A Chorus Rises Read online

  “Which was the point. Oh.” I pivoted like something had just occurred to me. “That reminds me. Just because I haven’t been posting my own content doesn’t mean I haven’t seen yours. Gavin.”

  All eyes landed on him.

  “I can’t control what my followers wanna talk about, Ny.”

  “Well, when your vlog is a very poorly veiled reaction video to some Super Woke video from Tavia’s suddenly viral channel about her sirenness being part of Unapologetic Blackness—”

  “What’s…” He turned one way and then the other, gesturing confusion with his hands like some stupid meme. “What’s supposed to be wrong with that? It was interesting. I liked the video.”

  “Funny how quickly the conversation turned into who isn’t Authentically Black.”

  “I didn’t know it was gonna go there,” he said, like for the first time he was actually sorry.

  “’Cause there’s a lot you don’t know, Gavin. But lemme be nice.”

  “Just. To be clear,” Gavin said like he knew he should have stopped talking. “She didn’t say that in the video. Rando commenters did.”

  I opened my mouth to cuss him out.

  “Can you help me get something down, baby?”

  We all stopped. Because suddenly there was an old lady standing with us, and she’d tapped me on the shoulder.

  “What?” Jamie said through a confused snort, while Priam and Gavin looked between the woman and me like they were asking if I could see her, too. “Do you know her?”

  The group got only more confused when I exhaled and answered, “Yes, ma’am.”

  An elderly Black woman told me to do something, what was I gonna say? No? C’mon.

  But when I followed her, the woman led me out of the room altogether. She weaved through the city of books and didn’t stop until we got to poetry, but I kept quiet. Because by then, I’d figured this wasn’t an anonymous and enfeebled octogenarian who’d randomly chosen me out of four teens to assist her. So when we’d passed the information desk and were flanked on both sides by tall bookcases, I waited for her to turn around, and I set my face to I Couldn’t Care Less. But like, respectfully, because Elderly Black Woman.

  “How are you, baby?” she said, finally.

  I hadn’t prepared for that. My chest immediately seized, like I’d been hit with a defibrillator. It actually hurt, and I felt like an idiot but I teared up. At that point, it had been weeks since the Awakening, and it felt like the first time anyone asked if I was okay. Dr. Corey didn’t count; there was a reason she was asking. The old woman sounded like she really cared.

  At first I could only nod my head.

  “I’m okay,” I said, when the overwhelm passed, and she tipped her head to the side like she was wise enough not to believe me. She rubbed one of my arms and nodded, too. “I mean, kind of. I will be.”

  “I know you will,” she replied.

  “I’ve never met you before,” I told her while I casually wiped my eyes.

  “You have,” she said. “You just don’t remember. You’ve been with us a long time. But I don’t come out often anymore, not unless I really need to.”

  She was really making it sound like it was the mafia, which I guess would make her the donna.

  Something had warranted her coming out, and that something had been me.

  “I wanted to be the one to tell you,” she said, and she kept her eyes locked on mine the whole time, the clear one and the cloudy one, too. “You aren’t one of us anymore.”

  The defibrillator again. After the sting, I was too conscious of my breathing, trying to regulate it so my chest didn’t rise or fall too fast or too visibly.

  “I figured,” I mumbled, without bothering to recount that I’d already told Tavia as much.

  “Not just for the moment, baby. It isn’t a temper tantrum. It’s for good.” She insisted on saying it all. “This means you can’t be trusted. Not with this.”

  The donna was saying all of it in no uncertain terms. There wasn’t a hint of negotiability, or hesitation. But there was a kind of gentleness like she was sorry for me. Which ordinarily would’ve pissed me right off. Except for the way she’d started the conversation. And the fact that she’d come herself.

  “I know you think she doesn’t need it anymore. That maybe none of them do now that she’s speaking up, and people are listening. But Portland isn’t the entire world, even if it seems that way. And I’ve lived long enough to know we can’t trust the world to take care of us. Not for long. The network’ll keep doing what we’ve always done.”

