Persephone’s Curse

by Sandra Bats

  I blew out a breath, setting my glass down. Going into town didn’t sound as tempting as it had a few weeks ago. Not so much because I’d suddenly lost my interest in women. Rather because I knew I’d be thinking about Elin the whole time anyway.

  “I’m not leaving tonight. Just wanted to clear my head a little,” I admitted.

  “You know that fighting with Elin isn’t a very good reason to drink yourself silly.”

  I rolled my eyes. “I’m not silly. Besides, what makes you even think this is about her?”

  “Everyone could see that you guys were fighting in the atrium. It has this huge thing called a window separating it from the cafeteria. We had front row seats. Didn’t really hear what it was about, but your body language was enough for everyone to decipher that you were fighting.”

  I dropped my head forward and sighed.

  “It’s not just her. I wanted one evening of peace. To not worry about Alex. Not worrying about MPs taking down another trading spot. Not biting my nails worrying how long winter might last and if we’ll get by. To top it all off, tomorrow marks eight years since I’ve last seen Abby. Every day that passes makes it less likely I’ll ever see her again.”

  I ran a hand through my hair. Cam gave me a sympathetic look which just added to my misery. I pitied the position Cam was in: always worrying about Josh, who was growing up headstrong and wanted to be on patrol and defend his home. I took pride in being detached from everybody so I wouldn’t constantly worry about them. Sure, everybody at the school relied on me, but that was different. I had always known that my feelings of responsibility for them could never match what Cam felt for the cousins he raised as his own.

  “I almost feel like I’ve forgotten how hard it is to care for someone. I mean, I lost Abby. She was the only family I had left, and they took her from me. I thought it’d kill me. Why would I choose to put myself in a position like that ever again?”

  “You’re talking about Elin?” Cam asked unnecessarily. I lifted my eyebrow in a no shit gesture. A rasping chuckle escaped my throat. “She hates my guts.”

  “Nah. She’s afraid, I think. She kept asking about you when we were in town. About your past and stuff.”

  “Great. I’m sure that certainly reassured her,” I said.

  “Yeah, you know I tried listing off all the girls there were, but I ran out of time when we hit number one fifty.”

  “You’re not nearly as funny as you think you are,” I pointed out.

  Cam laughed. “Don’t worry. I didn’t ruin your chances. Actually, I was the perfect wingman. I told her you’re trustworthy and she should take it easy on you. What have you guys been fighting about, anyway?”

  “Same as always. She thinks I expect something in return for her being here. She keeps saying she feels like she owes me. I don’t know how often I need to tell her that I don’t expect anything in return.”

  “Maybe that’s it. Maybe you don’t need to tell her. Maybe you need to wait for her to feel like she’s earned being here. Let her do things on her own, for crying out loud.”

  “I hate it when you sound so smart,” I uttered. I took another sip of my drink while Cam still watched me warily. “I’m gonna be all right. You don’t need to keep an eye on me, you know.”

  Cam waved me off, grinning. “It’s no trouble. I just rehash the speeches I’ve made to Josh. It’s almost like I’m raising two teenagers.”

  “Funny. Just piss off, would you?”

  ◆◆◆

  The next few days passed slowly. Elin still wasn’t talking to me. I had the feeling she went out of her way to evade me. She was up before dawn, spent her days outside, and went to bed before I did. Sometimes I heard her toss and turn at night, knowing she only pretended to be asleep.

  Cam still went on patrol with her regularly. I had an itch to ask whether they’d been talking about me again, but I didn’t want to admit how much I cared.

  I spent my days on patrols and on inventory lists. During the mornings, I even helped Diane teach the younger kids, and in the evenings, I worked out in the gym until I was covered in sweat. I found myself repeatedly passing the atrium, or sitting in the cafeteria staring out the atrium window. I was doing the latter, when Josh called me out on it, claiming I was annoying him with my soppiness.

  “I’m not soppy. I’m just … checking out the progress they’re making,” I said.

