The Siren

Letting Amy dress me and do my hair wasn't in the brochure for the night. When I've accepted to go partying with Amy I hadn't expect her to appear at the front door of the Walsh's residence with a duffel bag full of her "tools". One look at the three different sets of hair straighteners and the four bags of pink hair curlers and I knew I was in the presence of a makeover enthusiast. Not to mention the mountains and mountains of makeup products floating around the duffel bag. It was about then when I realized that Amy's love for makeup was a little bit out of control. I sat on my bed and watched her open the bedroom curtains and prepare all the products and different tools that she would be needing. She came to me about a dozen times and compared eyeshadow palettes against my skin tone to see the contrast of the colors. After half an hour of organizing and observing me like a sculptor observes a naked piece of rock, she smiled and looked around my bedroom with a clinical look.

"What are you wearing?" I blinked and looked at her with what I assumed was a blank expression. Amy scowled and went to my closet, opening and checking its contents while she drummed her ringed fingers against its doors. She was already dressed for the night in a cutout black dress and her signature black Dr. Martens boots. Her natural light brown hair was up in a straight ponytail that gave her the air of a barbie Dominatrix. She still hadn't done her makeup but I could already imagine that she would go for something dramatic with a lot of black eyeshadow. After scanning my clothes and inspecting my underwear drawer she snapped her fingers and started putting an outfit together.

I blinked and absorbed while Amy walked back to my bed and placed a short denim skirt that I didn't even know I owned and a crop top red t-shirt over my bedspread. I eyed the outfit with a guarded look. It wasn't what I would usually wear. As a matter of fact I'd never wore anything remotely short. That was simply not who I was. Amy waved a hand at me as if she could read by my diplomatic expression how much contempt I was concealing from her. She run back to the drawers and extracted a pair of black pantyhose. Then she took my discarded Seven Nation Army boots on her way to me and laid them to my feet with a contagious smile on her face.

"You expect me to wear that?" I asked, pointing with a finger at the skimpiest outfit I'd ever seen. Amy nodded and didn't even give me time to rebel before turning me around and start working in my hair. She started brushing it, making me gasp in pain. Mother of baby Jesus! Did looking good was supposed to hurt so much? Sincerely, I couldn't remember the last time I've brushed my hair. Or cut my nails. Or simply done something else that wasn't breathing and blinking.

"You are a raw diamond waiting to be polished Violet Windsworth. Just wait and see baby doll," I almost smiled at her "baby doll" phrase but decided to stay quiet and still. My life was in Amy's hands for the next hour and I valued my hair enough to not provoke Amy before she had to use those scary looking straighteners on me. She turned on music on her phone while working in my hair. I watched her work while she danced to a Cage the Elephant song. It was in those moments when no one was watching us that dead people like me, and halflings like Amy, came out from our insides and habited reality. Amy looked the happiest I'd ever seen her while she talked about clothes and makeup with me. I didn't say much, but that was irrelevant. It was the feeling of sharing a moment with another person without being judged. In that fraction of a lifetime we were just two girls, doing our hair and listening to music before going out. There was no underlying gravity, no worry, no sense of time. For the first time in my life I was able to feel a little bit more my age. The feeling was brutally unfitting, like a swimming suit that was two sizes too small. I was able to push that strange sensation away and focus in the moment. Amy had been saying something important but I'd been again lost in my limbo dreams. I shook my head trying to come back to reality, making Amy click her tongue at me. She ordered me to stay still, before taking a lock of my hair in her hands again and straightening it.

"What you were saying?" I asked her and Amy laughed, her green eyes sparkling in amusement.

"You get lost really fast," she said, making me shrug.

"That's just one of my many redeeming qualities," I murmured and Amy gasped, stopping whatever she was doing and looking at me over my shoulder.

"Was that a joke?" she asked me with an excited face. I shrugged again, not sure of what the hell she was expecting to hear.

"It wasn't intended to," Amy laughed, this time she laughed hard as if whatever I've said couldn't be funnier. I just shook my head again and decided there was no point traying to understand how the hell Amy's head worked. She was a wild cat with an unpredictable personality. Her mood changes were impossible to diagnosticate. And she was smart, but never let it show. In other words, she was fucking crazy. Just my type of people.

"I was thanking you for accepting to be my plus one tonight. I don't have friends that I can count on and it feels right to be doing this," she smiled at me, pushing my done hair to my left shoulder and focusing her eyes on all the remaining hair that still needed intense work, "to be honest I've never had many friends. Just Stolas and that's pretty much it."

