A Song Below Water (A Song Below Water, #1)

by Bethany C. Morrow

Okay, a very vague rapport, but I’m not a great conversationalist—which he probably reads as disinterest like everybody else. (Joke’s on them, I’m just super uncomfortable.)

“This sucks, Tav.” As usual, she makes it seem like my fumbling is enough.

My problem is that for a long time sirens have been Black women. Not just mostly. Exclusively. Now that it’s just us, the romance is dead. Instead of inspiring songs and stories, now our calls inspire defensive anger. Our power’s not enchanting or endearing anymore; it offends.

Altruism did—which is literally someone’s name because this is Portland.

the only ones who seem to stand for Black girls are Black girls.

But when it’s time to stand for us … it feels like it’s just us. Maybe that’s not true on an individual basis. But individual kindness or hate isn’t what makes the world go round. When it matters, when a larger population or institution could make the difference, it seems they don’t.

“Certainly, Joan,” Tamantha replies from on the scene, and for a moment I’m thinking of how white girls in Portland seem to increasingly have names I’m pretty sure would be “ghetto” if they were Black.

IB students have a reputation for being thoughtful and informed and mature, but I can say, as one of them, that we are given far too much credit. We’re always given the benefit of the doubt, whether it’s over tardiness that would’ve sent any other student to in-school suspension, or whether someone’s micro-aggression is generously interpreted as a tactless but benign miscommunication.

I never figured out how my anxiety gets lumped in with defiance toward elders, but that’s what it is.

Officer Blake’s offer, if it’s what she wants. And “it” is a silencing collar. “Just in case.” As heinous as it is, he thinks he’s offering safety and solutions. Even though no other supernatural would get that offer, because cops have no other equipment specially made to control them.

She’s so rational and normal. I don’t get why she likes me.

Tell myself not to hold it against him when he says one of those things Tavia calls “woke-adjacent.” Palatable, I call it. Something that sounds thoughtful without demanding action. I promise myself to let it slide for the moment if he says “people” without specifying which people keep being killed by police officers who apparently stay scared but are allowed to unload weapons into us instead of finding new jobs. And I vow to abruptly fade out and disappear if he says any variety of “but I take issue with the method.”

It’s one of the most frustrating things about being me, aside from literally everything else, so I’m drinking this moment in.

The question’s always framed so that bringing up destruction of human bodies sounds like a deflection even to my own ears.

an environmentalist’s nightmare of hair spray.