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Chapter One Do you ever feel like a bad luck charm? Like simply being in your presence is going to lead someone to their imposing doom? Well I am that. It’s not a matter of just coincidence, in my life I’ve been close to eight males. Seven died of a heart attack, and one was hit by a drunk driver in a freak accident. So, you could probably understand my unwillingness to say yes when Hunter Phillips decided to ask me out. It’s not that I don’t find him attractive, because that is definitely not the case. I’m just deathly afraid of continuing the streak with him.

The first one was my dad – my real dad – he died when I was two, of a heart attack, and my mother left me soon after at an orphanage where I was adopted by another couple, George and Anna Humphreys. George died three months later, again of a heart attack, which was probably more brought on by his love of large steaks, bacon and sometimes a combination of both, than by some curse, but I still need to include him in my tally because he was significant in my life.

Next was the Hilferty family. Apparently heart failure ran in their family because my first ever friend in school was Damien Hilferty, and we’d have play dates all the time. He and his dad would come over and talk to Anna or Anna and I would go over to their house, but Damien died of a heart attack at the age of eight and a half, and his dad died of what you would call “broken heart syndrome” three months later.

I suppose I could tell you the rest of the stories, like Mr Graham, my favourite teacher in primary school, or Rhys Martin, my first kiss, but they just get more and more depressing because they all end the same way. The point is, seven heart attacks and one drunk driver accident is a lot to be involved in all before turning sixteen. If my mother had predicted this happening, then it’s no wonder she abandoned me the way she did.

Oh, and in case you’re wondering, I don’t call Anna my mother, because we both agreed that we didn’t want to compare her to my birth mother. Her first promise to me was that she would never abandon me and fourteen years later, she’s still kept her word.

Anyway, now that you know a bit about me, I can tell you more about Hunter Phillips and the whole reason I started this rant in the first place. Hunter is in the grade above me, ruggedly attractive with a defined jawline and facial hair just long enough to be considered a beard and not stubble. His long black hair sits so it’s just shorter than his head, and he can be seen a lot flicking a disobedient part of his fringe out of his eyes. His looks aren’t for everyone, but he’s definitely not unattractive, and seeing him throw around a football isn’t a horrible way to spend your time.

“I noticed you watching me,” he says with a cheeky smile that says he knows I find him attractive.

“Yeah,” I say, pushing a lock of my golden blonde hair behind my ear. His brown eyes are locked on mine and I find myself starting to melt into them. “What about it?”

“Oh, nothing,” he answers back, maintaining the relaxed nature of the conversation, “I just came over to ask you something.”

“Ask away.”

“I was wondering if you wanted to go out with me sometime.”

Upon hearing that, I have a knee-jerk reaction, and I have to detach myself as much as possible from him, so I lie, and I tell him that I’m really not interested, and I start to get a bit sick in the stomach as I lie to him because another part of me is screaming “Yes, yes. Oh my god, say yes.” It’s like I was destined to be a lesbian, only I don’t find myself attracted to girls at all. As soon as he walks away, I can feel myself aching for him, because I’ve let him down all because of a “curse” which may or may not just be my likeliness to hang out with guys with bad hearts. I want to chase after him and tell him I changed my mind, but before I can, I hear Rose, my best friend since Damien died, calling out for me.

“Lauren Humphreys,” she calls out, walking towards me, “did my eyes see what I think they saw?”

Rose has always been like this. She loves to be in on everything, but she’ll never tell anyone if you don’t want her to. She’s short, too, about five-foot-two she claims to be, but she’s probably shorter. Compared to my five-foot-seven, she’s tiny, and if it weren’t for her boobs being so huge she could easily pass as being a ten year old. She straightens up her glasses and hugs me, then continues.

“What was that all about?”

“He asked me out,” I answer, sounding more depressed than I wanted to.

“Oh no, how tragic,” she mocks me. “Why so depressed?”

“I said no.”

Rose doesn’t answer me for a bit and she just sort of stares at me like I’m the most insane person on Earth, which I probably am. When Hunter Phillips asks you out, the last thing you tell him is that you’re not interested at all. She lets this process, then compulsively pulls off her black headband and puts it back on, brushing back the loose parts of her fringe with it.

“Let me guess, it’s the curse?” She asks looking more annoyed than I feel right now, and I nod. “Dear god, Lauren, what are we going to do with you?” She adds, hugging me again.

“Any news,” I ask, trying to change the topic of conversation and her face lights up again.

“Big news,” she announces. “Mum said you have to come over this afternoon because she’s got something that your mum…”

“Mother,” I correct her. I can’t stand people calling my mother, mum. Mum is affectionate, and that is definitely not what I want to think of the woman who abandoned me.

“She’s got something that your mother wanted to tell you.”

That’s another important thing I should tell you. Rose’s mother knows my mother. They’ve known each other since before Rose and I were born. For some reason when my mother left me, she didn’t bother to leave her friends too, so now, whenever Rose’s mother wants to tell me something, it’s usually passing on a message from my mother who refuses to see me.

