A Chorus Rises Page 5

  “We’re not doing any more for this baby than we did for you, darling,” Mommy tells me when she’s off the bed and either coming to join my dad in comforting me, or else coming to join me in being comforted by my dad. “And look how you turned out. You’re exactly what we wanted.”

  “Maybe it’s enough for the baby to be near me,” I suggest when the three of us are huddled together at the foot of their bed. “Maybe you don’t have to actually be in Portland the entire time this time.”

  “Oh, Ny,” she sighs, laying her head on my shoulder. “I’d hate myself if we took the chance and the baby wasn’t like you. But you’re Eloko. You’re so strong, and so vibrant. I just know you’re gonna be fine down there, if you really want to go. You’re always fine.”

  I stare at nothing, and feel my muscles tense even while my dad continues to rub my back.

  “Just promise me you won’t be upset at us for not going,” she whispers. “I couldn’t bear it.”

  “I’m Eloko, Mommy,” I say, shrugging out of both their arms. “I’ll survive without you.”

  * * *

  Jamie is always talking, which makes it really glaringly obvious when she’s not. When she and Gavin burst into my room unannounced after my group text informing everyone that I’ll be summering in the Southwest, she starts off uncharacteristically quiet. Which obviously has to do with the last time I showed up in her room unannounced.

  “You can cut out the Contrite Quietude, Jamie, it got old real quick.”

  “So you’re not mad anymore?”

  “Never said that,” I snap, folding a sweater before laying it in my open suitcase.

  Gavin has a new girlfriend in tow, a very obvious brand of Portland tourist who makes it their business to gravitate toward the Eloko population as soon as they arrive. I would’ve put money on her having a LOVE account, too, but. Gavin either doesn’t notice what she is, or else he doesn’t care, and one is no more likely than the other, to be honest. Point being, I have no intention of learning this one’s name.

  “Hi, Nina!” she beams, thrusting her hand at me less like she wants me to shake it and more like if I don’t, she’ll take hold of me. There is no scenario in which she doesn’t touch me.

  “And this, of course, is Naema,” Gavin speaks over her salutation. He does a pretty good job of not cringing, but Jamie does it hard enough for both of them. Not that either of them expect me to remember that Nina is the name of the girl in Tavia Philips’s movie. The one who would be me, except she isn’t Eloko, and she hasn’t selflessly given of herself and her time toward Tavia’s safety for years.

  So not only did Tavia herself take my melody when she Stoned me, she’s managed to do it again in a story memorializing the magic and mystery and love between her and her gorgon sister. Which makes it seem like—and I don’t think I’m being dramatic here—at Tavia’s direction, the entire world is dead set on erasing who I am. That I’m magic, too, even if it’s not the kind that has to be kept secret. Suddenly it feels like the whole world is trying to convince me that being Eloko isn’t as wonderful as it had always been—but just for me.

  It isn’t happening to my friends, even though they’ve been just as popular.

  It isn’t happening to Priam, and he dumped Tavia right before homecoming junior year.

  It’s just my Elokoness that maybe shouldn’t be paramount. That somehow contradicts the rest of me. Just me who should choose between a magic the whole world loves or an identity they made sure would never be treated as well. That I was born both doesn’t make a difference.

  That weird ghost-wind sweeps through my chest, in the front and out the back, the way it’s done before, only this time something lingers. Like that weird, maybe phantom throb in your throat after trying to swallow a pill without water, it feels like some part of the ghost-wind didn’t get all the way through. I feel it, like it’s lodged beneath my sternum, and if I was worried about being haunted before, that was nothing compared to not knowing how to get it out.

  I can hear it again, so clearly that it seems strange the way none of my friends can, and the wind is almost like a collection of whispers. They’re hushed and unintelligible, but there’s no mistaking what they are.

  I am not in the mood for a straight-up possession. But that isn’t the way it feels. I should be losing my mind, flipping out because not only am I possibly inhabited by whatever probably meant to go straight through me, but now it’s for sure something more than a feeling.

  It should crash me right out of sanity, realizing that this really is a full-blown haunting. That there are voices, and they must belong to someone. To someones.

