Three sounds join in one resounding crescendo. Hunter's victorious Woo-hoo!, my Yeah, baby!, and the bike's roaring engine sputtering and growling as if upset that we separated it from its rightful owner. Faint cries reach us from behind, My bike! Help! Help! then turn into echoes and disappear entirely. We lunge forward, one solid being, a precocious hooligan on two wheels, going from zero to thirty miles per hour in a few seconds. I ignore my pain from the loud noise and hot exhaust. I let myself be mesmerized by our movement, by the smells of cedars and maples and firs. I inhale, watching all this greenery fly through my field of vision as we speed down Seward Park Avenue, weave along its S-curve, ignore stop signs and the honks of rare cars, and finally emerge from the park onto an open road. It makes me feel like there is no way back, only forward; like it's been three years and not three hours since I became a siren. I don't know why, but suddenly, my eyes brim with tears.
I clasp my arms tighter around Hunter's waist and bury my face in the damp cotton of his hoodie, hoping he won't notice my crying. He turns onto Lake Washington Boulevard. For a second, the back wheel skids sideways, and I think we'll crash, but then it rights itself back up.
"Just a puddle!" Hunter yells over the wind.
I nod into his back, afraid my voice will sound too shaky if I answer. I'm feeling overwhelmed with everything that has happened this morning, still trying to find the end of my sanity so I can pull it up to where I can see it and make sure I'm okay. Make sure everything will be okay, no matter what it will be.
We speed by the sunken eyes of the houses to our left and the quiet lake to our right, waking up the sleeping neighborhood with our loud rumble. The bike splashes across puddles, and dowses early risers in mist, making their dogs bark like mad for a few seconds before going back to their business. I can tell Hunter is having the time of his life. His heart beats at an alarming rate, his muscles shake from adrenaline, and his entire body buzzes with excitement, adding a general overtone to the melody of his soul. I want to sit like this, clutching him in my arms, racing into who knows what future, and never let go. Slowly, I begin calming down and dare to peek out from behind his back.
The wind hits me in the face, mussing my hair. I squint to see better. The view is beautiful, almost too serene for our purpose. Tall oaks spread a canopy over the boulevard, forming a shadowed tunnel. A few yellow leaves wave as they fall, giving us permission to gun past them in a series of great, motorized coughs. The lake lulls in rhythm to the jingling masts in the nearby marina. I smell water lilies and pond algae, sweet and rank at the same time. Hunter shifts gears and the bike jerks, its back wheel brushing the curb. And it hits me that we both have no helmets or gear on. In my case, if we crash, I'm not sure what will happen, but I'll probably survive. In Hunter's case, however...
"Slow down!" I yell.
He doesn't hear me, because of the noise and because the wind carries my voice backward not forward. Reality, and all the facts connected with it-my attempted drowning in the bathtub this morning, jumping from the bridge, my rebirth as a siren, our escape, the image of Raidne being blown up, my father and Canosa pursuing me-everything rushes into my mind at once. The bike lurches again and it wakes me up completely. My throat goes dry. I turn my head and glance over at the lake, to the beach where we docked and left my father's rowboat sitting smack in the middle of the road. His Pershing 64 should be moored not too far from the shore.
I peer and peer and see nothing. His yacht is gone, and so are the sirens. From our distance of about half a mile away, and while riding on the back of a bike, I can't make out any white shapes on the beach nor can I hear any of them for miles. There's the immediate, dry clicking sound of the Ducati's engine, and, underneath it, a low drone from the traffic's white noise, punctured by the souls of a few morning joggers and car commuters and dipped in human chatter from their blasting music, news on the radio, or talking on the phone. I wonder if the poor chap whose bike we stole has called the police already and when they'll be on our tail, because I remember Hunter mentioning that it's illegal to ride a bike without a helmet. Great. My gut tells me we're about to pay for our madness.
Straight at first, now the boulevard turns twisty.
There are irregular engine revolutions, and then an oncoming clunky old Beamer appears from behind a blind turn a second too fast, driving in the opposite lane, perhaps having turned too wide. Its headlights are turned off, and I smell weed.
"Shit!" Hunter yells and veers to the right to avoid it, skirting the pavement. The bike's back wheel skids and I yelp in fear. The car's driver sees us, opens his mouth in shock, and yanks his steering wheel in the wrong direction. Old tires slide on wet asphalt and his Beamer passes us so closely, I can almost touch it. We squeeze by. I turn and see it roll onto the grass and smash its bumper into an oak.
