Siren's Song

by Heather McCollum

  “Uh…I don’t think she mentioned a flavor,” Dad says, his brows furrowing as he looks between Mom and me.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Well…I don’t think she mentioned a particular flavor, but she was so fast to hang up. Is there something wrong?”

  “It’s kind of a code word that she needs me to help her out with something,” I say, hedging the truth, but not enough to be a lie. Mom can usually hear a lie the second it’s uttered. I briefly wonder if Mom thought anything strange of Eric accompanying Patricia to visit her, but the thought is obscured by my wild worry about Carly. “Uh…I know it’s dinner time and,” I look at Mom, “you just got home, but I should really check on her.”

  “You don’t even know where she is,” Dad says with that “about to put my foot down” voice.

  “It’s okay,” Mom cuts in. She looks closely at me. “You’re really worried about her, aren’t you?” I nod, my face totally open so Mom can see I’m sincere. Mom peers at me like she’s trying to decipher my anxiety, as if it’s coaxing hers to return. I try to smile. I won’t be the cause of bringing back Mom’s paranoia.

  “I’m sure it’s okay, but I really–”

  “No, Julietta,” Dad says and shakes his head.

  “Go,” Mom says at the same time and looks at Dad. “Max, I think she needs to check on Carly.” Mom smiles serenely at Dad and I watch Dad’s shoulders relax a bit. God, he’s as tense as me, and he doesn’t know half the crap that’s going on.

  “Thanks! Love you,” I yell as I dash inside, grab my purse and run out to Mom’s car. “Can I borrow—?”

  She shoos me with her hand. “Go ahead.”

  I jump into the sedan that smells faintly like her perfume and start it up. I have to concentrate on keeping a level, soft foot on the gas pedal. Peeling out of the driveway would only cause Mom to worry.

  I turn into Carly’s circular driveway. Her car’s parked next to Eric’s. Crap! Why can’t the guy have just gone back to school? Should I call Luke? God, that would surely heat things up. I call Carly’s cell once more. Again, it just rolls to her voice mail. It must be turned off, but she never turns it off.

  I exhale fully and get out of the car. The house is quiet. Maybe it’s my imagination, but it seems too quiet. I walk past the manicured rosemary and lavender bushes on the cobbled walkway and rap on the back door, my usual entrance. No one answers. I turn the unlocked knob and poke my head in. “Hello?” I call and realize my voice is cracking. I clear my throat. “Hello? Carly?” I yell a bit louder. I walk into the kitchen. A pot of some type of stew is sitting on the stove on low. Cornbread is stacked like bricks on a pumpkin-shaped plate. I touch the top. Still warm.

  “Hello? Carly!”

  The swinging door from the entrance hallway swings inward as Richard Ashe rushes through. I gasp and he curses.

  “Jule?”

  “Where’s Carly?”

  Richard sidesteps past me to the sink and wets a dish towel. “In the study. She’s had some type of…I don’t know, seizure, maybe. She fainted.”

  “What? Is she okay?” I slam through the door and run down the hall into the Ashes’ den. Carly is lying on the couch. Eric leans over her and her mom sits next to her. “Carly?”

  “She’s okay,” Patricia says, but her forehead is furrowed in concern. She takes the cloth from Richard and wipes it over Carly’s face. “Sweetheart,” she croons. “Come on, now.”

  Carly blinks and rubs her head. “What happened?”

  Eric looks into her eyes as if he’s a doctor or EMT. “You passed out. Do you remember anything?”

  Carly struggles to sit up on the couch. Her mom hugs her close. “Are you eating enough, Carly?”

  “When I saw her,” Richard says, “she looked like she was shaking.” He stares at Patricia. “Could it have been a seizure?”

  “Richard, don’t scare her,” Patricia says and rocks Carly against her. “I think she just has low blood sugar.”

  Carly looks over at me. “Jule?” All the Ashes turn. The prickle slinking up my back tells me not to mention Carly’s call.

  “Uh…” I hesitate. “I was trying to call Carly and, well, her phone was off.” I shake my head and open my eyes in a comical shrug. “Her phone’s, like, never off. So I was just stopping by to tell her, see if it was broken or something.”

