Page 9 of Persephone's Curse
“Something is obviously really wrong with her,” Evelyn said. “She doesn’t need to be cutting all her hair off, sheneedsto be resting and processing.”
“Hair grows back, Evie,” Clara said. “I think you’re being a bit dramatic.”
“A bit? A bit?A bit?” Evelyn sounded like a broken record, and she was still pacing, and the whole thing was kind of funny. I sat down on the love seat next to Henry, and he looked at me likeyou better not laugh.
“Duh,” I whispered.
“And processingwhatexactly?” Clara asked.
“That’s a great question,” Evie said. “I would love to know the answer to that question.”
“Why are you being so punchy?” I asked, and Evie didn’t respond, just let out a huge huff of air and went into her room. She slammed the door behind her.
Clara and I looked at the door, then at each other, then at Henry. He shrugged.
“I don’t know,” he said, to our unanswered question of,what is her problem?
“You always know,” Clara said.
“Not always,” he said.
I could tell he was lying.
“I can tell you’re lying,” Clara said.
Henry disappeared then, completely, which for a ghost was a pretty passive-aggressive way of getting out of a conversation.
“How does it look?” Clara asked, even though I’d already answered that.
“Really, really, good.”
“Ugh. Of course. Bernadette is the hot one.”
It was true—Berniewasthe hot one, although Clara was fast on her heels. Evelyn was pretty in a subdued, understated, sneaks-up-on-you sort of way and I was what my mother had once annoyingly referred to as alate bloomer.
“Do you think something really bad happened to her?” Clara asked, in a small kind of voice. She put down her paintbrush and came and sat next to me, in the space Henry had just vacated. “I mean, aside from the volleyball to the face.”
“I don’t know. She hasn’t said. Maybe it was something big that happened or maybe it was more of…”
“A lot of little things?”
“Maybe, yeah.”
“She should have taken a gap year,” Clara said. Now that she was one year away from high school, she’d become very obsessed with the idea of taking a gap year. She had a map on her bedroom wall of all the places she’d go. She wanted me to go with her.
“You can’t take a gap year in the middle of college,” I said.
“Who is making these rules?” she asked. “Who is deciding all of these things for us?” Then she took a bunch of hair in her hand and arranged it so it covered her forehead. “Should I get bangs?” she asked.
“Yes. You’d look adorable.”
“I don’t want to look adorable,” she said.
“You’d look very pretty with bangs,” I amended.
“Idowant to look pretty,” she admitted. “And if Bernie cut off all her hair, maybe it’s time for me to try something different.”
“It’s just hair,” I said, echoing her earlier words. “It grows back.”
