Over the last six years of contemplating why my mother jumped off the Aurora Bridge and how it must have felt, I buried my pain and kept myself busy by researching every possible detail about suicide jumping. I read that objects tend to fall at the same rate regardless of their weight, as long as there is no major air resistance. The formula is distance equals sixteen times the amount of seconds squared. That means no matter how much you weigh, it would take you about three seconds to fall down 167 feet. On this rainy September morning it feels more like ten to me. Maybe because I'm so close to dying, my sense of timing becomes distorted. Strangely enough, the things that float through my head are facts. I hold on to them for dear life.

My name is Ailen Bright. I was born at 6:30 a.m. on September 7, 1993, two weeks early, weighing only five and a half pounds, sixteen inches long, head first, delivered by my father in our marble bathtub full of water, my mother giving birth naturally, without pain medication or any professional help. Exactly sixteen years later, I'm leaping to death, at about six in the morning, on September 7, 2009, weighing only 107 pounds, five feet six inches tall, feet first, escaping my father into a huge basin of water called Lake Union, to meet my mother's fate, on a whim, having used acid and weed as pain medication after rejecting professional help.

And one more fact. Today is a Monday. Suicide rates are highest on Mondays. I'm about to become another number.

All of these thoughts take less than a fraction of a second while my toes detach from the concrete. Air sucks me into a vortex of mad rush and kicks all thoughts out of my head. A floating sensation gets quickly replaced by sheer terror and an urge to grab on to something, anything, to keep from falling, but my fingers close on nothing. The wind sticks its cold hand into my open mouth and I can't make a sound, let alone breathe. Funny how your life always starts with a scream, but doesn't always end with one. My arms thrash like the wings of an immature bird, legs climb invisible stairs, ears ring loudly. My heart leaps into my throat and threatens to burst me apart. My skin burns from the freezing wet clothes stuck to it as if glued. I see everything and nothing, caught in a blur of sky, water, air, and tears.

Suddenly, I know that I just made the biggest mistake of my life. One minute of fantasy is better than nothing? Whatever gave me this stupid idea? Forget it, I changed my mind. I want to turn back time, I want someone to save me at the last second, like in the movies. But this is real life, and in real life the surface of the lake rushes at me with inhuman speed.

My survival instinct screams at me to do something. I forget why I wanted to jump, desperate to stop it. Six years of wanting to die go down the drain. All this gazing into water, wondering how my mother felt, every single image I conjured about it vanishes. Instead, a few intense questions overwhelm me. What the hell am I doing? How the hell am I going to survive this? If I press my legs together and enter the water straight as a rod, feet first, will I have a better chance?

Even that gets replaced by one internal cry: FUCK THIS SHIT, I DON'T WANNA DIE!

As if to answer my plea, a voice rises from below. It doesn't echo like it did when I heard it from 167 feet away, it rings loud and clear making me want to touch it.

"You could've warned me you're jumping! First, you make me wait, then you let your father interrupt me, and now you're falling right on my head, and I just did my hair. Absolutely no manners. Didn't your mother teach you?" Canosa says, obviously irritated. Her words knock guilt into me and I want to shift my falling trajectory so I don't hit her, but it's too late. As if sensing my intention, she says, "There is no time left to change direction, you know that. Girls, scatter."

I manage to lower my head against the rushing air and look down, unable to blink the tears away. At three seconds of total elapsed time, my falling is about to end. It's as if one moment I fall, and another I don't anymore. All I see is five giggling sirens swimming away in a five-point star formation and dark liquid underneath me, nearly touching my toes.

Then I hit water.

SPLASH!

Everything I read about diving from dizzying heights turns out to be true. After sailing through air for only three seconds, I pierce the lake's surface with my body, feet first, at the speed of seventy miles per hour. It doesn't feel like plunging. It doesn't feel like pool diving. It feels like crashing into a rock, solid and hard. My science teacher told me that entering water feet first is the only way to survive a fall from a crazy height like that. Right. Try jumping off a sixteen-story building with the intent to break through concrete, and you'll know how it feels.

My leg bones break. The impact rips off my hoodie and T-shirt, turns out my jean pockets. Smell, sound, taste, sight, touch, all collapse underwater into a tight fist of abrasion that scrapes my skin, shatters my vertebrae, and collapses my lungs. Another line I read flashes through my mind. Most suicide jumpers don't die from drowning, they die from the impact trauma. Only then, those who survive drown or die of hypothermia. Two very lovely alternatives, take your pick. The fact that I'm thinking this tells me that miraculously, I'm still alive, but not for long.

