The Siren

The house is quiet for the first time in...ever. My skin can taste the silence. The air particles float around my ears giving me the sweet nothingness of another meaningless hour passing by. My ears are licking the emptiness with the same laziness of a sleeping cat. Everyone is at the game tonight, which means I've been able to get lost in a great book for the last couple of hours. All I've done has been reading and sleeping, two activities my body seems to crave more than sustenance and oxygen. I'm already asleep when Cora and Ivy return from the game and come to check on me. I hear their light footsteps when they knock at my door and open it up to check on me. After making sure I'm resting they go out, softly clicking the door shut.

It's then when I push my head from under the covers and I think back to everything that happened during this last day of school. I haven't thought properly about it. Mostly because I'd been lost in my limbo dreams again and for an entire day I barely functioned among the living ones. Amy was a constant through the motions. She smiled and tried to engage me in the gossip of Broken Falls High. I lost track of who was with who and who was doing who after the first three seconds of gossiping. But Amy wasn't discouraged by my lack of attention. She just accepted it and joined me in my silence while we "ate" at the cafeteria. I had a salad, she had an apple. We smirked at our food choices but didn't comment on it. She shared her earphones plugs from time to time, whenever she wanted me to listen to a good a song. And just like that I started to feel more comfortable around Amy. She still wasn't a friend. At least it didn't feel right to call her one, but her company wasn't obnoxiously alive. She was a halfling of some sort, a hybrid between a living and a dead person. That alone made me like her more than the rest.

About Maddox...well, that was a completely different story. He had stormed into my bedroom in the morning and pulled me out of the bed and into my bathroom only because I've overslept five minutes. Five minutes. That was literally next to nothing in the oversleeping book of rules and misbehaviors. I gave him the silent treatment for the rest of the day, not that he was around to punish him either way. The kings of Broken Falls had disappeared before the first game of the season and mercifully had stayed that way for the entire day. All of them, Stolas, Rick, Landon and Maddox included. I hadn't heard them arrive yet and it was already late into the night, but that didn't surprise me. They were alive. They were teenagers. They've probably won a football game. My bets were they had gone to some afterparty and were drunk by now. Probably Rick was drunk, but Maddox wasn't one to lose control that easily. No. He was probably fucking another faceless body, exerting his power ruthlessly over all those eager girls that were oh, too eager to be subdued.

I sighed in the dark, feeling like a little island in the middle of nowhere. I was surrounded by life but I was yet alone. A part of me, the part that was confused at my behavior from yesterday felt as if I should see myself as a teenager too. But the idea felt like a sour lie in my mind. I wasn't a teenager. I was a carcass that had been born dead, too soon for my time, too late for my heart. Parties seemed to me to be terribly boring and predictable experiences. I could already know all the conversations that people would be having. I could feel their boredom accompanied by the intention to be liked and to be social. Like this biological need to get yourself out there even if you were comfier in your own skin and in your own mind. I even knew about the bodies that would look for solace in the arms of other bodies and all of it felt...inconsequent, temporal. I guess I wasn't your regular teenager. I sincerely fail to see the attractive on any of it.

I was already falling asleep again when I heard it. The sound of wrongness. Over the years I've gotten used to track sounds of wrongness that were a result of my mother's sickness. You know those sounds. The silence after laughter. The muffled steps of a person walking away. Silent presences. My skin grew pebbled with each passing second that I spend seating on my bed, trying to understand what I was hearing that had me worried. After waiting for any sign or sound I heard it again. A wheezing. A sick wheezing. I jumped out of bed and run, used to the adrenaline rush after years and years of watching out for my mother. I run through the dark hall, following the small sounds that were coming from the garage. I seriously didn't know how I'd been able to hear it, but with each passing second I grew more worried and anxious. This felt too familiar, too fresh, too known. Taking a deep breath I opened the garage door, pushing it all the way with my shoulder and turning the lights on. I gave a shit if Maddox was fucking another girl right then and killed me for interrupting them, something was wrong. Something was utterly wrong.