  “Sure. And when she’s staring at you each time you’re not looking she’s just checking how clean the cafeteria is.”

  I immediately turned to check if Elin was looking at me. She wasn’t.

  “She looks away whenever you move. Does the whole bashfully-dropping-her-eyes thing,” Josh explained.

  I was about to turn to check but Josh called me to halt. “Wait. Not yet. And move quickly if you want to catch her. Turn … now!”

  As I peeked I caught Elin looking at me. Our eyes met for a moment. Just for a fraction of a second, but it was more attention than she’d paid me all week. She averted her eyes and continued to rip up floor tiles. I kept staring like a fool.

  The exceptional cold forced the atrium crew to lay down tools a bit later, just in time for an early dinner. I was still sitting with Josh and Cam, who were bickering about something. Nigel rattled on to Jane about how cool chickens were. He’d been sent inside earlier because of the cold.

  Elin carried her plate over to our table. Her voice was timid when she asked if we minded her sitting with us. I tried not to act weird as she collapsed onto the only empty chair, which was next to me. I could barely follow the conversation. I was completely attuned to her nearness. I snuck glances from the corner of my eye.

  She was still shivering. She’d taken off her wet jacket, but her hair was wet with thawed snow. Her lips were very slowly regaining their color. At some point, I couldn’t stand her freezing anymore.

  Without thinking I got up and got some of the hot tea Kathy had freshly brewed. When I sat the cup down in front of Elin she glanced up at me.

  “It’s warm.” Not the smartest thing I’d said. I awkwardly pushed the cup towards her. Finally, she whispered a thank you. I watched as she drank. I’d have even offered her my jacket, but I knew how that would’ve played out.

  I was surprised she didn’t run right after dinner. When she got up once, I thought she was leaving. I was pleasantly surprised when she returned with a few sheets of paper. She and Kathy put their heads together regarding plans for the atrium. Elin didn’t talk to me. I just sat next to them and chatted with Cam and Jane. Still, it felt like improvement.

  Elin was different when she talked about crops. She obviously loved her project. It was adorable to see. She was like a different person; self-assured, all of a sudden. One time, she caught me staring and raised an eyebrow in question.

  “What?” she said.

  I thought about telling her she was beautiful when she was excited. Before our fight I would’ve taken the risk. As it was, I grinned and shook my head. “Nothing. You wouldn’t wanna hear.”

  I failed to stop grinning at her reaction. I liked the thrill of rattling her a bit. Maybe I liked how her eyes grew greener when she narrowed them at me. Or the way she pursed her lips looking for a witty response. I didn’t know, but I didn’t mind trying to figure it out. It was almost a shame when she stopped looking at me and, with a shake of her head, continued her conversation with Kathy.

  ◆◆◆

  That night, a sudden shriek jolted me awake. I sat, disoriented in bed trying to figure out what had woken me. Elin’s nightmares, of course. When she’d woken a couple nights before, I hadn’t dared approach her. Not since she told me not to. She hadn’t ever screamed as loudly as she did that moment, though.

  I listened for a bit. Her breathing was shallow, and I could hear how she tried calming herself. After a moment of hesitation, I got up, taking my blanket with me.

  I sat on the floor next to the couch. She didn’t respond, but a slight change in her breathing and posture ack
nowledged my presence

  I reached for her hand and gently brushed my fingers over hers. I tried to let her know I was there for her but ultimately it was her decision. She wrapped her hand around mine, holding tight. We sat like that for a bit until she calmed. I thought she was falling asleep. I was just closing my eyes when her voice cut through the dark. “Why?”

  I asked what she meant.

  “Why are you being nice to me?”

  This was exasperating. How could I explain it without upsetting her again by saying that I cared for her? Before I found words though, she moved. She slid from the couch and sat next to me on the floor. Our shoulders brushed while we held hands.

  “I tried everything to push you away but you’re still being nice to me,” she whispered.

