A Chorus Rises Read online

  Was it truth adjacent? Doy. Or it wouldn’t have been effective.

  Did I out Tavia? No.

  Did I show everybody that Effie’s hair moved on its own? Yeah, but plenty of us already knew that, so. Truly not a big deal. Like, I’m sorry, had no one ever been dragged in front of their classmates? Was I suddenly the first person to feud with my skinfolk? Because I think not.

  For the record, I wanted to say, I also didn’t start recording until after everybody’s True Self had been revealed, and Effie was gorgon-ing all over the courtyard, which—as I mentioned—turned out to be pretty useful footage. It helped identify the Stoned, and it solved the mystery in Triton Park. There was no question what happened to those kids all those years ago, and who had done it—intentionally or not.

  You’re welcome, PDX.

  “They did the right thing,” Dr. Corey said, like a concession. “Reinstating your LOVE account.”

  All of that was a year ago.

  I thought things would be back to normal by now. I thought—I just knew!—Portland would be.

  In no universe did I think I’d still be meeting with my pediatrician-therapist, that there’d still be anything to talk about, let alone more. New things.

  The trash fire has gone full dumpster.

  Dr. Corey’s holding my phone, because now there’s a Please Read Me banner on LOVE, and I don’t want to paraphrase it. I want her to see exactly what I saw when I logged on this morning.

  To our dear, beloved influencers and users,

  We here at LOVE had a single purpose in mind when this platform was launched: celebrate the Eloko who make PDX such a unique and charming place to call home. We wanted a place to admire and adore the magic we sometimes take for granted, and we knew we weren’t alone.

  That was just four short years ago, but so much has changed since then. We’ve discovered there’s more magic in Portland than we ever knew, and some of it has been hidden because being known wasn’t safe.

  We are LOVE.

  We’re committed to uplifting magic in all its forms, and we’re going to be taking steps to make this platform more inclusive, so that we aren’t just celebrating those who’ve always had the privilege of celebration. Please continue sharing your concerns and your ideas, because that’s what makes this platform magic!

  I know she’s finished reading the super woke manifesto when she takes a deep breath and her hands settle, my phone sinking into her lap as Dr. Corey lifts her eyes to me.

  “Talk to me about this,” she says.

  “But wherever to begin,” I reply, and my laugh is genuine, if misleading. “Oh, I know. We are LOVE.”

  “Yes?”

  “Well, they aren’t, are they? They’re Eloko Verified.” I blink a few times. “They’re literally using the nickname we gave them completely out of context to pretend they’ve always been about magic, when they exist because we do.”

  Dr. Corey isn’t on LOVE, but she gets it. She could be.

  “So, I’m just waiting for someone to explain to me why they’re doing these ridiculous stretches to please people who don’t subscribe to the original purpose of an app that no one, I might remind you, is forcing them to use!”

  I look around as though in search of the lie, or as though my squad were here, in the office. I can see Priam’s adorably smug grin, and Jamie’s about to begin her monosyllabic hype woman routine, and Gavin’s ready to launch into a sharp-tongued takedown to rival my own.

  “I grasp that everybody loves sirens now, I’m just not sure why attacking Eloko is suddenly okay.”

  And then I feel it again.

  The same thing I felt when I read the announcement this morning, standing in the middle of my bedroom, staring down at my phone.

  Something like a rush of wind passes through me, almost as though a spirit is entering my chest and moving straight through. I can’t help catching my breath, but at least I don’t gasp. It takes everything in me not to widen my eyes or gape my mouth, but I keep what I can only hope is a stoic expression, and Dr. Corey doesn’t seem to register that anything’s changed.

  There’s no convincing myself it didn’t happen this time. This second time it’s happening is precisely like the first. I can’t explain it, but it isn’t something that starts inside me. It’s something passing through. Except it feels the way it looks in every cartoon or show or movie where a ghost sweeps through an unsuspecting human. It feels like someone. Which, as far as brand-new phenomena go, is more than a little alarming.