"You guys were friends?" I asked her while eyeing my outfit again. Was I really going to fit in that? Amy stopped, her hands tensing around my hair and just then I realized I've asked a question that could be too personal. I frowned and looked back at Amy, "I wasn't trying to pry. You don't have to answer if you don't want to."

"No, that's okay. There's no much to say either way," she sighed, brushing her fingers through my hair. The feeling shouldn't feel familiar, but it did, as if it was my own sister doing it and not a friend that I've just met. She sighed and then started talking, "My mom is Stolas's mother personal assistant. Since I could remember the two of us had been tied to our hips. There were times when we practically lived together. Until the summer we turned sixteen and we started fucking each other like rabbits. It's okay, we were too young and too crazy. I get your bamboozled expression."

What I was supposed to say to that confession? I had been down to my shoulders worrying and caring for my mom back when I was sixteen. I didn't know any boys back then and having sex was a nonexistent concept that still hadn't bloomed in my mind. I was not judging Amy. I was just thinking on how different our lives had been. I sighed, screwing my face with a hand and trying to find the right words to say to her.

"You just took me by surprise. That's all," Amy nodded and we were quiet for a while, before I frowned, trying to understand something, "Wait a minute. So you admitted on liking Stolas as much as you hated him but you guys had been friends who have sex since you were sixteen. You still care enough about him to go and see him on his birthday, but you also hate him?"

"It's complicated."

"I can understand complicated," and that was the understatement of my life.

"Well, things got complicated when my mom and Stolas's mom realized after working together for ten years that they were in love. They legally married last year and Faith Stolas legally adopted me as her own. I'm Amy Hitchens Carter by the way," she said, offering me her right hand again as if we were presenting each other officially. I was too surprised to even try to process all that information. But I accepted her hand and we both shook it while Amy studied my face, probably trying to analyze my reaction to the bomb she had thrown at me. The fact was, Amy's story was wild, but I've seen worst things happening during my lifetime and I was okay with crazy. Damn, crazy was all I knew. I smiled and then snorted at her clinical expression.

"Why do I suspect the shit hasn't yet hit the fan in your story?" Amy smiled a big smile at me and just then I knew she was ten pounds lighter. There was this new light in her face, as if her secrets had darkened her soul for years. And it probably had for all I knew. Something told me she hasn't admitted on having sex with Stolas to anyone. People dealt differently with taboos. Some people need direct religious intervention after listening to stories that were difficult to deal with. Others like me couldn't be surprised by anything anymore. And then Amy threw her arms around me and gently hugged me. Who would have thought I was needing that hug probably as much as she'd been needing it? That's when I knew without a question that our friendship had been fomented for a lifetime. She hugged me tighter for a second or two and then moved slowly away.

"I refused to keep on having sex with Stolas after our mothers married. Even if I wanted to and even if we feel...connected to each other I wouldn't dare to hurt my mom. She had suffered enough before admitting to me that she was gay. She thought being gay made her a bad mom. I knew when she came out to me that my relationship with Stolas would have to change. We were going to be brother and sister so I thought it would be for the best to stop having sex. Stolas thought differently and warned me that he would start screwing other girls if I didn't accept on going out with him," Amy shrugged, holding the straightener in one hand and scowling at the memory, as if she could still see Stolas threatening her, "as you must imagine I don't deal very well with threats. So we had been hating each other for a whole year now."

"And how does it work? You date other people to get to each other?" I asked, now genuinely interested on how Amy's and Stolas's twisted relationship worked. To my surprise Amy blushed and looked away from me.

"That's just Stolas being stupid. I couldn't date another guy when I still feel things for him. That's just not how I work," she said and that's when I realized what she had been trying to say with so many words.

"You love him, don't you?" Amy didn't refute my statement and didn't admit on it either. I sighed, before turning around to my aunt Cora's kindle and opening one of her BDSM books. I gave it to Amy, who blinked interested at the cover of an almost naked man holding handcuffs in his hands. I smirked and pointed at the book, "I've been trying to read it for a while now but I can't understand a thing. Something tells me you are needing it a lot more than I do."

"Thanks, I will check it when I get home," Amy said, caressing the cover with a finger and making me lift my eyebrows in the process. I've meant it as in a joke but it seemed the joke was lost on her. She took a deep breath and refocused her attention back to my hair, "Come on, we need to get gorgeous so I can show Stolas all that he is missing."