Water gurgles in my ears. Momentum carries me down, some concentrate of a girl, hard-packed with agony, hurled forty feet deep, to melt in her sorrow at the bottom of the lake and never come up. This is no marble bathtub. There are no rims to grab and pull myself out. This is the end.

Enveloped in white noise and excruciating pain, I understand what true end means. This knowledge pricks my gut and robs me of any remaining strength. I feel hollow. My mind is blank, an empty box that can't be filled because it stopped being real. Nothing seems real, as if time and space ceased to exist and got replaced by a strange void, a land of no yesterday and no tomorrow. I try pulling myself out of this nothingness, try focusing on the present, on the now. This is as now as it will ever get. I want to fill myself with stubborn endurance, a force that breaks every fence, every barrier, determined to reach its goal. On the brink of death, I want to live like never before. Everything that needed to be fixed in my life doesn't need to be fixed anymore. It's perfect, it's absolutely fantastic. All of it. My books, my house, my father, Hunter, even school. Why did I ever think to escape it? I want to keep living, no matter how awful it is at times. But the freezing lake water presses on my eardrums, burns my sinuses, shoots terrible pain through my broken bones.

"Somebody get me out of here!" escapes from my mouth. The words make no noise, only bubbles trailing into murk. I involuntarily bend, wanting to cry out from the sharp pain in my chest. My body forms a perfect ninety degree angle. The trajectory of my gaze hits the bottom of the lake. I'm suspended about ten feet above, balancing in that place of not moving down anymore and not moving up yet, a momentary pause. It's dark. I'm cold. No, I'm not just cold, my skin is on fire, my muscles are mashed into one gigantic bruise. My head feels as if it's become a heavy bronze bell that tolls loudly, its walls shudder to the rhythm of my still beating heart.

I try kicking up and moving my arms, when darkness parts and a white figure swims toward me. It looms closer, now about twenty feet away, now ten. I find myself face-to-face with Canosa. Her hair resembles a floating white blanket, her wide-set eyes dominate her face, her skin glowing softly as if rubbed with a phosphorescent cream. Her gaze plucks the newfound strength out of me. I can't move, I feel paralyzed. She smiles, showing two rows of perfect teeth, too white for this darkness. It's not a happy smile, it's a type of final smile that's full of knowledge I'm lacking, and I choke on premonition. She licks her lips, cups my frozen face in her equally cold hands, and pulls me closer.

Our faces nearly touch. With one hand, she pinches my nose, and with the other, she clamps my mouth shut, probably to prevent me from inhaling water. As she does it, a little bit of liquid seeps in between my lips. I swallow. It tastes like an old pond where fish go to die, to rot, to float belly up for birds to feast on.

She turns my face left and right, examining it.

"Jawbone too square, nose too small, all features out of balance. Short forehead, eyes set too close, but a nice blue color. I like that. Eyebrows okay. Small ears. Fine, that'll do. But why, on earth, did you have to chop off your hair!?"

If I thought I was paralyzed before, I'm petrified now. Partly because this is the last thing I expected her to say; partly because she told me everything I hate about myself as if it's me talking. And mostly because this is the first time I've heard anyone speak underwater. Momentary curiosity pushes my panic aside. I watch her lips and tongue move freely, with no air bubbles coming out. Every word is amplified, as if spoken into a microphone, yet garbled and slightly distorted. Sound travels four times faster through fluid medium than air. Right. My mind escapes into facts again, but only for a fraction of a second. Lack of air, and an urge to inhale, yanks me back to reality.

I changed my mind, please, let me go. I wanna live. If I don't breathe in now, I will die! I scream in my head, but my body makes not a single movement of protest. I fall limp in Canosa's hold, mesmerized by her stare, fearing my chest will explode if I don't inhale soon.

She digs her fingers deeper into my skin, and scans my body. Her face is radiant with luminosity. Her voice sends vibrations deep inside my ears.

"And no breasts. Fantastic. How do you expect to lure men without breasts? Explain to me, please?"

That does it. I want to disappear. I want to cover up my pathetic chest, remembering that I'm naked from the waist up, but my arms won't move. Perhaps sensing this, Canosa's grip relaxes and she bites her lip.

"Oh, did I hurt your feelings? I'm sorry."

