by Alex Flinn
“A mermaid? Then where is her tail?”
“Still…”
I looked from one side to the other. They were women, beautiful women draped in white, their wings flying behind them.
“Are you angels?” I asked, for my voice had returned.
“We are Daughters of the Air. If you are human, we may take you with us, and you’ll live in the sky forever.”
I stared down at the shell of the girl I used to be. I felt I did not know her, did not understand her stupidity, did not want to know her.
Still, I said, “I was human … for a while … the last while.”
Right looked to Left, then down at my still, silent body. “She has committed a grievous error. Suicide is a mortal sin.”
“But perhaps it was not suicide,” reasoned Left. “You saw how much trouble she had with the oven. I’m sure it was a tragic accident.”
“Do you think so?”
Left nodded. “I do, poor dear.”
Right pondered, and I hung, wingless, between them. Finally, Right said, “I think so too.”
And, with that, I was one of them, a Daughter of the Air, with wings of white feathers and a dress much more beautiful than the sad nightgown I left on earth. Together, we flew out the window and into the dark, star-spotted city, over the ocean, then up, up into the sky.
KENDRA SPEAKS (WITH GREAT REGRET)
So you see how that really couldn’t have ended any worse, right? When they retell this story, sometimes they change it, so the mermaid gets her man in the end, and together, they defeat the evil Sea Witch, but that’s not what happened. This was what happened. The good thing is, no one knew about my involvement. Well, except sea creatures. But still, can you blame me for not wanting to get involved in people’s lives?
Emma may be miserable, but she’s miserable and alive. She’ll have other chances at happiness. Things tend to get a lot easier in college, and after that? Well, have you noticed that a lot of people who were rather nebbishy in high school end up with perfectly nice families and excellent careers? Indeed, seems I’ve seen a few movie stars who claim they weren’t part of the cool crowd. That’s because high school is hard.
That’s why I’m thinking Emma should just get through this on her own.
Well, maybe with a little help.
Part Three
Lisette and Emma
1
Once, in school, we read a folktale from the Philippines. It was about two sisters, Mangita and Larina. Unlike in Cinderella, both girls were beautiful, but only one was “as good as she was beautiful.” The good one, Mangita (a brunette), helps an old woman and becomes sick. The old woman comes back and tells Larina to give Mangita a seed every hour, to make her well. Larina doesn’t do this, for she wants her sister to die. Fortunately, the old woman comes back in time. She cures Mangita and makes it so that Larina has to spend the rest of her life combing seeds from her hair. Every time she combs a seed out, a new one appears.
I liked that story. Good was rewarded; Evil was punished.
It didn’t work out that way in real life.
So I had to watch Lisette and Warner. Of course, I had been wrong. It didn’t last a week. Her dumping him in a week would have given me what I wanted. Lisette couldn’t do that. I wanted him back, so of course she would hold on to him forever. She’d probably marry him and have five kids, just to spite me.
And I missed my father.
Some would say that I shouldn’t have wanted Warner back. They’d say he didn’t deserve me. They’d be wrong. Warner had fallen under Lisette’s spell because he was gullible, like my father. He wanted to believe she wasn’t lying. He was sweet like that. He couldn’t wrap his brain around the truth about Lisette because it was just too alien. I don’t know why he was less willing to believe me, except he was disappointed I’d lied to him. Also, I guess, I really hadn’t done anything to stop Mother from being cruel to Lisette. I was guilty of that, of doing nothing. Yes, Lisette had been mean to me first, but I should have been the better person. Now I was paying the price.
So, now, I saw him and Lisette in the hall. They held hands. I saw them in the cafeteria. She fed him grapes. I saw them in the library. She pretended interest in the books he was reading. She rode in his Civic like it was one of her old boyfriends’ Mercedes. She was always touching him, holding him, pretending to love him. I knew she didn’t, for the best possible reason: Lisette didn’t love anyone but Lisette. I actually felt sorry for Warner because, sooner or later, he’d find out. Unfortunately, it would probably be later, too late for me.