My heart beat in my chest like a hammer. It was waking up after a long slumber of ice and death. Then I saw him, laying on the floor and every emotional thought walked away from my mind. Emrick. I jumped into action, running to him and taking his wide shoulders in my arms. His face was contorted by pain and his skin was red and inflamed. I did what I'd always done when I saw my mom on the floor. Push the head over my shoulder, check the mouth for pills, pull my finger down the throat and make him vomit. I palmed his back in circles while he vomited all that shit out of his system and then I stabilized him on the couch, making sure that Rick was breathing okay. Then I run inside the house, trying not to fall on my slippery socks and opened the fridge looking for Benadryl. There it was. Kids Benadryl. A low dose should be fine to fight the allergic reaction he got to whatever the hell he put inside of him. I took a glass of water and run back to the garage, closing the door after me and locking it. Now, I don't know much about this family, but I didn't want Ivy seeing his brother like this. I was there when my father did this for my mother since I was a little girl and sometimes I couldn't stand the memories. No way I'm letting Ivy see Rick. I sit by his side and I make him drink the medicine and small sips of water. Rick looks at me through heavy eyelids and he tries to say something, but he is tired and falls asleep in my arms with his head over my shoulder.

And it's there when I realized there's something about me that attracts situations like this. Seriously, what is it about my personality that tortured souls seem to gallivant around me? I sigh, looking at the roof of the garage and trying to understand what had just happened. Why would Emrick drink those pills? There weren't many, probably only two. Drugs maybe, but I don't know what kind of shit could have make him so sick. Wasn't he supposed to be out? Partying with Maddox and the rest of the school? I sigh again counting the beats of his heart until they grew steady and so does his breath. He is stable, but I don't know if the Benadryl was the right decision to make. He could get worse if I don't keep an eye on him. I push his back to the sofa and check on him while I clean all the mess around us. Rick is still stable when I come back a couple of minutes after cleaning his vomit. I check his temperature first and it's fine. Then I check his pulse and everything seems fine too. For a long minute I study him under the dim lights of the garage. There's a scar on his chin that looks scarily deep. Just now I realize his hair is blonder around his sideburns, it shines against the tanned skin of his face. When Emrick is sleeping he looks strangely at peace, like one of those gracious statues from the Italian sculptor Bernini. He is all shadows and angles, darkness and light that mingles into a harmonious face. I can understand why girls like him. There's some darkness behind his flesh that attracts the eye. But Rick is still not match for Maddox. His brother is pure anger. Fire. When Maddox is storm and fury, Rick is darkness and pain. One is the compliment of the other, like matching pieces of a puzzle. I sigh, taking a seat on the floor and resting my back on the sofa.

I don't know how long I stay there, staring into the shadows, but I wasn't surprised when Rick talked to me softly. The fight had left his voice temporarily. We were at an interim impasse. Just two souls mitigating the gravity of what could have happened.

"You took good care of me," his voice sounds raspy. It sounds like sandpaper, the same way my mother's voice sounded after the doctors had to pump her stomach one too many times. I close my eyes at the memories and for a second I feel my skin pebbling. The scary thing about memories is how slowly they open a space in the cracks of your armor. My memories have spider fingers that reach inside and tear up the muscular tissue of my bare soul. I swear my soul keeps losing weight under the touch of my memories. By now my soul is as light as cotton, thin and small, eroded by the caress of all the memories that keep touching it. I sigh, too tired to question Emrick about all the motives that led him to be stupid and swallow those pills. I don't care, is his life either way.

"I will keep it a secret, but you have to promise me you won't do that shit inside this house again. Ivy could have seen you," I said to him over my shoulder and I feel him tense on top of the sofa.

"It was just bad shit I bought to a bad supplier. I wasn't trying to get sick on purpose, you know?" I shook my head at his excuse. The sad part was that I've already heard it all before. It was an accident. I didn't mean to do it again. I got confused and took the wrong pills. I didn't care for excuses. I just care for Ivy. I looked at him and focused my eyes on his tired face. There are shadows under his eyes that weren't there this morning when he was joking around at breakfast. For the first time I wonder how many layers this boy has? I shook my head again. Not my problem.