  I can’t explain why it doesn’t. Maybe it’s the fact that Portland has been upside down for a while now. Like, sure. Why wouldn’t this happen? This is fine.

  But maybe it’s also the fact that these voices aren’t mine. There’s no confusion about it. The whispers—whatever they’re saying—and the ghost-wind itself, they’re not coming from me. They’re coming to me. Which is better?

  Anyway. In a moment, all of it settles, and I can hear what Jamie’s saying.

  “I can’t believe you’re really going through with this.”

  “It’s one summer.”

  “Before we go to college!”

  “Together. In the same city. Calm down.”

  “Still.” She absentmindedly unpacks my luggage to see what I’m taking with me. “I love this sweater, did we buy this together? But seriously, Ny, why are you packing a sweater to go to the Southwest? In the middle of summer.”

  “It’s a desert, Jamie,” I say after I take a deep breath to get myself in order, and then I snatch the garment out of her hands and put it back. It hasn’t occurred to me that the weather will be different outside Portland, or predictable, or that it’s easily checkable on a weather app. “It cools down at night.” That sounds right.

  “I can’t believe you’re doing this to us.” She may as well stomp her feet.

  “Well, I’m not. Because it has nothing to do with you,” and because I feel Gavin sidling up next to me, “and do not say it, Gavin. I don’t know who gave you the right, but you can keep that ish to yourself from now on, or lose my number.”

  “Whoa.” He stops in front of me. His fingers are tangled up with his girlfriend’s, and he’s been taking her on a tour of my suite, which I have nicely not interrupted to evict Rando Portland Tourist from what has always been a sacred Eloko sanctuary.

  “I’m for real. Stop.”

  “I heard you,” he tells me, but we stare each other down, while Girlfriend’s eyes leap between us. I don’t know that she has a secret recording device, but I totally wouldn’t put it past her. She’s lapping up all the tea, not at all uncomfortable to be a stranger among squabbling friends. And having an audience seems to be giving Gavin that little bit of nerve he genuinely does not need. “So when do the rest of us get to be mad?”

  “Pardon me?” I ask, breathing long and slow, because I know this is gonna be good.

  “I mean, now that we’re all getting dragged into this magical Portland recalibration.”

  I feel my eyes go wide, and Jamie literally puts her hand over her mouth. Which. Yeah.

  “And that’s my fault, Gavin?”

  “All I’m saying is some professor’s talking about Eloko like we’re…”

  No one fills in the blank. Three Eloko standing in an heirloom bedroom, and not one of us can come up with a word for what we are if we aren’t magic. Not that we should have to.

  “Nobody thinks that,” my boyfriend says when he appears in my doorframe.

  “Priam!” Jamie bursts out and his name might as well be Oh Thank God.

  “Yeah,” Gavin continues, like he’s not so sure. “Well—”

  “No one thinks that,” Priam repeats, and it’s a declaration. Whatever’s been making him standoffish and weird, there’s no trace of it in this statement. “That professor doesn’t even know if she does.”

  “Yeah
.” Jamie’s addition bears slightly less conviction, but she’s clearly enthusiastic to get there. “Everybody knows what makes us magic.” She smiles invitingly, and looks at me.

  “Right,” I answer her, and then the room falls quiet. If the tourist is capturing all this, she really struck gold.

  “You guys good?” Priam finally asks, looking between Gavin and me, but I don’t turn to face him.

  I texted Priam earlier in the day to come over, but he said he and Gavin had plans and they’d be by later. And then Gavin showed up with Jamie and Girlfriend, and no Priam in sight. So whyever my darling boyfriend didn’t want to see me, it wasn’t likely the other two know any more than I do. Clearly no watches have been synchronized; Priam pulled up alone and after everyone else, and Gavin and Girlfriend have gone back to their touring circuit, which. I don’t know if she thinks I can’t see her fingering my porcelain figurines, but. Do not test me, tourist.

  “We’re gonna go get something from the kitchen,” Gavin tells him, gesturing to Jamie. “She’s already agreed to come skating before she ditches us tomorrow morning, so,” and he looks at me, “no take-backs.”

