Persephone

Persephone By Kaitlin Bevis


Chapter I

“Persephone…”
I hunched over, doing my best to ignore the sound of my name being whispered on the wind. It curled around me in a sensuous breeze. Once I would have turned around, tried to find whoever said my name. Now I knew better. There was no one there. There was never anyone there.
Too bad I hadn’t figured that out before the whole school began to think that I was crazy.
“Persephone…”
I was starting to think they were right. I could feel someone watching me. Eyes boring a hole in the back of my neck, crawling over my skin. The hushed sounds of my classmates did little to make me feel safe. Fabric swished as they shifted and moved. Nails scratched skin, lips smacked, and someone breathed too loudly. Above it all Professor Homer spoke with quiet excitement. Rare in teachers, but he was still new.
Something brushed against my spine and I twisted around, heart in my throat, only to see the innocent branches of the bushes swaying in the wind.
“Is everything all right, Kora?” Professor Homer’s glasses glinted in the sun. He shielded his eyes with his hand, brown eyes crinkling in concern.
“Sorry.” I shifted away from the bush and faced Professor Homer. He waited for Rachel and the twins, Jessica and Ashley, to stop giggling before continuing the story.
I ducked my head to ignore their laughs and whispers. The air around me stiffened, ice cold. No one else noticed. My breathing slowed, and I forced myself to stay rooted to the ground, as solid and unmoving as the gray trunk of the oak tree in front of me. It took every fiber of my being not to squeeze my eyes shut.
Please don’t see me.
The thought was as illogical as a deer praying not to be spotted by a hunter. I was already in the hunter’s sights.
“Are you okay?”
I jumped at the sound of Melissa’s whisper; her hazel eyes remained riveted to Professor Homer to fool him into believing she was paying attention. He narrowed his eyes in her direction, not missing a beat in the story he was telling the class.
It’s not real, I reminded myself, and latched on to the distraction she provided. I gave Professor Homer an innocent smile, touching my thumb to my chest to sign I was fine to Melissa. We’d learned American Sign Language years ago to share secrets, but ASL wasn’t often discreet. To learn another “secret” language, we’d signed up for Latin.
It hadn’t taken long to realize vocabulary wasn’t the focus of Latin class. No, we had to learn about declensions, cases, conjugations, and sentence structures. No wonder the language was dead.
Professor Homer tried to keep it interesting by mixing in classical education and mythology. Since tomorrow was the start of winter break, and two-thirds of our classmates were taking make up exams, we were taking what he called a “mental health day.” He leaned against the trunk of the oak tree, brown loafers peeking out from beneath the cuffs of his tailored pants. A yellow legal pad full of scrawled notes was propped haphazardly against the tree trunk.
A shift in his tone caught my attention. He rolled up the sleeves of his blue dress shirt, moving his hands as he told the story. He leaned forward, voice becoming ominous.
“Oreithyia danced upon the river bank, unaware she was being watched.”
A cloud passed over the sun, bathing the class in sudden shade. Goose bumps rose on my arms as the temperature plummeted. I flinched when a gust of wind knocked over the legal pad with a thump. The yellow pages fluttered open, sending loose scraps of paper floating toward the lake.
“Suddenly, the God of Winter, Boreas, swept her away in a cloud and…” Professor Homer faltered at the sight of the escaping papers. “Married her.”
I rolled my eyes. At sixteen, it wasn’t as though Melissa and I were clueless about what happened to poor Oreithyia. Beside me, Melissa nodded as though I’d spoken aloud.
Professor Homer continued. “For nearly a century afterward, the people of Athens traced their lineage back to Oreithyia and Boreas, claiming to share the blood of the gods. Can anyone tell me what’s special about this myth?”
“It explains winter, right?” Rachel’s voice drew my gaze past Alex to where she was perched on the opposite end of the short stone wall our class was using as a bench, flanked by Ashley and Jessica.
“Right!” Professor Homer smiled, and every girl sighed. “The ancient Greeks didn’t know why the seasons changed, so they came up with myths to explain it. Every year, on the anniversary of Oreithyia’s abduction, it grows colder for the length of her captivity.”
