It was a Teddy Bears song from the fifties. Diana had taught it to her, dancing on a humid porch in New Iberia.
The boy stopped, turned around, and stared at Eureka. He gaped like he’d never heard music before. By the end of the chorus, his iron grip had relaxed, and the twins slid away.
Eureka didn’t know what to do but keep singing. She had reached the song’s eerie bridge, with its one sharp note beyond her range. Cat joined in, nervously harmonizing; then her father’s rich, deep voice met Eureka’s, too.
The boy sat cross-legged before them, smiling dreamily. When he was sure the song was over, he rose to his feet, looked at Eureka, and disappeared into the recesses of the cave.
Eureka collapsed on the ground and pulled the twins to her. She closed her eyes, enjoying the fall of their breath against her chest.
“I take it that wasn’t Solon,” Dad said from his bower, and everyone managed to laugh.
“How did you do that?” Ander asked.
Eureka recognized the wonder in his eyes from a look that Diana had given her a few times. It was a look only someone who knew you really well could give, and only when they found themselves amazed to still be surprised by you.
Eureka wasn’t sure how she had done what she’d done. “I used to sing that when the twins were babies,” she said. “I don’t know why it worked.” She stared in the direction the boy had run. Her pulse raced from the victory, from the surprising, simple joy of singing.
It was the first time she’d sung since Diana died. She used to sing all the time, even make up her own songs. Back in seventh grade, when they’d still been friends, Maya Cayce had entered a school poetry contest using song lyrics lifted from Eureka’s journal. When Eureka’s stolen song won, neither girl mentioned it. Maya won twenty-five dollars, had her poem read over the intercom on Friday morning. It became the thing between them, a loaded glance over sleeping-bagged knees at slumber parties, and later, over kegs at house parties. Was Maya dead now? Had Eureka taken her life the way she’d taken Eureka’s words?
“I think that boy wanted us for his friends,” William said.
“I think we have our first fan.” Cat handed the torch back to Eureka. “Now we need a band name. And a drummer.” Cat brainstormed band names as they continued more cautiously down the narrow passage. Her rambling was comforting, even if Eureka couldn’t afford the energy to attend to every manic idea darting catlike through her friend’s mind.
White and dark blue tiles now paved the floor beneath their feet. Mounted on the wall was a marble plaque, into which were chiseled the words Memento mori.
“Thanks for the reminder,” Cat quipped, and Eureka loved that Cat knew the sign meant “Remember that you must die” even though she hadn’t been in the Latin class where Eureka had learned the phrase the year before.
“What does it mean?” William asked.
“A slave called it out to a Roman general who was going into battle,” Eureka said, hearing her Latin teacher Mr. Piscadia’s drawl in her mind. She wondered how he and his family had weathered her flood. Once she’d seen him and his son at a park walking a pair of brindle boxers. In her imagination, a giant wave washed away the memory. “It meant ‘You are mighty today, but you’re just a man, and you will fall.’ When we studied it in Latin class, everyone got hung up on how it was about vanity and pride.” Eureka sighed. “I remember thinking the words were comforting. Like, someday, all this will end.”
She looked at the others, their surprised faces. Cat’s sarcasm was a cover for her genuinely sunny disposition. Dad didn’t want to consider that his daughter felt so much pain. The twins were too young to understand. That left Ander. She met his eyes and she knew he understood. He gazed at her and didn’t have to say a word.
Ten steps later, the path dead-ended. They stopped before a crooked wooden door with brass hinges, an antique bell, and a second, silver plaque:
Lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch’entrate.