  There’s also the fact that I heard it. As in, I somehow heard this … wind move through me—inside me—the way I might hear my melody when no one else can.

  And then, I almost say it. The thing I sort of spontaneously spoke aloud the first time this ghost-wind-thing happened.

  I need to get out of Portland.

  It’s true in a way that doesn’t exactly make sense, like it’s something I just know. Despite the fact that I’ve never, ever had the thought before.

  I don’t say it to Dr. Corey, which is the important part.

  “And you’re sleeping?” she asks.

  My face scrunches, and my eyes dart around the room.

  What kind of segue …

  “Like at night?” I ask, one brow raised. “Or right now?”

  “I know it feels like a remedial question, Ny, but it’s important. That and drinking a lot of water.”

  Yep, because getting Stoned is exactly the same as getting a cold. Thanks, doc.

  And she looks up at me like she can read my mind.

  “I know this sucks. I wish I was more help, but. There’s no protocol for recovering from a gorgon attack. We’ve done blood work for a year now, and tracked your vitals, and I’ve asked you what I know seem like such pointless, redundant questions—”

  “Because they are redundant. And pointless.”

  A deep breath lifts her chin, and then she brings it back down.

  “Right? Can we just say it out loud, finally? You have no idea what you’re looking for.”

  “We have no idea what we’re looking for,” she replies, and she’s lucky she’s Eloko, so that instead of coming off like an amateur, her honesty actually comes as a relief. “We’ve been keeping a close eye on everybody who Awakened, but luckily so far there doesn’t seem to be any lasting effect. Nothing physical anyway.”

  Which just leaves all the mental and psychological possibilities, dope.

  “If you’re looking for answers, you might reconsider speaking to Professor Vesper-Holmes. She’s got as much experience studying gorgons as anyone is likely to get, and she’s focusing on Eloko now. In your case, that’s a promising intersection. I think you might benefit, and I know she would.”

  “Of course she would,” I scoff. “Sorry. I’m not a lab rat.”

  There’s a quiet in my chest. A weird calm that somehow reminds me of the wind I felt before. As though I’m wondering whether that professor might know the source of it, and whether or not it’s a post-Stoned thing, or an Eloko thing I’ve somehow never experienced before.

  But she wouldn’t. She might have a PhD, but she isn’t one of us, and I’m not about to trust a non-Eloko with something like that.

  “That’s fine,” Dr. Corey says, like she agrees with what I didn’t say, “but that means for the time being, I’m gonna have to insist you answer my pointless and redundant questions. Like whether or not you’re sleeping.”

  “Yep,” I say with a nod. “I sleep.”

  I’m not gonna tell her that for the past month, Sleep has involved me lying in my bedroom with my eyes wide open because I could swear I heard stones amassing. At which point I throw back the comforter and dash around my room checking the locks on the doors, and then stupidly looking out into the backyard where the little lanterns I used to love make bright spots and leave circles of darkness peppered between them.

  Without fail, the thought occurs to me that Tavia might be in any one of these shadows. Her gargoyle might’ve carried
her and she might even be accompanied by her sister, still in a Siren Slave stupor.

  I am not about to tell my fake therapist that sometimes I do see her out there—or I think I do. I don’t say that the one thing that keeps the scream from getting all the way out is the terrifying fact that in those shadows in my backyard, the Tavia I think I see is completely gray. So I know it isn’t really her.

  “Okay. Well, that’s all my questions. Do you have any for me?” she asks. “Anything you remember about the experience that you didn’t before?”

  Everything. I remember everything about The Experience, all three hundred sixty minutes of it. I remember the way it stole my melody. And I want to know why it was so easy to disappear. I want to know if our trill, and our melody, and LOVE is all we have, because.

  Suddenly every single one of those things seems super unreliable.

  Dr. Corey gives me a look she’s made the mistake of giving me at least a few times before. It’s a gentle earnestness, a silent nudging that always makes me bristle. It’s like she thinks that any minute I’m gonna turn out to be a new Naema, and maybe this one is gonna be fragile.

