The Siren

I searched through my phone for something to send back to him, maybe a picture of me in one of those dresses I loved. But I discovered that I had never turned the camera on myself. I had images of the sky, a bird, my sisters, but none of me.

I flopped down on my pillow, sweeping most of my hair above my head. Part of my face was buried in my comforter, but when I snapped the picture, it felt like an honest representation. I stared at that girl for a while, the giddy glow behind her eyes, the hint of a smile in her cheeks, and thought, Yes, this is how this moment makes me feel.

I sent it to him saying, This is when you give up and get in bed. No one will care about your math grades in six years. Promise.

I wanted to explain how many disasters I’d seen disappear in what felt like only minutes compared to the whole span of time.

Is it weird if I tell you you’re pretty? he answered. You’re pretty.

I thought of the way the water looked when I blew bubbles out of my mouth. That was the way I suspected it looked inside my body right now. Light and airy and bursting with happiness.

Is it also weird if I tell you I like talking to you even though you don’t speak? I like talking to you.

“Where are you going?” Miaka asked the second my hand hit the doorknob the next night. I had really thought I was going to be able to sneak out without them noticing. Elizabeth’s music was blaring from her room, and they’d been in serious dress talks for the last twenty minutes.

“Just for a walk. Might go by the store. You want anything?”

She looked me over, studying my outfit. Around the house, I enjoyed comfy rompers or sweaters, and if this had been an impromptu trip, I’d probably still be in those clothes. My skirt—which I already knew might be a bit much for the occasion but made me feel as nice on the outside as I did on the inside—was a bit of a giveaway.

“No. Nothing has sounded worth eating lately.”

I nodded. “We should hit up a new state soon. Or a new country. Sometimes the smell of a different place will make me want to eat, you know?”

“I do! We should make some plans for where to go next. Sometimes our moves are too spontaneous for my tastes.”

“Yeah,” I said, shifting the weight of my purse. “A strategy would be good.”

Miaka smiled and looked at my clothes again. “Well, maybe we can talk about a lot of things when you come back.”

I said nothing but was sure my smile was as damning as my skirt. Oh, well. So much for secrets.

I got the groceries and lugged them all the way to Akinli’s dorm, running slightly behind because I couldn’t get into the building on my own. The university required ID cards to get into the dorms after six, and since I wasn’t an actual student, I had to wait for someone else to come along and scan his so I could piggyback in.

“You need some help?” the boy asked, his eyes lingering on my mouth.

I shook my head no.

“Aww, come on. That’s way too heavy for you.”

He came closer, and again I cursed our natural appeal. I wasn’t in danger exactly, and I knew that, but it didn’t make these encounters any less uncomfortable. I shook my head again.

“No, really, which floor are you on? I can—”

“Hey, Kahlen!” I looked up to see Akinli walking down the hall. His button-up was open over the gray shirt beneath it, but I was thrilled to see that he’d at least put one on. “I was starting to worry. Hey, Sam.”

“Hey.” The boy gave Akinli a look and headed toward the stairwell, his displeasure at Akinli’s arrival clear. In the meantime, I felt my mood lift significantly. I was now officially on my first date.

“Here, give me one of these.” Akinli took a bag from my hands and led me to the elevator. “The kitchen’s just up here. Now, I did some practicing this morning,” he said proudly.

I raised my eyebrows.

“Yep. I made eggs. They were terrible.”

I held in a laugh as the elevator dinged, delaying a moment before actually opening to the second floor.

“I think the problem was that I had no supervision, so this will probably go much better.”

We turned into the small kitchen area, and I saw that he’d done some prep work. A whisk and a bowl were already out, as well as two different-size circular pans. He put down his bag and picked up another item.

“I took this off our door. My roommate was a pain about it, but if you need anything, just scribble it down.” He passed me a whiteboard that had already managed to take a beating in the first few months of school. It was such a thoughtful gesture, I nearly cried.

I watched him as he carefully took out the eggs and sugar and flour, lining up everything along the back of the counter to give us room to cook.

“Is this almond extract? This is fancy. Again, I ruined food today, so remember, you’re going to have to walk me through every step of this.”

Wordlessly, I pulled out the printed instructions and laid them beside the bowl.

“There we go,” he said, picking them up to study. He went over the multiple steps, his face looking more and more worried the closer he got to the end. He pulled himself together and peeked sheepishly at me over the top of the paper.

“Okay, Kahlen. Teach me to cook!”