I can't tell if she's making fun of me or is just really crazy.

"I know how to make you feel better. Let's talk about your jump. That was one big leap, wouldn't you agree? You're a brave girl, I'm so proud of you. How did it make you feel? Was it fun?" She cocks her head to the side. I wiggle in her grip, feeling an oncoming dizziness, not caring anymore about my looks or her looks or anything else. I wish I had never jumped, I want to tell her. If you take me to the surface right now, I'll never do it again, I swear. Just give me another chance. Please. Pretty please. I don't want to die.

She's indifferent to my silent plea. She looks behind her and calls out to the other sirens.

"Girls, come over here. Look who I got. What do you think, she'll work out okay?"

I watch with a mix of horror and awe as the other sirens emerge from the depths of the lake and swim closer, forming a circle around me. At this point, the need to breathe makes me convulse; I feel like my brain will explode from pressure and my lungs will burst into a million pieces. Canosa shifts her hand and holds me up by the neck. I'm a freshly caught fish to her, struggling to get off the hook. Oblivious to my thrashing, the sirens join hands and float in a circle akin to a pack of mocking kids at school, about to call me names and make fun of me until I shed first tear. That's what girls always did, that's what these will do. Sisters? Newfound sisters, really? What was I thinking? How much more hopeful, naïve, and needy could I get? They're devious femme fatales who are about to kill me. Panic takes over and I let go of my bladder, feeling urine warm my thighs, thankful for not eating anything in the last twenty-four hours. That would've been a disaster.

"Look, girls, I think she wants to tell us something," Canosa says. "What is it, silly girl? Go ahead, don't be shy, we're all friends. We're your sisters, remember? It's what you told us for years, didn't you? Isn't that what you wanted, to become one of us? Well then, this is what it feels like to be at the bottom of the sea. Get used to it." Her smile transforms into a sinister grin.

Other sirens call out to me and to each other. They clap, which underwater looks more like doing weird upper arm exercises.

"Hell, yeah, we're getting another sister!"

"I always wanted one."

"Shut up, Pisinoe. Who cares about what you want? She told me she wanted to be a siren 'cause she likes my breasts."

"Don't talk to me like that. She told me she likes my hair, that's why."

"No, she doesn't!"

"She does too!"

After years of imagining them speaking in verses right out of epic Greek poems, this is the first time I hear them talk and it comes as a shock. My thoughts are interrupted. Sirens blur into what's about to become a girl fight, a tangle of limbs, swirling hair, piercing eyes. I'm trying to remember their names, but they're fading quickly.

"Shut up, all of you, you're making my head hurt!" Canosa yells.

My brain feels like it's about to explode from her voice. Why are you killing me? What did I do wrong? I don't want to die. Please, help me get out. Like watching a scene in slow motion, I see my limbs struggle to move against the thicket of water; I watch the sirens shift their heads up and laugh, pointing their fingers, emitting noises similar to a pack of dolphins that decided to titter at once.

"Girls, cut it out. She's almost ready," Canosa says. "Now, silly, you'll give me your soul. I hope it tastes all right, I hope it tastes exactly like..." She swallows.

Tastes like what? I want to ask.

"But never mind." Each syllable sends tremors deep into my torso. Circles swim in front of my eyes, distorting the sirens into what looks like fizzing pain killer tablets, the kind that never fully dissolve.

I close my eyes. Canosa lets go of my nose and mouth, and I gulp water involuntarily while someone grabs my feet and pulls me down. My feet touch sand. At the same time, stinky water rushes into my lungs scorching everything in its flow. Yet I keep gulping it, hoping for a thread of oxygen, for a bubble of air to survive.

When my body can't take any more water, gray light begins seeping in shafts through the darkness. Someone pulls my eyelids up. Two light bulbs blind me. No, it's not light bulbs, it's Canosa's eyes. Two gazing projectors—cold flickering fluorescents, with a bluish tint to them. She locks her gaze with mine and begins to sing.

"We live in the meadow,

But you don't know it.

Our grass is your sorrow,

But you won't show it."

It's the same song, but it feels as if she sings it with more force, directing it to some being trapped inside my chest; its gentle movement tickles my ribs, like it did last time. My soul. I want to turn myself inside out and scratch, to get rid of this impossible itch. I notice that I don't feel much of anything anymore, no pain from broken bones, no freezing water, no urge to breathe, no headache. I'm simply numb.