I remember Kendra saying that, if Lisette stole Warner, we could fix it. I wished I knew how. On television, the dumped girl gets a new hairstyle and takes back her man. In the movies, she’d put a hit on Lisette. That seemed extreme, but a haircut wouldn’t work.
No, it was hopeless.
Yet, sometimes, in journalism class, I’d look over at Warner and find him looking back at me. Was it crazy to think he still loved me, that he didn’t believe all her lies?
I threw myself into the one thing that never failed me, school. In language arts, we were doing projects based on Macbeth. Even though I loved Shakespeare, I found this particular play difficult. The unfairness of Macbeth killing all those people so he could be king was too much like my own life.
Fortunately, the projects were easy. We could paint a painting, do an interpretive dance, or create a Macbeth-themed butterfly garden, stuff you could do without actually reading the play.
My project was a diary in the voice of Lady Macbeth. I chose that because it required no in-class presentation. I laid it on Ms. Delgado’s desk when I came in.
Today, Kendra was dressed in a kilt, tunic, and crown. Her long hair was gathered in a ponytail. “Nice costume,” I said. “It’s really authentic.”
Courtney, sitting two seats away, nudged Midori. “Someone’s craving attention.” She nodded at Kendra’s Macbeth costume.
Yes, Courtney, Tayloe, and Midori were still in classes with me. High school is like a hamster wheel that never stops.
“God, doesn’t she have parents?” Midori agreed.
Kendra ignored them. I admired her for that, for never caring what people thought.
“What’s your project?” I asked.
Before she could answer, Ms. Delgado asked if there were any volunteers to go first. Of course not.
“Well, then, I’ll volunteer someone. Tim Minor?”
A tall, skinny boy from the basketball team shuffled to the front of the room. He took up his book, opened it, and started reading Lady Macbeth’s “Screw your courage to the sticking place” speech.
A couple of people, including Tim, laughed when he said “nipple,” then “screw.” No one minded that he couldn’t pronounce most of the words. The cool people could actually bludgeon someone to death (and certainly bludgeon the English language) and no one would care.
“That was very nice,” Ms. Delgado said when he finished.
I shook my head. Bet he got an A.
Next, Kendra raised her hand.
“I’ll be performing a twelve-tone aria based on Macbeth’s ‘Out, out, brief candle’ speech. Twelve-tone music was invented by Arnold Schoenberg in the 1920s. In it, the composer uses all twelve tones of the chromatic scale in a prescribed order called a tone row. He must use them in primary, retrograde, inverted, and inverted retrograde orders.”
“Whatever she just said,” Courtney whispered.
“My reason for choosing twelve-tone music,” Kendra continued, “was that I thought its dissonance best evoked Shakespeare’s sentence about ‘a tale told by an idiot.’” Did she glance at Courtney when she said “idiot”? She did. “Full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”
“Is that supposed to be a costume?” Midori asked. “Or is it time to do laundry?”
Kendra cleared her throat. “Ms. Delgado, I’ve incorporated some performance art into my presentation. Would it be possible to turn out the lights?”
>
A few people whooped, and Courtney said, “Oh, yeah, then we wouldn’t have to look at her.”
Ms. Delgado said, “I think we have to leave the lights on, Kendra.”
Kendra shrugged. “Okay.” She pulled a candle from her bag.
“I think there’s probably a rule against fires too,” Ms. Delgado added.
“Oh, it’s not a real candle.” Kendra flicked it, and even though it looked exactly like a real candle, it lit with no match or lighter. “See?”
“All right, Kendra. Can we get going?”
“Certainly.” Kendra stood up front, holding her candle, which flickered just like a real one. She looked at me. “Would you mind turning the music on after I say ‘Out, out, brief candle’?”
Her iPod sat in a portable speaker. It had a cover with a picture of the rock group Counting Crows. I nodded.
