Undertow Read online

  Mother Jones

  * * *

  Activists Sue for Information About Missing Alpha

  by Molly Belden

  The Red Cross, Human Rights Watch, and the New York Civil Liberties Union have teamed up to file a lawsuit against the federal government, charging that it has kidnapped members of the Alpha and their human families. According to the filing, the suit also claims that officials know the whereabouts of nearly fifty-two missing individuals, all of whom are connected with the Alpha. The suit demands their immediate release.

  Lawyers representing the State Department call the suit baffling and claim to have no knowledge about the missing individuals, but NYCLU lawyer Andrea Quindlin says she has proof, including a witness who claims to have been inside a secret camp where the Alpha are being held.

  “The government has been singing this song for three years. They throw up their hands and claim they’re in the dark. It’s a lie, and we can prove it,” said Quindlin during a press conference held this morning at the Washington Memorial Arch. “They can’t pretend they don’t know anything anymore. We’ve got a witness who was there. He saw what is happening.”

  Quindlin declined to identify the witness for fear that it would compromise his safety but said his testimony would be “damning.”

  Speculation has swirled since the first member of the Alpha vanished three years ago, along with his human wife and two young daughters. Charles Sands and his wife, Kathryn, as well as Belle, age twelve, and Lara, age eight, were reported missing less than a month after Charles confessed to being a member of a group popularly known as “the originals,” who arrived twenty years earlier and masqueraded as human.

  Seventeen of “the originals” and their human families have been reported missing. Another is rumored to have died in a car accident. Two others are believed to remain at large.

  Chapter Five

  Dead catfish is impossible to get out of your hair. It’s gummy and tacky, and all I have are a handful of soggy paper towels and a bathroom sink that doesn’t have a hot-water knob. It’s hopeless. Stupid fish.

  Bex finds me mid-sob and gives me a hug.

  “You smell like Manhattan clam chowder,” she says.

  “Bex, don’t!”

  “You’re right. It’s definitely New England clam chowder.”

  And despite it all, I laugh and she laughs, and for a moment we’re free, just two normal teenage girls in a normal high school in Normalville, USA, suffering an embarrassing indignation. But it doesn’t last. The door to the bathroom swings opens, and a female SWAT team member enters. She’s wearing a black bulletproof vest and matching fatigues. Her helmet has a plexiglass visor that my father says is designed to take a brick. She nods to us—not a hello, more like an I have cataloged you along with all the other dangerous objects in this room, then stalks the floor in her polished boots, each step a click on the marble tile. She shoves a stall door open so hard, it crashes against its steel frame, then peers inside. Once she’s satisfied it’s empty, she moves on to the next. Step. Click. Slam! Step. Click. Slam!

  When her search is complete, she leans against the wall nearest the door, adjusts her rifle strap so that the gun hangs where her hands can reach it, and then watches us.

  “Fun,” Bex mouths as we stare at each other in disbelief. “Hope you don’t have to use the toilet today.”

  Bex can always laugh at this stuff, but I hate it, and I hate this woman. She should be ashamed of herself for taking a job where she spies on girls in the bathroom, but my father’s voice rings in my head, keeping me from telling her so. Smile, look respectful, make her believe it. So I do, and the cop smiles.

  “So what do you think?” Bex asks.

  “About?”

  “The new kids. I got really close to the big one. He has spikes on his shoulders,” Bex says.

  “He’s a Selkie,” I tell her.

  “Selkie, huh? Did you see the little one?”

  “Which one? The Nix or the Ceto?”

  “Nix, maybe? How do you know the difference?” she asks.

  “They’ve been on TV every day for three years, Bex,” I whisper. I know a lot more than what they tell us on TV, but I’m supposed to be playing dumb. Play dumb, Lyric! Okay, Dad.

  “Is the Nix the one with all the teeth?” she asks.

  The cop chuckles. “Rows and rows of them. Sharp and pointy.”

  Bex squeals and hops around like she’s trying to avoid stepping in dog poo.

