The Vicious Deep

by Zoraida Cordova

  She stares at her Converses. They’re all drawn on with black Sharpie. The laces on her right side are untied. I bend down and tie them for her but keep my eyes on her face. She has no idea how much I have riding on this. How much I actually need her to help me now. How I really wish I’d never hurt her.

  “Tell your mom I’m real sorry,” she says. “I’ll pay for it. I lost it. I—” She doesn’t finish. She walks away.

  It feels like the hallway gets longer and she’ll never reach the bathroom door again. When she does, she glances over her shoulder to make sure I’m still crouched here.

  I am.

  I take the stairwell down one flight of stairs, but it’s blocked by three couples making out. They don’t even budge as I step between them and down to the third floor. Someone slams into me, pushing me against the hallway door.

  “Watch it!” Some guy holds on to his pants as he runs away from two bigger guys. The halls are filled with more students cutting class than usual. A poke on my ass cheek makes me jump. When I turn around, I see it’s a girl I hooked up with once at a party, maybe during freshman year—Samantha? She walks around me and stands in my way. She puts her index finger on my chest. Her eyes are glossy. Her smile is wide and manic. She leans close to my ear at the same time that I lean away.

  “I haven’t stopped thinking about you, Tristan.”

  “Thanks, Sam.”

  “It’s Jessica.”

  “Thanks, Jessica. Listen, I have to go.” I try to step around her, but she blocks my way.

  “I was thinking we could, you know, hang. You’re always so busy that I never see you around.”

  The smell that comes from her is like rotting fruit and the spearmint gum she’s chewing. I try to cover my nose politely. “Okay, how about I call you tonight?”

  “Okay!”

  “Good. I’ll talk to you later, okay?”

  “I’ll be waiting!” She blows me a kiss as I run the other way, slowed down by the crowded hallway of students. Another girl calls out my name, but I keep moving forward. I make a left into the stairwell, where more couples are grinding against each other. I mean, damn, there are plenty of dark corners in this old school without having to do it all together.

  A loud pop crashes against the wall, right over my head, and breaks into itty-bitty pieces. It’s a peppermint ball. Or it was a peppermint ball. Then another. And another, until one finally hits me square on the forehead.

  “I hate you!” she says. It’s Diana, from the tennis team. We dated briefly last summer. Her serving arm was impressive, but she never, ever stopped talking.

  She’s holding a bag of assorted candy and chocolates, the big ones you get at Coney Island for $4.99. “Why didn’t you call me back?”

  “Diana, look, I’m sorry.”

  “It’s Deanna!” She throws the bag of candy on the floor and runs up the steps.

  Okay. I have to find my friends. This is beyond my level of strange.

  I skid on the tiles when I round the corner to History. They’re gathered around the door. Layla is leaning against the wall. She smiles the way I haven’t seen in days. Her head is cocked to the side, and she’s twirling a silky strand around one finger until it makes a coil of its own. She’s flirting. She’s flirting with Kurt, whose shoulders are relaxed and easy as he mimics the movement of throwing a lance. She laughs, but when she looks down the hallway to where I’m walking, her laugh goes away.

  I’ve used the word killjoy plenty of times, but I never thought I’d feel like one.

  “Well?” she says. I have her and Kurt’s undivided attention. For the first time, I notice that the couple making out in the corner is Ryan and Thalia. Guess he can’t ask too many questions if he can’t form a coherent sentence. Not that either of them seems to mind.

  “She says she doesn’t have it.”

  “Oh,” they both say.

  “Yeah.” I walk past them. I’m not going to add to my recent Strange Encounters of the Mer-Kind, because that’ll just add to the list of things I haven’t figured out. I can smell their disappointment, like flowers wilting in heat. An outstretched hand stops my forward motion.

  “Must be careful, Mr. Hart, or you’ll walk right past my classroom for the third time since your miraculous return.” Mr. Van Oppen stands in white slacks and a dark green blazer over a crisp white shirt that looks like it resists wrinkles. He’s the only dude I know who can pull off all of that, plus a blue scarf tucked just so around his neck and into his collar. When he smiles, it’s sort of slanted, revealing teeth that look like he drinks too much coffee. His blue eyes are ringed with dark circles. I can picture him walking around his apartment, smoking cigarettes that he rolls himself and wishing he could burn our weekly essays.