"Don't do it here ever again. That's all I'm asking," I said, crossing my arms around my knees and looking ahead. There's a tense silence between us for a while and then Rick break's the uncomfortable moment with an even more uncomfortable question.

"How did you know what to do? I would have called an ambulance and go to bed without blinking an eye if that was you in my position," he is bluffing and I believe we both know it. You just don't walk away from a person who could be dying. Is not a human instinct. People waste a lot of time imagining how tough they would act if someone puts a gun against their head, or if there's a sudden fire, or if you find an unconscious person lying on the floor. The honest answer to all those possible scenarios is fear. Your fears are you best motivation when you are faced with dangerous situations. And the fear to having someone's death in your conscious is the best incentive to grow a pair of balls. I know this as well as I know the lines in the palms of my hands. I don't say a thing, too lost in my own memories to try to say whatever Rick wants to hear from me. I bet he is trying to judge me, or at least to place me into some mold and dissect my motives to save him. I didn't have any motives apart from the fact that I really didn't want Ivy to see him lying on the floor all over his own vomit.

I stay quiet and after a while Rick sighs.

"You are a tough nut to crack, aren't you?"

"And you are definitely feeling better," I fight back, getting on my feet and turning around, ready to put all this night behind me. To my surprise Rick takes my hand and stops me from walking away. I look down to our joined hands and study them. My skin looks almost translucent in comparison to Rick's tanned arm. My hand is small. His hand is big and swallows mine. For a moment we just frown at our joined hands and then Rick lets go of me as if I'd burn him. His greyish-green eyes scan my face and then looks away.

"Stay for a while. I don't want to be alone right now," he says and all I hear is a little kid whining. To my surprise I stop and move back to my spot on the floor. I rest my back on the couch he is resting and yawn, all the sudden very tired and ready to sleep.

"You are always tired," he says and I look at him, frowning a bit.

"You wouldn't understand this, not even in a million of years but I'm just now starting to rest for the first time in my life," I say to him without meaning to be too deep, or to scare him, or to open up. It's the truth. It's how I feel. I don't give him any more insights into my mind. I curl on the floor and close my eyes. I'm already asleep before I could hear whatever Rick was about to say.

I wake up at the sound of angry voices raising like wolves' howls in the middle of the night. I open my eyes and there's blood in the carpet and a guy I've never seen lying on the floor at my side. I jump fast and look around, still confused after just waking up. The stranger at the floor stirs and moans in pain. I can't even see his face, it's that badly swollen after someone took a liking on punching his face against a concrete wall. I don't know if that's what happened to him, but it sure looks like it. Maddox is back and it seems to me that he has been fighting Rick for a while now.

"...how stupid you can possibly be to buy drugs from this moron?" barks Maddox pointing at the guy on the floor. Maddox's grey eyes focus on me and for a second he frowns, staring at me as if he can't quite put together what this situation is doing on a girl like me. Or was that vice versa? I yawn and push my hair away from my face getting ready to leave the boys to whatever the hell this was. Maddox stops me then, closing his big, calloused hand over my arm, "and just what the fuck are you doing here?"

I froze and look back to Rick. He just shrugs, staring at me as if I'm this new toy that he wants to know how it works. I feel as if I'm being tested by Rick right now. I could rat him to Maddox and turn into a snitch, I could take credit out of saving his life or I could mind my own damn business and go back to the dead ones, where I belong. I pull my arm out of Maddox's reach and look at him with all the ice and distaste I can muster. He fights back with a burning look of his own.

"I fell asleep here a while ago and I lost track of time. Leave me out of whatever this is and I won't say a word about the beat-up guy bleeding over the carpet," I said to both brothers and for a second there Maddox and Emrick looked at me as if they were just seeing me for the first time. I shook my head at them and walked out of the garage.