Page 46 of Persephone's Curse
I mean, I knew the reason.
Because I had betrayed her, and she didn’t know, and eventhough it all seemed to be working out, I knew, deep down in my bloody, red, betraying heart, that I shouldn’t have done it. I should have found another way.
I shoveled a forkful of fried rice into my mouth. It tasted like torn-up cardboard on my tongue. I washed it down with water and tried not to look miserable.
“You’re coming undone,” Bernadette said to me that night. The three of us were crowded on my bed—Bernie, Clara, and me—and it was true, Iwascoming undone. As it turned out, I wasn’t entirely good with guilt. It was eating me alive. It seemed like the happier Evelyn got, the more I fell apart. Like she was sucking the life force out of me.
“She’s stealing my life force,” I said, but even as I said it, I realized it didn’t make any sense and it wasn’t going to be something I was able to explain.
“She’s doing better,” Bernadette countered. “As shitty a decision as it was, it’s actually working out.”
Clara was quiet, distant, staring at a mark on my wall, her eyes unfocused and unseeing.
“I’m a terrible sister,” I said.
There was a knock at the door and we all swiveled to look at it.
“Come in,” Bernie said.
Aunt Bea poked her head in. “We’re missing one,” she said.
“Evelyn went to bed,” Bernie replied.
“Smart girl. I’m exhausted. Clara, thank you again for letting me steal your room.”
“Oh, it’s no problem, Aunt Bea,” Clara said. “Do you need anything?”
“Nothing at all.” Aunt Bea smiled and looked at each of us in turn and I couldn’t help but feel like she was lookingintous, like somehow she knew our sins—mysins—and she was deciding for herself just what punishment would suffice. The beating heart in the floorboards. I could hear it even now, pounding away like a siren. “Dismal mood in here,” she said after a moment.
“We all have our periods,” Bernadette replied.
“No,” she said thoughtfully. “That isn’t it.”
“I don’t havemyperiod,” Clara said, oblivious, and I smacked her on the arm.
“All right, kiddos,” Aunt Bea said. “Night, night.”
She left the room, pulling the door closed behind her. It didn’t quite latch. We all stared at it, and finally Bernadette got up and went and pushed it closed.
“I’m tired,” Clara said. “Aunt Bea wants to leave early.”
We were going to look at all the Christmas display windows on Fifth Avenue. It was sort of a tradition, but one upheld only because for some reason, Aunt Bea loved them. And she had a point, I guessed; in all their consumeristic opulence, there was true beauty and artistry to be found behind those blocks of shiny glass.
Bernadette said good night and left the room, and Clara made herself comfortable in my bed. It wasn’t that bad sleeping with Clara; she was small and didn’t take up a lot of space, plus she slept like an actual rock, hardly moving at all throughout the night.
“Do you mind if I read?” I asked. For once I was tired before her.
“Knock yourself out,” she said, her voice muffled by the covers, which she’d pulled up over her face.
But I knew I wouldn’t be able to read anyway, and when I opened to the bookmarked page, the lines swirled and blurred in front of me. I couldn’t make out a single word. I rested the book on my chest and stared up at the ceiling instead, imagining it going clear, transparent, seeing Evelyn in her own bed, staring up at her own ceiling, perhaps, or at her closet door, even now waiting, waiting, waiting…
I put the book on the bedside table and got up.
It was too late and too cold to go for a walk, but I couldn’t stay still anymore; I couldn’t even think about going to sleep.
Ever since Henry had left, I’d had trouble sleeping.
Ever since I had made Henry leave.