The other sirens float around me, glowing, grotesquely twisted in motion with their arms and legs stretched out, their eyes directed at me. Greedy. I'm fresh meat to them, and they're starving, yet Canosa is the one who's having the meal. I wonder if they hate her for that. Their skin is devoid of color as if someone dumped an entire supermarket's supply of bleach over their heads and forgot to stir. In this darkness, I notice how everything about them is white, not the brilliant white of a new T-shirt, but the white of an old, stinky washrag in the school cafeteria. I shudder.

"Give us your pain,

Dip in our song.

Notes afloat,

Listen and love..."

They huddle close to me, reaching out, until the one who I think is Pisinoe, the youngest, touches my arm and then tears her hand away, as if in fear. I frown. My nerve endings must have atrophied from hypothermia, because I feel nothing. Pisinoe smiles widely and touches me again. As if that was a signal, the other sirens begin poking me, their hair floating, eyes glistening, fingers trembling in lust. Canosa keeps singing.

Perhaps emboldened by her indifference, the sirens pinch me, stroke me, squeeze me, and muss up my hair, as if I'm the most adorable baby doll they've ever seen. I gulp in horror because I still don't feel their touch. All this time Canosa floats directly in front of me, her gaze unbroken.

"We wade in the lake.

Why do you frown?

Our wish is your wake.

Why do you drown?"

As if deciding that her sisters had enough fun, Canosa snatches me away from them and holds me by the waist, peering deep inside my very core, willing my soul to come up. It beats against my clamped teeth and I know that I won't be able to contain it much longer before it pushes my mouth open.

"Give us your soul,

Breathe in our song.

Words apart,

Listen and love.

Listen and love.

Listen and love."

My lips pried apart, I watch a stream of milky substance drift from my mouth and into Canosa's. Her face becomes immobile, her eyes turn blank like two silver spoons licked clean. All goes still. The other sirens stop moving and float quietly, their eyes glistening.

"We stir up your hope,

Calm down and let go.

Our love is your slope,

Slide here, don't forego."

Canosa raises her voice higher. It trails through the water, amplified by the lake, reminiscent of a thousand violins filling the space with mint that can calm a sore throat or a high fever. I want it to never end. I'm not scared anymore. The water clears up, and my soul trails through it like a tendril of smoke.

"Give us your life,

End in our song.

Because you

Listen and love.

Listen and love.

Listen and love."

I retch and watch the end of my soul escape me into Canosa's mouth. A part of me gets lost in this moment forever. She sneers and gulps it up, licks her lips, closes her eyes, then burps. Our gaze broken, I become emptiness, devoid of any thought or feeling. I hear a strange echo, as if my soul is thrashing in a foreign ribcage. It sounds as gentle as rustling book pages, with undertones from my favorite songs and dripping water. It sounds...tart.

Canosa lets go of me, spreads her arms over her head, and hollers a guttural, painful, piercing cry. It leaves her mouth and enters mine, turning water to milk once again. Its terrible taste makes me want to throw up, yet it forces itself in, frosting my trachea, turning my chest to ice, and making my body feel heavy and swollen. This must be a part of her soul, given to transform me, to mutate me, to turn me into a siren. Before I can think anything else, her voice fills me to a bursting point, as if someone turned the volume up, louder, louder. I can't stand the vibration, it's about to pop my ribcage, pulsing to the rhythm of my heart.

"Aaaaaah!" I cry.

The skin behind my ears tears apart. Desire to get rid of the noise overpowers my physical pain and pours out into another yelp. Now the muscles behind my ears tear open. I wail, shaking the water around me. And then I realize that I just made a sound underwater without breathing and I promptly close my mouth shut, astounded, processing what I'm feeling.

"Pity I can't have you for breakfast every morning, Ailen Bright. You taste pretty good, actually, just like I expected. How to explain it? A sweet soul-cake of innocence, sprinkled with bits of hope, made from scratch. Delicious...and tart." Canosa burps again, covering her mouth. "Excuse me."

Everything she says sounds impossibly loud. I hear every vowel, every movement of her lips. The pressing and the rolling of her tongue. The gushing of water between her words. And my soul. It rustles softly inside her chest. I clasp my ears to shut it out, not feeling the freezing water anymore or my bones or my skin or my lungs, yet strangely suffocating.

"Go ahead, don't be shy. Inhale," Canosa says.

