The Cassandra Curse

by Chantel Acevedo

  “It’s an aquarium,” I said. “I think we’re good.”

  Tempting fate has always been one of my strengths.

  Chapter 24

  An Incident at Sea-a-Rama

  Early Saturday morning, Mom and I walked over to Maya’s house.

  “I had no idea she lived so close by,” I said, kicking at leaves on the sidewalk.

  “You’d think we’d have seen her in the neighborhood,” Mom mused. She was wearing shorts and a T-shirt, and from a distance, we probably looked like sisters. I said so, and she told me to stop kissing up.

  We stopped in front of Maya’s house. They’d put up Christmas lights, along with a plastic Santa, whose cheeks were covered with purple marker streaks. I glanced down at my phone again, double-checking the address. The lawn was overgrown, and there were a couple of strewn bicycles. “I didn’t know Maya had siblings,” I said, pushing the doorbell.

  A man with striking blue eyes opened the door, gave us a big smile, and called out, “Maya, your friends are here,” before leaving us on the porch. From the depths of the house, I could hear the sounds of at least two kids arguing over the television, while a couple more kids, teenagers by the looks of them, zoomed down a hall, their feet pounding on the hardwood floor. Maya appeared at last. She was wearing black shorts over yellow tights, and a T-shirt with an orca on it that read SAVE THE SEA PANDAS!

  “Funny,” I said, pointing at the shirt.

  Maya crossed her arms. “Thanks. Let’s go,” she said, and started pushing toward the door.

  “Un momento,” my mom said. “Can I talk to your mom or dad first?”

  “Oh, um. Sure.” Maya turned around and called out, “Alicia? Mike?”

  My mother looked at me with wide eyes. If I ever called my mother Gertrudis, or Trudy, she would kill me. My brothers had once called my dad “Rafael” instead of Papi and they’d gotten grounded for a week.

  The woman named Alicia came to the door to greet us. She had a squirmy toddler on her hip, his little face covered in chocolate. My mom went baby-crazy at the sight of him. “Hola, nené,” she murmured, and started making weird sounds with her mouth. I cleared my throat and nudged her with my foot.

  “Ah, yes. I’m Callie’s mom, Trudy,” she said.

  “Alicia,” the woman said, shifting the toddler a bit to shake my mom’s hand. “Maya’s been staying with us for, oh, how long has it been?” she asked, searching Maya’s face.

  “Six months,” Maya whispered.

  “That’s right. She’s a lovely girl. Helpful.” A voice called out “Aliciaaaa!” from somewhere inside the house. “Maya, you have some money on you?” she asked, and Maya nodded. “Okay, kiddo. Have fun.”

  My mother’s eyes jumped from Maya to Alicia and back. “You mean she doesn’t live here full-time?”

  Alicia shook her head. “Yes. Full-time. This is a group home for older foster kids,” she said, bouncing the toddler, who was now pulling her hair. “This little one is here for an emergency stay,” she said, “but mostly we take in kids over ten.” Alicia smiled. “Lots of love in this house,” she said, and gave Maya a kiss on the cheek. “But not a lot of time. Gotta run. You have fun. Call if you need me.” Then Alicia and the toddler disappeared into the house.

  As soon as the door closed, my mom threw an arm around Maya’s shoulder. “Sea-a-Rama, here we come!” she said. I could tell she was trying to make things cheerful, but we walked in silence almost the whole way to my house.

  We came home to a shouting match.

  Fernando had eaten the last of Thalia’s special cereal, which her mum and dad had sent from London, and she had her hands on her hips, giving him what for.

  “Have you utterly lost the plot? Or are you always a git about other people’s things?” Thalia was shouting.

  Fernando looked at us and tossed up his hands. There were remnants of Thalia’s Cheeky-Os on his chin. “I don’t understand a word this girl says,” he shouted.

  My mom started yelling at him about hospitality, and Mela pulled Thalia away. “It’s not like you can’t just get more the next time we go to—” but she stopped herself in time to see Maya cocking her head over the conversation like an attentive puppy.

  “Hey, Maya,” Nia said, and Maya gave a tiny wave. “Love the shirt.” Nia’s own shirt today had a dinosaur running from a meteor on it, and it read: DINOSAURS ARE PROOF WE NEED A SPACE PROGRAM.

