The Accidental Siren (19 page)

Mara’s words were tucked between the collage;
ongoing lists of favorite movies on page six, TV shows on nine,
books on twelve, and baby names on fourteen.

On page twenty:
“Aunty baptized me in the
bathtub because she thought I was more interested in the alter boys
than Jesus. Submersion again and I thought I would drown. That
makes twelve.”

Page twenty-six:
“Today I watched Bushy
the Squirrel carry nuts to his tree. I bumped the window and he
glared at me. When I moved, he ran away.”

Page twenty-nine:
“I asked Aunty about my
parents again. Big mistake. She said that, if theyre alive, theyre
not looking for me. I think theyre alive. And probably nice. I
pretend my mom is an actress. I pretend my dad owns a bakery
downtown. I try to remember them, but it was so long ago.”

Page thirty-one was missing. I recalled the
origami note that sparked the tussle with A.J. beneath Mara’s
window and felt a privileged connection with the journal.

“
Where are you, Red Five? We’ve got major
giggling upstairs.”

“I’m searching the closet, Millennium One.
Give me two minutes.”

“
Roger.”

I flipped faster through the pages and
scanned the longer blocks of text for my name.

“
I hate being worried all the time. The
feeling in my tummy never goes away.”

“
They say they can find my real parents! I
pray every night theyre alive. Maybe when they know Im pretty
theyll want me back.”

“
Today I met a black squirrel outside my
new window! I named him Bushy Two. I like animals. They don’t seem
to care.”

“
James asked me to kiss him. I told him
he’s like my brother. Was that mean? Pretty sure it was... but I
dont need more boys trying to kiss me. We all remember what
happened with Troy.”
Etched in this entry’s thin margin was a
drawing of a hill with a water tower on top. I ignored the image at
first, its banal curve and lack of detail hardly distinguished it
from the lovely litter of Mara’s doodles. But the hill reappeared
again on page thirty-nine, then again on forty-one, then a dozen
more times throughout the book, tucked between Mara’s words or
trapped beneath layers of chicken-scratch hearts and stars. Each
rendering was more detailed than the last until pine trees were
surrounding the base like angry stalagmites and the water tower
cast a penciled shadow that dwarfed a perimeter fence.

I read faster.

“
Ryan replied to Livys note today. Says he
might like her too. I feel sick.”

“
I cried again tonight. The bullies
bruised my neck, but I hid it from the Parkers. I know God wants me
to forgive anyone who hurts me, but I will never forget what they
did.”

“
James and Whitney confirmed it: Im
anything but normal.”

“
I think he’s interested, no? Kitty is
loving it; Kimmy eats with Haley in there.”

“
I wish Livy knew how pretty she
was.”

“
Mrs. Parker yelled at me today but it was
an accident. I was sucking on a yellow highlighter while marking my
lines. She thought it was a cigar.”

“
Kimmy kissed me on the lips today. I
think she was aiming for my cheek.”

“
Life is good. Wanna know why? I got a
kitten!!! Her name is Dorothy and she’s perfect.”

“
I had the dream again last night. The one
with the hill and round building. When I woke up, they were calling
me from the woods. Tried to tell Livy about it this morning, but
she was too interested in my shampoo ingredients to
listen.”

Page forty-nine contained a single, expansive
entry. The word “James” stood out like spots on a cheetah and my
eyes darted across the text.

“
Dear Diary... ...busy making a movie with
James!... ...having so much fun... ...hope James likes my acting...
...too young for these feelings?... ...said he liked me again
today... ...Livys old enough, I should be too!... ...I know one
thing for sure, ‘like’ is not a strong enough word for how I feel
about them... ...both so sweet, especially James!”

Ryan’s voice was hushed but emphatic.
“The
girls say they need popcorn and more pillows. They’re sending Haley
down with a list. You need to get outta there, Red Five.”

My breath quickened. I flipped the page and
devoured every word.

“
Help! I keep going back and forth! One is
SUPER cute, but the other gets cuter every day. One is an amazing
director, but the other is an amazing actor... ...so smart and
funny... ...They both stare at me like the rest, but I dont think
thats ever going to change–”

“
She’s comin’!”
Ryan screamed.
“Get
out!”

