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  Siren’s Song

  Heather McCollum

  SPENCER HILL PRESS

  Copyright © 2014 by Heather McCollum

  Sale of the paperback edition of this book without its cover is unauthorized.

  Spencer Hill Press

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. Contact: Spencer Hill Press, PO Box 247,

  Contoocook, NH 03229, USA

  Please visit our website at www.spencerhillpress.com

  First Edition: February 2014.

  Second Edition: March 2014.

  Heather McCollum

  Siren’s Song: a novel / by Heather McCollum – 1st ed.

  p. cm.

  Summary:

  Jule knows she is a great singer, but she doesn’t know that she is a Siren with a terrifying destiny at the hands of the hot new boy in school.

  The author acknowledges the copyrighted or trademarked status and trademark owners of the following wordmarks mentioned in this fiction: Adidas, American Idol, Bagel Bites, Band-Aids, Barbie, BMW, Camry, Cheetos, Cheshire Cat, Chuck Taylors, Coke, Coke Zero, Diet Coke, Discovery Channel, Dixie cups, Downy, Girl Scouts, Glenburgie, Glinda, Google, Grape Crush, GQ, Harry Potter, Herbal Essences, Incredible Hulk, iPhone, iPod, Kawasaki ZX10R, Kool-Aid, Lightsaber, Mario, Mountain Dew, Nancy Drew, Neosporin, Thermos, Versus, The Wizard of Oz, Wheaties, Winnebago

  Cover design by Lisa Amowitz

  Interior layout by Marie Romero

  ISBN 978-1-939392-82-4 (paperback)

  ISBN 978-1-939392-86-2 (e-book)

  Printed in the United States of America

  To Skye –

  Your strong heart gave me hope.

  Your first breath made me a mom.

  Your inner beauty inspired me.

  This book is for you, my Carissimi.

  I love you. Mom

  1

  “A bird doesn’t sing because it has an answer; it sings because it has a song.”

  ~Maya Angelou

  Carly Ashe, BFF bordering on sister, flaps her hand in my direction as she stares through my mom’s opera glasses. “Jule! They’re moving in, and you have to see this!” She shoves the golden binoculars into my hand and points across the road toward the new subdivision of colossal homes set on three-acre manicured lots—Amberly Heights. I balance my Grape Crush on the sloped roof outside my bedroom window, where we sit on beach towels surrounded by magazines.

  “He’s gorgeous!” Carly continues. I smile over her enthusiasm. It’s Carly through and through. She’s a living upbeat musical montage. Even on my worst days, and I’ve had way too many lately, she can flap and babble me into a grin.

  “My mom said they had two kids when she showed them the place, but OMG he’s…” She waves her hand at the binoculars. “Just look!”

  I sigh and peer through the lenses toward the large moving truck parked along a curb two blocks away. The glasses aren’t meant for long-distance spying, but the boy standing on the lawn finally comes into focus. Tall. It’s the first thing I notice. Well-built for a teenager. He must work out. He’s wearing board shorts and a white T-shirt. His hair looks dark and longish from here, almost to his chin.

  “Your dad will be happy if his sport of choice is football,” I say and watch him heft a large duffle bag. Carly’s dad, Richard Ashe, is the football coach at Cougar Creek High, where Carly and I are about to start our senior year.

  “He probably plays hockey.” Carly gently tugs the binoculars back for another look. “Mom said his dad was a professional hockey player up in Boston. He retired and got a job with the Carolina Blizzards, assistant coach, I think.”

  “Wow, a celebrity,” I murmur and scoot across the shingles to a sunnier spot. The descending glow dips behind the overly large lilac tree along the side of the house. Towel smoothed and sunglasses back in place, I pick up the magazine I’d been trying to read. The article details what I should be doing the day before school starts. Stylish outfit picked out–not too dressy–check. Hair washed–check. Facial, hmm…only if Carly forces her homemade avocado mask on me. Pluck eyebrows–check. Mani-pedi–I glance at my newly painted pale-blue toes–check. Well, sort of.

  I frown at my bare fingernails. Who has time for fingernail polish? I’d only pick it off in my refusal to acknowledge the continuous internal avalanche of stress. Acknowledgment is overrated. Denial works for me these days. Anything to keep my mind on mundane things and off my mom.

