Siren (3 page)

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game system and a laptop, you're risking your entire future. Dartmouth. Medical school. Years of success and happiness."

"Isn't the steak delicious?" Dad asked. "Not too rare, not too crispy."

"I don't think a little fun is going to ruin my life." Justine pushed back her chair, her blue eyes flashing in the gray dusk. "And besides, some things are more important than an overrated Ivy League education and a high-paying job."

"Big Poppa has an idea," Dad said, licking his fingers. "How about we call it a draw for now and pick up again tomorrow, after a good night's sleep?"

Justine stood up, her good knee hitting the table and rattling our plates and glasses. She leaned toward me as she passed, and her eyes seemed even brighter than usual, as though lit from behind. She turned her head so Mom and Dad couldn't see her face, and said one word, just loud enough for me to hear.

"Boo."

Warm tears sprang to my eyes. Stunned, I watched her cross the deck and enter the house, letting the screen door slam behind her.

"I just want her to stay on track," Mom said after a pause.

"And I just want someone to help me paint the front porch," Dad said. "I was teasing about her using the scratch as a ruse to get out of it, but now I really might be rolling solo."

Ignoring them both, I looked toward the lake.

Boo
. Not "Thanks a lot," or "You've really done it this time," or even "You're on your own now," all of which probably
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would've brought tears to my eyes but wouldn't have made my skin tingle like that one word did.

And there was no way of knowing it then, but that was the very last word Justine would ever say to me. In the days and weeks that followed, I would replay the moment over and over again in my head, seeing her blue eyes, hearing her soft voice, and, for some reason, smelling salt water ... as though she still stood next to me on top of the cliff, her skin and hair wet with the sea.

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CHAPTER 2

WHEN I HEARD the first siren, I was standing in the sand, watching the water reach for my bare feet. A biting wind whipped my skirt around my calves and carried the sounds of Mom, Dad, and Justine laughing down the beach. The soft wail began as soon as the froth wound around my ankles, just as it had nearly every night for two years. Only this time, it didn't fade when I was pulled out and dragged under. It grew louder. Closer. And it was joined by another siren, and another, until I could hear them and see red, white, and blue lights flashing like the police cars had driven right into the ocean.

"You should really eat something."

I blinked. The flashing lights were gone, replaced by green coffee mugs. Next to me, a man in a gray suit leaned against the counter and shoved a cannoli into his mouth.

"Good food can be the best medicine," he said.

Medicine. Like I was just sick. Like this was a hallucination that would fade to normal once my fever dropped.

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"Thanks." Trying to erase the lingering image of the accident, the one I'd been reliving in my sleep since the cops pulled up to tell us they'd found Justine, I grabbed a mug and turned toward the coffeemaker.

It wasn't his fault. He was one of Mom's colleagues. He didn't know me and he hadn't known Justine, but he was obligated to say
something
as he enjoyed Italian pastries with other coworkers. What else was there? It's such a tragedy? She had her whole life before her? What do you make of the Red Sox so far this season?

"The voice of one crying in the wilderness," I said when I turned around and he was still there. Not knowing what to say was one thing. Hanging around for another shot was a bit much.

"Excuse me?" he said.

I held up my mug.
"Vox clamantis in deserto
. Dartmouth's slogan. Kind of appropriate, don't you think?"

"Vanessa, dear, will you please help me with these muffins?" Mom took me by the elbow and led me across the kitchen. "Sweetie, I know this is difficult, but we have guests. I would appreciate it if you could be a pleasant hostess."

"I'm sorry," I said when we stopped at a counter lined with trays of pastries. "I just don't know what to say. Part of me wants to lock myself in the bathroom for the rest of the day, and another part wants--"

"Did you eat?" she asked, poking at a scone. "Here, have a maple walnut."

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I took the scone, not sure what to say. Mom had cried for five days straight--from the moment the police officers had knocked on the lake-house door to the moment we'd pulled up to our brownstone--and had been in dry-eyed, party-planning mode ever since. She hadn't even cried at the funeral, when the collective weeping of Justine's friends and classmates had made birds fly from the trees and the priest shout his prayers. I hadn't cried at the funeral either--or any time before or since--but my reasons were very different.

"Can you check on your father?" Mom lifted a tray from the counter. "I haven't seen him in an hour, and the guests are starting to wonder."

I wanted to say that if our "guests" didn't understand Big Poppa's need for a little downtime, then perhaps they should find another party, but she spun on one heel and disappeared through the kitchen door before I could.

I dropped the scone in the trash and headed back to the coffee-cup cabinet, keeping my eyes lowered to avoid any more helpful healing tips from Mom's coworkers. The Dartmouth mugs still lined the first shelf, where Mom had displayed them as soon as she'd received the shipment of college paraphernalia two weeks before.

"Vox clamantis in deserto,"
Justine had read aloud then. "I love how these places try to impress with their love of dead languages. I mean, why bother? Why not just say, 'Thanks for shelling out another fifteen dollars for functional proof of the fact that you're important enough to drop two hundred thousand
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dollars on a chance for your rich kid to get drunk with other rich kids in the middle of nowhere?'"

"Well," I'd said, "probably because that wouldn't fit on a key chain." Of which Mom had ordered two dozen to distribute around the office.

I grabbed the center Dartmouth mug and filled it with coffee. Still keeping my eyes lowered, I took both cups and hurried across the kitchen toward the back stairwell door.