  Richard and Patricia turn back to Carly as if the answer reached their plausibility boundary, but Eric stares at me, suspicion obvious in the hard lines of his face. The prickle turns into a full-blown goosebump reaction across my body and I realize I’m sweating. Fight or flight? I feel my body tense to do either even though I won’t let it. At least, not yet. I don’t care what Mom thinks, Eric gives me the creeps.

  Patricia dabs the corner of the wet rag against Carly’s cheek. “You’re bleeding a little bit, sweetheart.” Carly runs her finger along her cheek, but her mom brushes them away from a scratch that runs from her chin up to her cheekbone. “Don’t get it dirty.”

  Eric looks at me. “I tried to catch her when she fell toward me.” He holds up his right hand. “She caught my ring on the way down.” Eric briefly flashes his hand, where a large ring now sits. It looks like a fraternity ring or something.

  “Do you remember falling, Carly?” Richard asks, and we all wait.

  Carly’s eyes move from me to her dad and then the rest of her family all staring down at her. She shakes her head slowly. “No…not really. I was just standing here talking to Eric about…Jule, maybe.” She shakes her head as if clearing it. “No, about school, I think. I felt…hungry.”

  “See?” Patricia jumps on that. “You’re not eating enough,” she scolds. “God, you kids think dieting to get a toothpick body is what life’s all about. Well, not in my house,” she says, but curbs her tirade by hugging Carly close and smoothing her hair. “At least three meals a day, and air-popped popcorn and Coke Zero don’t count as a meal, young lady.”

  Weird. I’ve never seen Carly turn down a meal before. Sure, she goes through phases where she eats just little bits, but she’s never seemed unhealthy to me.

  “You, too, Jule. If I catch you girls dieting I’m going to force-feed you lasagna until you pop,” Patricia scolds.

  “Don’t worry about me, Patricia,” I say and sit down on the other side of Carly. “I eat all the time.” I want to get Carly alone, but I’m not sure that will be possible with her family all around her. “Well, if you think you’re okay, Carly, I’ll get home to my dinner.” I smile as normally as I can.

  “Uh, sure. Thanks Jule, for checking on me.” Carly looks around. “So, where’s my cell phone?”

  “You mean this?” Eric asks and picks up three pieces of phone from under and around the couch. “This might be why you couldn’t get through, Jule.”

  “Crap,” Carly takes the pieces and tries to fit them together like a puzzle. “What happened to it?”

  “I think you dropped it when you fell,” Eric supplies. “I heard something hit the wood floor, but I was too busy catching you to chase it.” Eric takes the pieces. “Yeah, this thing is toast. Dad will have to get you another one.” Her dad frowns but nods.

  “O-okay,” I say. “Well, um…see you tomorrow, Carly. You want me to drive? I think Mom might let me use her car.”

  “No, it’s okay. I’ll pick you up.”

  “See ya, then,” I say. “Bye.”

  Carly’s dad trails me through the kitchen to the back door. “Thanks, Jule, for stopping by,” he says. “You’re a good friend to Carly.” He sounds worried. “You’d tell us if you thought she was…well, doing anything dangerous, right?”

  “Sure,” I say, “but I don’t think she’s doing anything like that.” Does hanging out with three cursed kids count? Or living under the same roof as a stalker?

  “Thanks,” he says. “Say hi to your folks for me. I’ll stop by to see Isabella soon.”

  I nod and turn. As I walk past Eric’s car I glance through the side window. Throw
n on the floor of the passenger’s seat is an old-looking book, not something I’d expect to see in a jock’s car. The book has a shield on the cover—larger, but the same image that I saw on Eric’s ring. My breath catches as I realize what seems to lie beneath it, a vague outline under the shield. It’s a dragonfly, exactly like the one across my heart.

  * * *

  “And she doesn’t remember a thing?” Taylin asks again as she stands with Luke and Matt at my locker.

  “Not a thing. Not calling me or what she was doing in the study or what she was talking about with Eric.”

  Matt’s frown is brutal. “They did something to her.”

  I toss my French notebook into my locker and grab my script. “If I didn’t know better, Matt, I’d say you’re acting quite protective about my non-Siren friend.”