  I take my usual seat against the wall. This is the whitest of all the classrooms. The shutters are pulled tight, and there are curtains that don’t let in any light. It’s one of the few rooms that’s air conditioned, so it always gets the most requests for transfers.

  There’s a small gasp behind me; it comes from Thalia. I guess even mermaids can’t resist his strange charms. She uses Ryan as a shield and pulls him to the back of the classroom. Van Oppen is ruffled himself, like he can’t resist her mermaid charm.

  The last time I saw Mr. Van Oppen was in my dream, something I would never admit to anyone. Layla sits in front of me, right at the front. I can smell her lavender shampoo and something else.

  “I forgot your cousins were joining us, Mr. Hart,” Mr. Van Oppen says.

  Kurt walks in slowly. He sits beside me. He sniffs the air, and by the subtle growl on his lips, I can tell he smells something he really doesn’t like. Everything about him, from his shoulders to the way he balls up his hands into fists, screams tense.

  “Where was I? Oh yes, Helen of Troy.” Van Oppen clears his throat and looks paler than usual. He stands over his desk and rifles through a stack of papers.

  Bracelets jingle all over the class as hands fly up. The girls know to answer just by the way he looks at them, all Yeah, that’s right, I’m calling on you.

  A girl with purple-rimmed glasses leans forward so hard that I think she might teeter toward him. “Well, there was this thing on the History Channel about how this lady was trying to prove Helen of Troy was really real. But some text is missing. Or was it a building that was missing? I can’t remember.”

  “Ah, yes, the best thing about history is perhaps also the most frustrating. There are some things you can’t prove. Because the evidence has crumbled or washed away, or in some cases, it’s been hidden.”

  “So was she real or what?” a girl in the back asks sweetly.

  The girl beside her says, “I’d like to think she was. It’s romantic that they went to war over her.”

  “Kingdoms go to war over less,” Kurt says darkly.

  “You’re right,” Van Oppen says. He stands in front of Layla and lifts her chin with his finger. If he weren’t my teacher, I’d shove him off her. “Was this the face that launch’d a thousand ships, / And burnt the topless towers of Ilium? / Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss. / Her lips suck forth my soul: see where it flies!” He hands her the handouts to pass along, and I can swear I can hear their tiny hearts fluttering all over the classroom.

  “That wasn’t in the reading,” someone says.

  “No, it was written by Christopher Marlowe. This story has fascinated people so much that they’ve spent their whole lives trying to prove it could’ve been true. They don’t have much to go on, but they chase all over the world for clues. Sometimes it’s something as small as a rumor about a distant island claimed to be the home of the oracle that warned Menelaus about protecting Helen.”

  That’s a thought. I raise my hand. “What do you mean, Menelaus and the oracle?”

  “I’ll forgive the question, since you had a concussion for a few days. I’ll assume that’s the reason you don’t remember the reading on it.”

  “Uhm, thank you?” I go. “So what d
id Menelaus do to talk to the oracle?”

  Mr. Van Oppen bares his teeth in a curious smile. “I do not wish to fill your head with fodder, Mr. Hart. The Greek oracles were girls chosen for their beauty. It was their burden, but it also was a great honor. The oracles would sit in a room with burning herbs and stones, the smoke so potent it would make them hallucinate. This would be translated as the prediction or sight. Hardly more than a girl’s delirious ramblings. It’d be like the president taking advice from a socialite tripping on acid, which, well—never mind.”

  “So you believe Helen might be real but not oracles?”

  “I did not say that, Mr. Hart. I merely stated what I know about village oracles in ancient Greece.” I just remembered why I always fall asleep in his classes or take extended bathroom breaks. “Now, if you’re asking me about real oracles, that’s a different story.”

  Maybe it’s his sharp blue eyes, maybe it’s that he dresses like something out of a Jane Austen novel, or maybe it’s the slightest trace of an accent. Whatever it is, the class is transfixed by his words.