Kendra stared up at the fluorescent light. In its glow, her skin seemed almost green. Someone giggled, then someone else. But then the lights began to flicker, then dimmed, until the room seemed bathed in a dull gray glow.
In the dim half-twilight, Kendra said Macbeth’s line, “Out, out, brief candle.”
My cue. I pressed the play button. The strangest music came out—someone playing notes on a piano in an order that seemed random, yet not, tuneless, yet planned. The music was like breaking glass.
Kendra began to sing.
“Life’s but a walking shadow.”
Her voice was high and light, like you’d imagine a mermaid would sing. Funny how I never heard her in chorus.
“A poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and is heard no more. No more.”
The piano grew louder. It had nothing to do with what Kendra was singing, and yet, she seemed in a trance, in the zone.
“A tale told by an idiot!” she sang louder. “Full of sound and fury! Fury!”
Her voice and the piano both reached a crescendo, the notes crowding on top of one another.
“Fury!” she shrieked.
More notes, growing softer again.
“Signifying. Nothing.”
Silence. Kendra blew out the candle, and the room was suddenly dark.
From out of it came a voice. Courtney.
“All right, who killed the cat?”
The room went crazy. The lights came up. Ms. Delgado clapped her hands. “Quiet!
To Courtney, she said, “You’re next.”
Courtney signaled to her posse, Tayloe and Midori, plus her boyfriend, Eric Rodriguez. “We’re doing the witch scene.” She glanced at Kendra. “Even though others might be better for the part.”
She picked up a plastic Halloween kettle I’d noticed sitting empty beside her desk. As she brushed past Kendra, Kendra stuck her foot out. Courtney stomped on it.
“Clown!” Courtney whispered.
“Clone!” Kendra shot back.
So they started on one of the witch scenes. None of them could act, and I saw Courtney check her hand for her lines. I wondered if they’d practiced even once. They were having trouble with easy words like entrails. I glanced at Kendra, looking for someone to snicker with.
But she was watching them like it was great theater.
When they got to the part where all three chanted:
“Double, double, toil and trouble
Fire burn and cauldron bubble!”
I could have sworn I saw the cauldron move.
Probably someone had kicked it.
“Fillet of a fenny snake.” Courtney pronounced it fill-ett with a hard T.
“In the cauldron, boil and bake.”
Again the cauldron moved. This time, I was sure no one had touched it.
“Eye of newt and toe of frog, wool of bat and tongue of dog,” Courtney chanted.
The kettle was shaking back and forth. I glanced to my side, at Kendra. She was staring forward, not smiling, not even noticing.
I was nuts.
The three girls chanted:
“Double, double, toil and trouble
Fire burn and cauldron bubble!”
There was a pop, like something was actually burning. They must have gotten some kind of trick cauldron. Courtney’s family always had big Halloween displays.
But, just as I had this thought, Tayloe screamed. Something thick and red was boiling up, splashing out of the pot, bubbling over the sides. The pot was melting, and its disgusting contents were spilling over the brown linoleum classroom floor. There was all sorts of other stuff in it too, lumps.
Midori, who was apparently even more clueless than I’d thought, read her lines.
“Nose of Turk and Tartar’s lips, finger of a birth-strangled babe.”
I noticed one of the lumps. It was a tongue. Tongue of dog.
It was sliding toward us. Someone screamed. It was me.
“Stop!” Courtney yelled.
The cauldron boiled harder, its contents spilling down the sides. People jumped on chairs, screaming. Now all the stuff they’d mentioned was coming out, fake eyes and fingers (I hoped they were fake), snakes and a frog, and stuff that looked like the slime Mother took out of the turkey at Thanksgiving. Midori finally stopped talking and ran from the shaking, melting cauldron. Ms. Delgado yelled, “Stop it! Make it stop!” Everyone was screaming, grossed out, all but one person, Kendra, who watched it like it was a normal thing to happen.
