floor in the study. I happened to go in there one afternoon in search of extra highlighters, and I spotted his blankets and sheets, all neatly folded, in an orderly pile on top of the fully inflated air mattress. Gradually, more and more of his stuff began to leave with him in the mornings and not come back. Music he wanted to play while he was cooking. Sweaters. Books. His guitar. The first time Dad left with his overnight bag, we watched him go.
“I’ll be staying right down the road,” he assured us, slinging the duffel bag over his shoulder. Nobody was saying it out loud, but I think it had occurred to all of us by then that if he was capable of migrating this far, there was no telling where he might go. With our mom’s death, it was like all the normal boundaries and obstacles that come with being a family were gone, and Dad was unmoored, skating away with nothing to stop him, like the objects in chapter 7 of our science textbook, The Wondrous Capabilities of a Frictionless Surface.
“I’ll see you at the diner every day,” he continued. “Okay? So it’ll be like I’m not even really gone. And if you need anything, you just call or come on over. Right? You’ll barely even miss me.”
“Right.” All I could see was the illustration of a giant piano sliding across a skating rink.
“Who’s gonna do the laundry?” Lily asked. Even when Mom was alive, Dad was the one who did most of the housework.
Lara said, “I think we’ll manage.” Then she and Lula said good-bye and went back into the kitchen and started making dinner like nothing weird was going on. Or rather, Lara started making dinner and Lula helped the way she always did, by sitting at the kitchen table and changing her nail polish for the fourth time that week.
But Lily and I watched. We stood in the window, close enough together that our shoulders were touching, and we watched him head off into the sunset like he was starring in his own cowboy movie.
; “Do you think it’s our fault?” Lily asked.
I shrugged. “Maybe.”
I think we were both recalling all the times over the last few months when we’d been difficult to live with. Tired. Distant. Secretive. I guess a dad can’t be expected to notice or understand when his daughters start turning into sirens. I barely understood it myself. All my sisters would ever tell me was that they’d made a deal with the Sea Witch and that I was a part of it, that it meant we were all going to be more beautiful and more powerful than we ever could have dreamed, and that we’d live that way forever. We had just lost our mother, and it made sense to me somehow that they’d make a deal like that. When you lose someone you love, for a while it’s like there’s this strange, shimmering cloud around you and your family. The loss is so powerful, it’s almost magic. Like you’ve fallen through a secret portal or seen into another world. Anything could happen. But they would never tell me why or how it happened to them. Lara just promised I’d find out when I was older, when my own transformation was complete. And if they weren’t going to explain it to me, they certainly weren’t going to explain it to Dad.
He was leaving us his truck, and some of his flannel shirts, which we’d end up wearing as nightgowns, and the pistol he kept for protection from bears. Bears are pretty common around here, but they usually keep to themselves. They don’t really bother anybody. But Dad would insist he could hear them at night, prowling around in the woods behind our house. He claimed they weren’t like ordinary black bears either, that they were bigger than normal and that their fur was white. “Ghost bears,” he kept calling them. “Some type of albino or something.”
Jason told me it was possible, that there was such a thing as a Kermode or spirit bear, and they made up just one percent of the black bear population. He said it was an extremely rare genetic mutation, though, one never seen before in this region (even though we have tons of regular bears), and that if there were Kermode living in our very own woods, it would be a true wonder of science. In any case, Dad hates guns, and he certainly had no interest in hunting, so he kept the pistol loaded with blanks, figuring that if one of the ghost bears ever got too close, he’d just fire and scare it away with the sound.
“Remember to keep the garbage cans locked up tight, girls.” That was the last thing he said, right before he slipped out the door.
I come in through the kitchen and walk up the back steps. At the apartment now, Dad has three guitars, two pairs of boots, an old wood-burning stove, and a couch with a colorful blanket draped over it. But mostly he has cassette tapes, boxes and boxes of them that he keeps in crates all over the floor. There are tapestries nailed to the wall, and a black-and-white photograph of him and my mom together onstage at a concert. In the picture, my mom is in profile, holding her guitar, with her dark hair falling over her face and her eyes cast down at the floor. She’s wearing some kind of gauzy tunic with flowers embroidered around the collar. Beneath the bright lights, she looks like an angel.
“Hey, kid.” Dad’s standing at the sink rinsing out a coffee cup. He smiles at me and his eyes crinkle behind his glasses. “I’m glad you came.” He always greets me like this, like we’re long-lost friends and he can’t believe he’s seeing me again after all these years, even though it’s only been, like, eight hours.
“You ready to go?”
He nods. “Just about. But listen, Lolly, there’s something I wanted to ask you first.”
“Sure. Is everything all right?”
He sits down on an overturned crate and takes my hands in his. “Well, I’m thinking about going out on tour again.”
I pull my hands away and take a step backward. “What?”
“I have a buddy who’s playing over in Boston right now and then touring out west next month. I was thinking I could meet up with him this week and see how it goes.”
“This week?”
“Well, yes. Immediately.”
“But what about the festival?”
“Well, I’d have to miss it. I’d be leaving tomorrow. But it’s a great opportunity, Lolly. And I’d be back in a few days. What do you think?”
I think again about the speeding piano demonstration, the illustration they don’t include where the piano eventually crashes against the wall of the skating rink and smashes into a million pieces. “Did Jason’s mom say something to you?”