  He tilts his head to the side slightly as if thinking over something deep, then shrugs. “I’ve gotten used to her being around. It feels…comfortable, but I wouldn’t call it love.”

  I shake my head and sigh. Could my group of friends become any more bizarre?

  “Well, there’s something going on in that house.” Taylin runs her black-painted nails along the metal grate in the locker door.

  “The cake,” Luke nods grimly.

  “The icing,” Taylin reminds him. She looks back at me. “It definitely had some hyped-up Ma Huang sprinkled on top.”

  “Ma what?” I ask.

  “Ma huang, or ephedra,” Luke says.

  “Herbal Ecstasy,” Matt chimes in.

  “It’s a shrub, originally grown in China, but it can be found in the U.S. now, too,” Taylin explains. “It’s used in illegal diet pills to rev metabolism. It has a nasty side effect of memory loss.”

  “Really? Someone put that in the icing?” I lean back on my shut locker.

  “Just on top. Could have been done by anyone around it, really.” Taylin says. “But…” she raises an eyebrow, “it was most definitely spelled to be that effective.”

  “Spelled?”

  Luke leans in toward me and brushes a thumb across my cheek like he’s thinking about following it with a kiss. My heart speeds up, and I suddenly can’t remember what I just asked.

  But instead of kissing me, his features harden as he stares into my eyes. I wonder if it’s the curse that seems to make his blue-black eyes shine whenever he draws closer to me. “Spelled means that someone enhanced the herb,” he explains, “with magic. They probably also replaced the memory your mother had with another one.”

  “And Carly?” I swallow and try to keep my breathing even. God, does he have any idea what he does to me when he gets so close? Talk about revving a metabolism. And here we are talking about my parents and BFF being poisoned by illegal herbs. I shake my head to clear it and glance past Luke’s shoulder when I hear Matt growl.

  “Probably gave her too much of the herb,” Matt grits out.

  “Is that what you did to her after the bonfire?”

  “No!” Matt says defensively. “Just a little memory-muddler spell. Nothing like Ma Huang. That’s serious shit.”

  “Okay.” I step out from Luke’s embracing lean-in. He intertwines his fingers with mine, but the barely restrained fury is still in the set of his jaw. “So, someone changed my mom’s and probably Carly’s memories.”

  “Looks like it,” Taylin says.

  Luke’s gaze moves to Matt. “I think it’s time we talk to Eric Ashe.”

  “Uh…” I start to say.

  Luke’s gaze snaps back to mine. “You asked me to wait. I’ve waited. It’s time to talk to, what do you call him, Psycho-Stalker.”

  I exhale. “Yeah. I just don’t want to upset Carly.”

  “Give happy-go-lucky some credit,” Taylin says. “I’d want to know if one of my brothers was stalking my friend, probably wanting to kiss her senseless and then kill her…wait…” she rolls her coal-lined eyes dramatically. “I do have one of those.”

  “Aw,” I wink at Luke, “Taylin called me a friend.” Matt chuckles as we walk toward the auditorium.

  Matt veers off towards the gym, his hand in the air. “Luke’s basement after practice.”

  Luke pulls me to the side while Taylin walks past us into the darkened theater. “You’d better get out of here,” she warns Luke over her shoulder. “Bishop will probably have her start right up.” She twists off the top of a Thermos of hot, spelled nettle tea, then swings a bag of Dixie cups in a wide arc. She trots down the steep incline toward the stage. “Special tea for singers here! Loosens up those cords.”

  Luke places his large hands on either side of my shoulders as I lean against the wall where his fistprint sits crushed into the cinder block. He glances at the reminder and shakes his head. “I’ll go.”

  My heart jumps. “You’re going to ditch art again and ride your bike six miles away until the end of my drama class.” I expand the two simple words that sound too much like “good-bye forever.”

  He leans in and kisses me. His lips are warm but tense. He breaks away and leans his forehead against mine. “If,” he closes his eyes, and I watch as he clenches his teeth together, “if I hadn’t been so cocky, I would have left right away. If I was strong enough, I would leave now.”

  “You can’t leave me.” I touch the side of his stubbled cheek and his eyes open. “Don’t leave me.”