  Kurt shakes his head at me. It’s not like I’m going to pull off clothes to show my Spider Man costume and reveal my true identity or anything.

  Thankfully, Layla asks for me: “Did he just go up to an oracle and ask?”

  “If only it were as easy as that. It’s not the high-school cafeteria where you ask Lourdes for extra fries and she gives them to you. You present the oracle with a tribute, and if she’s in a good mood, then she may give you an answer.”

  “What kind of tribute?” I go. And they say you’ll never learn anything useful in high school.

  People start to whisper. He’s so weird. Good thing he’s cute. Can you believe those are his cousins? I don’t care what anyone says, green hair is so clichéd.

  “Half your herd of cows. Your second wife. The blood of a virgin. The usual.”

  The sharp whistle of microphone feedback slices through the loudspeaker. A small voice announces that all after-school activities are canceled. I know we have a meet tomorrow and all, but my head’s not in it right now.

  Just then a sweet, soft hum fills the room. At first we look to the speakers, because it’s not the first time the announcer has left on the microphone while he’s jamming to his new-millennium pop collection. This time it’s different. The temperature in the room rises. The sound is like a lullaby, a pitch that wraps around you and leads you wherever it wants.

  Van Oppen smacks a book against the desk. “Whoever that is, please turn it off. Now!”

  But it isn’t coming from in here. It’s coming from the hallway. There’s a hole in my stomach when I fear that somehow Nieve has found a way to get me, that my dream after I fought Elias is coming true. I grab my bag for my dagger at the same moment that the door flies open.

  My breath is caught in my throat.

  I hold on to my desk, because I feel as if I’m trying to wake up from a nightmare.

  She fluffs her messy white-blond hair, stepping into the room in a slinky black dress under a bright pink motorcycle jacket and heels that look like they’re made of sequins and glitter.

  Elias’s fiancée.

  “Hi.” She leans against the doorframe. Her gray eyes find mine without even searching the room. “I’m Gwen. Tristan’s cousin.”

  They say the sea is cold, but the sea contains

  the hottest blood of all, and the wildest, the most urgent.

  —D. H. Lawrence

  Gwen.

  So that’s her name. So sorry about your future husband, Gwen. It wasn’t my fault. There’s this sea witch, you see?

  “Don’t forget about us.” A sharp soprano voice echoes through the hallway. Behind Gwen is a cluster of girls, girls I’ve only seen as mermaids.

  The court princesses are at my school. It’s one thing for me to have this secret I can barely keep from my friends; now I have to deal with the rest of the school. I’m halfway sitting, halfway standing. “What are you guys doing here?”

  “Come, now, Tristan.” Gwen steps forward. “That’s no way to treat your family.” She hands Van Oppen a piece of paper, along with a smile that would have most men on their knees pledging their love for her. Not me, of course.

  From where I stand, it’s just a blank piece of paper, but he nods with a tense smile and tucks it in with his other papers mumbling something that sounds like “more of them.”

  As the princesses walk in, there isn’t a single person who isn’t staring at them. The glamours may disguise their naturally raw colors and their flawless faces. But nothing can disguise their hourglass figures as they move through the desk aisles like snakes in the desert.

  There are four of them, from the princess with a lush head of chestnut waves who wears a shirt so tiny she might as well be wearing two clam shells on her breasts, to the one with ivory skin and plum-purple hair gathered in a bun. Like Thalia, nothing disguises the slight point to their ears or the gem-like eyes that glance giddily around the classroom.

  “Dude,” Angelo goes, “can I come to your next Christmas party?”

  Sure, if Christmas is going to be ten thousand leagues under the sea and Rudolph is going to be a sea horse named Atticus.

  Gwen takes the empty seat behind me just as the bell rings. I get up right away, because part of me is afraid she’s going to take out a knife and stab me in the back. She thinks I killed her fiancée, and now she’s going to try to kill me on my own turf.

  My classmates stand aside to let Gwen leave first. I lean against the lockers just outside the door, and she stands in front of me. The metal bits of her leather jacket clink, clink. The gray of her eyes is harsh, and they’re set on my face. Still, when she smiles, everything about her softens.