  “I won’t lie so you don’t get angry at me. I like you. It might scare you, shit, it scares me sometimes, but there’s no point in pretending I don’t. I want you safe and happy, Elin. That doesn’t mean you owe me anything. It doesn’t mean that you’ll lose this home if you just want to be friends with me. Whether you like me back isn’t a condition that influences how I treat you.”

  I quietly waited while she worked through her thoughts. Eventually her grip on my hand tightened a bit.

  “There is so much I can’t put into words. I can’t explain what I dream about. All I know is anger and fear and that I’m barely able to breathe after my nightmares. I can’t even begin to explain how much it scares me to think of anything good, like having a home or friends. All I know is every time I have something good it gets taken away. I physically can’t take anymore without breaking and each time you offer me kindness I feel like a failure for being unable to give you anything in return. I feel like a failure for not just being able to accept it, for the fear that creeps into every corner of my mind.”

  Her voice was taut with devastation. I carefully snuck my arm around her shoulders. I didn’t hug her. That might’ve been too much.

  “It’ll get better. Over time. You’ll learn to trust in the good things. Happy things and safe things. You’ll learn to not expect conditions attached to everything. I’ve been at the point where I thought nothing would ever get better and was afraid when it did.”

  We sat silently after that. Her yawns came more frequently. At one point her breathing became deeper as she dozed off. She dropped a little to the side, landing on my shoulder. I reached for her blanket and put it over her body. I was exhausted, so I closed my eyes. Just for a moment. Just to wait for her to fall fully asleep. Then I’d return to my bed. I opened my eyes. Closed them again, when she stirred at my movement. Yawned. Smiled as I fell asleep.

  Sixteen

  Elin

  It was around 8 a.m. when the room filled with smooth, crisp light that reflected from the thick layer of snow outside. Unlike the last few mornings, I woke feeling pleasantly warm, but my neck was stiff from the odd position I found myself in. What a trade-off. I could barely remember falling asleep, but I knew my sleep had been free of nightmares, which was still a somewhat rare occurrence. Dazed, I gradually recalled what happened the night before and I finally made sense of why my pillow was moving — oh my, that was not my pillow! I leaned on Jayden and had possibly drooled on his shirt. I timidly opened my eyes.

  Jayden’s blue eyes stared right back at mine and his familiar smirk tugged on the corners of his mouth.

  “Good morning!”

  His voice was raspy and I clumsily sat up, brushing my doubtlessly messy hair from my face, clearing my throat and timidly wishing him a good morning, while struggling to my feet.

  I might not have been angry at him anymore, maybe I was even a little closer to accepting that I owed him nothing in return for his friendship, but him being so close, before I even had my thoughts together, was too much for me. He ignored my graceless hurry to put some room between us, instead asked whether I’d slept all right.

  “I haven’t slept that good in a while, actually,” I admitted quietly.

  He got up and had a stretch. I apologized for having made him sleep in such an uncomfortable position, but he waved it off, telling me it had been worth every kink he had in his neck. I hid behind the blackboard before he could see me blush and changed my clothes.

  Rounding the corner again I caught him still changing his shirt. Butterflies and panic chased each other as I stared at his back; all smooth, still tanned from summer, his muscles flexing as he reached for his shirt. Jeans sat low on his slender hips and he seemed to be taking his time putting on his shirt, turning without buttoning it.

  “I can feel your eyes on me, you know?”

  I dropped my gaze in shame, but that only meant I ended up looking at his abs. A round scar under his chest caught my eye.

  “That was where the rebar exited my body,” he annotated, slowly buttoning his shirt. “Come on. I don’t know about you, but I need something to eat.”

  ◆◆◆

  I’d been so busy evading Jayden, that only when we were back on good terms, did I notice the little things I’d missed because of our argument. I hadn’t wanted to sit with him during mealtime, but that had also meant I hadn’t gotten to sit with Cam and Nigel. I also got to do patrol rounds with Jayden again, which admittedly was something I almost enjoyed. It was always a nice way of getting to know him better while he chatted easily — as he did when we walked the south perimeter of the building that afternoon.