  I heard the unspoken Without you.

  “Yes, ma’am,” I said, because I didn’t want to say anything else.

  If the message had been delivered differently, or if my chest weren’t aching, I would’ve said what I’d been waiting for someone to admit since being Awakened. That what Tavia had done to me should’ve meant she was excommunicated, not me. That she shouldn’t get to have a network anymore, that no one should be risking anything to protect a power she could wield so maliciously.

  “You’re entitled to a defense,” the donna said. “And since no one came forward to speak on your behalf, you should be permitted to do it yourself. It won’t change the decision any. But I’ll hear you now, if you want.” Then, before I could answer, she said, “Sometimes when you’re strong, people don’t think you get hurt. They don’t think to help you unless you ask.”

  I wished she’d stop. talking.

  Everything she said hurt, and I didn’t have a chance to wipe my eyes this time. I felt the streaks on my cheek, and then she sucked her teeth and reached up to wipe one away.

  “I don’t have anything to say.”

  “All right.” She nodded again, lines forming around her mouth when she set her teeth together so tightly that it made a kind of grimace. “Thank you for your service.”

  And I had to get away from her. Away from the reminder that I was exile-able from everywhere. From my city, my platform, my place in all of it—and the network, too. I had to get away from my friends, who wouldn’t have understood this even if I could’ve told them. I had to get out of Powell’s, and since literally every one of them had recently let me down, I didn’t bother telling anyone when I left.

  Chapter VI

  UP Professor Wants Portland to Reconsider Eloko Love

  Staff Writer | Two days ago

  Portland isn’t exactly lacking in local celebrities these days. With a first annual Awakening Day on the books, and a commemorative movie recently released to overwhelming local enthusiasm, no one would begrudge us publishing the millionth article on Tavia Philips, Portland’s own siren. Even a conjecture-heavy write-up on her mysterious best friend turned gorgon recluse, Effie Freeman, would be considered clickbait. So why is it that Heather Vesper-Holmes, the University of Portland professor who’s attained her own level of local acclaim for her theories on the interdimensional nature of gorgons, is shifting her focus and resources elsewhere?

  “I think a good researcher should be contrarian, by nature,” Professor Vesper-Holmes says when she’s made it back to the other side of her desk, and gestured for me to have a seat. “If everyone’s already looking at one thing in particular—”

  “Like at the suddenly famous sisterhood between a siren and a gorgon?” I ask.

  “Like that—then my job is to look at what isn’t in focus. It’s where my work has the most use. I knew going in that most people wouldn’t see the value in studying Portland’s most popular magical population,” she says, anticipating my hesitation. “Believe me, I get it. We’re confident in our relationship with them. We fancy ourselves experts. We’re constantly observing Eloko, after all, whether in person every time we hear that unmistakable collection of notes that make up an Eloko melody, or online, where we know just where to find them.”

  That’s when Professor Vesper-Holmes drops what feels like a bombshell question.

  “But what is it we love, exactly?”

  “About El
oko?” I ask, and she has to hear the incredulity in my voice.

  “Okay, maybe that’s an unfair question. Rather”—and it only takes her a moment to reframe it in a way that knocks me off my center—“what do we know about them? What is it that Eloko can do? What’s their true form?”

  That feels like sacrilege, but something about the academic setting in which we’re meeting encourages me to ask: Is it fair?

  We just witnessed history—the first confirmed gorgon on record. Despite the professor’s hypothesis on a second mythologized gorgon more than likely related to Effie Freeman, the named is the only one observed in human, in nearly invisible mirage, and in gorgon form.

  “We know gorgons have the power to transform others, with devastating consequences,” she says, and there’s no arguing that. “Sirens don’t change form, but we know their voices carry power. Mermaids transform once, but permanently, and largely retreat to life under the sea.”