Rose doesn’t delve much deeper into the announcement after that but then proceeds to tell me about all of the other gossip she’s heard around the school, like how Hannah Scott hooked up with some twenty year old at a party on the weekend and all the news about breakups. I honestly don’t care about gossip, but it’s Rose’s passion – she says she wants to work in entertainment journalism, delivering all the latest news about things that aren’t vital to anyone’s survival. I listen to her because I know how happy it makes her.

After lunch, I’m forced to sit through an hour and ten minutes of English with Mr Gradstein, which on its own, isn’t that bad, except that I’m forced to endure the suffering of every girl around me circulating the word that Lauren Humphreys rejected Hunter Phillips, apparently ignorant of the fact that I’m sitting in the room with them. I just have to survive this period, and then I’ll have the whole weekend before I’ll have to come back to the “Lauren’s a lesbian” rumours which I have inevitably sparked back up after saying no to another attractive guy asking me out.

I don’t really care if they think I’m a lesbian, but Rose on the other hand cannot stand it. She’s not homophobic, she just likes to make sure of two things – first, the gossip going around the school must not be about her friends and secondly, the gossip spread around the school cannot be lies. Bad journalism, she calls it, although the school gossip is hardly comparable to something like The Daily Telegraph or The New York Times.

I catch the bus home with Rose this afternoon, making sure to text Anna that I’m going there, but Rose’s mum usually rings Anna to make sure it’s okay before she invites me over. I walk into the Dubois household, where I’m eagerly greeted by their dog, Neve, a yappy little terrier cross something or another, and she jumps up and down my leg, before I crouch down and she jumps up onto my lap, wagging her tail to bat her white dog hairs onto my uniform. Anna will not be happy. Rose’s mother is a heavy, short woman and she usually dresses in bright shirts with black suit pants, today being no exception. When she greets me, she’s yelling, probably after having just spending time with Rose’s brother, Toby, who’s partially deaf.

“I’m glad you could make it today,” she says, moving closer to hug me.

“Of course I can, where’s Toby?” I ask, and she knows that’s universal code for ‘you’re talking too loud.’

“He’s in the kitchen,” she says, quieter. She turns to Rose before speaking again, “How was school, sweetie?”

“Good,” Rose answers, not looking up from her phone where she’s already monitoring every possible rumour source.

“How about you, Lauren?” she asks.

“Is Lauren Humphreys gay?” Rose interrupts, and both her mother and I glance at her, before she turns her phone around to face me and shows me Claire Dunmore’s latest update telling everyone about how Hunter Phillip’s asked me out today. Claire is Hunter’s ex-boyfriend, and there is nothing she likes more than to latch on to any rumours about him and expose them to the world. Mostly she’s just a whiny brat, who gets angry whenever she doesn’t get her way or her daddy threatens to stop buying her things. She got a Mercedes for her sixteenth birthday and she smashed it up in about two months, but then she showed up two weeks later with a brand new Mercedes in a different colour.

“What did you do this time, Lauren?” Rose’s mother asks.

“She rejected one of the hottest guys in school,” Rose answers before I have a chance to, she smirks at me then goes back to her phone.

“Good thing, too,” she continues, diverting her attention back to me, “I have some news about that curse of yours.”

Rose, Anna and Rose’s mother, Tina, are the only ones that know about my curse. I’d rather have people think that the reason I don’t date boys is because I’m not interested and not that I have a habit of killing them via natural causes. Tina grabs my wrist and leads me out to the kitchen where she is in the middle of cooking dinner and Toby is reading a book. I sit up on one of the stools at the counter and she begins talking, not needing to ask Toby to move because he won’t hear anything anyway.

“So your mother,” she begins, pausing to reach for something in a higher cupboard, then continuing once she had pulled down her kitchen scales, “she told me that she thought you were old enough to find out now.”

“Find out what.”

“What’s causing your curse.”

“I only talk to unhealthy people?” I ask, light-heartedly, but Tina puts down the raw chicken she was weighing out and stares at me.

“It’s not really something that you’ll take seriously, believe me, I didn’t.” I start to worry as she speaks now. “You’re a siren.”

“I’m a what?”

“A siren,” she repeats, even though I heard her clearly the first time.

“What are you talking about?”

“It’s a mythological creature.”

“So I’m a myth?” I ask, disbelievingly.

“People think it’s a myth, but you’re immortal.”

“I was born in nineteen-ninety -seven,” I remind her, even though she helped organise my sixteenth birthday party no more than a month ago.

“This is why your mother and I waited to tell you.”

“My mother didn’t do anything except give birth to me,” I yell back, angrily, and Toby looks up at me which tells me that I was being too loud.

“Your mother is a dangerous woman, Lauren. She left you to protect you.”

“My mother has done a lot of horrible things Tina, but this is the worst yet,” I fight back. Tina never likes me talking bad about my mother, but she can understand why I do it. “She convinced you that I was a mythological creature and told you that’s why she abandoned me.” Then it dawns on me that my mother knows about my curse and I can feel myself growing angrier at Tina. “When did you tell her about the curse? That was a secret between you, Rose, Anna and I.”

“I didn’t tell her.” She answers with a straight face, and I can tell from the way she delivers her lines that she isn’t lying. “She knew.”