  “Love yours,” Maya said.

  My mom finished telling off my brother for being rude, packed some snacks in a bag for us, and finally we went in the van, Sea-a-Rama bound at last.

  When we arrived, there were about thirty protestors gathered outside the Sea-a-Rama gates. Their signs read “Free Otto” and “Empty the Tanks!” and other things. They booed and jeered at everyone who walked past them.

  “I don’t think this is a good idea,” my mom said, but we could see Ms. Rinse coming over to the car.

  Breathless, she waited while Mom rolled down the window. “Glad you could come. The protestors are outside, not in the park. They’re here every weekend and gone by noon,” Ms. Rinse said.

  My mom was making a face, the same one she always made when she watched the evening news—as if she had taken a bite out of something really gross.

  “It’ll be okay,” I said. “Yeah,” Nia, Mela, and Thalia added. Maya was very quiet. She was staring at the protestors, her hands clutching her cross-body purse.

  “Come on, Maya,” I said softly, and she shook out of it a bit.

  My mom finally relented, but I know she stayed in that van and watched us until we were all safely within the park gates. I waved her off from a distance, and she put the car in drive at last.

  The other members of SAP were there too, huddled around a kiosk selling bubble wands and stuffed orca toys. Max was talking to Violet, but when he saw us, he broke away from her and came to stand next to Maya.

  Thalia hovered behind me, and I heard her whisper in my ear, “Violet is here? Suspicious, right?” and I nodded a little.

  “What’s she doing here?” I asked Max, my eyes on Violet. “She’s not even in SAP.”

  “Neither were you until, like, yesterday,” he shot back, and it was true. I glanced over his shoulder and caught Violet glaring at us.

  “She wanted to come, that’s all,” he said.

  “What about Raquel?” I asked softly. I hated that I had to ask. Normally, I’d know exactly what Raquel was up to on the weekends.

  Max raised an eyebrow. “She’s in Los Angeles again,” he said.

  “Okay,” Ms. Rinse said, “the park is yours.” She handed out park maps. “We will all meet in the food court at noon for lunch and share what we’ve learned.”

  The first thing I noticed about the park was how much painted white concrete there was everywhere. Planters and benches and tables, all made of the stuff. White concrete–encased glass tanks filled with eels and puffer fish. There were so many layers of paint on everything that it chipped off like confetti, littering the ground.

  We could hear the barking of sea lions in the distance, but we headed left, guided by Nia, who held the park map up before her like she was an explorer.

  “The main event has got to be the killer whale show, right?” she said. I heard her ask, “What do you call a pod of musical whales?” When nobody answered her, she turned around and said, “An ORCA-stra! Get it?”

  “My job. Jokes are my job, Nia,” Thalia said. Nia laughed, ignoring her as she led the way, and chattering on about how orcas were actually a kind of dolphin but nobody ever called them that. Thalia and Mela walked up front, followed by Maya. And Max. Max and Maya. Talking quietly together.

  I watched them anxiously. First Violet showed up on the field trip when she wasn’t even in the club, and now Max was all cozy with Maya. Maybe it was just a coincidence.

  I brought up the rear. Alone. We passed by one of those wax toy machines. This one made a wax penguin. I wanted to stop, quarters jangling in my pocket. B
ut the others didn’t wait for me.

  They seemed so happy. Nia was in science la-la-land, going on about the intelligence of dolphins, Thalia and Mela had happily donned tank tops and flip-flops, every inch the tourist, and now it looked like Maya had a . . . boyfriend?

  I had never felt so left out. I checked my messages for anything from Raquel, but there was nothing. The longer Raquel and I didn’t talk or text, the more I felt as if maybe I’d never have a real friend again, as if having her for a best friend had just been dumb luck.

  I toyed with my bracelet as we walked, tempted to whisper into it, if only to alleviate my lonesomeness. Would Tomiko respond? Maybe she was in one of her college classes and would get mad. Elnaz, perhaps? Someone had left a juice pouch on the ground, and I crushed it with my heel, walked on, paused, and returned to pick it up and throw it away.

  When I rose, trash in hand, I caught Violet standing there, a smirk on her face. “It’s empty. Can’t suck any more juice out of it if you tried,” she said.

