Liv turns and laughs, stretching her arms out in welcome.
“Hey, welcome home!” Liv says. “Let me get that.”
She takes a duffel bag from the girl and carries it off toward the other dorm room, and my new suitemate steps into the doorframe.
“Hi!” she says, and for the first time, I hear her voice clearly. No muffle, no echo. Bright and smooth and present, lilting with her smile. Her teeth are white, without a trace of blood. “I’m Rosemary.”
I stand up so fast, my Hamburger Helpers spill sideways all over the common room carpet.
She looks just like I remember, but her eyes are shiny brown instead of red and her skin looks warm, like the underside of a pillow. She looks incredible—healthy and full-color and happy to be there, so full of beginnings that she’s glowing with it. She’s leaning on a cane covered in hand-painted flowers, and she’s alive.
I never did finish reading that article. She was so sure she was dead.
My hand flies to the back of my neck, and my fingers reach for the short hair there, the haircut I learned from her. She’s looking at me the way she always looked at me from the mirror, like she saw me better than the glass ever could. I’ve never seen her without seeing myself, too. Not even now.
“Rosemary,” I say.
“Yeah, I know, it’s an old-lady name,” Rosemary says, still smiling. “What’s yours?”
La Bruja y la Sirena
byANNA-MARIE McLEMORE
THEY ALWAYS HIDEbehind their unlit windows. They think if a bruja like me catches them looking, I’ll be able to slip right through the glass like cold or light.
they look out
through parted shutters.
I’m a game
they play.
“watch for la sirena.
if you see the last flash
of her scales,
it’s good luck.”
Those panes of dark glass reflect back the sky and sea, so I can never make out their faces.
But I can still tell.
I know they’re there.
their shadows
give them away.
They watch for me at the western edge of Abulón Cove, coming out of the surf at midnight, the moon silvering the brown of my skin. They smell the wind wringing the seawater from my hair, pulling against the stone and staghorn coral pinning it in place. They hear the purple shells tinkling along the edges of my skirts like bells.
at dawn, they follow
my distant shape
as I rise from the waves
