“How to what? French braid your hair?” I must have asked with an obvious skepticism because he angled his head at me and mocked my surprise.
“Yeah,” he said while we laughed. “I feel like I can pull it off.”
“Priam.”
“Tavia.”
I remember my face getting all warm then, and for a moment even though I couldn’t stop smiling down at the woodchips beneath the swings, I had to fight the urge to touch my neck. I wasn’t self-conscious about my keloid around Priam, and it wasn’t always my siren call flaring up, I told myself. A girl could get flushed because a cute boy said her name just right.
And then my ear was against my shoulder, one of my braids yanked so hard I heard my neck crack as it yielded to the tug. I might have yelped, but it was so high-pitched and sharp that it didn’t really sound like me. Priam told everyone he was sure it’d come from my sprite admirer and I couldn’t be sure it wasn’t true. Ever since then, I wear my hair up when I visit parks, or elementary schools, or basically anywhere kids—and therefore sprites—might be. And Priam liked those hairdos, too.
“See, high buns are for me, man buns should be directly at the back for you.”
“That’s so expected, though,” he had argued, touching the mole above my collarbone and staring at it like the black circle on my otherwise deep brown skin was emitting a Compel call of its own.
When I was with Priam, I sometimes wanted to use it. Not Compel, though. Appeal. If Compel bends someone to a siren’s will, Appeal bends the siren to someone else’s, even though she’s the one in control. It’s the call a siren uses to endear someone to her—that’s the way my mom describes it, anyway. (She’s the only one who does.) Basically, it makes the siren attractive to the subject, whatever that means in the moment. It changes the way the person sees her so they think she’s been changed, and then it tells on the person. Like if I used Appeal on Priam, I would know how he wanted to see me, or how he wanted me to act or think in order to satisfy his idea of the perfect me.
The effect doesn’t last forever, but it’s still tempting—and not just with Priam. (Sometimes I think I should use it at home … but I don’t need Appeal to know how my dad wants me to be.)
I hadn’t liked anyone the way I liked Priam, and I haven’t since. I think that’s why, no matter how obvious he was about being into me, I always wanted him to like me more.
We were on this step up the hill from my house when I reached up and undid his hair, untying the strip of leather he used instead of a more traditional hair tie. He watched me the whole time and I didn’t even mind his smug smile.
He had a mole, too, beneath his right eye, except his wasn’t raised. It matched his dark eyes, standing out from his pink-beige skin just like they did, and it reminded me of some period drama where people gave themselves fake beauty marks. It was almost too perfectly placed. Maybe it was that—the perfection of his mole, his dark blond hair loose, the ends flipping and curling beautifully against his shoulders. The way he was totally comfortable and confident. All of it. It made me want to tell him the truth, and I thought it’d be easier if I brought up his trait first.
“Can I hear your bell?” I asked, settled on the step beside him, content to sit so close I could hear him breathing and see his pulse in his throat.
He broke into a smile and without breaking eye contact, dug the charm out of his pocket. This wasn’t the first time a girl had asked to hear his eloko melody, that was for sure. But we were sitting close—like, almost intimately so—which meant I wouldn’t hear it naturally, the way people do when an eloko first enters their presence.
Every eloko I know carries their melody in a charm like the one Naema wears around her neck, at least all the ones at Beckett High. They’re gifts, usually given at a child’s dedication or christening or some early milestone, and they’re an eloko’s prized possession.
Priam held it between thumb and forefinger and blew on the bell. I don’t know if that was just for effect, or if it really activated the charm, but a three-note melody tinkled into the air between us and enchanted the hillside up the street from my house.
“That’s my song,” he said, and closed the charm in his hand.
I was supposed to say that I wished I had one. That’s what people always say to elokos. I’d planned to tell him that I did. I had a song. And when I told him, it was gonna be life-changing, for both of us. He was going to get this look in his eye, and just be in awe of me and my call and the melody of it. But I thought I heard gargoyle wings, and when I finally looked from the sky above to my street below, I saw Effie waving. My parents wanted us to come back to the house. They liked Priam—which for my dad was actually an understatement—but I was sixteen and wandering the neighborhood with a charming eloko boy after nightfall. They’re only human.
My dad was happy while I was with Priam. All three months of it. At first I thought he was just glad I was dating like a normal girl, and then I realized it was because of what Priam was. Dating an eloko made me stand out in a good way, he said.
“Not like your signing.” He’d been watching TV when I came in that day, too. Now Dad snapped his head to look at me, like he hadn’t meant to say that part out loud. “It’s not like I don’t want you to stand out, Vivi, you’ll always stand out to me. I just don’t want it to be for things like made-up disorders and—”
“Being my grandma’s granddaughter.” I hurt myself nibbling on the inside of my mouth and held my tongue against the wound, the taste of copper growing stronger by the second. “It’s not a made-up disorder, Dad. It’s spasmodic dysphonia, it’s a real thing. It makes people’s vocal cords spasm, and it can change their voice or keep them from speaking.”
“And you don’t have it.”
“Well. I also didn’t try to kill myself, but that doesn’t mean it’s not written down somewhere in a file in Santa Cruz.”
“It’s sealed.”
“Like I was during that 5150.” And then I shut my mouth. Like, I curled my lips into my mouth and sealed that puppy shut because I could not believe how far I’d gone.
It always seemed so easy for him to forget—and it still does. Not that I’m a siren and how badly my life can turn out. That stays right at the fore. Somehow he forgets how horribly he responded to what I only did because I knew how much he hated my siren call. I was eleven years old, but he should’ve known better. So as much as I want to be fixed for him, I’m keeping my not-fake-but-not-mine diagnosis and my sign language, because I need them. At least until I get rid of my siren voice.
“I was just trying to tell you how happy I am for you, Vivi,” Dad said. He’d let me get all the way to the staircase before speaking again. “Priam’s a good guy.”
I turned back and gave him what felt like a really weak smile. I liked Priam, too. I just wanted my dad to like me regardless.
Anyway, Priam’s long gone, so nobody sends Effie for me tonight. I come back down the hill alone, and not even the gargoyle’s watching. He’s got his neck curved like he’s trying to see the front door from his roost, and when he does glance up at me, he looks right back down, so I follow his gaze.