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

Taylor Wasserman, formerly of Woodland Studios, is producing for Power Pictures, and Power’s son Jackson Power is set to direct. The Siren is slated for production early summer in the Caribbean.

I reread the article until I have it memorized, then frantically search the internet for more information about the film, but this is apparently the first report. It’s unbelievable; I immediately feel negligent for not knowing sooner. Cole, Stella, and Jackson together in one place—it’s what I’ve been trying for months to figure out how to engineer.

After my run-in with Cole at the Ninth Circle, I never returned to work, never collected the money I was owed. I completely ghosted Marty and Lacey and all the other people who knew Nikki Nimes. I moved clear across the 101 to Echo Park, ditched acting classes, changed my email and phone, and became Felicity Fox—Felicity for luck and because I can use the nickname my mom used to call me, “Fee.” Fox because I hope to be smart like a fox in this incarnation. Plus, it sounds cool.

My ID still reads Phoenix Pendley, though this time I’m taking the steps to change it legally.

Felicity is brown-eyed, with chin-length brunette hair and bangs. The thing I find the funniest is the difference in the men I attract. As a blonde, it was generally either guys with fast cars and lots of money or the really good-looking ones, both of whom predictably wanted a roll in the hay and a trophy on their arm. As a redhead it was the artsy ones in search of their own manic pixie dream girl. As a brunette, it’s the more serious types looking for a girlfriend, who want to cook me dinner and discuss our dreams before they make sweet love to me. Barf.

One more adjustment I made to be totally sure Cole wouldn’t remember me the next time we meet: I got a nose job. Expensive and painful, but worth it, I think. Though it was tempting to take a picture of my mother to the surgeon and ask for her nose, I didn’t. I simply had the bump shaved off, leaving it smaller and straighter and slightly turned up at the end, when it had been turned down before. My profile is completely different now, and with the cut-and-dye-job and darker eyes, I really do look like another person. It’s taken some time for me not to start when I see myself in the mirror, but I’m getting used to it.

Once the task of starting a new life was taken care of, I set about the business of devising a plan. There could be nothing haphazard this time; I needed to unearth what had happened to Iris that terrible night in Miami and carefully plot my retaliation accordingly.

The encounter with Cole had made me realize I couldn’t exact revenge without total certainty of the truth and an airtight strategy, and I ruled out any interaction with him because he would inevitably want to fuck me, an option that was off the table.

That left Stella and Jackson.

After her reality show tanked, the tabloids finally tired of Stella, and she disappeared from the public eye. Time passed and people forgot about her. Then last year she got cast in a low-budget horror movie that released to no fanfare on Amazon, in support of which she gave the odd interview I saw. The thing was, she was really good in the film—as she was in the handful of other small roles she’s done since. There’s a rawness to her acting, a very real availability. She’s no longer the sweet, spunky girl she was in the Harriet films or the manic madwoman she became after Cole dumped her. The chip on her shoulder is gone, as is the starry-eyed optimism, buried somewhere within her, covered by a thin layer of humble fragility that’s both heartbreaking and fascinating to watch.

Jackson’s story is much lighter fare. A year older than me, he took a year off to travel after high school, then went to college at NYU, returning to Hollywood for the directing program at the American Film Institute, unarguably the most prestigious film school in the world. He’d somehow managed to stay out of the spotlight growing up, despite the stardom of his father and, to a lesser degree, his mother, a model and party girl turned philanthropist after marrying a wealthy French businessman and birthing twins. She was even younger than Cole when she got pregnant with Jackson and has herself admitted she’d had him only in an effort to save their failing marriage. Now she lives in Paris, making up for her lackluster performance with Jackson by doting upon his little half siblings with every waking breath.

I have a couple of fake social media accounts I use to keep tabs on him, and as far as I can tell, he’s not a partier like his parents were at his age. He rarely checks in at bars or clubs, and there are no photos with models or celebrities, nothing with Cole. His pictures are all black-and-white and of the artistic variety: bare tree branches across a full moon, the bottom half of a girl’s face as she turns to smile.

I’ve been able to find little of his personal life online. He’s a registered Democrat, an environmentalist, a supporter of the Black Lives Matter and #MeToo movements. He spent a year in India after high school and had a nerdy-cute girlfriend while in college in New York, but they amicably uncoupled when he moved to LA. His friends are as annoyingly artistic and benevolent as he seems to be. I’ve swiped and swiped trying to find him on various dating apps but come up empty-handed.

I spun my wheels for months after my run-in with Cole, but my machinations led nowhere and I’d begun to feel desperate. My ideas were all too complicated, with too many moving parts that depended upon one another to work. Was I