  Which, no. Eff that.

  “I think I’m good,” I tell her, and stand without checking the clock. She isn’t a real therapist; this isn’t a real session. I’m through, sixty minutes filled or not. “I’ll figure it out.”

  “Naema,” she says, and it, too, is a bit too careful. “I know you know that movie’s streaming today.”

  “Oh, you mean that made-for-TV movie about my attacker is finally debuting?”

  So what if she thinks by attacker I mean Effie. The girl played her part, too.

  “Yes, that one. I hope you’ll really think it over before deciding whether or not to watch it. In case it’s too much for you.”

  I roll my eyes again; I am all the way done.

  “Dr. Corey, please. Ain’t nobody checking for Tavia and Effie’s little movie.”

  Chapter IV

  When Eloko Behave Badly, or: a Time to Reframe

  Staff Op-Ed | July 2020

  It’s no secret that many consider Beckett High a kind of mini-Portland. The school with the enviable title of enrolling the highest number of Eloko (in a city known as their self-proclaimed capital) is a microcosm of the strange and magical place we know and love. It therefore wasn’t terribly shocking when a phenomenon that’s mystified the city for nearly a decade came to a stunning conclusion—and all three players at the center of that conclusion were currently enrolled at Beckett. More fantastic still? The trio was comprised of one siren, one gorgon, and one Eloko.

  Microcosm, indeed.

  Everyone knows the story of the gorgon, once thought to be the sole survivor of the Triton Park incident, and how she was revealed to be unknowingly responsible. We know that her best friend was a secret siren whose own power proved to be the children’s salvation. If that had been the final twist in a story ripe for cinematic retelling, it would have been shocking enough—but there was more.

  In the weeks since the Awakening, the internet has been working overtime to piece together the events surrounding it. What’s been uncovered is a completely unexpected and seemingly uncharacteristic episode of an Eloko behaving badly. It isn’t something often seen, if at all, and it’s likely not a conclusion anyone would’ve been willing to arrive at without video evidence. Which, in another twist, came from the Eloko herself.

  On the grounds that she is a minor, we have decided against printing the young woman’s name, despite the overwhelming number of views her video received before a magic-friendly platform made the compassionate decision to take it down.

  In her livestream, the young Eloko captures the horrifying scene at Beckett High’s junior prom when Effie Freeman, the young woman previously known to the public as Park Girl, turned almost a dozen of her classmates to stone under her gorgon form. After Tavia Philips used a call to stop the carnage, the siren is briefly seen pleading directly to the camera. Unaware that the footage was being streamed, and clearly terrified not just for her own exposure, but her friend’s, she begs the young Eloko not to release it.

  What happened next isn’t captured in the video, but it soon became clear that the Eloko herself was “Stoned,” a colloquial phrase for the experience of those impacted by the gorgon’s power. Initially, discussions about her ordeal revolved around what, if any, impact her magical identity might’ve made upon her Stoning experience. Speculation quickly gave way to rumors, however, that the Eloko had been responsible for triggering the Stoning. Provocative or not, on closer study it turned out these rumors fit neatly with the tone and content of the footage. Since then, an Eloko accustomed to the flattering attention of her fellow Portland citizens is under a scrutiny she’s likely never experienced before.

  If activists like Tavia Philips are to be believed, being a siren is a dangerous thing. She points to the recent arrest and subsequent remand of fellow siren activist, Camilla Fox, as evidence. Perhaps the most pointed illustration, though, is that a few short months ago, both young women kept their identities a secret. If that’s the argument, then someone capturing the prom attack after instigating the revelation of Tavia’s and Effie’s identities—even just to their classmates—would be despicable. Considering the Eloko’s sizeable following online, it isn’t unreasonable to assume the intention was even graver.