I have another confession to make. It's stupid and you are probably going to hate me once I admit this out loud. You already hate me so I suppose that's not going to change much. I will do appreciate if we respect each other. This relationship between us is about to transform like a chrysalid morphs into a butterfly. Respect is the foundation of whatever happens next between you and me. You are either going to love what is in my mind or completely disagree with me. Either way you are stuck in my mind for this next confession of mine. You are my only confident. At times I think I can hear you, you know? It feels like you are constantly looking at me, spying on my every move over my shoulder. And that's okay. I want you here with me. I need you. I don't want to be that lonely. Do you feel lonely too?

I sigh while I look at my reflection in the mirror. Here comes my confession...I'm scared of feeling pretty. Trust me when I say my confession it's not related to my sense of vanity or my high self-esteem. I'm not vain. I couldn't care less how I look or what people might or might not think about me. I gave up all those nonessential social constructs the day I buried my parents. I have a normal sense of self-esteem, is not high, but it's not small. When I said earlier that I'm a beautiful woman is not because I think I'm beautiful. I know I am beautiful, as I know you are, and pretty much every girl out there. I'm not scared of being pretty. I'm scared of feeling pretty. The difference lies in how alive I feel when I know I'm feeling pretty versus just knowing how I look. Do you smile when you are feeling pretty? Do you sing to yourself a silent song that only you can hear? Do you laugh? Do you take pictures of yourself and post it on Instagram? Needless to say I don't do any of those things. I just feel pretty by getting scared. I'm not falling in love ever. Remember?

What business do I have feeling pretty when I don't want to catch a man's attention? I already know I'm pretty and that feeling is mine and mine alone. But feeling pretty usually means feeling pretty for someone else. Wanting others to feel how pretty you are. I don't want to podcast how pretty I am. I don't want others to see it. I just want me to see it. I know that is going to be a problem tonight, when I'm basically flaunting to the world everything I didn't want others to see. I stare at my reflection for what it feels like years before I take a step closer and study my aquamarine eyes.

I've never seen them look so pale. My eyes look like iridescent crystals under the smoky shadow that Amy used to outline the curve of my eyes. I don't look as pale as I usually am, courtesy of the foundation and the blush that I'm wearing. In contrast my lips only have a soft pink gloss. Amy explained to me that she wants all the attention going to my eyes. I don't know what she meant with that. I just know I look too exotic, too tempting and definitely too alluring. I don't want to be alluring. I don't want to feed Maddox's ideas by looking like the siren he thinks I am.

My hair falls in a middle part style and looks sleek and shiny, reaching my waist. I'm dressed in the outfit that Amy selected for me and against all logic I fit in it. I feel comfortable wearing a pantyhose and my usual boots. Those boots almost make me feel like my usual self, but there's no point lying to myself. The body I'd been trying to kill is still full and curvy. And I hate it all. I hate I look so damn alive. I hate I can't cover it all up with one of my big sweaters. I hate that tonight I won't be able to lie to the living ones. I sigh again and open the bathroom door. My aunt Cora and Ivy had been waiting to see me before I leave for the party. Cora's eyes almost pop out of their sockets when they see me. A second after Ivy echoes my worst fear out loud.

"Wiolet...you...you look beautiful!" and that's exactly what I've been fearing. I smile for her and only for her. I smile so Ivy's eyes can light up the way they always do. She smiles back and in that moment she looks like all children should look. Happy. Carefree. Innocent. What I would do to go back in time and tell my old self that I grew old too soon. That I died too fast. That all my worries are now inconsequential. I smile though, I smile through my teeth because the girls are waiting to see me smile and be young for a night.

"Are Emrick and Maddox going to be at this party?" asks Cora looking worriedly at my skimpy outfit. I wish I could roll my eyes at her. God knows I love my aunt, but she can be so obtuse sometimes. As if Emrick and Maddox are going to take care of me at the party. As if. They will probably be too busy fucking the entire female population of Portland. I tense and I think about all the looks that Maddox have given me for the past days. There are these hot waves of fire rolling from his eyes directly to my skin the moment he sees me. And I wonder. I really wonder what the angry god will do. Will he burn or will he burn me?

"All the boys will be at the party," chimes Amy while she applies another layer of purple lipstick to her lips. As I've predicted she went all out tonight. Her makeup is on point, as it is her perfectly styled ponytail and skintight dress. She looks like a punk model, only sexier and smaller.

"And that's exactly what I'm scared of," murmurs Cora before shaking her head at us and reminding me my curfew is by one in the morning. I nod and for the first time in weeks I blink and I breath, but I don't absorb. Tonight I'm fluid, like icy water running through a river. Tonight I feel like I will be absorbed through smoke and flames.