  “Got it,” Priam says as they file past him.

  Seconds later, Jamie sings, “Mommy Simone!” and all the excitement I was apparently stifling spills out in the living room while my mom and friends love on one another.

  “Good gawd, please close the door,” I say, rolling my eyes and throwing myself across the side of my king-sized bed not covered in suitcases and possible clothing choices.

  “Have they been working your nerves?” Priam asks, climbing up beside me.

  “Don’t act all innocent,” and my eyebrows crash down over my involuntary grimace. “They’re not half as bad as you.”

  Priam isn’t Gavin so he doesn’t scold or attempt to correct me. His face does go slack for a moment while he props himself up on one elbow.

  “What, did you forget?”

  He twists his neck in confusion.

  “You were supposedly with Gavin today, remember? Except,” and his face goes blank for a moment, before his eyes fall away from me. “Except, right, Gavin was with the girls. And here. And you weren’t.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “You don’t get to be. You don’t get to just say you’re sorry, when you haven’t even told me what you’ve done.”

  “Ny, I haven’t done anything, you know that.”

  “Why do I know that?”

  “Naema.”

  And I feel it. That thing I always feel when he says my name, the entire year and eight months we’ve been together. I’d liked him long before that, but I was always entangled with somebody else, at our school, or otherwise. But always an Eloko boy. So yeah. His liking Tavia had felt like a personal slight against me, even though he probably didn’t even know I liked him. And he definitely didn’t know she was a siren and that I was shielding her.

  When he abruptly called it off with Tavia junior year, I was more than a little relieved. I knew he’d come to his senses, and between that Thanksgiving holiday and the beginning of December, he’d started watching my LOVE streams. I’d see his name and avatar bubble up, and I couldn’t help smiling. After a couple of times, I started shouting him out in the videos, blowing him a kiss while everyone watched. I just sort of claimed him. It was time for us to happen. And he fell right in.

  Except for that one distraction it seems like nobody but me can sense. Throughout our entire relationship, Jamie’s maintained that Priam is head over heels for me, but that’s just what she’s used to. She just takes for granted they all will be, just because they always have been. But he freezes up. At the sight of Tavia, at the mention of her. He always has. He’s wooden and awkward at our choir recitals, like he can’t just pretend she doesn’t exist. He’s there to see me, so the fact that he can’t just ignore her makes me think she was important, which. I’ve never thought he liked her—that Jealous Nina angle they used in the movie is the absolute laziest—but if it means she has that great an impact on him? Hating her is just as bad.

  “Naema,” he says it again, like he knows its effect, and he tugs on the ends of my hair.

  “Premium.” I say the nickname through a sigh, to let him know I am willing to overlook his many faults. He scooches closer and lays his forehead against mine.

  “Stay.”

  “I can’t,” I whine, even though I don’t know why not. Except for the rush of wind inside me that confirms it.

  “Stay,” he whines back. “Your parents won’t care if you cancel your ticket.”

  When I shake my head, his turns, too, because we’re still connected.

  “Why leave Portland? Since when is that even an option? Because of Gavin, or, fine, a little bad press? You belong here.”

  “Just here?” I ask, trying to make it light by putting my trill inside my voice, like a glimmer of soft laughter. “I can’t belong in the Southwest, too? I’d like to think I have national appeal.”

  “You’re Eloko,” he says, like he’s responding to my thoughts instead of my words, and I close my eyes to cherish the sound. “No matter what happens, Portland will always love you best.”

  Now I squeeze my eyes shut against the rush that swirls into my abdomen again, mimicking a queasiness I never experience. I haven’t thrown up a single time that I can recall, and I never feel sick to my stomach.

  But there it is again. Like I can no longer just disagree with something, I have to have a physical reaction, too. Conviction that refuses to go unnoticed.

  I am not a fan.

  “And if I wasn’t Eloko?” I ask. I feel his forehead move away from mine and I open my eyes to find Priam scoffing. “What? Why is that such a ludicrous question?”