7

“Have you always lived in Florida?”

I shook my head and cracked another egg. It wasn’t one of those things I could easily explain without speech. I waved my hand in a circle and made an exasperated face.

“All over the place?”

I nodded.

“Are your parents in the army or something? I only got to spend a year with one of my best friends in high school before his dad was stationed somewhere else. I hear that’s pretty fast, though.”

I watched him, listening intently, not really confirming or denying anything about my parents and hoping he wouldn’t press any further.

“I grew up in this tiny town in Maine. Port Clyde. You ever heard of it?”

I shook my head, and he passed me the sugar he’d measured out. I took my finger and brushed the extra heap off the top into the sink.

“Oh, is that bad?” he asked.

Baking is science, I scribbled on the board.

“Huh. Okay, I will tuck that lesson away. So, yeah, Port Clyde. It’s really small and mostly known for its lobster. There’s also an artist residency there, so we get some creative types coming through town. That’s why I thought you might have heard of it. You were drawing the other day, so I didn’t know if that was something you were into or what.”

I made a so-so gesture with my hand. Even with the whiteboard, it would be hard to explain that I really liked drawing because of my sort-of sister and that I wished I was half as good at seeing the world as she was.

“My parents are there, dying for me to come home. I’m an only child, so they’re kind of lonely without me around. My mom calls me literally, like, every day. I told her she should get a puppy, but she said I was better than a dog, which is good, I guess. Am I talking too much?”

He paused, staring into my eyes, genuine worry coloring his face.

I shook my head. No, I thought, I’d listen to you talk about nearly anything. You make phone calls sound like an adventure.

“Okay. She’s also worried because I’m still undeclared. I don’t think that’s a huge deal. Not yet anyway. Do you?”

I snapped my first two fingers and thumb together quickly, the ASL sign for no. Realizing he might not understand, I shook my head as well.

“Cool. What are you studying? Is it art?”

I didn’t have another answer, so I nodded.

“You’ve got an artist vibe,” he said knowingly.

I looked down at myself, then back up at Akinli, questioning him with my eyes.

“No, really. I’m not sure what it is, but you look like you’ve made and broken a lot of things and then made them all over again. Which makes no sense, I’m sure. But trust me, it’s there.”

I started whisking the batter. I was glad he didn’t know how much I’d actually broken in my time—ships that cost millions of dollars, lives no one could put a price on—but I liked the idea that maybe, somewhere deep inside me, I was also capable of fixing things.

I passed the bowl to him, really hoping he’d participate.

“Oh, my gosh. Okay.” He took the whisk in his hand. “I got this. Okay …”

He started whisking.

As he worked, I added in a few drops of the almond extract, and after a moment he looked up at me. I tilted my head questioningly. What?

It took him a second to snap out of his stare. “Oh. Sorry. Nice teamwork there,” he said, then winced as if he thought he’d said something dumb. “Speaking of teamwork,” he added, his voice lighter, “I think you could maybe help me with something.”

I raised an eyebrow.

“Hear me out. See, if you’re not talking, you spend almost every second of your life listening, taking things in, right?”

I nodded. That was all I did.

“I feel like, because of that, you’re probably very perceptive. So as an experiment, I’d like to know what you think I should be studying.”

I gawked at him.

You mean pick your major? I wrote.

“Exactly. I’ve had a few friends weigh in, but I think they were joking. Someone said musical therapy, and I’ve never so much as touched a kazoo.”

I smirked at his exasperation.

“Come on. I need some direction in my life. Give it a shot.”

I stared at this boy who I admittedly hardly knew. Yet I felt as if I’d learned so much about him, like, if anyone asked, I could outline his entire personality. He was so warm, so open, so full of simple joy. What had I done to catch his attention, to have him interested in not just my looks, but my thoughts?

I could tell he was actually eager to hear my opinion, so I focused on his question. I could imagine him as an advocate for an abused child or an aide for someone with mental illness, the only person in their whirlwind lives with the capacity to hold them down to the earth. I wrote on the whiteboard again.

“Social work?” he asked.

I applauded.

He laughed, a sound more like music than anything I made. “I’m intrigued. Okay, Kahlen, I will research this field and get back to you.” He glanced down at the cake batter, then raised the whisk and held it out to me, dripping. “Does this look right?”

I touched the whisk, then licked the batter off my finger. Akinli’s warm blue eyes held mine as sweetness spread across my tongue. It was perfect.