Crack!
I can hear the snapping of the seat belt and the unfolding of an air bag, mixed with the freshly burnt smell of a car wreck. The driver's soul-a mix of football shouts and an old guitar-flares up and joins in tempo with his heart rate, which is going berserk. He sounds...salty. A salty soul yanked out of his Monday morning boredom. I lick my lips, hungry and mad and disgusted at the same time.
"You're crazy!" I yell loudly at Hunter. With the amount of force I put into my yell, he should hear me, but he pretends he doesn't; he's either focused on the road or washed in a cardiac high from his reckless riding. Reluctantly, I admit to myself that I'm high on it too, and enjoy it every bit as much as he does. He swerves into the next side road turnout in one vicious slide. The bike leans and my left knee scrapes the road.
"Watch out!" I scream.
"It's okay, I got it!" he yells back, slightly turning his head to the left and then snapping it back to look at the road.
"Yeah, right, I see as much," I whisper to myself grumpily, thinking that no matter what I say, he'll still ride any way he wants. That's Hunter, stubborn once he sets his mind to something.
We ride up the hill, to the honks of cars politely huddled by an all-way stop sign on Genesee Street, then lurch ahead without waiting and merge into heavy morning traffic spilling onto Rainier Avenue.
"Shit!" Hunter pushes on the brakes, and we idle in-between two cars, their passengers glaring at us. One is a young woman with her hair made up, in a business suit, a cup of Starbucks coffee in her hand, looking up from a green Volkswagen Beetle. The other is a mother with a sleepy face and a tired frown, two kids in the back of her old Subaru openly staring at us and waving. I smile and wave back, listening to their souls, so tender and creamy, I want to feed on them right there and then.
I curl my toes around the foot pegs and stand up, using Hunter's shoulders for support. "Let's go around," I say into his ear and sit back down, wincing as my thighs connect with the hot sides of the bike.
"I know, I'm trying," Hunter says back nervously, power-walking between rows of cars. I revel in the multitude of human life, the blaring hullabaloo of their souls' melody. Some are perspiring, doomed, and unhappy; others are fidgety, sticky, and full of fear. Peppery. Soupy. Moldy. Only a few children's souls awaken my appetite, the rest promises to taste spoiled. A wave of dizziness hits my head and I nestle into Hunter's back again.
"Please, go faster," I mumble into cotton.
As if in answer, Hunter's words echo in my mind, about what happens to you if you're a siren's victim. They find you dead in the morning. They can't say what happened. It looks like your heart stopped, so that they conclude you died from sudden cardiac arrest, you know, loss of heart function. What's creepy, though, is that you're smiling. Dead, but smiling. Like you were your happiest just before you died.
I wonder if I'd be doing a service to these folks, giving them one minute of fantasy before they died, jerking them out of their daily misery and making them happy, making them die in such a fashion that they wouldn't know what hit them. Mesmerized by my voice.
And I really want to tell Hunter this idea-to hear his opinion, right now, right this very moment-to somehow justify my desire to kill.
"How much longer to your house?" I yell over the noise.
He doesn't answer. He edges toward the intersection, guns the throttle, runs a red light, passes way too closely by a school bus, and shoots up Alaska. The stink of exhaust gives way to manicured lawns dotted with an occasional kid or two, backpacked and on their way to school, milk still sweet on their after-breakfast breath. Yummy. I can't believe I think of them as meals and shake my head to get rid of this sensation.
We leave Beacon Hill, head south, pass under Interstate 5, and slow down. I can tell Hunter is lost and I can tell a police car is speeding our way, accompanied by a faint echo of a mechanical siren.
"Cops! I hear cops!" I yell.
"I know, I heard them!" Hunter yells back.
"Are you lost? Do you know where you're going?" I realize I want him to answer this question because I have a hard time orienting myself, having never been to this part of town.
We hit a cloud of freshly-baked bread aroma hanging in the air. It doesn't tease me like it used to; just the opposite, it makes me want to retch. To our left another large body of water opens up, with huge, red cranes stretching out their necks over boxes and boxes of stuff delivered to the port on long barges. Puget Sound. Now I know where we are. We're heading north on Aurora, the ugly Route 99 that blocks Seattle's waterfront view from downtown with its dark, unsightly shape.