  But an Eloko using her platform for harm? It’s far-fetched—or is it? Because while we in Portland have always considered our beloved friends benevolent and wholly magical, maybe that’s been a little myopic. Reductive, even. In this age of parsing and acknowledging the layers of identity one can house, maybe ignoring what the three girls have in common would be a mistake. Not to mention unfair to the rest of the Eloko community.

  This is where it gets tricky. No one wants to still be focusing on something as basic as racial identity, especially not in a city known for its progressive values. To hear Tavia Philips and Camilla Fox and a slew of others tell it, however, being a Black woman makes a difference. So we hope it’s taken in the most respectful spirit when we state the obvious: all three members of the Beckett prom fiasco were magical Black girls. And if that matters, then maybe we’ve been looking at the young Eloko’s behavior through the wrong lens. Maybe it only makes sense when you take into account what the girls—clearly embroiled in a high school feud—have in common. Instead of assigning uncharacteristically malicious behavior to an entire population of Eloko who otherwise have no hostility toward sirens or gorgons, maybe it’s time to hold the young instigator responsible as a young woman of color cruelly acting against her own. As difficult as it is to consider those uncomfortable optics, something tells us that a certain well-spoken siren would err on the side of truth.

  Chapter V

  NAEMA

  When I get home, Mommy’s rousing from a nap she decided to take on my bed because she’s extra.

  “Hi, Ny,” she says through a yawn, and tries to descend from the tall four-poster bed as though she doesn’t have ridiculously short legs. As per yoosh, she’s got one hand on her extremely modest baby bump. Her cautious movements usually annoy me to no end since it’s a bit early in her pregnancy for all that, but this time I intervene.

  “Use the steps,” I tell her, blandly, moving the dark wood stool beneath her feet.

  Like most of my bedroom furniture, it’s heirloom wood, repurposed from ancestral belongings because that matters when you’re praying for an Eloko baby. That and—according to Darren and Simone Bradshaw, and plenty of other people—living in an Eloko hotbed like Portland. While planning for a family, my parents were relentless in two campaigns: one, commandeering antiques and hand-me-downs whenever loved ones passed or they were moved into a convalescent home and their things were up for grabs; and two, digging their heels into the PNW and not budging. To hear my dad tell it, they may have burned some bridges to accomplish both, but it was worth it. For years, he stockpiled everything in a locker at one of the local self-stora
ge facilities he owns throughout the state, and when Mommy finally got pregnant, he had everything dismembered, sanded, stained, and rebuilt into custom pieces for me.

  They filled the house with family history, but some people said Dad should’ve gone further. That he should’ve built it all with his own two hands to be on the safe side, made sure the process was familial from start to finish, but. My father is a literal boss. He knows there’s a balance between ritual and right. The wood was the important part, he said, and he wanted it all to be beautiful. Fit for a princess. Because he said he didn’t just know I’d be Eloko: he knew I’d be Naema. So not only did they give me the master bedroom, they knocked down a wall for my thirteenth birthday so I’d have the elaborate suite of my dreams. Beckett High’s Eloko HQ, and intended venue for a historic post-prom bash that obviously never happened. Junior prom, for obvious gorgon-related reasons. Not after senior ball, because—well, nothing about this past year was as fun or energetic as it should’ve been. I’d be pissed if I weren’t just glad high school is done.

  When I get back from my appointment with Dr. Corey, my room looks a lot creepier than usual.

  “Mommy, what the hell are these wreaths? And why’d you put them around my bed like I’m dying and people are coming to view my body?”

  “Oh, Ny…” She trails off for a moment because she’s finally made it off the bed, and has wrapped her arms around my waist and laid her head against my back. “They came while you were at the doctor’s.”

  “Okay, but what are they? Because they’re giving me Triton Park Memorial vibes. And why are they in here?”

  “People sent them to the news station after they did a segment on Awakening Day, and the station delivered them today! I put them here, so you’d see them when you wake up, and you’d know there are still so many people who adore you and hope you feel better soon.”

  “I’m not ill,” I snap, pushing through her hold. The part about people still adoring me, I don’t dignify. “Get them out of here, please, it looks super depressing.”