Siren

by Tricia Rayburn

  “Beautiful.”

  My head snapped toward Simon. He was still staring, transfixed, like Zara was a flawless, translucent pendulum swinging in front of him.

  “She’s beautiful … isn’t she?”

  I turned back, my face burning. How could he think that at a time like this? He wasn’t some random teenage guy whose every thought careened around the same track. He was Simon. Mr. Weatherman. Mr. Science Guy. How could he of all people get caught up in hormones, emotions, or whatever, when Caleb sat only a few yards away?

  And how could I suddenly wish I’d put more thought into my appearance that morning so that I had the same hypnotizing effect?

  I watched Zara sit near Caleb on top of some large rocks surrounded by trees. She leaned back on her palms with her legs stretched out before her. She faced him while he faced forward, his back to us. I couldn’t see his expression, but it was clear by the way he sat—perfectly straight and still—that he was uncomfortable.

  She leaned forward and shifted to her knees. She crawled toward him, the white skirt flitting around her tan legs, her dark hair falling over one shoulder. She watched him as she moved, her silver eyes like stars, and smiled, apparently anticipating the reaction she knew would come.

  Reaching him, she stayed on her hands and knees and stretched forward until her mouth was next to his ear. She said something that made his entire body tremble, and then brushed her lips against his earlobe, his cheek, his neck. His head tilted toward hers, and she moved even closer, so that her chest pressed against his arm.

  I wanted to yell, to scream at her to stop. I wanted to sprint through the trees, shove her off the rock, and grab Caleb. I wanted her to stop doing what she was doing, and I wanted him to stop liking what she was doing. But I couldn’t speak, and I couldn’t move.

  I inhaled sharply when Caleb stood. He walked across the rocks, away from her. He looked like he was about to jump to the ground when she flew up next to him. She placed one hand on his arm, stood on her tiptoes, and reached her mouth to his ear again. This time when she whispered, he tried to push her away—but she used the movement as an opportunity to stand between him and the edge of the rock, blocking his escape route.

  He looked away but didn’t move, and she stretched her arms overhead and wrapped them around his neck. She looked at him the way I’d seen Justine look at him so many times.

  Caleb’s arms stayed tense by his sides. He endured her lips trailing down his neck and her fingers tracing the lines of his face. His expression was blank as she dipped her head to one side and her hair fell against his hand. He didn’t flinch when she moved closer, making the whole lengths of their bodies touch.

  What got him was when she tried to kiss him.

  Even I had to look away. I felt guilty, like I’d stumbled upon any young couple about to do what I’d never even come close to doing. I’d never stood before a guy, tilted my head up, and held my lips centimeters from his, daring him to refuse me. I’d never kept my eyes open and locked on his as I waited for his response. I’d never pressed my mouth against a guy’s at all, let alone taken his bottom lip gently between my teeth. And I’d definitely never had a guy put his arms around my waist and yank me to him, as though finally giving in to an urge he was tired of fighting. And I wanted to run as much as I wanted to know what happened next.

  Because the longer I looked, the less the two people on the rocks looked like Zara and Caleb.

  And the more they looked like Simon and me.

  When I peered through the trees again, they still weren’t kissing—she kept trying, though his lips wouldn’t move—but her arms were around his neck and her legs were around his waist. His hands slid along her back. When the tips of his fingers slipped under the bottom of her tank top, she beamed.

  He lowered to his knees. She pressed on his chest with one hand until he was lying on his back and continued to smile as she lowered her face, slowly, inch by inch, toward his.

  “No …,” I moaned softly when her hair fell to one side, blocking our view of their lips. Simon and I vanished, and I was jolted back to what was really happening. The idea of their kissing, of Caleb’s kissing Zara instead of Justine, was just too much.

  “Caleb!”

  I jumped at the sound of Simon’s voice.

  “Are you okay?” he asked, turning to me.

  I nodded. My head still throbbed, but I was too startled to speak.

  “Stay here.”

  I watched him dart through the trees, the hammering in my chest overpowering the one in my head.