  “It’s not mine. I was throwing it away,” I said. The others were getting farther away from me, chatting among themselves. I looked in their direction.

  “Sure, sure. Abandoned by your friends?” Violet asked.

  “Same as you,” I said. And it was true. Usually, where Violet was, Max was, too. That seemed to have changed in the last few days, though.

  Violet flinched as if I’d hit her. But the moment passed, and she sniffed and looked at her watch. “Whale show in ten. Let’s go. I hear you can get soaked if you sit in the first row,” she said.

  Which is how I ended up walking through Sea-a-Rama with Violet Prado.

  “Max and Maya, huh?” I asked. Maybe Violet had the scoop.

  Violet shrugged. “I don’t get it. He says she’s interesting. He’s just hoping she’ll help him with his science project next year, that’s what I think,” she said, but the way she said it suggested she didn’t quite believe it.

  I watched as Max bumped Maya with his hip, sending her staggering a little. She laughed and bumped him back.

  “That’s flirting,” I said. I hadn’t really had any crushes yet, not beyond Jordan Miguel, anyway. But I was pretty sure Max and Maya were doing that flirting thing, because it made my stomach all fluttery to watch. Violet had had a boyfriend in the fifth grade, a kid named Guillermo Diaz, and I remember how we had all watched them at the end-of-the-year dance. Only three pairs of fifth graders had participated in the slow dance, and you could reach out and touch the relief in the room when the DJ went back to playing reggaeton and hip-hop.

  “Max? Flirting with Maya?” Violet scoffed. She was quiet after that, and I could tell watching Max and Maya together was bothering her. “He’s my best friend,” she said at last.

  “I know what you mean,” I said, thinking of Raquel. I expected her to tell me to shut up, but she didn’t. Violet only nodded in solidarity.

  “Raquel misses hanging out with you, in case you were wondering,” Violet said.

  “She has a funny way of showing it,” I told her.

  Violet only shrugged. “Believe me or don’t. I don’t care.”

  After that, I made a mental note to scratch Violet off our suspect list. A siren wouldn’t be this human.

  “So what’s up with the new girls? They are so weird,” Violet said after a while, interrupting my train of thought.

  “I like them just fine. Thalia is funny and Nia is so smart. Mela tells the best stories. Tomiko and Elnaz are so cool, I wish I—”

  “Who? How many people you got living with you, Callie?” Violet asked.

  I gasped. I was so not good at this secret identity thing. “Nobody. I mean, besides my mom and brothers. And the muse—I mean, the girls. They’re just, wow, hey look! We’re here,” I said, pointing at the entrance to the killer whale stadium.

  It was, like the rest of Sea-a-Rama, a concrete structure, blindingly white in the sun. A blue-sequined sign read “OTTO THE ORCA” in ten-foot letters over an oval pool. Pelicans sat peacefully on the sign, their saggy gullets twitching in the breeze. The place smelled powerfully of fish. The back wall of the tank wasn’t glass, but rather, it was a gate that led out to the bay. A black dorsal fin pierced the water and drew circles on the surface.

  The stadium was made up of aluminum benches. We all took our seats in the “Splash Zone,” aka the front row. A smattering of tourists sat throughout the rest of the stadium.

  Violet and I sat at the end of one of the rows, and she kept arching her neck to watch Max and Maya. “I don’t get it,” she said at last. “She’s such a freak.”

  “She’s not,” I said. “She’s going to do great things one day, just you wait.”

  “Oh yeah?” Violet said. “You mean to tell me that is not freaky behavior?”

  I was almost afraid to look.

  Maya had left her seat and was now nose-to-nose with Otto the orca through the thick glass of the tank. She had both palms on the tank and was talking quietly to herself. I rose and joined the muses.

  “Budge over,” I said, and they did. Nia had whipped out her phone and opened up her kódikas app.

  “This isn’t right. This is definitely not right. That tank is way too small for that animal,” she said, an edge growing in her voice.

  “Look at his dorsal fin. Is it supposed to be all floppy like that?” Mela said. She was right, Otto’s fin wasn’t standing up the way it should. It was dog-eared, the tip touching his back instead of pointing to the sky.