  “I’m guessing this isn’t your first time on land,” I say.

  She shakes her head slowly. “I’ve got a few years on you, foot-fin.”

  “You’re not allowed to call me that.”

  “I can do whatever I want.” She crosses her arms over her chest, which pushes her cleavage up and out. Not that I’m noticing or anything.

  “What do you think you’re doing here?”

  She shrugs. “It’s tradition for eligible princesses to seek a champion for courtship. Brendan and Dylan are being visited by dozens of mermaids from every inch of the seas. Technically, I’m betrothed, so I don’t have to be here. But my fiancé’s gone missing because of some half-breed claiming the throne.”

  Fine. If she wants to go that route. “I’m flattered you’ve chosen me to rebound on, especially after what you did to your champion.”

  If she weren’t already so white, I’d say she goes pale at that. But the shock that registers on her face is all the proof I need that she helped Layla win, that she did something to Elias, which makes her guiltier than it makes me.

  “That’s right, Princess. I know.”

  She purses her full pink lips, seething. For a moment, I think she’s going to hit me, but she just turns on her heel and struts down the hall as if she’s done it a hundred times before.

  When the other princesses come out, they walk past and touch my face and poke my abs and my butt. The one with the plum-purple hair tries to go right for the goods, and then the princesses disappear. They mingle into the flow of students. Angelo pushes past me, hot on the trail of a girl who could probably eat him alive in a second, not that he’d complain.

  At the first glimpse of Kurt’s face, I throw my hands in the air and yell at him. “I have to court the princesses? Why didn’t you tell me?”

  He seems as surprised as I am. “I honestly didn’t remember that part of the championship. I didn’t think they’d be interested in you.”

  “Thanks. I really feel the love, bro.”

  “That’s not what I meant. I meant that you’re human. Part human. I should’ve taken into account that you’re the grandson of the king. The princesses are sort of—”

  “Shallow?” Layla suggests, seemingly too happy at my miser
y.

  “I’ve swum in deeper puddles than them,” Thalia snarls. “They don’t want mates, they want meals.”

  “Cool, so mergirls are easy,” Layla says. She shoots a finger toward me. “Hey! That explains you.”

  When I don’t laugh, she pats Thalia’s shoulder. “No offense.”

  “None taken. I absolutely loathe those girls.” Her cheeks puff up. All things considered, Thalia is pretty cute when she’s angry.

  “They don’t seem so bad,” Ryan says, strutting out of the classroom and slinging his arms around Thalia’s waist. He picks her up, and they’re suddenly in their own world, away from the merrows, the princesses, the sea witch, and my championship. They’re in high school.

  Layla looks away from them guiltily. I wonder if she’s thinking about Alex. Maybe she’s thinking about Kurt. She sure isn’t thinking about me, the way she keeps avoiding my face. “Maddy really said she doesn’t have it?”

  I nod. “Yep.”

  “Explain to me why you can’t give the oracle something else.” Layla reaches over to my chest and picks off a bit of lint. She smooths the fabric on my chest, absentmindedly, then pulls her hand away like she didn’t realize what she was doing. I wonder if she can feel my skin grow hot at her touch.

  Kurt answers, “That seems like the best idea, but all the other champions will be taking similar gifts—from family jewels to promising their firstborn children. This is specific. The Venus pearl is something that was taken from her.”

  “So then don’t give her something else,” Layla corrects herself. We’re in front of Ms. Pippen’s English class.

  Jerry runs out of the room. “Pippen’s a no-show.”

  “Again?” Thalia goes.

  “Figured I’d wait a few more minutes in case the sub shows and I can get attendance in, but she’s not here either.” Angelo runs past, saying something about “red-hot girls in school in the caf.” He jets down the hallway, chasing the hot mermaid trail.

  •••

  Under the cacophony of students shouting, singing, or just being general pains in the asses is the same lullaby hum of the princesses. If I weren’t so irritated, I’d say it was the greatest thing I’ve ever heard—it makes your heart sigh and burn all at once.