  She briefly sidetracks herself returning to the mythos suggesting that gorgons also retreat for the most part, though perhaps they are among us more often than we suspect, in the mirage form that mimics water, before seeming to recall the self-imposed redirection of her scholarship.

  “There’s the long-debunked mythos, ancient stories about Eloko being ancestor spirits, and cannibals,” and her mouth pulls to one side in an almost apologetic grimace. “I mean, it’s observably untrue, and has always gone without saying. But then, it almost begs the question, what is the nature of Elokoness?”

  For a moment I actually think she’s asking me, and if I’m supposed to supply her with an answer, I can’t.

  “Does it constitute a magical identity, or is it more akin to a caste? We know they’re beloved, and we know they’re charming,” and while she speaks of them, even without being in one’s presence, not even Professor Vesper-Holmes can keep from smiling. “They’re smart, and they’re insightful, and we tend to credit that to Ancestral Wisdom. We adore them for it. But is that the same as a power?”

  For my part, I’m stunned silent.

  “And does it need to be?”

  Chapter VII

  NAEMA

  My parents have never said anything to me about the footage I took at prom. Over the past year, they’ve mostly tried to act like that side of things isn’t happening, and focused on my recovery with Dr. Corey. I’ve caught them wringing their hands when they think I’m in bed following the doc’s super customized medical advice to Rest Up.

  It’s been a year since my excommunication, and yet for some reason, when I get home from Jamie’s house and power walk down the hall to their bedroom, I find out they’re still not over it.

  “Do you think they’re ever going to ask her back?” I hear Mommy ask my dad, and I pull back in time to keep them from knowing I’m here.

  “I don’t know, Simone,” he answers through a heavy breath, absently scratching at his clean-shaven chin. My mother’s the only woman in Portland who doesn’t fall apart over a nice beard, so Darren Bradshaw doesn’t have one, but you can tell there’s something missing in his life by the way he plays with the lower half of his face sometimes. “I don’t know why they haven’t sent anybody to see about her, I’ll tell you that. Kicked out or not. It’s been a year, and as far as I can tell she’s had it just as bad as the other girl.”

  “I don’t know if that’s true…”

  Wow. So much for family loyalty, I guess.

  “I know they feel some kinna way about that video, but it’s not like she actually outed Tavia. The girl did that on her own.”

  “That’s not how they saw it.”

  “I don’t care how people saw it, that’s what was on the video. The world’s seen it enough times to know by now. Ny recorded a gargoyle standing in the middle of the high school courtyard, and then that gorgon girl started zipping around changing people, and Tav—”

  “Darren,” Mommy says, hushing him. I pull all the way around their doorframe, in case they nervously look my way.

  “And Tavia,” he repeats, in what passes for a gruff whisper to someone with a voice as deep as his, only it’s still Quite Loud, “used her voice to calm her down. Just because the girl said it’s what Naema wanted, doesn’t mean it’s Ny’s fault. And since when does an Eloko not get the benefit of the doubt?”

  At least he sounds agitated.

  “The network knows more than the public, Darren.” I can’t see it but I know she’s shaking her tiny head. “They know Ny knew what that girl was. She shouldn’t have been recording in the first place; she shouldn’t have been so mean.”

  “Kids fight, period. It’s fine. It turned out fine,” he says, but I can’t help hearing the slight hesitation in his voice. Like even he’s not convinced. “They’re gonna get over it. She’s the only Eloko they have.”

  I peek back around the doorframe in time to see him swallow Mommy into his arms, and I march away.

  I am beyond tired of this, of the endless cycle of finding out everybody still thinks I’m in the wrong. It’s been a whole year and my parents are talking in hushed voices, debating whether or not the great network will forgive me despite the fact that I’d told them before prom that I was done. I’d already said I wasn’t gonna shield Tavia anymore, regardless. How does it still matter whether or not they’re upset at me? When is it gonna start mattering that I’m upset?

  Screw this.

  I turn around and burst into my parents’ bedroom.

  “Where can I go?” I ask.

