I don’t want to make a big deal about this or anything, but I think it’s kind of cool how you do everything you do.”
I squinted at him.
“I mean, you use sign language, and it’s hard to communicate. But you’re into art and you can seriously cook and, for goodness’ sakes, you can even jitterbug. By the way, I told my mom, and she wants a video. Totally doesn’t believe me. But, yeah, I think it’s nice that you don’t let a little hitch in life slow you down. I admire that.”
I smiled. For a minute, I admired myself, too. He didn’t know how deep my problems ran, but he was right all the same. It was no small thing to try, to find out what you cared about in life. Even this moment, with this wonderful, temporary boy beside me, was a tiny miracle. I ought to give myself some credit.

I can text in complete sentences. Oh, yeah, it’s a skill.” He smiled, proud of his accomplishments. “And, thanks to my mom being a competitive dancer as a teen, I know how to do the Lindy hop and the jitterbug.”
I sat bolt upright, and Akinli rolled his eyes.
“I swear, if you tell me you can jitterbug, I’m going to . . . I don’t even know. Set something on fire. No one can dance like that.”
I pursed my lips and dusted off my shoulder, a thing I’d seen Elizabeth do when she was bragging.
As if he was accepting a challenge, he shrugged off his backpack and stood, holding out a hand for me.
I took it and positioned myself in front of him as he shook his head, grinning.
“All right, we’ll take this slow. Five, six, seven, eight.”
In unison, we rock stepped and triple stepped, falling into the rhythm in our head. After a minute, he got brave and swung me around, lining me up for those peppy kicks I loved so much.
People walked by, pointing and laughing, but it was one of those moments when I knew we weren’t being mocked; we were being envied.
We stepped on each other’s toes more than once, and after he accidentally knocked his head into my shoulder, he threw his hands up.
“Unbelievable,” he said, almost as if he was complaining. “I can’t wait to tell my mom this. She’s gonna think I’m lying. All those years dancing in the kitchen thinking I was special, and then I run across a master.

I looked at him and the other two people whose names I’d just learned. “So . . . so this is home then?”
Akinli looked at me, perplexed, then turned to Ben and Julie.
“She said some girls left her here and told her it was home. That’s all she knows. She doesn’t even know you.” Julie wiped at her tears, trying to calm herself.
He moved his eyes back to me as quickly as he could manage. “Kahlen? You remember me, right?”
I stared into this face, searching for something familiar. I didn’t recognize the angle of his chin, the length of his fingers. I didn’t know the slope of his shoulder or the shape of his lips.
“Akinli, right?” I asked. This poor boy. I pitied him in the depths of my heart. Clearly, he’d already been going through something, and I could see the last scrap of fight he had in him dying with those words.
“Yes.”
“I don’t remember ever seeing you before in my life. I’m sorry.”
He pressed his lips together as if he was swallowing the urge to cry.
“But,” I said, “I know your voice. I know it as if it were my own.

Elizabeth nodded, looking too dejected to do much more. “Can she just go back to him?” she pleaded. “He’s dying. She’s dying. They can’t have a life together, but at least they could have this.”
No, Kahlen is Mine. We’ll fix her.
“With what?” Elizabeth demanded through tears. “There’s nothing left.”
“Please,” I said, letting all the dams burst, exposing every last drop of love I had for Akinli. “You’ve seen how I feel now. I’ve shared everything . . .

Akinli, this strange boy whose life at the moment seemed to be hanging on this, pushed himself from the bed.
Julie gasped, watching as his arms trembled under his weight, even as thin as he was. He crushed his eyes together in concentration, willing himself up.
I heard Ben whisper to himself, “Come on, come on, come on.”
When Akinli, breathing as if he truly had just run a marathon, was fairly close to upright, he held out an arm for me.
I fell into it fearlessly.
We leaned into each other, neither of us strong enough to stay up on our own.
“I thought I’d never see you sit up again,” Julie cried.
We both turned to her, smiling at the happy tears on her face.

It was like staring at a piece of art or the stars in the sky. I just had to watch him.
-Kahlen, The Siren