  “It’s okay, Caleb!” Simon yelled as he ran. “Stay away from him!”

  Zara shot up, unsure of who deserved her attention more: Caleb, who was emerging from the trance she’d worked so hard to put him in, or Simon, who ran at her like a bullet from a gun. The decision was made for her when Caleb fully snapped out of it, threw her off him, and scrambled to his feet.

  “Don’t move, Simon!” Zara shouted, following Caleb as he backed across the rocks. “It’s okay, baby. Don’t worry. Everything’s fine.”

  Caleb’s eyes shifted from Zara to Simon. He seemed scared of them both; when Simon climbed onto the other end of the rocks, Caleb looked at him, shook his head, and jumped into the leaves below.

  “Caleb! Where are you—”

  Simon froze when Zara spun around. She walked toward him slowly, deliberately, like he would wait for her forever if that was how long it took her to reach him.

  “Run,” he called out without looking away from her.

  I knew that was for me, but I stood there, my feet planted as though they’d grown from seeds in the ground.

  The road, Nessa … He’s heading for the road….

  I took one more look through the trees, cringing at the sight of Zara standing only a few feet away from him, and then bolted in the opposite direction.

  I ran faster than I’d ever run. Branches scratched my face and my ankles twisted as my feet flew across uneven terrain. I slowed down only once, to grab Caleb’s hooded sweatshirt from the tree. When I shot out of the woods and onto the shoulder of the road, I was sweating and gasping for breath.

  “Which way?” I whispered, resting my hands on the tops of my legs. I glanced to the right and the left. Both the Mini Cooper and Subaru were still where we’d left them. “Which way did he go?”

  Back … back the way you came …

  I sprinted down the road, past the dentist’s office, the market, the school. Past the post office, coffee shop, and gas station. I ran until the buildings grew farther apart and the trees lined the road uninterrupted. I ran until I felt as if my lungs would explode and my legs break off, and then I kept running. I didn’t stop until Justine told me I’d gone too far.

  Across the street …

  I stopped. The gas station was tucked away in the woods. I darted across the street and down the long driveway. Reaching the building, I hurried around the perimeter and then inside. The place was empty except for the driver of an old blue pickup truck and the gas attendant.

  But Justine offered no other instructions. Caleb had to be there.

  I waited until the driver went inside to pay for his gas, and then headed for the truck. I crouched down and followed the side not facing the building. When I reached the driver’s-side door, I stood up, just enough to see into the cab. It was empty.

  I was about to try a nearby shed when the truck bobbed. Not much and just once, but it was definite movement. And the driver was still inside the building.

  “Caleb?” I peered over the edge of the pickup bed. It was filled with wrinkled tarps and old blankets, which were vibrating, like the truck was still running. “It’s okay, Caleb. It’s Vanessa.”

  I waited a second and then lifted the edge of one blanket. He was curled into a ball and lying on his side, shaking like it was winter instead of summer, and the blankets and tarps were sheets of ice. His dirty blond hair was dyed dark brown, just as the waitress had described. His eyes were wide open, h
is lips trembled, and when he realized who I was, his face crumpled.

  “Vanessa …,” he said, his voice thin. “No. Not you.”

  “Caleb, you have to get out of there.” I looked up as the driver laughed inside the building. He was giving the gas attendant cash and would be on his way out soon.

  “I can’t.” He shook his head, and tears ran down his cheeks. “I can’t do it without her.”

  “Caleb.” I reached into the truck and took his hand. “Justine’s here. She helped us find you. She wants you to come with us.”

  He looked at me, wanting to believe me, and then toward the sky, sending a fresh stream of tears from his eyes. “So tired … I’m just so tired.”

  He let me help him out, and I was startled to see how thin he’d gotten. It had only been a few weeks, but his jeans and T-shirt hung loose around his body. He could still move, though, and we were jogging down the road before the pickup driver could realize he’d picked up a hitchhiker.

  “What if she’s still there?” he asked as we neared the Subaru, sounding like a scared little boy. “What if she’s still in there, waiting for me?”

