How I Remembered Persephone by Chrysallis Haven (manga ereader txt) 📕

home I had ever had. We sat in the fourth row, towards the front, even in front of Robby and his two jock friends, and six rows before Marley and his geek friend Harold.
We talked and laughed, just like normal girls. Persephone even liked walking in the woods and reading, like me.
I could have listened to Persephone talk for hours. Her voice was pure magic, and she had been everywhere from New York City to the cliffs of Dublin.
“We, my Madre and I, moved here from San Francisco. You’d love it there, Helena, it’s beautiful!”
She called her mother Madre, because when she had learned to speak, they lived in Mexico, on the run from her mysterious father’s gang.
“He wasn’t a bad man, Hel, but you’ve got to understand: he wanted my mother to lay on a silken futon and lounge about all day in the finest clothing and dine with him under the stars on the most expensive wine and exotic fruits and cheese.”
“So?” It sounded pretty good to me.
“My Madre is an artiste! She has to be free, Hel.”
She told me how her cunning and beautiful mother had tricked her selfish father into thinking she had “taken ill” and escaping with Persephone under her shawl and climbing three stories down on a rose trellis before making a run for the guard gate and poisoning the guard there so that she could escape.
“And he’s been looking for us ever since,” she concluded grimly. “That man is just so in love with her! And who wouldn’t be? But he’s gone too far. My Madre is a free spirit, not to be caged and clothed in silk and fur and waited upon. She’s a woman of liberation!”
It was Persephone’s words that lured me in in the beginning, I think. She had a way of making everyday happenings like some higher power had dropped some magic nectar on earth and that event had occurred, just for us. She drew me in with her exotic flair and her piercings and the clothes that would have made anyone else look like a circus clown on drugs, but somehow made her a goddess of color and prints. I was absolutely mesmerized by her.
Of course, we had our differences. She wore makeup and fixed her hair and loved clothes and shopping. But she wore what she wanted to wear, and didn’t care what anyone thought. Words like ‘popular’ and ‘accepted’ and ‘fitting in’ didn’t mean a thing to Persephone Hill.
“Here’s what I think, Hel,” she said (and I didn’t mind it when she called me Hel), “If people can’t accept you for who you are, then they’re not people worth knowing.”
How she could think like that, I didn’t know. What I did know was that I had just made a friend. A real, true, honest-to-God friend. Someone to have sleepovers with and stay up late and talk about boys and go shopping with and do each others hair and makeup. I was so excited I didn’t want to get off the bus. I wanted to stay on with Seph and see where she lived. I thought it must be someplace absolutely magical, with glass ponds and fountains of sparkling crystal water.
But I got off the bus first, and walked backwards down the road to my house, watching Seph wave back to me like an elegant swan about to descend to the Heavens.

Dear Winston,

Today I met the most beautiful

girl in the world. I think she’s actually a Goddess in disguise, because no one in the school will acknowledge her existence, and yet she’s just breathtaking!
Her name is Helena McFadden, and I have the honor of sitting next to her in two classes! And she has become my first friend at Montesano High. So far, there has been no sun kissed golden hills, but there will be. I’m sure of it. Yours till Niagra Falls, Persephone Unique Hill

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Publication Date: 04-16-2010

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