Persephone

  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.

  Chapter III

  Horns howled. I slammed on the brakes just before hitting the concrete pylon of an overpass.

  Melissa and I stared at each other, panting. “Is that ice?” Her hand shook as she pointed at the windshield.

  I nodded, reaching for the door handle. “No.” Melissa spoke fast. “Don’t get out.”

  “Someone could be hurt.” I glanced behind us to the center of the highway.

  Not a single car had been caught in our wake.

  “Let’s take this exit and get the hell out of here.” Melissa leaned forward as if she could make the car go.

  Trembling, I put the car into gear and waited for an opening back onto the highway. We crept forward the twenty feet to the MLK exit. “When we get off, map the way to the hotel?”

  Melissa nodded, instructing my phone’s navigator to avoid highways. We drove in silence until we pulled into the hotel parking lot. My legs were shaking when I climbed out of the car and I took a deep breath to calm my nerves.

  “We can’t tell our moms about that,” I said. “They’ll never let us drive anywhere again.”

  Melissa looked troubled but nodded. “Persephone, what was that?”

  I shook my head and shrugged. “Just the wind, I guess. Why didn’t you want me getting out of the car?”

  “Um, because it’s a huge freaking highway. People have gotten hit changing their tires.”

  “Oh.” I grimaced at the thought.

  “Plus the fact your car was just singled out by a force of nature.” Melissa’s voice was dry, and for once I couldn’t tell if she was being sarcastic or serious.

  I laughed, the sound coming out higher than I’d like. “That’s not possible. I’m sure the others were affected; you might not have been able to tell. They were all huge SUVs.” I patted my car. “This is a lightweight.”

  “There was ice.”

  “It’s December.”

  “It’s seventy degrees!”

  “Maybe they were having a Christmas party over at the CNN tower? The wind could have picked it up from the roof…” I trailed off, realizing how little sense that made. “There’s a logical explanation.”

  “I don’t doubt it.” Melissa fell silent until we found our room.

  I turned and met her eyes. “Stop being creepy. Let’s just drop it, okay?”

  Melissa sighed and opened the door to the hotel room. “I still can’t believe your mom went for this.”

  “It was her idea!” I smiled at her in thanks for dropping the subject and inhaled the chemical scent of carpet cleaner and stepped into the humid room. “I still don’t know how she pulled it off.”

  Melissa’s boots left impressions in the wheat-colored carpet. She dropped her green book bag next to one of the queen-sized beds with a thunk, then crossed to the window and pushed aside the marble-patterned curtains.

  “Maybe she’s got a boyfriend or something and just wants some time alone.” I grimaced at the idea, setting my daisy-patterned duffle bag on the bed. “I’m surprised your mom went for it.”

  “You know she’ll do anything your mom asks.” Melissa struggled with the cream curtain liner and pushed it aside, revealing thick white blinds. She sighed, pulling the string until the blinds parted in the center, folding up like my closet door. “Finally.” Sunlight streamed in through the window.

  “Nice parking lot.” I peered past her out the window, grinning so she knew I was joking. I preferred the naked window to the thick stuffy curtains. A view of the parking lot was still better than suffocating in a windowless room.

  “To think we could have gone our whole lives without witnessing this marvelous sight.” Melissa spun to face me. “We need to get ready.”

  We spent the next hour making sure we looked perfect in case Orpheus saw us. I pulled on a black dress I’d borrowed from Melissa and groaned when it brushed the top of my knee. “I hate being short! On you, this was practically indecent.”

  Melissa ran a brush through her hair. “Yeah, but I didn’t pull off that neckline half as well.”

  I tugged the square neckline up self-consciously then twirled, laughing as the skirt rose into the air. I’d loved “spinny” dresses since I was seven.

  “Oh my God!” I came to an abrupt halt. “I look seven!”

  “You do not!” Melissa’s reflection stepped next to mine. “Twelve at least.”

  I narrowed my eyes at her reflection. She didn’t look seven. Her legs seemed to go on for miles under her tight-fitting black skirt. Four delicate black chains hung from her neck, each longer than the last, until they reached her waist, glinting darkly against her flowing purple blouse.