  Chances were good that she still waited for him somewhere, but my head no longer throbbed. I’d been so focused on finding him I wasn’t sure when it had stopped, but it had. She was gone. And as we reached the car, I could see the Mini Cooper was gone, too. “She’s not,” I said.

  “What about Simon?” Caleb looked at the Subaru’s empty driver’s seat. “What if she took him with her?”

  My chest tightened. I didn’t know what to say. I wanted to tell him that Simon was fine, that he wouldn’t have let us go unless he was sure he could make it on his own, but the truth was I had no idea what Zara was capable of. And if I said that, I’d be admitting that Simon might be in trouble … which was more than I could bear.

  “Are you okay?”

  “Oh, thank God,” I whispered before turning around.

  Simon came out of the woods and crossed the street toward us. He moved slowly, awkwardly, like he’d just woken up, but besides that, he appeared fine.

  I waited by the back of the Subaru as Caleb met him in the middle of the road. They hugged without speaking.

  Simon’s eyes found mine as he released Caleb. Before he could say anything to me, I threw my arms around his neck and squeezed like I would hold on forever if he let me.

  CHAPTER 14

  “IT STARTED IN the spring. I even remember the exact day, because before all the days that followed, it was the strangest of my life.”

  I handed a cup of hot tea to Caleb, who was wrapped in a fleece blanket on the couch, and one to Simon, who sat across from him. There was room on the loveseat next to Simon, but embarrassed by the vise grip I’d put him in earlier in the day, I sat on the floor near the fireplace instead.

  “I mean—this is Zara. Zara Marchand. Before May first, the girl couldn’t be bothered to look at me, let alone talk to me. And then she just showed up at the Lighthouse.” Caleb winced as he looked at Simon. “By the way—I left the marina.”

  “I heard,” Simon said.

  “I had to. I needed the money. I didn’t tell you—or anyone—because everyone who knows me knows how I feel about Monty and the marina, and I didn’t want to be talked out of it.”

  I frowned into my mug. He’d needed money? What had been so important—and expensive?

  “It’s okay,” Simon said when Caleb’s voice wavered. “We’ll get to that later.”

  “So she just shows up one day,” Caleb continued. “I’m hauling boxes to the supply shop, and she stops me on the dock to say that she had a note from her mother for one of the owners, Carsons.”

  Paul Carsons. The first victim to die after Justine.

  “And honestly? I wanted to ignore her. I wanted to walk right by and not say a word—treat her the same way I’d seen her treat so many people at school.” He looked out the window behind the couch. “And I really wish I had.”

  I glanced at Simon. He watched Caleb intently.

  “But you talked to her?” Simon asked.

  “Yes. The Lighthouse is all about money. Its investors want it to grow, expand, and be the best waterfront resort in the country.”

  “Which means keeping its customers happy?” Simon guessed.

  “Exactly. Employees are required to be polite and helpful so guests feel wanted and important. That’s why I couldn’t just brush past her. If word somehow got out that I wasn’t helpful—even to someone who wasn’t a resort member but could one day become a resort member—I would’ve lost the job. And I needed the job.”

  I caught Simon’s eye and knew we both wondered the same thing: Why?

  “Anyway, I tried to find Carsons for her. I went through the entire property and told her about all of its features, just like we do for anyone visiting the Lighthouse for the first time.”

  “Sounds painful,” Simon said.

  “Not as much as you’d think. She was impatient at first, but she lightened up the longer we walked and the more I talked. She asked questions and listened. She even laughed when I made the same stupid jokes no guests ever laugh at.” He sipped the tea. “We never found Carsons, but after looking for him, she seemed to forget he was why she was there. And then …” He stared at the mug, which twitched in his hands.

  “And then?” Simon said.

  “And then she asked if I’d have a drink with her.” Caleb closed his eyes. “On the pier at the end of the property.”

  “A drink? Like, right then?”