  Condensation trails in small rivers down my soda, in direct contrast to my parched mouth. Even with the threat of twilight, the late-summer days of North Carolina are still hot. The stagnant air hovers around me like I’m in some cosmic oven. “You want more water?” I push into a standing position with my dark hair hanging down like a curtain, stretch my hamstrings, and grab the slick glass. Gravity and the absence of friction, my physics teacher would point out, can lead to instantaneous disaster. The tall, thin glass slips from my fingers. In slow motion I watch as it lands on its side on the hot, black and gray speckled shingles. The glass shatters, the ice flying with the force over the side into the gutter. “Shit!”

  Carly shrieks at the impact and leaps up. “Jule! God, you’re bleeding!”

  Bright-red blood gushes over my foot. I throw a napkin on it. “I didn’t feel anything.”

  “Glass cuts can be so clean you don’t feel them.” Carly nods, as if she studies various types of wounds all the time. Although, maybe she does. She reads a lot of medical books, since she’s decided to apply to the pre-med program at Duke next year. “Wait here.” She ducks into my window. “And don’t step on any more. I’ll get…stuff.”

  “The Band-Aids are in the bathroom closet,” I yell and search my towel for a non-sharp spot to sit on. I shake my head. Now I’ll have a bandage on my foot tomorrow. At least it’s not my wrist. There’ll be rumors enough. I don’t need to add “possible suicide attempt” to them. No one slices her foot to off herself, right?

  Carly pops back out the window with Band-Aids, hydrogen peroxide, paper towels, cotton balls, and Neosporin.

  “God, Carly,” I half-laugh, “I don’t think—”

  “You don’t want an infection.” She drops to my foot and rolls back the napkin. Tsking, she sounds so much like her mom. How many skinned knees has Patricia Ashe patched for me growing up? As many as my own mom, probably.

  The Ashe family has been with us forever. We’d lived next to them in Virginia, but we moved to the outskirts of Raleigh, North Carolina, when I was twelve. I’d been devastated over Dad’s job transfer. But miraculously, within a year, Carly’s dad had found a job at the local high school and they’d followed us down. Patricia knew the housing market, since she was a realtor, and felt the move was to their advantage, even if Carly’s brother, Eric, had been about to start high school. So they followed. Eric remained the same grumpy, brooding boy he’d always been, but he didn’t seem to hold our family responsible. Now he attends NC State and plays football for them. His dad is ecstatic about it. They’ve always been just like family to me.

  I peek at the mountain of red-splotched gauze. My stomach feels higher up in my body cavity than it should. “What a mess.”

  Carly glances up. “You look pale.”

  “I am pale. You won’t let me in the sun without at least SPF 50 on.”

  “If you’d read the melanoma accounts I’ve read, you wouldn’t give me such a hard time. Plus, pale is in, although with your natural tan you’ll never look really pale. But you l
ook, like, sick-pale right now. Lay back and hum or something.”

  “Ugg…” My groan trails off as I flatten out on my back, hoping there aren’t any slivers of glass under me. Hum? Okay. I used to hum all the time, incessantly. I take a deep breath.

  Mom… I haven’t hummed since she left. My stomach tightens, making the nausea worsen. I suck in another cleansing breath, not that ninety-degree plus, motionless air can cleanse anything. Why should I worry about humming? Stupid, really. There is something wrong with Mom, not me.

  I start. Softly at first, one of my favorite songs from the opera, Julietta, my namesake and Mom’s favorite role. The score is dreamlike, tranquil and light. My mother sang it to me whenever I was sick. It’s an aria, an emotion-filled solo. My humming transforms into words as I remember the sweet lyrics of the English translation. I feel my spirit lift and I am flying with the notes as they rise out of me. They take me high above the world, above the worry.

  I am already feeling better. I can breathe again. A breeze brushes against me and I open my eyes, propping myself up on my elbows. Carly hovers, motionless, over my foot as if she’s frozen in an arctic ice blast. I break off and she shakes her head slightly.

  “Sorry,” I mumble.

