The Siren

nose and out through your mouth.” Surprisingly, he obeyed. “Now count to ten.”
He closed his eyes, again inhaling through his nose and blowing it out slowly through his mouth. I bent to collect his script from the ground, hiding my smile. Perhaps he’d turn out to be one of the good ones after all.
I climbed into my director’s chair to watch as Jackson walked Felicity and Cole through the scene. Jackson obviously knew exactly what he wanted, but he had a natural way of guiding the actors to make the discoveries themselves so they felt empowered. Cole was so fooled he clearly thought he didn’t need any direction. After a minute, I noticed that Felicity wasn’t holding her sides in her hand as she ran through the lines and hit her marks without missing a beat. She had the script memorized.

Felicity
Thirteen Years Ago
Iris takes a swig of her Dr Pepper and lights another cigarette. “Fucking gorgeous day.” She stretches out on the plastic lounger with her arms above her head. “Finally.”
It is a gorgeous day, the first we’ve had after weeks of nonstop rain. I don’t understand why we’re the only ones enjoying it at the Super 8 pool, but we’re glad because it means we can do whatever we want. Iris sings along to Nelly Furtado, “Maneater” blaring out of the boom box between our chairs.
I practice some of the moves I’ve been learning in the hip-hop class I finally got to sign up for last month, the concrete hot under my bare feet.
Iris claps. “Whoo-hoo! Get it, girl!”
I dance harder. “I’m gonna be a dancer just like you when I grow up,” I shout over the music.
She laughs. “Don’t even think about it. You’re way smarter than me, girl. You’re going to college. You’re gonna have a real life with real money and never be anybody’s bitch.”
Hitch-kick! Shoulder isolation! I can feel my belly jiggle as I hop, but if I keep dancing like this I’ll be skinny as my mom in no time. “We’ll see.” I parrot her favorite thing to say when I ask for something she doesn’t want to give.
She sets her cigarette on the edge of the ashtray, and before I know it she’s tackled me and we’re both in the deep end sputtering water. “Gotcha!” She laughs.
I splash her, joining in her laughter.
She’s been a different person since the day I found the holes in her arm. Or I guess the person she had been before the drugs, only better. And not exactly since that day but a few days after. I’m not sure what happened, but the holes were gone and she was glowing, whistling in the shower, giggling every time she picked up her phone. I knew what it had to be.
“You’re in love,” I declared one evening when she kept checking her phone even though we were watching our favorite show together.
She looked at me wide-eyed and started to protest, then laughed. “You’re right. I think I am.”
“With who?” I asked, though I could guess. Cole was the only man she’d seen in months.
She smiled secretively. “I’m in love with a movie star,” she purred.
I grinned, my mind swirling with possibilities. “And is this mystery movie star in love with you?”
She nodded, her cheeks red. “I think so.”
“Are you actually blushing?” I teased. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you blush before. Iris and Cole sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G. First comes—”
“Stop it.” She whacked me with a pillow.
“So when do I get to meet him?” I prodded. “If he’s gonna be my dad, I have some questions for him.”
“All in good time,” she assured me. “It’s complicated right now.”
Then I remembered. He was married to Stella Rivers. They’d just married when my mom met him, and I hadn’t seen anything about them divorcing in the tabloids, so they must still be married. “He’s gotta get divorced first, huh?” I asked.
“Something like that,” she replied. “You don’t—you haven’t talked about this with any of your friends, have you?”
I shook my head. “No, of course not. You told me not to.”
“Good.” She nodded. “Don’t. It’s more important now than ever.”
“I promise.”
And I haven’t said a word to anybody. The thing I find weird though is that the big pile of money in the safe hasn’t been growing. In fact, it’s been shrinking. But I can’t ask her about it because I’m not supposed to know the code. I’ve decided it means that Cole is really in love with her. Maybe he’s even set up a bank account in her name or something. It’s the only explanation.
It’s late afternoon by the time we get home from the pool, and I can tell I’m going to be sunburned. I’m usually so brown I don’t get sunburned, but with all the rain, I haven’t seen the sun in weeks. “Shit,” Iris says, looking at her phone. “I didn’t realize how late it was. I gotta hop in the shower. Can you handle dinner for yourself?”
I nod. “I gotta go to the store for aloe anyway. I’m sunburned.”
I’m in line at the 7-Eleven with my frozen pizza, aloe, and Coke, when I see the front of Celebrity magazine. It’s a picture of Cole and Stella that looks like it’s been ripped in half, a jagged black line between them. The caption reads “OVER ALREADY? Cole and Stella reportedly headed for Splitsville.”
I grab the magazine and start thumbing through it, unable to hold back my grin. At the register I don’t have enough money for everything, so I choose the magazine over the aloe. Who cares about a sunburn. My mom’s gonna marry a movie star!
I run all the way home and throw open the front door, panting. “Mom! Guess what?” I tear into the bathroom, where she’s curling her hair, and slap the magazine in front of her, doing a victory dance.
But her response isn’t what I thought it would be. She frowns at the cover, sets her curling iron down, and lifts the magazine,