  “Two of the girls are very pretty,” Bex says as she steals the lip gloss from my purse.

  “For talking fish,” the cop says.

  “One of the boys is pretty too, and he’s a prince,” Bex says. “I call dibs. I’m going to marry him and have a million little fish babies.”

  The guard clears her throat and gives us both the kind of hard stare my father gives to murderers and my boyfriends. “That’s sick, kid. Those things aren’t people.”

  “It was just a joke,” Bex says defensively.

  The cop’s lips curl into a snarl. “Joking about lying with animals isn’t funny. I’m supposed to report stuff like that.”

  “I really think it was innocent,” I say, trying to quell the argument, but they both dismiss me.

  “You need to watch your mouth, girl. A lot of people might think you were serious,” the guard continues.

  “A lot of morons, maybe,” Bex says, standing her ground.

  “It’s going to get you hurt . . . like that kid they hung from the Wonder Wheel.”

  That kid’s name was Kevin Folkes. When the Alpha arrived, people went down to the beach to ogle them, back when they were a curiosity and not something to fear. Kevin started a friendship with one of them and even helped her pick a name—Madison. She was a vision of hotness, but most Sirena are. They’re the closest to what people think of when you think mermaid—long flowing hair, beautiful face, flawless body—but when they’re on land they lose their tails and at first glance are as human as everyone else. My mom is a Sirena.

  Kevin was smitten. He gave Madison little presents: flowers, clothes, shoes. He made her a playlist and fed one end of his headphones through the fence so they could listen to it together. It was puppy love, innocent really, but people talked. A TV preacher said Kevin was committing bestiality, a sin against God, but Kevin ignored him. Then, one morning, soldiers found his body hanging from the Wonder Wheel, fifty feet in the air. Someone had tied a chain around his neck, attached an end to one of the cars, and turned on the ride.

  “Well, that won’t happen, because I’ve got you to protect me, even in the bathroom!” Bex crows.

  The bell rings.

  “Get out of here,” the cop snarls.

  I snatch up my things and grab my friend.

  “Bex, you can’t do that. She could report you,” I say once we’re in the hall.

  “Screw her,” Bex says. “Stupid toilet cop.”

  “I’m serious,” I cry.

  “Sometimes I don’t get you, Lyric. Are you going to let everyone intimidate you?” she says.

  I wish the answer weren’t yes.

  Chapter Six

  There are schools in New York, even in Brooklyn, that are temples to education. Their walls of glass and stone rise into the sky, beckoning to the city’s elite and affluent. John F. Hylan High School is not one of those schools. Our school is a depressing, hopeless holding cell for future criminals, with outdated books, a staff of misfits drummed out of every other school in the state, and a student body of barely awake degenerates. The Board of Education hasn’t appropriated the funds to wire the entire building for the Internet. Apparently, they think it’s a fad. We haven’t had a full-time librarian in years, but that’s okay, ’cause no one is banging down the doors to check out Someday We Will Go To The Moon. There’s no music department. No art class. No after-school sports. Hylan’s architect must have gone on to a lucrative career designing maximum-security prisons. Built in 1945, it probably would have been de
molished years ago if it weren’t in the Zone. Nothing gets knocked down here. Nothing gets built, either, except fences.

  But Hylan does have one thing going for it: Mr. Ervin, a kind, passionate guy who really does seem to enjoy his job. He’s waiting outside my homeroom class, smiling and giving our faces his full attention. He’s the first happy person I’ve seen in days, and if I didn’t know him, I’d suspect it was chemically induced. He came up from the middle school, where Bex and I had him for health class (another name for sex education). There he suffered through our endless giggling while he showed us gross-out slides of STDs. I wonder if he remembers us from then.

  “Oh, brother,” he says when he spots us. I want to hug him. “Find some seats, ladies. We’ve got lots to cover this morning.”

