The Siren by KATHERINE JOHN (general ebook reader .txt) 📕

The second she was gone, I opened the closet and pushed aside the pile of clothes that hid the safe. I crouched before it and spun the code, then jerked the door open, my heart hammering. To my relief, the money was intact. I knew I probably didn’t have much time before Carol came in trying to be helpful, so I snatched Iris’s satin pillowcase off the bed and stuffed it with the cash. I heard a soft knock.

I wrapped the pillowcase in a sundress I grabbed from the floor and jammed it into my backpack beneath my schoolbooks right as Carol opened the door. I zipped the bag, trying to act nonchalant. “Just making sure I have all my schoolbooks,” I said.

She wrinkled her brow in sympathy. “You’re going to be attending a different school in Pennsylvania, so you’ll probably need new books.”

“But I really like these,” I demurred, panicked she’d try to take my book bag away. “And they’re already paid for. I’m gonna take them with me so I can keep learning.”

She looked at me funny. “Okay.”

When your mother dies, people will let you get away with all sorts of strange things.

She and I packed the garbage bags with a mixture of my clothes and the things of my mother’s that most reminded me of her: her sketchbook and the larger folded sketches she did of me when I was little, the silver heels she bought herself the day after she met Cole, the little Dior saddlebag a suitor gave her, her jasmine perfume, her favorite jewelry, T-shirts, and dresses. It was hard leaving anything of hers behind, knowing it was all I’d have of her; I kept taking out things of my own to make room for things of hers, until Carol stopped me.

“You’ll need clothes,” she said.

I took one last look around, then lifted the framed poster of the Eiffel Tower off its hook above the bed, perched her most-loved sunglasses atop my head, and marched out of the apartment.

Only it wasn’t actually my final time in the apartment. Two days later, when Ruthanne and Fred arrived in a blue Impala to collect me, they wanted to see where Iris had lived, so we went back. They tiptoed as though the floor might fall through if they stepped in the wrong place and glanced around tentatively, afraid to see something they didn’t want to remember.

Fred spied the open safe first. “What was in here?”

“Some jewelry, a Dior purse,” I fibbed. “It’s all packed. She kept her money in there too, but there wasn’t any left.”

They shook their heads, disheartened by what their only daughter’s life had come to. I could tell they were itching to argue about which of them was to blame, but thankfully they were too inhibited to do it in front of the grief-stricken girl freshly foisted upon them.

I rode all the way to Pennsylvania in silence with the backpack between my feet, next to the urn of my mother’s ashes that now sits on the mantel beneath the big decorative iron cross. One day I’ll take those ashes to Paris and release her into the city she always dreamed of visiting.

The picture of the Eiffel Tower hangs in my bedroom above the dresser, where an old teddy bear I gutted and packed with my mother’s cash quietly waits for my eighteenth birthday, when I’ll be free. Until then, I’m patient.

June 24, 2019Celeb SpotterTrouble in Paradise?

Cole Power and Stella Rivers took a break from filming on the beautiful Caribbean island of Saint Genesius Monday to visit the small port of Gen Town. We’d speculated a few weeks ago, when the report came out that Power had cast Rivers to star opposite him in The Siren, that the exes might be rekindling a romance, and Rivers’s post last week, in which a smiling Power had his arm around her, seemed to support the theory. But bystanders say the two appeared to be arguing as they strolled along the port, and newly released video shows Rivers losing her footing and falling ass-first into a puddle while Power looks on, appearing to almost laugh [video]. Whoopsie! Rivers and Power were smiling minutes later as they posed for pictures with fans waiting for a nearby ferry, but the clip of Power watching Rivers drop has become a meme overnight. Sadly, it doesn’t look like we’ll be getting a Stole reprise anytime soon.

Taylor

Thursday, June 27

The greenhouse was set up as a photography studio for the initial seduction scene between Cole’s and Madison’s characters, with plants hung from the leaden glass ceiling and giant scrims filtering light through the walls of windows. Only, the light kept shifting as clouds rolled in. We were already behind, and if we didn’t complete the scene before the storm, we’d be even further behind. It was doubly maddening because I’d been tracking the forecast and suggested we start with this location first thing to avoid this very predicament, but Cole refused to work before noon. Something about switching his body clock, since we were doing a night shoot tomorrow. So here we were, battling rapidly changing daylight for the second time this week and racing to finish before the heavens opened.

The scene wouldn’t be so difficult if the babies didn’t scream bloody murder at the sight of Madison, but we had to shoot Madison’s coverage with a live baby stand-in, then switch to Felicity standing in for Madison to catch the baby’s coverage. Felicity was now holding a baby on her hip, wearing Madison’s skimpy white sundress and a wig to match Madison’s long black hair.

On the sidelines I watched the monitor as the camera rolled, captivated by what I saw on-screen. Felicity disappeared into the role in a way Madison never could. There was nothing self-conscious or stilted about her performance; I felt like I was watching a real human being instead of an actor portraying a character.

Funny, as Stella’s stand-in, Felicity was always professional—and