Honey Girl(14)

Ximena looks at Grace. “I think we should,” she says carefully. “I think you should. But it’s your wife, your life, your decision.”

Agnes huffs. “Why would you read Porter her rights like that?”

Grace gives in. “Oh my God, just do it.”

“Doing it.” Agnes presses Play on the most recent episode.

“Are you there?”

It’s Yuki’s voice, as clear as Grace remembers. Not sweetened by alcohol or swallowed in a laugh. It’s just her, Yuki, coming through the tinny speaker of Grace’s phone.

“Are you there?” she asks. “It’s me, Yuki, and for the next hour, you are not alone.”

It’s intimate and quiet and if Grace closes her eyes, Yuki could be right beside her.

“Tonight, I want to talk about the sea,” she says. “Is that okay?” She pauses, as if waiting for someone, anyone, maybe even Grace, to answer. “Good. I want to talk about the sea and its dark depths and foaming, white tides and its swelling, hungry waves. The sea isn’t inherently supernatural, or even scary. But it holds many unknowns.” Her voice quiets. “Sometimes unknowns are the scariest things of all, aren’t they?”

Yes, Grace thinks. They are.

“Tonight,” Yuki continues, “I had a listener write in about sirens. So that’s what I’m going to talk about. Sirens.”

Somewhere in the distance, a truck rumbles by. It nears dawn, and things begin to creak awake.

“Sirens started as a Greek myth,” Yuki says. “It’s a woman, well, half woman, half bird. It’s a creature who rested and waited and preyed upon the deep sea, whose great big lungs created sounds that lured in those who dared breach the blue. These creatures lured people under the water so sweetly they didn’t even feel the burn of salt water in their chests, filling them up from the inside out.

“But this is not,” she says, “just about the origins of sirens. It is about the evolution of sirens, the modern-day existence of sirens and the things used to lure us in.”

She pauses, and her captive audience waits.

“I think they must be lonely,” Yuki says. “I think anything that waits and sings from the very bottom, the very pit of their stomach, is a very lonely creature indeed.” The dead air wouldn’t work on any other radio show, but for Yuki, it becomes space to absorb her words.

“And I think,” she continues, “that those who venture, traveling through the water toward their song, must be very lonely, too. I think lonely creatures ache for each other because who else can understand but someone who feels the same dark, black abyss?”

Who else, Grace wonders, can understand loneliness if not someone who sits in solitude all their own?

“I think there must be a different song for each person. I think a siren must peer into the very soul of a lonely creature to understand what brings them closer. What song makes lonely creatures step further, toes then ankles then knees and deeper, until they are nothing but a sinking thing that a song can no longer reach?

“I have a question for all the lonely creatures out there,” Yuki says near the end of her show. Grace doesn’t know where the time has gone. Yuki’s tale of sirens is like its own song that Grace is unable to pull away from. With her two best friends, she feels like their grip on her hands is the only thing keeping her steady.

“My question to all the lonely creatures out there is, who is your siren? Who is your fellow lonely creature who sees into the very core of you and knows which song to sing? What song do they sing for you, and do you follow? What would happen if you did?

“We are all lonely creatures in our own way,” Yuki admits. “That’s where I’ll end tonight. I have one last thing. If you’ve been following along, you guys will know I’m hoping there is someone out there that’s listening. Someone who glows like bee honey and has golden hair that spreads out when she’s sleeping, like a halo. Someone who shares a key with me, perhaps a key to the messy, ridiculous core of me, but me, nonetheless.”

Grace’s breath hitches. Yuki is talking to her. She is the bee honey. She reaches a hand to the key under her shirt. Yuki is talking about Grace, to Grace, lonely creature to lonely creature.

“If you’re out there, Honey Girl, I am singing you a song. It’s a good song. It won’t lure you to the depths of the ocean. It’s a song that leads you just to me, I think, if you’re listening. This has been Are You There?, and I am Yuki. Sleep tight, everyone.”



Six


Before, Grace had been afraid to hope for the best about her champagne-fizz wedding. The girl who clung to her hand and kissed her gently and climbed through flower bushes to click a lock into place may not have matched her memory. But hearing Yuki’s voice, hearing her call for a girl that glows like bee honey and talk so intimately about loneliness, sparks something brave and warm in Grace.

She finds herself hoping, desperately and passionately, for this to be good. For Yuki to be good.

She has a phone number Agnes found somehow and tries to find the courage to press Dial.

“What are you doing?” Meera asks, and Grace jolts from her thoughts.

“I’m still on break,” she says. She holds her phone up to her chest, suddenly possessive. “I have, like, fifteen more minutes.”