The back stairwell had always been Justine's and my escape route--from cocktail parties, dinners, and even parental arguments. As I climbed I thought about the last time we'd sought stairwell refuge, during Mom's annual Christmas party. While two hundred guests downed champagne, Justine and I sat on the steps, her down comforter draped across our shoulders, sucking on candy canes and getting tipsy on eggnog. That night we'd tried to pretend that we weren't hiding from Mom's drunken coworkers in our brownstone in the middle of Boston, but rather hiding from Mom and Dad in our lake house in Maine, breathless with excitement as we waited to see Santa fall down the old stone chimney.

I climbed the steps slowly now, comforted by the dim light and dark paneling. I blocked the thought as soon as it entered my head, but for a fleeting moment, I was aware of just how strange it was to be there ... alone. I hadn't been anywhere alone all week, and certainly nowhere I'd only ever been with Justine.

Reaching the landing, I stopped and waited. After a few

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seconds, I blinked, and waited again. Nothing. Even revisiting one of Justine's and my favorite places couldn't bring on the waterworks.

I continued down the hallway, my heartbeat quickening. I hadn't been inside Justine's room since preparing to leave for Maine the week before, when I'd watched her try on her entire wardrobe as she searched for the perfect thing to wear on the drive north. By the time we'd left, skirts, sundresses, and tank tops had blanketed her floor like seaweed on the shore after a receding tide. Now I wasn't sure what I was more afraid of: that the clothes would still be there, exactly as she'd left them ... or that they wouldn't be.

Closing my eyes, I turned toward the door. I reached one arm forward until my hand found the knob. The brass was cool beneath my fingers, and I waited for my skin to adjust to the temperature before tightening my grip.

It's only Justine. It's just her stuff. Everything will look just as she left it, because she's coming back. Soon, we'll return to the lake house and everything will go back to the way it's supposed to be
.

I opened the door. A small sound escaped through my parted lips.

It wasn't my deeply anchored fears floating to the surface. And it wasn't the fact that, compared to the hallway, Justine's room was as hot as an oven.

It was the salt water. The smell was so strong, the air so thick with moisture, if I didn't open my eyes, I'd think I stood at the ocean's edge.

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"You get used to it."

I opened my eyes. Big Poppa sat on the floor in the middle of the room.

"There must be a problem with the pipes. I'll call the plumber tomorrow." He sounded exhausted and looked it, too. The corners of his mouth drooped toward his chin. His blue eyes were dull, and his shoulders slumped forward. Our strapping yeti had lost his strength.

"Big Poppa," I said, stepping into the room, "I know this is difficult, but we have guests. I would really appreciate it if you could be a pleasant host."

One corner of his mouth lifted as he took the Dartmouth mug. He knew the words weren't mine. "Your mother's coping, Vanessa. We all are."

I didn't say anything as I sat down next to him. Until now, the only thing my mother and I had in common was our adoration for Justine. I didn't understand why Mom worked so much, or shopped so often, or tried so hard to impress strangers. I didn't understand why of the hundred people downstairs, only a dozen or so would be able to tell Justine and me apart in the annual Sands family Christmas card. Most of what Mom did didn't make sense to me. But Dad thought she was the sun and the moon and the stars all in one, and for that reason, I kept quiet.

"She's beautiful," Dad said after a few minutes.

I followed his gaze to the photo-covered bulletin board hanging over Justine's desk and willed my eyes to water. Because there she was. White-water rafting in the Berkshires. Horseback

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riding on the Cape. Hanging out in the quad at Hawthorne Prep. Hiking Mount Washington in New Hampshire. And in my favorite picture, the one she'd had blown up to a 5×7 that was at the center of the collage, fishing in our old red rowboat on the lake in Maine--with me.

"I remember taking that," Dad said. "I wondered what she'd said to make you giggle."

He'd taken the picture from the dock behind the house when our backs were to the camera. Justine's head was turned slightly toward me, and mine was tilted toward the sky. My shoulders were pulled up near my ears, a physical reflex that occurred whenever something made me laugh until tears cascaded down my cheeks.

I blinked. Nothing.

"I figured it was girl talk," he continued. "Makeup. Boys. Top secret stuff I was better off not knowing."

"Probably," I said. "Considering her romantic revolving door, the girl talk about boys usually lasted a while."

"I still don't understand why she needed all that attention," he said thoughtfully. "She was so bright, so beautiful and talented. But it was like she didn't believe it unless a different boy was telling her every week."

I didn't say anything. Justine didn't
need
the attention--she just got it.

We sipped our coffee in silence. After a moment, he released a long sigh. "I should go play host for a while," he said, climbing to his feet. "You'll be okay?"

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I nodded. He rested one hand lightly on my head before leaving the room and closing the door.

I blinked and waited again. When the tears still didn't come, I turned back to the center photo and thought about what Big Poppa had just said. It didn't make sense. But then, nothing made much sense now.

The police claimed that it had been an accident, that Justine had simply jumped off the cliff at the wrong time. It was dark. The tides were high. Chief Green said the water was so deep and the currents so strong that Triton himself, the Greek god of the sea who could turn the waves up and down with one blow into his conch shell, wouldn't have been able to hold his own. The medical examiner had agreed.

I didn't.

Yes, Justine was a thrill seeker. And that night, she might've wanted to prove a point. But she was too smart to do something so careless.

As my eyes traveled across the bulletin board, I noticed dark thin lines between the photos. It looked as though someone had taken a Magic Marker to the bulletin board padding ... except the line wasn't drawn on the ivory satin that covered the rest of the board. The background behind the photos was white.

I stood up and went to the desk for a better look, and saw that the lines were actually words.

Name. E-mail. Phone Number. Caucasian. Parent 1 and Parent 2. Early Decision. Financial Aid. Campus. Degree. Secondary School. ACT. SAT. Extracurricular. Awards/Honors.