The cauldron stopped shaking. A teacher from another class poked her head in to see what the problem was. Ms. Delgado, realizing she’d lost all control over her class, resorted to the weapon of choice of every teacher in the face of anarchy.
She flicked the lights on and off.
Courtney stepped on the liquid, which was expanding like Gorilla Glue.
She stuck to the floor. She tried to unstick herself by removing her shoe. Instead, she fell on her butt.
It took the ringing bell to restore order. Courtney was still glued to the floor. Eric, who’d been playing Macbeth, had slipped out, but when Tayloe and Midori tried to make their escape, Ms. Delgado blocked their way.
“Office,” she said.
“But … but…,” Midori stammered. “We didn’t do it.”
“Who did it then?”
Midori looked back. I slipped past her. There was no one else there.
“You have to believe us,” Tayloe said. “The cauldron was empty when we brought it. It’s like it was … magic.”
From the floor, Courtney said, “I think I need an ambulance.”
I knew who’d done it. Tayloe was right. It was magic. Actual magic.
Suddenly I knew how I was going to get Warner back.
KENDRA SPEAKS
Heh. That was fun, right? Yeah, it was me. Okay, so I probably shouldn’t be doing that kind of thing, but I just hate bratty mean girls like Courtney. And besides, sometimes, when you give people their comeuppance, they actually learn something.
I heard from an old friend today. His name’s Kyle and he lives in New York City. He was as mean as Courtney, almost as mean as Lisette. He’s the one I turned into a beast.
And it worked out! He’s a better person, and he actually texted to thank me, if you can believe it. I got thanked for turning someone into a beast.
So there’s at least one person out there I actually helped.
Maybe I can help Emma too.
2
Back to Lisette and Emma
After sixth period, I found Kendra in the hall. I tapped her shoulder.
She whirled to face me, and I thought I saw her eyes almost flash green. Then she smiled. “Emma, how’s it going?”
“Great. Hey, I loved your project in Delgado today.”
“Thanks. I’m a great admirer of Schoenberg’s work. Sad man. Did you know he had triskaidekaphobia, fear of the number thirteen? And he was born on the thirteenth and died on the thirteenth too.”
“Interesting.” This type of thing should have been a clue about her, long ago. “Did he live around here?”
“He was born
in Austria, but he moved to the United States. California.”
“Hmm. Hey, can I drive you home? You can tell me more about Schoenberg, and there’s something else I want to discuss too.”
Her glance darted downward. “Um, I may be a little busy.”
“I’ll drive you wherever you need to go.”
“I guess.”
We headed toward my newly appropriated Saab. I didn’t know how I was going to ask Kendra this, and yet I was sure I was right. In the rearview, I saw Warner walking Lisette to his car. She turned and brushed a stray hair from his face. He smiled like he used to smile at me.
I had to do this.
I started the motor, shifted into drive. Lisette walked in front of me. She waved.
I could kill her and make it look like an accident.
Okay, we’ll call that Plan B.
I said to Kendra, “Interesting what happened with Courtney’s project today.”
“Wasn’t it? You’d think she’d know better than to bring all those animals to school.”
“You’d think. Thing is, Courtney doesn’t usually do stuff that’s unusual.”
“That is weird.” She was playing with something from her purse, a pair of dice.
“And a lot of weird stuff seems to happen … when you’re around, Kendra.” I paused, unsure how to continue.
“Like what?”
“Oh, I don’t know. A mouse getting into my purse when it was on a teacher’s desk.”
“Wasn’t that lucky?”
“Me hitting three targets when MVP Courtney couldn’t.”
“Everyone has good days and bad days.”
“You showing up to that party just in time to get me out.”
“Serendipity. I think—”
“And now, Courtney’s kettle.”
“What’s your point, Emma?”
Her voice was different, and I turned to face her. I gasped. The outfit she’d been wearing had disappeared. Instead, she had on a blue gown with a square neckline that looked like it was from another era. Long blond braids hung down the bodice. She looked younger.