  “No, no.” She blinks hard. “I’d just forgotten how… beautiful your voice is.” She sits back on her heels and shakes her head again. “I mean–God, it’s mesmerizing.”

  So that hasn’t changed in the last two months of silence. My voice still has the ability to freeze people. Not like some super-villain who can stop people’s hearts with a kick-ass Beyoncé song. But as my mother used to say, before the incident that I’m not thinking about, Julietta, your voice is bel canto. Its magic captures people. My mother’s voice has a similar effect.

  Isabella Welsh is a famous opera singer, a true prima donna but without the attitude. She retired from the opera circuit when we moved here. She was close to being stalked because her cult following had grown so rapidly in D.C. Now that I’m older, I realize part of the reason we moved was probably for her to get away from her fans, not just for Dad’s job.

  I grab the loose strands of my hair that are blowing around and look at my mummy-wrapped foot. “Great, no one will notice that. God, Carly, I don’t think I can even get it in my sandal.”

  “Just leave it wrapped tonight and put a few regular Band-Aids on it in the morning.”

  She begins to gather her supplies as I wad up the blood-smeared tissues. Geesh, it’s a wonder I’m not woozy from loss of blood. I grab a few cotton balls that tumble-weed across the roof and glance up. Is there a storm rolling in? No, just empty blue sky. The lilac tree, dipping over the porch roof where we’re perched, sways. Blossoms shake loose and scatter toward us like summer snowflakes.

  As Carly swivels, crouched on the balls of her feet, she inhales fast. “Did you cut yourself?” I ask.

  But she’s staring, not at the glass-covered shingles, but out toward the road. “We have company,” she whispers out of the corner of her mouth.

  My gaze glides out across the roof line to the sidewalk on the other side of my driveway. There he stands. Tall, chiseled biceps, fists clenched against his thighs, dark hair moving haphazardly in the sudden gusts. My breath sticks somewhere in between my lungs and my lips. The new boy, although he seems more like a college guy. Some type of dark, Celtic-looking dragon tattoos coil around his upper arms. They seem to be…moving. I brush my hair out of my face and blink hard. The images are still.

  I force myself to exhale before I faint and roll into the gutters with the ice. He stares. At me. When I meet his gaze I am locked, captured, like a bird hypnotized by the slitted orbs of a cat. He doesn’t smile, doesn’t wave. I am barely conscious of Carly calling a greeting. One he blatantly ignores. The wind whips around us, scattering more and more lilac petals. The only sound is the flipping of the pages of our magazines and the swooshing of the trees.

  The guy’s eyes are dark. The sun glances off them, making them look like they’re glowing. His scowl, and the rock-hard set of his jaw, pin me in place. Had he been walking over and heard me singing? Usually my voice causes people to smile or sigh. But never, never has anyone heard me and stared at me like they want to…to dissect me or throw me in a jar with formaldehyde-soaked cotton balls. No, it can’t be that.

  Then my stomach drops. He knows. He’s only been here half a day and he’s already heard about the crazy family living across the road in the old plantation house. About the mom who went berserk and had to be hauled away to the loony bin. He’s come to see. Like the others who’d stood on that very corner staring at the house and whispering until my father went out to get the mail, again, so that they’d disperse.

  My face heats up and I draw in a ragged breath, which somehow slips past the boulder in my stomach. “Let’s go in.”

  “Rude,” Carly mumbles, giving up. She grabs our towels and flaps them to toss the glass off. “And Mom said they were nice. His parents, anyway.”

  I stare at my hands while I ball up the cotton. He doesn’t say anything, but I know he’s still there. My stomach twists as I step through the window into cool seclusion. Carly slams the window closed behind me and yanks the curtain shut. Mica, my three-year-old floppy mutt, sniffs at my bandages. I run my fingers through her coarse curls.

  Carly huffs indignantly. “I don’t care how gorgeous he is, nothing makes up for a crappy attitude.” She peeks out the curtain and then pulls it further open. “I don’t see him.”

  Sitting on the edge of my bed, I fight past the lump that has blocked my swallow, a reminder of just how thirsty I am. “Do you…” I tip my chin up. “He must know about my mom.”