  We stroll into his room, and I give the place the once-over. There’s a security camera mounted on the ceiling. That’s new. A bright-red steel box on the wall has a thick padlock on its lid. That’s new too. The other kids don’t know what’s inside, but my father spilled the beans. It’s a pistol. Every class has one now. Mr. Ervin has a key and a permit to use it. I don’t want to imagine a situation where he would need it.

  “What’s with the windows?” Bex asks as she points to the brown paper that blocks our view of the sky.

  “Snipers,” I whisper into her ear. “The police are worried the crazies will be able to see the Alpha kids from the rooftops across the street.”

  At least one thing hasn’t changed. Crowded in the back are the same rough group we’ve known since kindergarten: the hardcore punks, the gangstas, the angry girls, the thugs, and the quiet one you have to keep an eye on. They throw stuff at one another, give one another the dozens, practice their freestyle, and ignore the bell. There were days when I would look at them with disdain, like I was trapped in that movie where the naive teacher gets assigned to the class full of inner-city stereotypes and tries to show them how Shakespeare is just like hip-hop. Now I’m almost grateful for their predictability. They make this all feel a little more like a normal day of school.

  There are only two white kids who claim membership in their exclusive club, and one of them is Gabriel—my Gabriel. He saunters in with his black jeans, tank top, loose-fitting white shirt, sleepy eyes, and bed head. He gives me a grin, then takes a seat so far in the back, it might as well be in the hall. The street kids have adopted him because he laughs the loudest at their antics. I’ve adopted him because he’s hot. As a boyfriend he’s only a part-timer. If there were more boys in the Zone, I probably wouldn’t put up with it. Then again, maybe I would. I mentioned he’s hot, right?

  “I heard your phone is broken.”

  He looks confused.

  “That’s why you haven’t been able to text me.”

  He laughs. I guess apologies are for full-timers.

  “People, I need eyes and ears up here,” Mr. Ervin begs. “We’ve got a lot of new rules to go over before the Alpha—”

  Suddenly, the door opens and five police officers march into the room, flanked by two National Guardsmen, two United Nations soldiers in blue caps, and a man in a dark suit and tie. He’s got an earpiece, and sunglasses that hide his eyes. Behind him are two of the Alpha kids. One is the Nix. His skin is gray and wrapped around his bony body like a sausage casing. His limbs are spindly and long, and his head is misshapen, like something a toddler might sculpt from Play-Doh. On his hand he wears a steel glove made from golden metal etched with intricate swirls. It’s actually kind of sick, like something a rock star would wear, if the rock star had powder-white fingers and sharp black fingernails an inch long. Next to him is the redheaded Sirena I saw earlier. She’s wearing a glove just like his. It must be some kind of Alpha bling.

  A lot of kids gasp when they enter, but I’m stunned by who comes in next—Terrance Lir. I haven’t seen him or his family in almost three years. He and Rochelle and Samuel just vanished. There was no goodbye, no letter. They took nothing from their apartment, and even Samuel’s doctors, who were prepping him for a hip replacement, couldn’t track them down. Now we know he was taken somewhere, just like Melissa Wheeler and her husband and five kids. Just like Bennett Walsh and his partner, Darren, and the Griffins, and the Hans and the Devillers. One family after another—just gone, and all of them were original families.

  My dad warned me that Terrance would look bad, but I wasn’t expecting him to be this bad. His clothes are filthy and there are holes in his shoes. He looks skinny and exhausted, and his nervous eyes flit around the room suspiciously, as if one of us might leap up and attack him at any time.

  “I was told I’d have time to prepare the students,” Mr. Ervin complains.

  “The schedule is evolving,” the man in the dark suit explains.

  He walks out, taking the soldiers with him. Terrance follows. He didn’t notice me, or if he did, I couldn’t tell. One National Guardsman stays behind and stations himself at the door. He watches us while fingering his M-16.

  “You can go too,” Mr. Ervin says to him.

  The soldier shakes his head. “My orders are to stay.”

  Mr. Ervin scowls. “I need to speak to your supervisor.”