  They’re both still on the bed, legs stretched and crossed at the ankle, only hers end somewhere around his knees.

  “Oooh, we haven’t done a staycation in a while!” she coos. “We could go back to that meditation hotel, or the Victorian one you like.”

  “Where can we go that’s not in Portland, I mean.”

  The room gets very quiet, and both my parents stare at me without blinking. Because that is how unfamiliar a concept leaving Portland is. For me, or anyone Eloko-obsessed.

  The donna said that Portland isn’t the whole world, but it is to us. Boasting the highest Eloko population in the United States, PDX is widely accepted as our capital, so it always made sense that we never left.

  Like, never.

  Are there other cities in the world? Sure. Do they have their own Eloko populations? Of course. Are they the toast of the town? I have no idea. I assume so. We don’t have a network like sirens; we don’t need to, so I have no idea what they’re accustomed to. If they have a LOVE platform of their own, if they have films or TV shows based in their town, and if that’s the majority of what they consume, and whether that media predominately centers Eloko characters. Because that’s what it’s always been like here. Until last year, the media was just another branch of Eloko fandom.

  “What’s going on, princess?” my dad asks. Despite its gruffness, his voice is always gentle. When I first came out from the gorgon gray, he was there, in the courtyard. When Tavia rushed off, and the herd of people and cameras chased after her with what I’d hoped at the time was the passion of an angry mob, only he kept his eyes on me. The moment I had legs again, they gave out, and he carried me away.

  During the ride home afterward, when I couldn’t stop jumping at everything that blurred past my window, he’d asked if it was happening again. He’d kept that up for months, actually, asking if the stone was taking me back, until Dr. Corey explained why it wasn’t possible and why it was annoying af.

  There’s something about what he’s asking now that sounds like that’s still what he wants to know.

  “There’s more to my life than prom night,” I say, and he nods, which is Darren Bradshaw for I’ll Do Better. And then he does. If I could leave Upside-Down Portland to him, it’d get straightened out and I wouldn’t have to go anywhere. But sadly there are some things neither my dad nor I control. Which is really unfortunate for everybody.

  “I don’t know if you want to go that far,” Mommy says, rubbing her belly. “But you could go to t
he reunion, I guess. I don’t know. It’s so far. But Carla Ann’s hosting it again—”

  “Carla Ann’s the only one who ever does,” Dad interjects like without FaceTime we’d even know that. We buy recordings of family reunions; we don’t actually attend them.

  “She’d love to have you, and I know your cousin Courtney would, too. Baby Carmen would be over the moon!” She’s getting more excited by the moment.

  “I can’t help noticing how you keep saying me now. Like, just me.”

  The room falls quiet again.

  “Ny,” and she’s using her pouty voice, which she and Dad always claim doesn’t exist, but here it is. “I would love to go with you. I wish I could.”

  “Great, we’ll all go.”

  “You know we can’t do that, princess,” Dad says.

  “I’m pregnant,” Mommy announces, like her unnecessarily attentive belly rubbing hasn’t given it away. “You know I can’t leave Portland right now.”

  I snort out one of those laughs that make it clear that nothing’s amusing.

  “I wish I could go with you, do you know how much I’d love to see my sister? The whole family?”

  “So come.”

  Her mouth falls open like there’s so much to say, but like it should go without saying.

  “No, you’re right. God forbid you prioritize the Eloko child you already have.”

  “Don’t be like that, princess,” Dad says as he finally detangles his arm and my mom’s frame, and comes over to hold me instead. “We just want to make sure this baby is as blessed as you are, and Portland is the best place to do that.”

  “Wait, is that why you’ve been napping in my room, Mommy? Because of the heirlooms? I’m not sharing my suite with an infant, so feel free to get out of that habit.”

  “Of course you’re not, Naema, no one would ask you to do that.” He rubs my back while he speaks.

  “No, you’re just asking me to go to Bumblescum Nowheresville to visit her family, and leave what used to be my city, on my own.”