The defense is saying the deceased was a siren.
Which means maybe she wasn’t a victim after all.
The video has captions, so when I realize the community center has great acoustics, I finally mute it. It doesn’t stop the familiar, unsympathetic voices from blaring in my head.
Sirens, they say, and anyone listening knows it’s a dirty word.
Danger, they report, and they’re talking about the danger she posed, never the danger we face.
The world is closing in on me, and in the community center, I feel the wall at my back. There’s a wet echo all around, and it’s sad, but I’m relieved when I remember that I’m alone. The news people, the talking heads who for once will all agree with each other, they aren’t talking about me—at least not as far as they know. My chest is jumping with a jackrabbit pulse and it’s beginning to hurt.
But no one knows.
I’m still safe.
I must have slid down the wall because soon I find myself sitting on the floor. If it’s damp, I don’t notice. If I’ve lowered myself into one of the many wayward puddles decorating the pool area, I can’t tell. What matters is that no one can look over my shoulder. No one can see what I’m seeing—even though according to the viewer count, literally thousands of people already have.
I turn off my phone; this is something not even the iconic Camilla Fox, naturalista goddess, can fix.
Because Rhoda Taylor was a siren. Like me.
I think I’m going to be sick.
II
EFFIE
There’s nothing like being in the water.
People ask me if it’s quiet, if that’s why I like it. It makes sense; I’m quiet, I must want the world to be the same way.
Tavia asks me that; Tavia is people.
The thing about being underwater is that it’s not—quiet, I mean. I can’t hear what’s happening above the surface, but when I’m totally submerged, I hear the water. I hear its song, the way it sings to itself and anybody who comes below to hear it. I love the way it never changes, and the way I’m always different when I’m here.
Sometimes I bring my head above the surface when I don’t need a breath, just so I can duck back under and hear the song start again. That’s all I mean to do when I crest between laps, but this time I feel a pair of eyes on me.
I can always tell when I’m being watched. I guess when you can never shake the feeling, you’ve gotta be right sometimes.
There he is. He’s leaning back in his seat, wearing a white community-center polo shirt with his red shorts, tanned brown hands interlaced on top of his buzz-cut hair. He lifts one my way and I can’t help but smile—even though I immediately hide behind my heavy twists when I wave back.
Last week he said his name is Wallace, and now I hear it replay inside my head.
We only just introduced ourselves (finally), but he’s been coming to the pool for the past several years and I feel like we’ve built up a rapport.
Hey.
How’s it going.
The water feels fine.
Okay, a very vague rapport, but I’m not a great conversationalist—which he probably reads as disinterest like everybody else. (Joke’s on them, I’m just super uncomfortable.) Sometimes I don’t say anything at all, just make a nonverbal hello.
With the faire coming up, it’s the gesturing that makes me feel a little guilty. Like outside of me and Tav, signing should belong to my life in the mermaid tank. And to Elric, the boy I’m betrothed to when I play Euphemia the Mer.
Whatever. Wallace told me his name but nothing else. He’s the strong, silent type, I guess. Emphasis on the strong. I used to think he was a lifeguard (his arms are built for heaving people out of an unforgiving sea, trust) but despite being a walking ad for the community center, he’s never on the lifeguard stand.
When I climb out of the pool, he’s looking away, smiling with a mom who just got foot-checked by her overly enthusiastic toddler. A moment ago, it was just us—the way I like it. As if Tav knows the sight of a mother and child’ll be a trigger, she chooses that moment to look over, but I play it off.
It’s the one downside to Ren faire season returning. Knowing Mom won’t. Most years it’s a passing acknowledgment. Just the truth, crappy but not crippling. This year feels different.
Tavia’s not in the lobby when I’m done showering, so I double back through the locker room and find her standing in a corner on the far side of the pool. For a moment, I think maybe she finally heard something in the water. I don’t know exactly what she’s been doing the last few times she’s come with me to the pool; I’m not a siren. I just know what I pick up from Tav, and she’s not totally sure she knows how this whole searching-for-siren-gramma ritual is supposed to work. All I know right now is that she looks more traumatized than victorious. Like, even before I get to her, I can tell something’s really wrong. She might be trying to become the wall, the way she’s pressed into it.
“They said she was like me,” Tavia signs when I get closer.
When she defaults to ASL, I know there’s a problem. It means her siren call is close to sliding free—or she’s afraid it is, anyway. It means the safest thing for her to do is not to speak. When that happens, I try not to speak either; we sign. I’ve got my swim bag in one hand, and the other one’s still checking that all my twists are safely bound inside my wrap and completely out of sight, so I have to respond out loud.
“What?” I ask, and even though it isn’t my voice that has power, the sound of it makes Tavia shiver and she waves me even closer.
“They said she was like me,” she signs again, and when she swallows I can’t help but remember how she said it feels when she’s scared to speak out loud.
The inside of her throat must be burning. It must feel tight and tense, like a rubber band stretched too far. She told me once that it’s like choking on a rock of fire that refuses to melt down, and that must be why she’s teary-eyed.
“Who did?” I ask when my hands are free, but I mouth it too, the way I do at the Renaissance faire when me and the few other cosplay mermaids are in our tanks.
Tav reaches out and pulls me in before spelling Rhoda’s name against my chest. When she’s done, she just stares at me with these pleading eyes. Like I’m the strong one. Like she’s not the one teaching me how to keep it together.
Like I haven’t been waiting all day for the right time to tell her I’m having nightmares again. The swim was supposed to give me the courage, because the water’s the only thing that does.
But now Tavia needs me. So I do what I do best; I sputter. I open my mouth and just make generally unintelligible sounds like I sometimes do in class, hoping someone bails me out before I shrivel up and die.
Tavia knows my tricks.
She mouths my name once, then widens her eyes for emphasis—and that’s when I remember who Rhoda Taylor is. That her boyfriend’s going on trial for her murder, and that no one’s ever mentioned her being a siren before. They’ve barely mentioned her at all.
“Is she?” I ask her. Like an idiot.
C’mon, Effie. That is not the point.
I expect Tav to gesture wildly, sign that she doesn’t know or that I’m a jerk for thinking it matters. Instead she does something worse. She deflates, shrugging one shoulder like she doesn’t have the energy to lift both.