  “You look great.” I smiled at her.

  “Aw, you too.” She handed me a pair of black strappy heels. “Let’s go.”

  We walked across the street to the Tabernacle, alternatively poking fun at each other and giving compliments the entire way. A part of me felt cool and grownup as we joined the throng of people pressing against the stage.

  It was loud and claustrophobic, but the moment Orpheus came out on stage all of that changed. Our energy converged with the crowd’s. We screamed, jumped, and danced to his songs. I felt energized and exhausted.

  My hair was a mess and I was sweating when we pushed our way backstage, but I didn’t care. Orpheus was there, drinking a bottle of water while his band packed up around him.

  When he looked up I gripped Melissa’s hand and she squeezed back hard. He did a double take and walked over, an average looking woman trailing behind him.

  “Hello.” He sounded tense and looked stiff and uncomfortable. The way he was standing in front of the woman made it seem like he was protecting her. “This is quite an honor. Pleased to meet you, Persephone.”

  I blinked, captivated by his golden eyes. “Kora,” I corrected. “And this is Melissa. How did you know my name?”

  “Your mother told me all about you.”

  “You know my mom?”

  His eyes darkened. “I suppose it would be more accurate to say I know of her. Last night was the first time we’d spoken.”

  Mom had arranged all this one night before the concert? I glanced around and noticed we were the only fans backstage. What had she said to him? How had she contacted him? And how would a rock god like Orpheus know of a flower shop owner from Athens, Georgia?

  My confusion must have shown on my face. Orpheus studied me with an intensity that made me uncomfortable. He stared at me for a long moment then nodded like he’d come to a decision.

  “You really are just a kid, huh? Look, I’m sorry. It was a long show, and I can get a bit…edgy when I get too tired. It’s always great to meet a…” He paused, eyes searching mine. “Fan?”

  I beamed at him. He thinks meeting me is great!

  “This is my wife, Eurydice,” he said, motioning to the woman behind him. “She’s also my manager
.” He put his arm around her shoulder and gave her a smile that melted my heart. “I’d be lost without her.”

  She waved, obviously used to the crestfallen looks of teenage girls at her introduction. “It’s nice to meet you.”

  As we exchanged pleasantries I studied her, trying to see what had drawn Orpheus to this nondescript woman. Her voice was deeper than I would have imagined from a woman with such a slight build. Her mousy brown hair made a frizzy halo around her head. Her pale skin was marked with freckles, and her gray eyes were narrow and squinty. She dressed casually, in jeans and a T-shirt. My feet ached when they saw her comfortable looking sneakers, reminding me why I hated heels.

  In the best of circumstances this woman would be called plain. Standing next to her, Orpheus shone like the sun. His unmarred bronze skin seemed to glow with health. His gold hair was pulled into a short ponytail, revealing his rectangular face. He wore his trademark black sleeveless T-shirt, showing off his muscled arms—and oh God, I was staring.

  “It was a wonderful ceremony,” Eurydice said. I blinked, following her gaze to Melissa.

  “It sounds like it. I want to get married on the beach.” Melissa’s voice was wistful.

  Thank you, Melissa. Maybe they hadn’t noticed my faux pas.

  “Your time will come. I know mine did.” Eurydice smiled, and in that instant I knew what Orpheus saw in her. Her entire face transformed, radiant with inner beauty.

  “So you girls are from Athens?” Orpheus asked, squeezing his wife’s shoulder.

  As we made small talk I was able to come to my senses enough to wonder again why we were the only fans backstage. How had my mother pulled this off?

  Before I knew it, Melissa and I were on our way out the door, loaded down with a surprising amount of autographed gear. I’d just reached the door when I felt a hand brush my shoulder. I turned around, surprised to see Orpheus and Eurydice behind me.

  “I don’t normally do this.” Orpheus slid me a card with a hand-scrawled phone number written on the back of it. “But you’re going to have questions. When you do, don’t hesitate to call.”