Mechanical sirens blare closer. Hunter gives it the gas and shifts gears again, lurching the bike forward. We pass in between lanes. Tires screech, cars honk, and people shriek and curse and gasp. One by one, their souls come alight with panic, like flashing dots of plankton when stirred by hand in the sea in the middle of the night. Except it's morning. I gulp, remembering again who I am, or who I was, or who I'm about to become. I feel utterly confused, wanting to drop everything and run away, so I attempt to calm myself down with facts.
My name is Ailen Bright. Today is September 7, 2009. It's my birthday. I'm sixteen now. I died and then I was born again, as a siren, about three hours ago. Does that mean I'll stay sixteen forever? Maybe yes, maybe no. Or maybe I'll die at the hands of my father, exploded into a cloud of mist. I press my head into Hunter's back, and cement my arms around his waist, trying to get rid of these thoughts, to empty my mind, wanting to scream.
Hunter speeds up, jolts the bike to sixty miles per hour, seventy, eighty. Cars honk at us as we near downtown. I can't help but think about how much longer I'll live in this new shape, and who'll get me first-Papa or Canosa. I wonder if they killed each other on that beach or are after us, somehow knowing where we're headed, waiting for us there. Perhaps I will die today after all. Well then, if I die today, I'll die having fun.
The sky agrees with me, because, at once, it opens up into a heavy rain, just like that. One minute there's almost a hope of afternoon sun, the next, huge drops fall on my head, quickly turning into a gush of water. Within a minute, we're drenched. Jagged skyscrapers ahead of us get buried in an ominous cloud.
Hunter veers. "I can't see shit!" he yells. "Fucking rain, I'm blind! Hold on!"
"I am!" I yell back and lift my head to the sky. "Darn you! Why did you have to start right now, you stupid rain, just when we almost made it?"
I see red and blue reflected in the wet windows of other cars and turn to look. About five cars back, a cop is making his way toward us. Just then, we pass another cop on our left and spray his windows with muddy water, skidding and narrowly avoiding a collision. The cop whips up the mechanical siren and turns on his lights, red-blue, red-blue, red-blue.
Wheeeee-wee. Wheeeee-wee.
The shrill is so authoritative and penetrating, it pisses me off and I gawk back at him, forcing as much power into my voice as I can.
"Shut the fuck up!"
The blast of my scream hits every car in an almost visible wave, echoing and multiplying, threatening to shatter all glass. Windows shimmer under the pressure. But the police siren continues blaring at me, now only one car away.
"Shit," I curse, and inhale to try one more time.
"Getting off the highway!" Hunter yells.
"Got you!"
Rain whips at my hair. I open my mouth wide and scream one more time. This time, it's a simple comment on everything crazy that has happened, all poured into one phrase.
"I hate you! I hate you! I hate you!"
A multitude of rain drops fall on my head at once, as if I caused a wave, as if water listens to me like it listened to me when I hummed to the lake. I'm caught in a momentary pause of this realization.
Hunter swings onto the Seneca exit, two police cars screaming on our tail. There is no time to think. I decide to go with my gut.
I hum to the water. I hum one of my favorite Siren Suicides' songs, Did You Love Me, because the lyrics start with the rain, so that's why I chose it.
"I'm lonely,
Watching the rain.
Drop by drop,
Falling
Into my heart,
Because you're gone."
Except I don't speak any words, I simply hum the tune, my lips closed, my mind focused on the song. Noises die away and I only hear the rushing sound of the water, the steady rhythm of falling drops as they start out about a mile into the sky and make their way down, merging with the rhythm of my humming.
I close my eyes, lift my face, and let it get wet, feeling the water drip onto me. It calms me, mellows my angst, soothes the abrasion from the terrible thoughts that have circled my mind since this morning. The world attains an even tone of bliss. I keep humming, merging with nature's vibration, droning on to the sky.
There is a shift in the air and I open my eyes.
The water is moving. It hears me, it listens.
I experience a high that doesn't compare to any weed or acid or any drug. This is beyond cool. This is me doing magic, at will. I watch water drop by drop as it collects into puddles, licking the street clean all the way to the curb as if pulled by a gigantic magnet. The blanket of rain parts in the middle in the way a crystal beaded curtain would part, directly above us, forming a tunnel of dry air. Our passage through.