  He inhales and I notice his fingers clenching, nails biting into the walls. Bits of paint flake off under the assault. “It’s getting…harder. The more I’m with you, the more I hear your wit, the more I see of the smile that reaches your deep brown eyes. Each time I inhale your scent, I love you more.”

  I reach up and grab one of his hands off the wall. I cup my own around it, working his fingers out straight. “We’ll stay away from each other more.”

  He shakes his head. “When I’m away from you, I miss you. I think about you and the feelings increase. So even if I force myself to leave, it will just be a matter of time before I come back.”

  “Then don’t go.” I flatten against the wall, afraid to touch him, afraid to make it harder for him.

  “Jule Welsh!” Ms. Bishop calls from within.

  “I will see you at two-thirty, your house,” I say. “Now, go. I’ll stall as long as I can.”

  He hangs his head for a moment, clenches his lips tight and nods. He jogs off down the hall and I rush down the aisle as the late tone sounds.

  * * *

  “Carly, we’ve always been BFFs,” I say. I stare out the front windshield as she drives towards Luke’s house. I fidget with the fake syringe Carly has hanging from her rear-view mirror.

  “Just spill it, Jule. I know something’s been bugging you.” She chuckles. “Well, more than your boyfriend being taken over by an ancient curse that’s making him want to kill you.”

  “Why does everyone keep bringing that up today?” I mumble. I clear my throat and turn toward her. I bend my knee up so I’m looking right at her. Maybe this will be easier with her driving. She has to look straight ahead.

  “Okay, Carly, you know that Eric seems to have a crush on me.”

  Carly shakes her head. “He told me last night that he’s seeing that girl who’s been texting him, Angie something or other. She’s in his psych class.”

  My mouth hangs open. “Eric’s taking a psych class?”

  “Actually he’s thinking about switching majors to psychology instead of sports medicine.” She shrugs. “He seems to like figuring out crazy people. Anytime now, he’ll start diagnosing us.” She laughs.

  “I bet,” I say under my breath and inhale. “Well, I think he might…be a little stuck on me.” I grit my teeth. This isn’t coming out right. “What I mean is,” I close my eyes and talk, “Luke has seen Eric hanging out around my house in the dark.” No need to mention that Luke just smelled Eric. “Luke even thinks he saw Eric go inside once when we weren’t home.” Big breath. “And my mom thought she saw some secret alcove in your house with tons of pictures of me in it. Then the cake
that Eric and your mom brought over yesterday had this herb in the icing that causes memory loss. It also may have been given to you yesterday when you saw something you weren’t supposed to and you called me. You told me to bring lip gloss.” Another breath. “But by the time I got there, you were passed out and now don’t remember anything.”

  I keep my eyes closed for a few seconds, finally opening one. “So Luke and Matt want to have a talk with Eric.”

  There is a stretch of silence. My knee starts to bounce and I taste strawberry as I bite my bottom lip.

  “What herb?” Carly asks in a monotone.

  “Ma hoo-ang or hoo-ing or something. It’s illegal.”

  “Who analyzed the icing?”

  “Taylin. She says that the effects of the herb were revved up by some sort of magic spell.”

  “You think Eric is working magic?” Carly glances at me critically and I feel my face turn hot. I nod. “He doesn’t even like Harry Potter,” she defends.

  “Uh…I don’t think that’s a prerequisite.”

  “And I think I’d know if there was some secret room in my house. Mom has a closet where she is putting together a Welsh family album. That’s what your mom saw.”

  I sigh. “I know. But Mom’s memory was tampered with, too. There might also be a spot where someone is keeping pictures apart from your mom’s scrapbook closet. Eric came with your mom yesterday. That’s, I don’t know, kind of weird, too.”

  We pull up to Luke’s mailbox. Carly stares at the steering wheel. Her jaw moves left to right. She doesn’t turn off the engine. “Tell Taylin I want to see the lab results, unless she’s just guessing that Herbal Ecstasy was somehow put into my mom’s cooking.”

  “You know about Herbal Ecstasy?”

  “I’m going for pre-med, Jule,” she says with a mix of pinched fury and disbelief. “I know some things.”