Wincing at the sound of her voice, I decide to try. Water cools my throat and exists behind my ears. I inhale more water, and it sort of chills me, spreading a pleasant calm through my chest and exiting through...gills? I raise my hand to touch them, two raw wounds that have been recently opened. Two smooth slits under my fingers, rhythmically opening and closing. They must have formed when I was screaming.

"All right, then, you're done. I think we need to make this a proper occasion. Wouldn't you agree, girls? Happy Birthday, Ailen Bright. Welcome to our coveted siren family. Well, we welcome you, but you are not part of it yet." Canosa spreads her arms wide and attempts a bow, but floats upside down instead to the snickering of the other sirens. They swim up with the clear intent of touching me again.

"Give her space. Shoo," Canosa says.

The sirens float away, unhappy, yet obedient.

"Take a look at yourself, do you like what you see? Much better, I think. A far cry from that flat-chested, broken looking girl with unruly hair, I'd say."

I lift my arms. They're white. I wiggle my fingers, one by one, and try flexing my feet. Everything seems to be working as before, even better. I appear to be a faded self, just a notch, a few grades of saturation lost. The water feels lukewarm, which means I'm as cold as a fish from a freezer. I reach again behind my ears, unable to believe that actual water is sprouting through my gills.

"This feels weird," I say and clasp my mouth, astounded at the power it emits. I can see with sharp clarity, make out every siren, and remember each by name. My heart wants to jump out of my chest.

"I'm a siren. I'm a siren. I'm not dead. I'm a siren." I want to keep mumbling this over and over again, to believe it. As if sensing my distress, the sirens float up to me.

There is Pisinoe, the youngest, giggling. Next to her Teles, the perfect one, snickers into her chubby fist. Behind them is Raidne, the one whose long, curly hair I envy. And, to the side, as if she's special somehow, Ligeia, the only one not smiling or making any sound; the shrill one, with the perfect bust. Looking at it, I quickly avert my eyes and look down, hopeful. A surge of joy pierces me at the sight of two beautiful, perfectly round protrusions. I quickly cup them with my hands, both thrilled and ashamed at my nakedness.

"I can breathe underwater. I can talk underwater. I'm a siren. I'm not dead. And I've got breasts," I say, and swallow.

"What's the problem, you don't like them?" Canosa floats close to me and peers into my eyes.

"I do, I do," I quickly respond, afraid she'll take them back. I wonder why I don't hear my soul anymore? It's as if she absorbed it.

"Good. I thought you'd approve."

Just as I'm opening my mouth to ask her about my soul, a distant warble distracts me. It comes from above.

"Everything is so loud. What's that noise?" I say.

"Ah, that? It's food. People's souls. Hear it?"

I concentrate. There are car honks, rain patter, pumping hearts, breathing, and, above all, a multitude of noises full of things people do: music they listen to, things they say, sounds from hobbies, the mechanical whirr of tools, a clinking of household items, an occasional hush of a paintbrush, a baby's cries, the smacking of a football, dog barks, and a million more. They mix into one breathing organism, fluctuating in its pitch, overlapping and creating a cacophony of impossible beauty—a pattern of human existence itself. Wishes, hopes, and dreams, orchestrated into a gentle concert that is both overwhelming and mouthwatering. I begin detecting flavors.

"Will I be able to taste them? Does every human soul have a taste?" I ask, instantly shrinking, remembering how I'm not supposed to ask stupid questions lest Canosa gets mad at me again.

"Babies are my favorite; their souls are so sweet, sweeter than candy," Canosa says, then grins. A chill runs down my spine.

"Babies?" I recoil. "Why would you eat a baby?"

"Why not? They'll grow up and die anyway. Would you rather live in pain for years and years or live happy for a few months and die without knowing what got you? Cause of death: lullaby. That's how I wanted to go." She looks through me, at something distant.

"So, if you converted me, then who converted—" I begin, when Pisinoe pinches my arm, hard. I hold down a yelp of pain and stare at her. She and the others glare at me, fingers to their lips.

"Anyway, we can't stay here for long," Canosa says, ignoring me. "Police are about to arrive to look for your lovely body. And I don't like their souls. They leave an oily aftertaste. Ugh."

At the word 'taste,' tightness spreads across my chest, nagging at me like a stomachache, except it's rather a yearning for fullness, a need for sound to fill my void.

"I think I'm hungry," I say, licking my lips and looking up.