  Carly lets the curtain fall and sits next to me. “Doesn’t matter, Jule. He’s just another asshole.” I nod. Thank God I have Carly. She couldn’t possibly be dangerous, no matter what Mom said.

  “Jule, I gotta run. Told Dad I’d be home by now.”

  I try to smile. Apparently it doesn’t convince her, because she hugs me before grabbing her bag. “I’ll pick you up in the morning. No worries, now. You’ll look perfect.”

  I mumble “thanks,” or something to that effect. As my bedroom door clicks behind Carly, I stare at the purple, blue, and silver print of a dragonfly my mom gave me, its shape very much like a birthmark that my mom and I both have. I don’t need to read the words, I know them by heart. “Fragile in form, resilient in spirit.” I certainly don’t feel resilient right now.

  The menacing look from the new guy flashes through my mind. People are so judgmental and mean. I blink back the annoying tear, pushing it back inside with all the rest.

  * * *

  I step lightly into the dim kitchen. Not only is this going to be the second-worst day of my life, but it has to start at 5:45 in the morning. Dad slumps at the kitchen table, staring into a mug. As I near, I realize there is nothing in it. In fact, it looks clean.

  “Dad?” Max Welsh, Ph.D., father and scientist for Gentec Research, a small biopharm company, doesn’t usually sit staring blankly into an unused cup. Panic pinches my stomach muscles. Shit! Not him, too. Maybe there’s lead in the paint around here and we’re all slowly turning into freaked-out zombies. “Dad?” I say louder and draw the cup gingerly from his hand.

  “Julietta?” He looks up, startled. “Why are you up so early?” He sounds tired, but…well, sane.

  I blink and breathe. “School, Dad. The first day.”

  His forehead relaxes and he runs a hand through his wild hair. His face looks scruffy. Has he even showered? “Oh, right.” He glances up at me. “Did you get a new bag, notebooks, that stuff?”

  “Yep,” I say as cheerfully as I can and find the coffee crystals in the cupboard. “Patricia took me and Carly.”

  “Richard didn’t go, or Eric?”

  “No, just Patricia and Carly.”

  “Good.” He nods to the table. “I know it’s… Well, your mother…she’s calmer when I promise I won’t let you near them.”
<
br />   I shake my head and pinch my lips shut. Then I won’t say something stupid like Mom’s crazy, Dad. Coach Ashe carried me home when I wrecked my bike, and Eric is hardly lethal. Hell, they’ve both watched me grow up.

  I worry at my bottom lip and stomp the comments down deep, to sit with the rest of the horror that is my life these days.

  “She’ll get better, Julietta.” He turns to me.

  “I know, Dad.” I force a smile. I see the camera sitting at the back of the counter and sigh. I grab it and set it before Dad. “You’d better take it. Carly will be here any minute.”

  “What?” He looks at the digital camera like it’s some alien technology.

  “The first day of school picture.” My mom has been taking them ever since preschool. “If we miss this year because she wasn’t here, she’ll go…” I was going to say nuts. Wrong, so wrong. I shake my head. “Just take it, Dad.”

  He scrapes his chair back and picks up the camera. He flicks a finger toward me. “Aren’t you supposed to hold up fingers or something to say which grade you’re going into?”

  “Yeah.” I slip off my sandals and lift my big toes in the air while holding out my splayed hands, fingers stretched into the universal sign of ten. A Band-Aid hides yesterday’s cut.

  Dad chuckles and snaps two pictures. Carly raps a song on the door, probably what was just blaring on the radio. “Bye, Dad.”

  He smiles. “Good luck.”

  “Thanks.” Though good luck avoids me just like the rest of my so-called friends did this past summer. Only Carly stuck by me.

  “Ready to start the best year of your entire school experience?” Carly asks and sips at her travel mug.

  I make a face. “Best year?”

  “Seniors rule,” she tosses back with a pump of her arm toward the ceiling. I roll my eyes and follow her to her car.

  “Buckle up,” she says out of habit. “I swear Mom knows if we don’t click it before I turn the key.” She lifts a second travel mug to me and I smell the hot chocolate.

  “God, you are good to me,” I say and sigh as I inhale the pure, dark bliss.