The Accidental Siren

10.2 Olivia

It was nighttime and the castle was asleep. I studied the footage with Whit at my side, forcing my eyes open, watching the repetition of shots and scenes, staring at the Evil Prince--hating him, damning him--then pausing every few minutes on a closeup of Mara's face. Together, we added my Folli sound effects and battled the claustrophobia of another summer night locked between the castle walls.

Suddenly, Dad’s voice exploded from Livy’s bedroom. “Son of a--” He howled and withheld the expletive.

“What now?” I muttered.

Whit was already peering through the crack in the door. The parlor light turned on and he winced.

“Egg-sucking dogs!” Dad exclaimed and something crashed.

I pushed Whit out of the way and opened my door. Livy and Mara were standing by the piano. Mom was squeezing her robe at the chest and blinking in the bright light. Before we could address one another or ask what the heck was going on, Dad emerged from Livy's room like Donkey Kong preparing to throw a barrel. “Boys! Go to your room! Bev, watch the girls.” He stormed to the stairs and growled, “This ends tonight.”

For a split second, I caught Mara's glance and felt her gloom. Then Mom swept the girls up like a duck with her ducklings, lead them to her room beneath her wing, then shooed me to bed with a swipe of her hand.

I leapt to my bed and dove to the window.

Whit closed the door and rolled to my side. “Whaddya see?”

“Holy mother of Hannah,” I whispered.

“James! What's out there?”

“Fire,” I said.

Scrawled in forest floor beneath my window was a single word ten feet wide in flaming cursive: “SING.”

The front door opened and slammed. Foliage shook and two shadows hobbled away. They were old. They were women.

“The church ladies,” I said. “They wrote 'sing' in the ground with gasoline or something!”

“Holy shnikies...” Whit said.

I watched as Dad rounded the castle corner. He was hunched, searching the clearing like a raptor on the prowl. He froze beneath our windows. (I swear he sniffed the air.)

A metallic glimmer drew my attention to his right hand.

“Shit!” I said. “Dad's got a--”

The gun fired before I could finish my sentence. The window pane trembled. Whit coiled and covered his ears. A kid fell out of the tree, two feet away from the flaming letters.

Whit squealed, “What happened?” then saw the horror etched in the creases of my face.

The next two seconds lasted two hours as my father stared at the fallen child with frozen panic. Then the boy leapt up, hid his face from the lunatic with the gun, and barreled full-force into the brush.

Dad sighed, fell against a tree, and watched the fire with a hopeless stare.

“Did he kill somebody?” Whit asked.

I shook my head, inhaled hard, and watched the flames dance in my father's glasses.

*  *  *

“Maybe they're high-schoolers,” I said while scooping heaps of sugar into my mouth with a candy stick. “Some of Ryan's friends?”

“Ryan's friends never heard Mara sing,” Whit replied.

“Maybe they’re tryin’ to catch a glimpse. We already know she's the prettiest girl in the world.”

“Duh. But that’s not the reason they're outside her window or everybody who's ever laid eyes on her would be with ‘em.”

“Then why are they here?”

“You want me to rationalize super-human powers?”

“I wanna know who they are!” I sucked leftover dust from the cellophane wrapper like a fiend, then ate the stick whole.

“Maybe A.J. told the boys from Ms. Grisham’s house. You said he knows all about their blue bandanas, and we know for a fact that he's been out there too.”

“Age didn't even tell Danny about Mara,” I said between chomps. “He wants to keep her a secret as much as we do. No... it’s not the zombies from the Grisham house.”

Whit groaned. “Do you think your dad scared them off for good?”

I opened the second bag of candy, licked my pinky, and swirled it around inside. “Doubt it.”