Siren

Vanessa. Vanessa. The way she said my name made it sound exotic, interesting. She kept repeating it like an incantation. Her voice so sweet it drips and sticks to the teeth. Like taffy.

“Vanessa, would you do it?

Would I do it?

This was always how our conversations seemed to end. With a plea. A pull and a tug. A flowing current moving from my part of the sea to hers. Always to hers.

But this time it was different. Wasn’t it?

“Vanessa, would you?” Celeste’s eyes were their usual cornflower blue, unwavering. The briefest pause. “I would do it for you.”

And there it was.

Of course I was going to do it. I was always going to do it.

--

My friendship with Celeste was easy, for a while. We clicked and fell into step right away like characters written for each other in a high school play.

It was messy and exciting in all the ways teenaged girl friendships could be. That girl is trouble, my mother had warned within the first few minutes of meeting Celeste. I had rolled my eyes but I knew what she meant, and for the most part my mother was right. Celeste was the type of friend who would convince you to sneak out late at night, to talk that boy, take a few sips too many of cheap beer.

But Celeste was also undeniably refreshing. An oasis in a suburban desert. She breathed a fresh fire into my otherwise typical adolescence. You needed to get into trouble when you were that young, didn’t you? Otherwise the absolute mundanity of it all would have been unbearable.

“Aren’t you tired, Vanessa?” Celeste would ask, right before convincing me to do something I almost always regretted later. In a million ways but one. “Of repeating the same thing? Every day more of the same? Doesn’t it feel like your heart stops when you stand still?”

And so that was how it went for our entire junior year. Celeste, the instigator, me, her lieutenant. Side by side and arms linked, full of mischief.

—

The summer before our senior year, Celeste asked me to do something that later I would realize was the start of everything. Or the end of something.

A lie. A small one.

“Vanessa.” Celeste had pleaded, eyes wide and round like silver dollars. Magnetic. Their invisible pull was stronger that day than all the others.

And so I did it, because that was what friends did for each other, didn’t they? But then again, if I were really her friend she wouldn’t have asked. Because she knew. She knew what it all meant, even if I didn’t.

Yes, officer. She was with me. Maybe eleven? Yes, sir, we watched a movie. Microwaved a frozen pizza. Which movie? Umm...

Damn you Celeste.

A small lie never remains small, not if you have to keep lying to protect it.

I asked her, at first, where she really went that night, but she wouldn’t say, and after a while I decided I was better off not knowing. Plausible deniability and all that. Surely I wouldn’t technically be considered an accomplice if I didn’t know the crime?

Later, I would realize just how stupid I was.

—

It was months before I had finally conjured up enough backbone to put my foot down. I needed an explanation. Something about the whole thing was eating at me, keeping me up at night.

Finally, little by little, to placate me, Celeste offered some answers.

It was a boy. It was always a boy, wasn’t it? Celeste was trying out her fake ID at a bar outside of town, got too friendly, too drunk, and left with a guy that was just old enough to be trouble. Apparently things got out of hand, in more ways than the obvious one.

“It was an accident, Vanessa.” Celeste explained, her voice cold and smooth like ice water. “He wasn’t a good guy. He deserved it. I did what anybody would do.”

I paused, I wasn’t sure anybody would do what she did, in the efficient and tactical way that she did it, but I nodded. I knew my role. I was supposed to stand with her in solidarity, as females, sisters in arms, against all the bad men in the world.

I decided to keep quiet. What was there to do? It had been months by that point, the case already ice cold or ruled accidental. Celeste had me as an alibi. It was done and over with.

But then it happened again. And again.

—

As the months went by, I slowly understood the enigma of a girl that was Celeste. She wasn’t wired like the rest of us. She was an angel of reckoning, a beautiful Medusa, a siren with a deadly song.

And she had a fire she had to keep on feeding.

Perhaps I wasn’t wired quite right either. Why else would I have stood by her, covering for her like a loyal soldier, over and over again?

What war were we fighting?

In retrospect, I should have seen the signs. Celeste’s unique magneticism, the way she can charm her way through life one minute and be ice cold the next.

Celeste was a girl that had been broken, but instead of cracking, she hardened into steel.

With sharp edges.

Apparently all her victims were men.

She never really did tell me her story. About which villainous man in her life wronged her so. I supposed in the end it shouldn’t matter. Whoever it was, whatever they did, shouldn’t be the center of this story. It should be Celeste.

I would not defend her actions, nor would I defend mine.

I loved Celeste, like a sister, but I was also afraid of her.

One day we would both pay for our sins, but not today.

—