I gave an enthusiastic nod, and he reached to taste it himself. “Hey, not bad for my first cake, yeah?”

I grinned. Not bad at all.

I greased the pans, excited that because they were two different sizes, we were going to end up with something that looked like a tiny wedding cake.

“I don’t want to make a big deal about this or anything, but I think it’s kind of cool how you do everything you do.”

I squinted at him.

“I mean, you use sign language, and it’s hard to communicate. But you’re into art and you can seriously cook and, for goodness’ sakes, you can even jitterbug. By the way, I told my mom, and she wants a video. Totally doesn’t believe me. But, yeah, I think it’s nice that you don’t let a little hitch in life slow you down. I admire that.”

I smiled. For a minute, I admired myself, too. He didn’t know how deep my problems ran, but he was right all the same. It was no small thing to try, to find out what you cared about in life. Even this moment, with this wonderful, temporary boy beside me, was a tiny miracle. I ought to give myself some credit.

I went to write my thanks but had a hard time getting more ink out of the marker.

“Ah, I thought it might die. You wanna come by my room real quick to get another?”

Stay calm, I thought. I nodded as nonchalantly as I could.

“Awesome. It’s this way,” he said with a wave, and I followed him down the hall. “I think my roommate left for a while, so at least you’ll be spared that horror. I swear, it’s like he took lessons in how to be an ass.”

I grinned as we came upon a door with the obvious blank space where the dry-erase board should be. On two little leaves that his RA had placed on all the doors down the hall were two names: Neil Baskha and Akinli Schaefer.

Schaefer. I longed to say it out loud. The shape of the word was so pleasant in my head, I couldn’t wait to breathe it into the air. But that would have to wait until I was alone … and not distracted by the disaster that was his room.

To be fair, it was only half a disaster. It appeared that Neil’s religious practices acknowledged neither trash cans nor recycling bins. Probably so he could build that haphazard altar of Mountain Dew cans by the window. Akinli’s things seemed much homier. Instead of a store-bought comforter, he had a quilt. Instead of posters, he had pictures. Instead of beer cans, he had three bottles of Port Clyde Quencher root beer that he appeared to be saving.

He had said he was an only child, but there was a slightly older boy in a few of the shots who had the same eyes and chin. I saw his parents and one picture of him as a child holding a lobster in each hand and smiling so big I couldn’t see his eyes.

“Here we go.” He pulled out a new marker from his desk drawer, and I was drawn back from my quiet observations. “Sorry it’s kind of messy in here,” he said sheepishly, noticing my wandering eyes. “Neil … well, he’s a character.”

I smiled, trying to let him know I cared less about that than I did all the little pieces of himself I got to peek at, if only for a second.

Back in the communal kitchen, we played a game of hangman on the whiteboard between whipping up frosting and waiting for the cake to finish baking.

It was all so plain, so simple, and I was grateful for every single moment. When we managed to get both layers on—even though the top one wasn’t quite centered—and covered the whole thing in buttercream, Akinli posed dramatically in front of our creation.

“The moment of truth. Have I overcome a long and difficult season of being the worst cook in America? Kahlen, the fork, please.”

I passed it to him, picking up one myself so I could taste it, too. I didn’t want to brag, but I was sure Aisling would be impressed.

“This. Is. Amazing!” Akinli yelled, taking two more heaping forkfuls before stopping to breathe. “We cannot keep something this beautiful to ourselves. Come on.”

He picked up the plate and headed into the hall.

“Who wants cake?” he yelled.

A girl with her hair in two French braids stuck her head out of an open doorway halfway down the hall. “Me!”

Beside us someone opened his door, too. “What you hollering about, man?”

“We made cake!”

The guy’s face turned from irritated to jubilant. “Cool.”

Within minutes, half the floor had spilled out, using everything from spatulas to paper cups to get some dessert.

“I mean, I did an incredible job,” Akinli said to someone, “but it was mostly Kahlen.”

A few people patted my arm and thanked me for cooking or sharing. One girl said she liked my skirt. I wanted to burst, I felt so happy. Was this what it was like to be a normal nineteen-year-old girl? Living in a dorm, letting other peoples’ lives spill over into yours, if only for a season? Studying one thing with absolute focus while having dozens of things change around you and learning from that, too? Having a boy see you, acknowledge you in such a way that you felt sure no one had ever experienced that feeling before, all the while knowing you’d joined a long line of people who did the same dance to find the person they spent their lives with.

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