  The soldier gives him a withering look, then gestures to the hall. Mr. Ervin stomps past him, slamming the door as he goes, and an argument erupts between him and several people. I hear something about classrooms and prisons, but most of it I can’t make out. The soldier at the door looks on, unfazed by the noise. Meanwhile, the Nix and the Sirena stand in the front of the room, staring back at us.

  A moment later Mr. Ervin barges back into the room.

  “I’m sorry about this. I’m Mr. Ervin. Welcome to our class,” he says as he takes the Sirena by the hand and shakes it vigorously. She’s alarmed and stares down at her hand like he plans to keep it. Then he does the same to the Nix, who hisses and pulls away. “Students, this is Luna and Ghost. They will be sitting in on our classes, observing for the time being, while they take special classes to help them catch up on reading and math.”

  One of the kids in the back leads the class in laughter. “Wait! That one’s name is Ghost? That’s a crazy-ass name!”

  “All right, Jorge. Yes, it’s unusual. The Alpha language is complex and meant to be spoken underwater,” Mr. Ervin explains. “From what I understand, some of it is impossible for humans to speak, so each of the thirty thousand immigrants were given a new name by members of the Red Cross. Sometimes they picked names that sounded similar to their own, but when that wasn’t possible, they had to be given English names. As you can imagine, they ran out of Jennifers and Davids and Jorges pretty fast, so the volunteers got creative. Luna’s name must come from the old amusement park. I think there was a haunted-house ride with the word Ghost in its name.”

  “So one of them is named Funnel Cake?” Gabriel says. He is rewarded with howls of laughter.

  “Be cool,” Mr. Ervin begs. “Luna, Ghost, welcome. I hope you can forgive us, but we’re all very curious about you. Not many people have gotten to speak with an Alpha face-to-face, and I bet the class has a million questions. I know I do. Would you share a little about yourselves? Why don’t we start with you, Luna?”

  Luna looks pleadingly at Ghost. He nods, and she turns back to Mr. Ervin.

  “My name is Luna. I am a Daughter of Sirena,” she says, shifting her gaze between the teacher and Ghost.

  “Daughter of Sirena?” Mr. Ervin says.

  “Yes, Sirena was the first of the Alpha. Our clan has taken her honorable name.”

  “How fascinating!”

  The scales on her arms and neck turn a silky pink. The effect is like fireworks for the class, and they ooh and ahh, which only makes her more awkward. Luna shifts back and forth from one leg to the other like a child doing the pee-pee dance.

  Mr. Ervin ignores her discomfort. “Pay attention, everyone. A clan is a bit like a tribe, like our Native Americans.”

  I can see Luna has no idea what he’s talking about, and why would she? Luna
grew up at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. She doesn’t know anything about American history.

  “So you and Ghost are in a clan—”

  Ghost snarls. “No! I am a Son of Nix, the holy thinker.”

  “A thinker?”

  “An inventor, a medicine maker, an adder of sums,” he boasts.

  “A scientist! Fascinating. How many clans are there?” Mr. Ervin asks.

  Luna looks to Ghost again. Is he in charge of her? Mom has told me about the Alpha caste system—their community has different strata, and those on the lower levels have to obey those on the higher ones without question. Ghost’s family must have an important role within the Alpha.

  “There are many,” she says.

  “But exactly how many?” Mr. Ervin presses.

  Ghost snarls. “Are you finished with your spying, human?” he snaps. The word “human” comes out like spit on the sidewalk.

  Mr. Ervin is so befuddled, he takes a step back. “I’m not spying, Ghost. I’m trying to get to know you. Do you have any questions for me?”

  Ghost shakes his head, then laughs derisively.

  Mr. Ervin turns back to Luna. “Aside from your appearance, what separates a Sirena from a Nix?”

  Luna looks to Ghost. He nods his approval and she beams proudly. “Sirena are speechmakers and counselors and . . . I don’t know the word in your language.”

  Mr. Ervin smiles. “There’s no need to feel insecure about it, Luna. English is not an easy language to learn. Maybe you could describe what it is you do?”