A chill crept up my spine. I hated winter. Luckily I lived in Athens, Georgia, where winter was rarely serious until late January and over by April. I thought of Oreithyia, swept up into that cold cloud, and shuddered.
“What is with you today?” Melissa asked when the class broke up.
“That shirt looks really good on you. You should wear purple more often.” I stalled, reaching down to gather my things. I didn’t know how to put my paranoia into words without sounding crazy.
“Thanks.” Melissa’s narrow cheeks flushed against her olive-colored skin. She gave me a wry look to show she wasn’t oblivious to the fact I’d avoided the question, but to my relief she didn’t press me further. “Do you want to eat here?”
“That’s a great idea!” Rachel piped up, passing behind Melissa. “It’s so beautiful out.” Before we could stop her she called the twins over. Melissa gave me an apologetic look.
A yellow page landed at my feet. I plucked it from the ground, and walked to where Professor Homer was gathering stray pages before the wind could snatch them away again. I knelt to help him.
“Don’t you know it’s a half-day?” He placed a wrinkled page in the middle of his legal pad. “Shouldn’t you be fleeing this awful place?”
I inclined my head toward the parking lot. It was just visible over the hill, but even from here it was clear it was gridlocked by soccer moms picking up their kids. On full days the lower school got out earlier than we did, but half-days messed everything up. “I don’t think anyone is getting anywhere fast.”
“Smart girl.” He smiled, meeting my eyes. His pupils dilated, brown eyes disappearing into black. I looked down at the papers. The last time I’d seen that, the eight-year-old I’d been paired with for the tree decorating ceremony had professed his love for me in front of the whole school. I’d been humiliated!
Professor Homer’s hand brushed mine when we reached for the same sheaf of paper. He jerked his hand back as though he’d been bitten by a pit viper and sprang to his feet. “Could you rescue what’s left of these and drop them off before you leave? I’ll be around for a while this afternoon.”
My nod proved unnecessary as he was already receding in the distance toward the circle of white buildings on the horizon. I felt the eyes lingering on me and gulped, finding myself alone at the edge of the lake. As I grabbed the rest of the papers, my hand paused over a yellow page, one half submerged in the water, flakes of frost climbing up the other half.
“What the hell…?” I closed my eyes and shook my head. I really was crazy if I was seeing frost on this perfect sunny day.
“Hey, Kora!” Melissa called. “You gonna eat or not?”
“Yeah.” I rose to my feet, turning so I didn’t have to look at the lake. A crackling sound came from the water, and I quickened my pace until I reached the stone wall. I smiled in thanks at Melissa for remembering to call me by my middle name. It was easier to say and a lot more normal than my first name. Melissa and my mom still called me Persephone, but they’d both known me since birth, so I let them get away with it.
“Did you see that look he gave you?” Jessica asked.
I gave her a thanatotic glare, shoved the papers in my purse, and sat next to Melissa. Behind us a trio of seniors evidently came to the same conclusion about the parking lot and starting throwing a football between them.
“I bet you get an A in his class.” Ashley snickered.
“Would you mind dropping those papers off in my room?” Rachel mocked, her voice breathy as she waggled her eyebrows.
“Oh my God! Would you all shut up?” Melissa snapped. “That is not what he meant.”
“Sounds like someone’s jealous,” Jessica teased.
“Yeah,” Melissa shot back. “And it’s not me.”
I swallowed hard, checking to see if anyone else had noticed. They sat in an awkward silence, too angry at one another to hear voices in the wind. Melissa pulled her lunch from her giant leather purse, splitting half of it with me without a word. Neither of us offered any to the twins or to Rachel. Offering them food would either be construed as an invitation to eat lunch with us or to complain about their weight, and we didn’t want to offer them either.
Rachel pulled sunscreen out of her purse and squeezed it into her hands. “What?” she asked when we all looked at her. “Just because it’s December doesn’t mean I won’t burn.” She rubbed it onto her pale legs, stopping when she reached her barely legal Soffe shorts. “So, Kora, that’s all you’re going to eat?”
“Why?” I glanced down at the whole grain roll, carrots, celery, pomegranate seeds, and blueberries. “What’s the matter with it?”