  “There is nothing funny about this at all,” Thalia was saying.

  “The protestors,” Max said suddenly, and we all jumped. I didn’t know he’d been listening to us. “That’s what they’re protesting. Otto’s treatment. And they’re right.” He got to his feet.

  “We need to do something,” Nia said.

  Thalia and Mela nodded in unison.

  My scalp was buzzing, as if a thousand caterpillars were crawling on it.

  “Girls,” I said, but the other muses weren’t listening.

  That’s when I heard them—the pelicans on the sign, three of them, screeching, sounding a lot like angry ducks, their bills opening and closing, clacking together loudly.

  Nia was on her feet now, too, and she skipped down the steps to join Maya at the tank wall. They were talking furiously, pointing all around the tank. The trainer, who had been gathering tiny, limp fish into a bucket for the orca, was now laughing hysterically to herself for no clear reason at all. My eyes slid over to Thalia, who was staring at the trainer, her lips twitching into a smile.

  “Thalia?” I asked, and touched her shoulder, but she brushed my hand off, hard, her eyes never leaving the trainer, who was now so distracted with her own laughter that she didn’t notice Nia and Maya over by the tank.

  Mela was on her feet, bouncing up and down, mumbling, “His little fin. It’s so sad. He’s trapped there,” as her eyes filled with tears. Another trainer, who had been hanging up a wet suit, started sobbing into his hands. I grabbed on to Mela’s arm, showed her the earplugs in the palm of my hand, and then plugged my ears. I pointed at the pelicans. Mela’s eyes opened wide. She dug out her own earplugs, and then searched through Thalia’s purse to find hers. When she found them at last, they were covered in chewing gum. She popped them into Thalia’s ears anyway, startling her and breaking her concentration on the trainer, who quit laughing at once.

  The three of us ran to the others. “Nia, your earplugs,” I said, but when she turned to look at me, I took a giant step backward.

  Nia’s eyes, usually deep brown, were blazing, the irises golden, her pupils huge. “Save Otto!” she shouted into my face. Maya was still nose-to-nose with the tank, and the tips of her fingers were purple where she’d splayed them on the glass.

  Shaken, I turned my attention to Maya. “Come on, Maya. Come on. Let’s go,” I kept saying, but she would not move.

  I concentrated my feelings, felt the numbness in my hands, and said again, “Maya, come with me,”
as forcefully as I could, but this time, instead of feeling the muse magic coursing through me, I felt . . . weak. My eyes focused on the back gate and not on Maya.

  If it had a lock, then it could be opened.

  And if it could be opened, then Otto would be free. Free of this too-small tank. Free to go anywhere he pleased. He wouldn’t have to live in a too-small house. He would be fast and gorgeous and not fat at all. His parents would still be together and his best friend would be his best friend again and . . . and . . .

  I stopped and looked down. I was no longer in the spot where I had been, but rather, I was standing with Maya and the other muses on the ramp that led to the back of the tank. How had our feet taken us here so quickly?

  In the distance, a couple of trainers in wet suits were headed our way. In the stands, Violet and Max were on their feet, mouthing the words Go, go, go. Maybe they were shouting. I couldn’t hear them.

  The pelicans were above us now, diving into the water every so often. Otto was on the move too, circling the tank faster and faster, creating a whirlpool. The pelicans screeched, and it sounded like they were saying, “Dive in. The water’s warm.”

  I felt dizzy, different from the last time the sirens had attacked.

  Nia’s voice cut through the fog. “Save Otto,” she was shouting into my ear and into Maya’s, shouting it to people in the audience, to her own reflection in the water.

  Suddenly, I remembered what Tomiko had said back during our training session, how Nia had the power to inspire an idea, how she could encourage someone to jump off a building if she wanted to. I remembered looking out the window, imagining a body falling, falling . . .

  “Nia! Stop it!” I said at last, and yanked her arm so hard that I almost fell into the tank.

  Maya was now dipping her toe into the tank, the top of her sneaker getting wet. Mela seemed to wake up the same moment I did, and she grabbed Maya in a bear hug and pulled her back, both of them tumbling off the ramp and onto the ground below.

  “Rule number three, a muse never uses her magic against her sisters!” Thalia was now saying, “Never, Nia!”