“Alice? About what? What would she say?”
“About not being a good parent or something. Because it’s not true, you know. You’re a good—well, you’re doing fine.” I keep remembering when I was little and he and my mom were getting ready to go out on tour. I’d have a tantrum and throw myself at his feet and wrap my arms around his legs to keep him from leaving. “Don’t let her scare you away. Okay? We still need you here.”
“She’s not scaring me away, Lolly. This has nothing to do with Alice. This is about me. The truth is, I haven’t been feeling too well lately, and I thought maybe getting out of town for a few days . . . well, I thought maybe it would do me some good.”
I look down at my sandals. One tiny iridescent scale peeks out from beneath the silver straps. “I guess if it’s a good opportunity, then you should do it.”
“Well, that’s what I think too. But I wanted to make sure you’d be okay with it.”
“Is everyone else okay with it? I mean, did you ask Lara?”
“They’ll be fine. But you know, they’re . . . older than you.”
“Well, I’m fine with it too.”
“Okay, then.” He nods. “I guess I forget sometimes you’re not a little kid anymore. I still picture you having temper tantrums and getting upset every time we leave the house.”
“Right.” I’m still seeing the speeding piano in my head, only now I have an urge to shove him in front of it.
“Well, thanks for being so cool about it, kid. And we’ll celebrate your birthday together when I get back. Okay? Don’t think I forgot.”
“Sure. No problem.”
“Okay, let’s get this show on the road.” He takes his guitar in one hand and my hand in the other, and we make our way back down the stairs to the kitchen.
I barely recognize the diner. The place is transformed in semidarkness, with twinkle lights around the windows and mirror balls twirling overhead, bathing the audience in a million tiny circles of light. It’s so beautiful that I almost forget to be angry at Dad. The band starts up their new song, “On the Ghost Road,” and I watch the people in the audience. To my surprise, Alice is there, sitting alone in the back with her chin resting on her hands. She looks like she’s on the verge of tears. When it’s good, that’s the kind of thing music can do. That’s what our mom always used to say. That’s the kind of power it has.
Years ago, when our parents went on tour together, we’d stay over at Jason’s and sleep in sleeping bags on the floor or, if the weather was warm, outside in the field behind their trailer. Alice would make pancakes for dinner, and Lula would drink maple syrup straight out of a juice glass, and Lara would let me play with her makeup and French-braid my hair to distract me from being homesick. Then we’d stay up late to listen to their interviews and live performances on the radio, like transmissions from outer space. I remember listening for the sound of Mom’s voice before it got swallowed up in static, and I remember feeling sleepy and wide awake at the same time, and the rush from the sugar and having my hair pulled back too tight.
But Dad stopped touring completely when Mom died. Since the accident, he hasn’t even left Starbridge Cove. So maybe he’s right. Maybe this trip will be good for him. And we’re not little kids anymore. I guess we can take care of ourselves now.
At the end of the first set, I catch Dad’s eye and give him a small wave. It’s time. I’m a woman on the run.
Dad nods, and I start snaking my way back through the little tables, trying not to disturb anyone or bang into anything.
And then I smack straight into the Sea Witch.
She’s standing by the open do
or with her wild gray hair blowing crazily in the breeze. She’s nearly six feet tall and is wearing chandelier earrings and a sparkly dress. People are staring at her, but I can’t tell if she realizes it. Or if, like my sisters, she’s perfected the art of attracting attention without letting it concern her. She’s smoking a cigarette, and she has one hand on her hip and a shawl thrown over her shoulders like an old movie star, like she’s posing in some kind of weird sea witch fashion magazine.
“What are you doing here?”
The Sea Witch almost never visits the mainland. And when she does, she never goes farther than the beach. Seeing her all dressed up and out at a concert is as weird as when Nurse Claire started showing up at the diner on Sundays on the back of Coach Bouchard’s motorcycle. Or the time I saw Ms. Cross in the produce section at the supermarket choosing an avocado.
The Sea Witch smiles. “Didn’t you know, Lolly? I am a great patron of the arts.”
“You shouldn’t smoke,” I tell her. “It’s really bad for you.”
“Ha!” She gestures dramatically with her cigarette, leaving smoke trails in the air. “Mortality is the least of my concerns, dear. Yours as well, come to think of it.”
“I have to go.”
She sniffs the air. “You smell like perfume.”
“I’m already late.”
“For what? Where are you going?”
She knows. I can hear it in her voice. She knows everything about us. “Home,” I tell her. “I’m going home.”
The Sea Witch laughs. “So this is your big idea? You think you’re just going to ignore me and carry on living your life like a normal girl? Go to dances? Make friends?”
I put my hands on my hips. “What if I do?”
“Lorelei, I hate to rain on your parade, but no sailor in this town is safe from my sirens. Now, everyone in this town is a sailor of one sort or another, and in two days’ time, you will be one of my sirens. Ergo, no one in this town is safe from you. You can attend all the dances you like, but you cannot shut your eyes and pretend this isn’t happening. This is a powerful magic. Even I struggle occasionally to control it. Soon it will transform you into a cold-blooded monster, and the more attachments you have with other people when the transformation occurs, the harder it will be.”