“That’s, like, zero points.” Ashley’s voice was layered with false sympathy.
“She means there’s not many calories there,” Jessica explained. Her brown hair was chopped short in a pixie cut to distinguish her from her twin’s longer hair. “Mom’s dieting again, and she’s labeled every package in our house with a black marker so she knows how many points they are.” She rolled her eyes to show her opinion of that particular dieting method.
“Yeah, you should eat meat or cheese or something,” Rachel added.
“I’m a vegan.” It wasn’t an animal rights thing; I’d been this way all my life. My mom and I just preferred to eat things that came from the ground.
Rachel shook her head and pulled out her phone. “Here. I’m gifting you an e-book that deals with your problem.”
“What problem?” Melissa’s eyes flashed.
Rachel let out a deep breath through closed lips that puffed her red bangs into the air. “Kora.” She spoke haltingly, as though she didn’t want to continue, but her eyes glittered, telling another story. “You don’t have to starve yourself to lose weight. I mean, the amount you’ve lost already isn’t healthy.”
All ninety pounds of Melissa’s thin frame quivered with anger. “Oh?”
“You’re different.” Jessica waved her hand. “You’re taller. Kora, you’re like, what, four-ten?”
“Five foot.”
“Exactly.”
“Is that what you guys were whispering about during class?” I asked, incredulous. “My problem?” I put the word in air quotes.
“What?” Ashley wrinkled her forehead, and then laughed. “No, some idiot freshman asked Joel out this morning and got completely rejected. It was brutal.” She giggled. “You should have been there.”
“Oh.” I really was paranoid. No one had been talking about me, and no one was watching me at all. It was probably all in my head. My shoulders loosened, and I allowed myself to relax.
“Don’t change the subject, Kora. You don’t have to be afraid to ask for help.” Rachel’s voice was so sugary I felt ill.
I took a big gulp from my water bottle to avoid protesting. Instead I let Melissa chew them out, her voice tight with anger.
I did eat, just not big meals. I liked to snack throughout the day. I hadn’t done anything to lose weight. My body slimmed down and toned up of its own accord after I turned sixteen.
I heard soft laughter on the breeze, the sound so cold I shivered. The hunter’s eyes bored holes in the back of my neck. I rubbed it, wondering if I should tell someone about the feelings I’d been having.
Tell them what? I wondered. That someone has been following me? Sorry, Mom, can’t describe them because I’ve never actually seen this person. It’s just a feeling.
“Hey!” Melissa waved a manicured hand in front of my face. “Where did you go?”
“Pluto.” I blushed as I wondered how long she’d been trying to get my attention. “Sorry.”
“Did you remember to bring the tickets for the Orpheus concert?”
“Are you ready to go backstage?”
“No way!” Melissa exclaimed and let out an ear-piercing squeal, pumping her fist into the air. “No way!”
“How did you get tickets?” Ashley folded her legs under her and leaned forward. “It’s been sold out for months!”
I shrugged. “My mom managed it somehow.”
“That’s in Atlanta, right?” Jessica asked.
“Yeah. We’re staying in a hotel.” Melissa managed to keep the smugness from her voice, but I could still tell she enjoyed the importance of that statement.
“By yourself?” Rachel asked in disbelief.
“Our mom would never go for that.” Ashley shared a look with her sister.
I suppressed a grin. My mom trusted me. Unlike most parents, if I told her I was going to follow her rules, she believed me. “I’m going to have to work at my mom’s flower shop every minute of the break to make up for this, but it’s completely worth it.”
“Absolutely,” the girls agreed.
“I want that big cardboard cut-out of him they have in the mall for my birthday.” Jessica’s cheeks turned pink when we turned to look at her. “Oh come on, who wouldn’t want to wake up to that in their bedroom. That man is a god.”
Rachel snickered and started to say something, but something behind me caught her attention. Her eyes widened. I heard my name carried on the wind, felt the piercing stare, then gasped as something hit me from behind hard enough to force the breath from my lungs. I fell forward, gasping. Melissa’s hands shot out to me. Rachel and the twins cried out in surprise.
A shadow fell over me.