I slammed the book before I could finish,
then dropped it in the nightstand drawer. As it fell, a petal
slipped from the pages and fluttered to the ground. I picked it up,
opened the book, shoved the flower back inside, slammed the drawer,
then bolted from the room.

* * *

9:05 AM.

I awoke on the floor of an empty room. Pain
struck my senses as I sat up; my very first hangover, the
consequence of an overindulgence in Mara’s written words. Excerpts
from that book intoxicated my thoughts and dreams as I puzzled over
a world that I never imagined. Who was the girl with the pretty
façade? Who was the girl who smiled so readily after a bully
attack? Two months with Mara and I had been oblivious. She never
expressed her hatred for bullies or frustration with my family. She
never fretted over hygiene, showed concern for her real parents,
proclaimed an interest in animals or books or babies...

Or Ryan.
I saw the way they looked at
each other. I heard their smacking lips. I sensed the ping of
resentment every time Livy forced herself on him.
But I believed
her when she said that boys were gross.
I made the stupid
assumption that there were no contenders for her affection! Or if
there were contenders, that I stood alone. I was the boy who saved
her. I was the director who hired her! I listened.
I cared.
I strived to be different! What was Ryan Brosh but a basketball
jersey, pretty face, and smacking lips?

I hoisted myself from the floor with the
knobs on my nightstand drawers. I adjusted my shorts, checked the
time, then wandered into the parlor. Whit was in his wheelchair at
the bottom of the staircase. He was motionless, listening, neck
stretched toward the open ballroom like a flower to the sun.

I waddled past him, rubbed my eyes, and
looked up the stairs. The boys were arranged shortest to tallest on
the top steps, eye-level with the rosy carpet, admiring the pastel
pallet of girls on the ballroom floor. For the first time, I
understood why Mara called them ‘ferrets.’ They were tenacious
weasels, rabbit hunters, slender rodents with paws on the banister
preparing to pounce.
Zombie-ferrets,
I thought. Ryan and
Whit and Mrs. Greenfield too. All of them. All of them
zombie-ferrets.

Of the nine boys who had spent the night,
only one refused to look. Ryan Brosh was sitting on the middle
step, face forward, hands together...
different
.

I locked eyes with my arch-nemesis. I
scrutinized his pretty face. I coveted his lips. If Mara was going
to chose between us, she was going to chose me.

But then he smiled. It was an unsettling
smile; forced, as if fish hooks were pulling the corners of his
mouth. He glanced down at his hands, then unclasped them slowly as
if he was showing a toddler a captured insect. Trapped between his
fingers was the pressed petal of a yellow rose.

* * *

Only minutes after I shooed the peeping toms
from the stairs, boredom struck and spurred a second make-believe
war. Armed with Nerf guns, pillows, water balloons, invisible
bazookas and unlit torches from the night before, we overtook the
front yard in a merciless free-for-all. Every boy claimed to fight
for the kingdom, as if the tangle of sleeping beauties represented
humanity itself. But in truth, we all fought for the same girl.

7.
FAIRYTALE, PART III: THE FINAL SCENE

01 EXT. THE CASTLE OF THE EVIL PRINCE -
DAY

THE MOVIE OPENS WITH DRAWINGS OF A LITTLE
GIRL AND HER DAD. WHILE THE PICTURES FADE IN AND OUT, A NARRATOR
WITH A DEEP VOICE TELLS THE STORY.

“Once upon a time, there was a young girl who
lived a very happy life.” Dad’s voice had a nasally quality that I
never imagine for the narrator, but with a month left until the
Lakeshore Celebration Art Show, I was running out of options.

“Try it again,” I said, then slid the camera
closer to his lips.

“What would you like me to change?” he
asked.

“What do you mean.”

“You’re the director. Should I read it
faster, slower–”

“Just... I dunno. Just try it again.”

Dad removed his bifocals, folded them, and
placed them neatly on the dining-room table. He rubbed his fingers
against his temples, stretching and releasing the creases in his
paper skin, then repeated his lines for the eighth time.

The performance was worse, but it wasn’t his
fault. I was distracted. My mind was stuck on Ryan’s declaration of
war. He read Mara’s diary to get my attention. It worked.

