Page 25 of Persephone's Curse
“Yes,” Evelyn agreed.
“When she threw the glass at my head, do you think she really meant to hit me, or she didn’t, like she said?” Clara asked quietly. It wasn’t the first time she’d asked that question, and nobody knew how to answer her, because nobody knew.
“She’s just adjusting,” Evelyn said. We weren’t sure what she was adjustingto,but still. It sounded like a nice excuse, so we didn’t press it.
Footsteps on the stairs and then Dad was in the doorway, squinting, rubbing at his temple. He surveyed the room, the Monopoly board, the fourth spot that he must have assumed was for Bernadette but had really been for Henry, who of course by that point had disappeared (he had never shown himself to my father, and I wasn’t sure my father would even be able to see him, had he done so).
“I don’t think Bernadette is going to be up for any games tonight, girls,” he said sadly.
He went into the kitchen and came back a few moments later with a glass of water, which he took upstairs.
“Let’s just play,” Henry said, there again. “We might as well just play.”
“Oldest goes first,” Clara said brightly, and handed the dice to Evelyn.
She stared at them in her hand for a long time before letting them tumble to the floor.
III
Persephone had two children, Melinoë and Zagreus. Zagreus, the prince of the Underworld, was the god of hunting and rebirth. Melinoë, his sister, was the goddess of madness and nightmares, but also of ghosts and spirits. She could speak to them, converse with them, guide them, command them. She loved them, just as her father, Hades, loved them. People debate endlessly over whether Melinoë was agoodgoddess or abadgoddess but that is ultimately irrelevant, because in the end she loved her favored subjects endlessly: the mad, the dead, the sleepless.…
September gave way to October, and it grew chilly and gray in the city. The days were getting shorter. It was dark when Evelyn and I walked to school in the mornings and it was dark when we walked home. Sometimes we’d meet up with Clara at Todd’s and do homework together at one of the back tables, pressed against a wall with endless hot chocolate delivered by Todd himself, who was a friend of Dad’s and who had obviously, judging by the expression on his face, heard about Bernadette. Otherwise we’dnever have gotten away with the homework thing; there were signs everywhere—NO LAPTOPS!!!
We made quite the trio. Evelyn: sad and morose. Me: lonely and irritable. And Clara: frustrated with her painting, withdrawn and sullen. You knew things were really bad when Clara descended into a dark mood. Her painting wasn’t progressing how she wanted; she had covered up half the canvas with a wash of white paint. I had found her late one night with a brush in her hand, murmuring to herself angrily.
After that night with the broken glass, we hadn’t seen Bernadette for four days, and then she was gone in the middle of the night; I’d woken up and just knew, could feel that four had become three, that one Farthing sister was missing from the nest. I went upstairs early and peeked into her room. The bed was made, the clothes that usually littered the floor had been folded and put away, the dirty glasses and candy wrappers had been disposed of.
“She left,” Evelyn had said from the doorway of her room. She’d had a blank expression on her face.
“Gone where?” I’d asked.
She’d shrugged.
To Aunt Bea’s, it had turned out.
“InVermont?” Clara had shrieked at breakfast when our parents told us.
“A little bit of country air will do her good,” Dad had said, keeping his voice bright and calm. Mom hadn’t been there; we’d assumed she’d driven Bernadette north. She’d returned a few days later, sans Bernadette, and none of us had asked any of the questions we’d wanted to, likeHow long is this going to be?andWhat is wrong with her?andDo we need to be seriously concerned here?
Now, at Todd’s, we trudged through our school assignments and diligently plodded along with essays and Clara held an enormous English textbook in front of her face, reading some short story that made her knit her eyebrows together in maybe confusion or maybe dislike; I didn’t ask.
After my second mug of hot chocolate I felt bloated and a little too warm. Todd’s was filling up with its early dinner crowd and I was having trouble concentrating over the increasing volume, the dull murmur of voices.
“I think I’m going to go home,” I said.
“I’m in the middle of this,” Evelyn said, not taking her eyes away from her laptop screen.
“Same,” Clara said.
Neither of them looked up at me, so I gathered my things and left them behind, stepping out into the sharp chill of the night, grateful it was almost the weekend, ready to sleep in on Saturday and put my schoolbooks away for a few days. We were split fairly down the middle for school—Bernadette and I had always been average students, Evelyn would likely be valedictorian, and Clara was constantly fielding scholarships for private high schools around the city. She took each letter she received, gave it a brief once-over, and tossed it in the trash.
“It’s a grotesque waste of money,” she always said, never minding the fact that said scholarships often offered full rides.
I was only wearing my usual sweatshirt and I raised the hood to try and stave off the chill of the night, even though it was less than a block to our house and I walked quickly, as if I could avoid the breeze.
Mom was coming down the stairs when I reached the sidewalkin front of the house, and I stopped and waited for her. She didn’t see me until she was almost on top of me, then she looked up and jumped a mile and grabbed at her chest dramatically.
“Jesus,”she said. “What gives?”
