Persephone

Chapter II

I knew I wasn’t crazy! I didn’t have time to wonder if insanity might be preferable before I felt hands grip me from behind.
“Are you okay?” It was Joel. He picked up the ball and threw it back in the general direction of his friends. “Don, I told you to be careful where you’re throwing that thing!”
“I’ll live,” I managed, simultaneously relieved that this guy wasn’t the creepy name whisperer and annoyed at the prospect that I might still be losing my mind. I pushed myself off the ground and sat up, hands moving automatically to fix my hair.
I found myself staring into dazzling blue eyes. He shot me a confident grin and held out a hand. “I’m Joel.”
The introduction was pointless. I knew who he was. Everyone knew who he was. Unlike most of the boys at this school who’d been here since preschool, he’d transferred here for his senior year. I’d seen him around but never worked up the courage to talk to him.
When I didn’t say anything or accept his extended hand, his smile faltered. “Persephone, right?”
“Kora,” I corrected. Melissa’s sharp elbow dug into my side. “Um, and this is Melissa.” She shot me an annoyed look and then gave a pointed look at his extended hand.
Right. I flushed and gripped his hand. I felt a pinprick of pain when static electricity zinged through my fingers with an audible pop.
“Hey, Melissa.” He gave her an easy grin and swept his blond hair out of his face.
Her cheeks colored. “Hi.”
“I’m Rachel.” Rachel thrust her hand at him. I jerked back when her hand came close to grazing my face. Her voice prompted the twins to chime in with their names. Joel nodded, but didn’t spare them a glance.
“Didn’t I see you at the last game?” he continued when it became obvious I was too tongue tied to speak.
“She doesn’t go to the games.” Jessica scooted closer to Joel.
“Yeah,” Ashley chimed in. “No school spirit, I guess.”
“But I’m at every game.” Rachel fluffed her hair, as if that was always what she’d been planning to do and Joel hadn’t left her hanging. “I saw you make the final touchdown. I’ve never seen anyone run that fast.”
Melissa gave them all a scathing look. “Kora, I’m going to go get my stuff. I’ll meet you at the car. And weren’t you guys just saying that you were running late?”
“No,” Rachel said.
Melissa’s cheerful voice belied her death glare. “Yes, you were.”
They got the hint and left. I could have killed Melissa. I didn’t know what to say to guys! There was an awkward silence and then I stood.
“I should get these back to Professor Homer.” I clutched the yellow papers in my hand and started toward the Lampkin Building.
Joel was beside me in a flash. “I’ll walk you.” He didn’t sound confident anymore. He sounded self-conscious. “I mean, um, if you don’t mind.”
I smiled. “I don’t mind.”
We made our way down the cobblestone path woven through a trail of magnolia trees and harvest maples with bright red leaves.
“So…” Joel trailed off when we reached the classroom. “About the football, I’m really…”
“It’s fine,” I assured him.
He hesitated. “Hey, I was wondering, did you wanna go—” He touched my hand. I glanced up at him, meeting his eyes. His pupils widened and he broke off mid-sentence.
He leaned toward me. I backed up and met the door of the classroom. I hadn’t realized how little space there was between us before.
“I…um…I should go,” I squeaked, fumbling behind me for the doorknob. I opened the door and practically fell into the classroom.
Confusion marred Joel’s features. “Right. I’m so sorry.” He turned bright red. “See you,” he muttered before retreating down the hall.
Like most classrooms at Athens Academy, the door from outside opened straight into the classroom. Sunlight flooded the room from the floor to ceiling windows. I waited until Joel was out of sight before I turned to find Professor Homer.
He was sitting at his desk behind the glass wall separating his office from the classroom, red pen dancing across some unfortunate student’s paper. I walked past the posters depicting ancient Rome and laid the papers on his desk, moving the Colloseum paperweight on top of them so they wouldn’t fly away. He gave a distracted wave, hunching forward over the paper. His pen made an angry red slash across the page. I hoped it wasn’t mine.
I ducked into the bathroom on my way to the car, frowning. It wasn’t like Professor Homer to just wave a student off. He didn’t even tell me to have a nice vacation. I gulped, wondering if it really was my paper he’d been grading. Was my translation of The Illiad so awful he couldn’t even look at me? I closed the stall door, pushing the sliding lock into its bracket. I was calculating what failing my final would do to my grade when I heard Jessica laughing.
“What would he even see in her? She’s just so weird.” The door slammed and I jumped. “I don’t get why she tries so hard. And have you looked at her eyes? They have to be contacts, right? Nobody has eyes that color.”
“What about her hair?” Ashley asked.
There was a second of silence and I could imagine the three of them looking at each other. “Bottle blonde,” they said in unison.
Are they talking about me? My eyes were green, but I’d never noticed anything unnatural about them. They were the color of a new blade of grass, just like my mother’s. I touched a lock of my honey-blonde hair. They couldn’t be talking about me. My hair color hadn’t changed in the last thirteen years. My mom would have a fit if I dyed it.
“That’s not the only thing about her that’s fake.” Jessica snickered. “I heard she had work done over the summer.”
Definitely not me, then.
“She acts so innocent, too! Melissa’s practically her guard dog.” Rachel’s voice echoed through the bathroom. “It’s sickening.”
“I heard she’s with Professor Homer,” Jessica said.
“Ugh. Do you think they’ve ever done it on that couch?” Ashley asked. Professor Homer’s room was famous for having a leather couch next to the bookshelf.
“It’s so wrong of her to lead Joel on,” Rachel said.
“You want to know something gross?” Jessica asked. “She’s probably doing Professor Homer right now.”
The girls squealed, and Jessica continued. “They’re probably on that couch doing—”
I flushed the toilet, drowning out whatever gross thing she said next. I forced myself to take a deep breath and open the speckled gray stall door, restraining myself from throwing it open.
I met their stares, not looking away until they dropped their gazes. With measured steps, I moved across the gleaming white tiles until I reached the sink and washed my hands. I wanted to break the silence, but why make it easier for them?
Proud my hands weren’t shaking, I dug a brush out of my purse and fixed my hair, and straightened my blue peasant dress, turning to make sure I looked okay from behind.
The girls stood in the doorway as if made of stone. I looked at them and kept my arms by my side instead of crossing them like I wanted to.
Jessica mustered up the courage to speak, her voice indignant. “You—”
“I was using the restroom. Maybe next time you want to spread garbage in a public place, you’ll be more careful.”
“I’m sorry.” Rachel tripped over each word. “We shouldn’t have said—”
“No, you’re not. You’re saying that because you got caught.”
Ashley rolled her eyes. “Oh, like you and Melissa don’t talk about us when we’re not around.”
“I don’t think about you at all when you’re not around. Were you planning to keep me in here all day?” They looked at me, confused, and I motioned behind them. “The door.”
“Oh.” Jessica let out a nervous laugh. “Oops.” They moved out of my way and I left, quickstepping to avoid the door slamming on my heel.