As if Ryan wasn’t enough to divert brainpower
away from my film, Mom, Mrs. Greenfield and Mara were having a
“ladies night” in the library. My ears weren’t interested in the
nuanced inflections of my father’s narration, they were itching for
the seam around the library’s hatch.

“How was that?” Dad asked.

I removed my headphones and sighed.
“Perfect.”

“If you want me to do it again–”

“Naw. I think we’re done for the night.” I
stood, gathered my equipment and reached for the camcorder.

“James,” he said.

“Really, Dad. You did fine.”

“
James,”
he said again, calming my
fluster with his pensive tone. “Let’s go for a drive.”

* * *

Traffic signals, storefronts and neon signs
painted downtown Grand Harbor with primary streaks of light. The
Dune Grass Grill was on my left; my father’s go-to joint for
romantic dinners with Mom. Out the right window was a series of
novelty shops interspersed with a make-your-own-jewelry shop, a
music store, and The Grand Harbor Bread Co. In three weeks, Main
Street would be overtaken with screaming children, tumbling hunks
of colorful metal, and the unquenchable smell of fried batter.

“Son,” Dad said. “We need to talk.”

“What about?” I watched his glasses; the way
they lifted when he crinkled his nose, the reflection of taillights
in the right lens. Did he know about the game of Truth or Dare? Did
he know about the diary?

“Remember the woman that Mara was living with
when you found her?”

Was he serious? Ms. Grisham would follow
me for the rest of my life.
“What about her?”

“She’s been in county jail since the arrest.
Nobody’s posted bail. Do you know what bail is?”

“I watch movies, Dad.”

“For two months she refused to talk about
Mara; who she is, where her parents might be... but early this
morning, Lydia opened up.”

“Lydia?”

“Lydia Grisham.”

Bestowing that witch a name made me
queasy.

“They set the date of her trial yesterday;
your mom thinks it scared her into a confession.”

I imagined the hag in a confessional, a
cop–not a priest–listening through the lattice. “Wha’d she say?” I
asked.

My father gave me a watered down version of
the tale that evening, but with the advent of search engines,
online public records and social networking sites, I’ve been
filling in the blanks ever since.

To my horror, Lydia Grisham wasn’t a
pedophile hermaphrodite with yellow eyes and snakes for hair, but a
relatively normal English teacher at a South Florida elementary
school. In 1966, she was recognized and awarded by the State for
developing a unique system of teaching phonics that involved word
repetition, silly nemonic devices and elaborate sign language.
Former students not only describe her as “easygoing,” “patient,”
and “beloved,” but they traced their understanding of the English
language directly to her.

In 1972, Lydia married Donald Grisham, a
hotel manager and entrepreneur. My internet research didn’t expound
on the reasons for their divorce eleven years later, but sources
suggest a one-two punch of infertility (on her part) and infidelity
(on his).

It was church that helped Lydia overcome the
pain. It was church where she first heard Mara’s voice.

The girl was four when her parents stuffed
her into angel garb and debuted her gift at the annual Christmas
pageant. (
She had parents.
“The Landons” my father told me;
a name so human–so tangible and permanent–it sucked the light from
Mara’s ethereal veneer.) Standing among the heavenly hosts–above
the kings and shepherds and cardboard stables–Mara sang
Away in
a Manger
. I lived twelve-hundred miles from the tip of Florida
when that tiny voice shook the walls of that holy chamber, but the
memory is vivid nonetheless.

The song brought Lydia to her knees. It was
there–folded before the nativity–that she hatched her plan. As the
congregation dried their tears and mingled toward the exits, the
divorcee approached Mara’s parents, introduced herself, and claimed
to be a vocal coach. Her services would be free... for such a
special little girl.

For three months she maintained the ruse,
inviting the family into her home, faking her way through music
theory, relishing every moment with that darling child.

Despite my best efforts, I’ve been unable to
locate a police report to pinpoint the date of the kidnapping. In
her confession, Ms. Grisham placed their departure from Florida in
March of 1986. She provided no insight into her motives for taking
the child, but explained that Mara’s face was recognizable, not
only to those who knew her, but to those who glimpsed her on the
street, in a photo, staring out her bedroom window. Michigan was an
arbitrary decision, but provided the distance and seclusion needed
to begin a new life.