  I glanced up at the sky, which was spattered with heavy clouds — yellowish tinted with sulfur residue from the electricity plants downtown. A deep sigh escaped my lungs.

  “In the countryside, you can see the sky sometimes. It would be this amazing blue color and I just loved laying in the summer grass, staring at it. And at night, you’d see so many stars and the moon … I miss it,” I said.

  “I was born and grew up around here. Actually, I grew up in the area where we met. When I moved out here, I got to see the moon. I’d heard stories, but it was really strange when I saw it the first time,” Jayden responded.

  I glanced over at him in wonder. He always seemed so knowledgeable, to believe he’d grown up without ever seeing the moon seemed insane.

  “My mom loved the moon,” I muttered, still somehow nervous to talk about my family too loudly. “She’d stand outside on our porch, sometimes for hours on end, and stare at it. I thought she was crazy, but towards the end … when she was pregnant with Norah, my youngest sister, she stayed out there almost every night. She said that it gave her a sense of peace. The moon’s regular cycle promised there was some sort of control. No matter how crazy things were, there was still an underlying order. For many years I thought she had just gone crazy being scared of dying, but now … I think I understand it.”

  Jayden walked in silence, scuffing the toe of his boot against an icy bit of snow.

  “How come your mom survived childbirth twice? I mean, I’ve heard of a few people who survived once, especially in the beginning, but twice?”

  I exhaled heavily. “Luck, I guess. We weren’t very exposed to other people, so I suppose she just never contracted Persephone’s until after Maddy’s birth. We sustained ourselves and Mom didn’t regularly meet with men.”

  “And your father?”

  “Never really met him. He was traveling, dropped by when he was around. He’s Maddy’s father as well, but not Norah’s. From what I understand, he just randomly hooked up with anybody he met. I’m sure that’s something you can relate to.”

  Jayden cringed. “I’m not sure what you’ve heard, but it’s not like that. I mean, yeah, there were a few women, but they always knew what they were getting themselves into. That I wasn’t in for a relationship.”

  I scoffed at his naivety. “People misread signs. They might’ve thought you were serious about them.”

  “They didn’t.” Jayden stopped, turning to look right at me. “I’m usually direct about what I want. If I wanted a relationship, they would’ve known.”

  It wasn’t that I doubted Jayde
n had been sure he made his intentions clear with those girls, but I doubted all of them understood as clearly as he believed they did. After all it was far too easy for assumptions to be made and for people to get the wrong idea about such things.

  “How would they know?” I asked.

  Jayden grinned sheepishly. “Well, for starters, I never let any of them sleep on my couch.”

  I gasped and snapped my mouth shut because nothing sensible was going to come out of it. Neither of us spoke when I caught up to him. My mind was still reeling and I was sure I would miss any intruder due to my racing thoughts as we finished patrol duty.

  ◆◆◆

  After our shift I didn’t see much of Jayden until that evening. It wasn’t necessarily that I was evading him — though I was glad for the time to mull his words over on my own — instead, I’d been in the library trying to read up on fertilizers we could use on the ground in the atrium and where to get those. Kathy was busy in the kitchen and Jonah with laundry duty and besides, it had been far too cold to work on the atrium so I took that time for some much-needed research. In my short break, I checked if the boxes in the attic held some clothes I could wear to the New Year’s celebration Nigel instigated for that evening.

  I’d just put on a fitted, washed-out, green blouse that felt silky on my skin and paired it with tight jeans and the red boots I’d kept after the ammunition heist, when I ran into Jayden in the hallway.

  His eyes shifted over me and he openly stared for a second before clearing his throat.

  “You look beautiful,” he muttered.

  I blushed but didn't wave him off like I used to when he complimented me. Maybe something had shifted between us earlier that day. While we walked, I snuck glances at him. Dressed completely in black — a black button-down shirt with sleeves rolled up to his elbows and black jeans — I felt daring having thought about his lips so much all day. He caught me staring and suddenly stopped, turning towards me in the middle of the empty hallway. He grinned, tipped his head down and gingerly tucked a curl behind my ear.