  “Because you are, Ny. You’re the epitome of Eloko, babe. If you aren’t magic, no one is. Nothing a nobody professor says to get her name in the press is gonna change that.”

  Except that it already has. Where has he been? Where have they all been? How has no one else noticed that whatever Eloko is, and even though it’s from birth, it isn’t as permanent as we thought—not for me, anyway.

  And that’s not a consequence of being Stoned. It isn’t me forgetting how to be Eloko, or not hearing my melody, because that came back as soon as I got Awakened.

  It’s something being taken from me. Other people—people who’ve adored me and treated me like an exception my entire life—changing their minds. So Dr. Corey isn’t gonna be of any help. If she hasn’t figured it out already, and despite the fact that I haven’t told her about the rush and swirl and sometimes nausea I’ve been feeling, checking my vital signs and sleeping eight hours a night isn’t gonna tell us that something changed me on the inside.

  Things are changing from the outside … and maybe that means that’s all Elokoness is.

  Totally unrelatedly, I don’t know Professor Heather Vesper-Holmes, but I sure can’t stand her.

  “Don’t worry,” I say aloud, echoing the rush within, and Priam thinks I’m talking to him.

  “I’m not. I’m never worried about you. I just want you with me.” He draws a finger along my jawline, and then tips my chin up like he wants to kiss me.

  “I’m here right now.”

  “Hm. But there are people over,” he says, his voice dropping suggestively.

  “Yeah,” I say through a laugh, “that’s … not what I meant. I was being literal. I’m literally here. I haven’t left yet.”

  “Oh, yeah, no, me, too.”

  “Okay.”

  “So we should make the most of it.” He makes it sound like a question, or like he’s fishing but also wants plausible deniability. “And we’re talking about in ways that include our friends, and aren’t intimate.”

  “Right.”

  “Exactly, that’s what I meant, too.”

  “Good.” I smile despite making quite an effort not to.

  “So you’ll come skating?” he asks, running his fingers through my hair.

  �
��Yeeeesss, I’ll come skating. But only because Oaks Park wasn’t in that stupid movie, so hopefully it won’t be crowded with tourists, aka all of Gavin’s future girlfriends.”

  “Wait. Did you watch it?”

  Oops.

  “Naema.” I can’t tell if he’s annoyed or just flummoxed. He’s wound his neck back and is squinting at me, though. “Are you kidding me right now?”

  “Shut up, you watched it, too.”

  “No.” His eyebrows leap so high they’re trying to join his hairline. “I didn’t.”

  “Oh. D’aww,” and I throw my arm around his neck and curl under him on the bed. “See, that’s why you’re my favorite.”

  “You’re—”

  “Adorable. The word you’re looking for is ‘adorable.’”

  But he grunts and stares off somewhere above my head. “Something like that.”

  Chapter VIII

  Awaken: an Underwhelming Piece of Propaganda

  Blog Contributor | July 2021

  Editor’s Note: This movie review was intended to be an In Conversation with Ms. Philips. We apologize for any disappointment or confusion.

  If you’re in the know, then you already know. A year after the Awakening, there can’t be many Portlanders unfamiliar with Tavia Philips’s name, but little was known of the story before the story. That changed when her movie hit streaming sites this month, the perhaps slightly underwhelming title immediately becoming the number one locally trending hashtag and viewership more than meeting expectations. And while there were no doubt countless raves written as—or even before—it aired, for the more discerning viewer, it’ll leave a lot to be desired—and verified.

  Awaken is based on a true story, a disclaimer that tends to get overlooked in favor of the fictionalized account being accepted as fact, but it’s important to remember. For one thing, much of the context of the relationship between the two main characters—Tavia and Effie—appears to be gleaned from public record (including Effie’s transfer of school districts to confirm when she left her aging grandparents to live with the Philipses) and social media (referring to Tavia’s YouTube viewing history, and Effie’s already fictionalized accounts of her involvement with the Renaissance faire). Certain story lines, such as the incessant bullying by the resident mean girl at Beckett High, are seemingly confirmed by already well-known events, while other events come across as so dramatic and cinematic they’re almost beyond plausibility.