When I reached my yellow bug I slammed the door so hard the white gerbera daisy fell out of its vase on the dashboard.
“What happened?” Melissa asked. Her seatbelt was buckled and she had Facebook pulled up on her phone. How much time had I wasted listening to that garbage?
I shook my head and scooped my daisy up with a smile. It was hard to stay angry in my car. My mom had bought it for my sixteenth birthday last March, and I’d used my meager paychecks from the shop to add the daisy rims to the tires and the flower cut outs to the brake lights. I even had a wildflower license tag that spelled my name.
“Well?” Melissa asked after we turned out of the parking lot.
“Can you call our moms and let them know we’re on our way? I don’t want to waste another minute, and they won’t talk to me if they think I’m driving.”
“I already did. They said to drive safe.”
“Always.” I turned onto Timothy Road. “Ugh. You will not believe what I overheard!”
My recap of the conversation lasted until we got to Highway 316, and Melissa’s colorful descriptions of our classmates and what fates she believed should befall them took up the remainder of the forty-five minute trip to Atlanta.
She fell silent when Highways 75 and 85 merged and a wall of semi-trucks converged on either side of us. I wished I could just stay in the slower moving right lane, but it kept turning into an exit lane. I stayed in the middle lane for safety, keeping what I felt was a reasonable distance behind another intimidating semi-truck. A red convertible squeezed in front of me, followed by a black SUV.
“Seriously?” I gripped the wheel.
“I think you have to follow closer.” Melissa’s voice was quiet with tension. I inched forward and almost got sideswiped by a yellow taxi that didn’t bother with a turn signal. “Or not.”
A huge gust of wind hit my car, pushing it to the left toward the left lane. A blue Civic honked, steering out of our way.
Melissa shrieked and I clung to the steering wheel, trying to keep the car in our lane. With an audible thunk, the wind pushed us from the driver’s side.
“What’s happening?” Melissa yelled.
“It’s the wind!” I clung to the wheel as a gust propelled the car forward. I resisted the urge to squeeze my eyes shut as we closed in on a black SUV.
“Why isn’t it affecting the other cars?”
I was too busy trying not to hit the other cars to notice how they were being affected. I gritted my teeth and flipped on my hazard lights, dodging into the right lane seconds before colliding with the SUV. A silver Prius had no choice but to brake and let us over.
“Bricks,” Melissa muttered. I gave her a tight smile. Melissa always joked that she was going to keep a pile of bricks in the car to chunk at bad drivers. Not a bad idea, but with our luck they would just blow back onto my windshield.
“One lane down,” I announced. “Two to go.” My knuckles ached from gripping the wheel as I tried to keep control of the car and waited for the other drivers to let me over.
“Can’t they see the hazard lights?” Melissa flipped off a white Dodge Ram roaring past us.
The wind slashed across the windshield, leaving a trail of frost in its wake. I screamed as the car careened out of control and skidded onto the shoulder.