  Caleb nodded. “I don’t know why I said yes. I was working, and she was still Zara. The experience wasn’t completely miserable, but I hadn’t forgotten who she was.”

  “You were just caught off guard,” Simon said. “Who wouldn’t be?”

  “It was the stupidest thing I’ve ever done.”

  “It was just a drink, Caleb.”

  “But it wasn’t. We sat at the end of the pier and shared a bottle of champagne that probably cost a week’s pay … and I actually had fun. She was funny. I liked talking to her. We sat there for three hours.”

  Justine had been silent since I’d found Caleb in the back of the pickup truck in Springfield. My heart lurched as he spoke of Zara now, and I wondered if Justine could hear him.

  “Before she left, she said she was sorry that it had taken us so long to have a real conversation. She said she wished we hadn’t wasted so much time, but that she was glad we still had so much time to look forward to.” Caleb shook his head. “And I didn’t tell her about Justine. I didn’t even think to mention that I had a girlfriend until hours after she’d left. And Justine was all I ever thought about. She’s still … all I think about.”

  I’d been watching him but had to look away when the first tear slid down his face.

  “But I didn’t know, you know? I didn’t know what would happen after that. If I had, if there was any way I could’ve …”

  Simon waited for Caleb’s jagged breathing to return to normal before speaking. “What happened after that?”

  “She was everywhere,” he said softly. “Waiting for me before school. After school. Before work. After work. She’d bring me things—video games and comic books. She showed up at the beach when I was there with my friends. And she started stalking them, too, to find out where I was, what I liked, if I ever talked about her. They thought it was funny at first, that Zara Marchand, the most gorgeous girl in Winter Harbor, had picked me of all people to pursue. But then she wouldn’t stop. I asked her to stop—I begged her to. But she wouldn’t.”

  “And you told her about Justine?” Simon asked.

  “Every day. It was the first thing I said the next time I saw her. I told her I’d already met the girl I was going to spend the rest of my life with.” The mug shook harder in one hand as he wiped his eyes with the other. “But it was like she didn’t hear me. Or if she did, she didn’t care. Because it went on like that for weeks.”

  I pictured Zara’s scrapbook,
the blank pages following the Lighthouse napkin. There were no other mementos of time spent together because, unlike the rest of her targets, Caleb had resisted her.

  When he spoke again, his voice was almost a whisper. “I thought it would stop once Justine got here for the summer. I thought she couldn’t pretend Justine didn’t exist if she was right there in front of her.”

  I focused on my tea, feeling Simon’s eyes on me.

  “And I was right. For about fifteen amazing hours, Zara was gone.”

  Fifteen hours. They hadn’t even been reunited a whole day before Justine was gone, too.

  As we fell into a long silence, I noticed a light rain had started to fall.

  “She was here that night,” Caleb said a moment later. “Waiting for me after I got back from the cliffs. She was in my room, on my bed, wearing a long white dress. She didn’t say anything, but I knew that somehow, she knew what had happened. And I knew that in her crazy, twisted mind, she thought we were going to be together.” He looked at Simon. “So I ran. I hated leaving Mom and Dad. I hated leaving you … but I couldn’t handle it.”

  “I know,” Simon said.

  “I dyed my hair. I hitchhiked. I did everything I could to get away, but she always found me. And every time she did, something happened—I was drawn to her. I wanted to be near her. I wanted to scream and push her away, too, but those instincts were overpowered by the others.” The tears started again, falling faster. “I began hearing things whenever she was around, and it was like my brain just shut off—I couldn’t see or hear anything else. I didn’t know where I was, or what was going on. All I knew was that Zara was there, trying to take me with her.”

  I jumped up when the fleece blanket around him began to vibrate like the blankets and tarps in the back of the pickup truck earlier. I took the tea from his shaking hands and put it on the coffee table, then sat next to him on the edge of the couch.

  “There’s something wrong with her,” he said, shaking even harder as he looked at me, then Simon. “Beyond the obvious. That’s why I didn’t tell you where I was going, or call along the way—I didn’t want her to use you to get to me.”