Hunter cheers and dog shakes his head to get water out of his hair and face. Droplets splatter me. I keep humming, playing the conductor. The tunnel widens, a sheet of rain serving as a gray veil on each side of us. We're lucky. The light turns green as we hit the intersection and Hunters veers the bike to the left, onto 1st Avenue. Astounded drivers roll down their windows and stick out their heads to see why half of their windshield is getting pummeled and the other half is dry. Wipers squelch across dry glass with that annoying squeaky rubber sound.
I grin, unable to contain myself, enjoying this perhaps too much. At the next intersection, a motorcycle cop enters traffic and edges toward us.
Hunter swings to the left too abruptly. My right foot swings off the peg and I instinctively grab his hoodie so that I don't slide off the bike. I gasp and lose my tempo. For the next few seconds, rain continues falling in separate shafts and then detaches from the rhythm of my humming completely. I've lost it. Water gushes on our heads with a renewed force.
Hunter curses and continues veering in and out of car lanes to escalating honks, until we hit red-brick pavement. The bike's resin tires squeak over every single stone in sync with my teeth chatter, then we turn again.
"Are you out of your mind? Where the hell are you going?" I scream at the top of my voice. Hunter simply shakes his head from side to side as if to tell me, Hey, I'm busy right now, can't answer, sorry. A few seconds later, we cut into a pedestrian crowd, barely avoiding hitting people, and roll toward the grand entrance of the famous Pike Place Fish Market. Here is the perfect place to get lost-a labyrinth of one-door stores, five layers deep into the ground, selling everything from meat to produce to homemade jewelry and tie-dye shirts. At the same time, this is the worst place ever to approach on a stolen motorcycle, in the middle of its busy opening hour, under heavy Seattle rain.
I register a small, brick plaza about a hundred feet long and forty feet wide, with several trucks parked on its left side. A farmer emerges from behind one of them, a box of peaches in his raised arms. He hears the racket of the motor, turns, and stops smack in the middle of the road, gaping at us. The visor of his baseball cap drips water, his rain boots glistening in the wetness. Hunter leans to avoid him, trying to continue onto Post Alley by turning to the right. Except he misses the turn and pushes both brakes. The bike stutters and its back wheel locks. A split second later and we're about to tap dance on the cobblestones with our teeth. I stick out both of my legs. My naked feet scrape the pavement, shooting a fire of pain up my legs.
As I'm trying to stop the bike, Hunter lifts his left leg mid-fall, hopping on top of the fairing, and maneuvering the whole machine like a gigantic, warbled skateboard, sashaying on its side. My leg is trapped underneath it. I hear my jeans rip and feel excruciating agony shoot up from my knee into my stomach, threatening to eat my guts and make me puke. My left elbow hits the pavement with the full force of the fall and gets dragged along. I stick out my hand to stop the movement but it's useless. Somehow, I know that both my leg and my arm are still intact, that they only got scraped a little. Every bone is solid, perhaps even my skin too, despite the fact that this silver Ducati probably weighs close a bathtub full of water. I hold my head above the ground by sheer will, watching cobblestones zoom past me only a few inches away, my hair leaving wet trails on top of them.
The noise all of this produces reminds me of a train wreck where a head train car hits something standing on the road, and long after that, the rest of the train cars continue piling up and screeching as they come off the rails and bend into a sorry metallic mess. Add to that human screaming and the blaring of police sirens, and you almost have the complete picture. Almost, because we're not done sliding until we hit a pig that is bolted to the ground right under the Public Market Sign.
Thud!
We finally stop moving.
Pieces of silver fairing scatter in all direction, a rearview mirror breaks off and skips on the stones. The front wheel stops from impact, but the back wheel continues spinning with a sickening whizzing sound; and the motor continues running, producing bluish smoke and stinking of gasoline.
The whole thing looks like a beautiful disaster wrapped around pig's feet. Hunter's on top of it, hunched, his arms spread in an eagle stance, as if he's ready to fly. His face is not just pale, but a true shade of gray. His eyes are opened wide, staring at me below. I'm trapped underneath this pile of scrap metal that used to be an exquisite silver Ducati 748L, one of the hundred made, a limited Neiman Marcus edition. Actually, only my left side is trapped underneath. My right side is fine, just wet from the rain. My face is inches away from the pig's belly, her bronze tits so sharp and positioned in a such a way, that another half an inch and they would've poked out my eyes for good. I eye their very tips, polished and golden in color, and breathe out a sigh of relief.
At this moment, a woman standing right by the pig begins to scream in a high-pitched voice.