The morning tangerine and lavender sky stratum was melting like sherbet into the day’s blue while Jillian walked to the barn. Her mother’s injunction bounced around in her head.

“Get all of the eggs you can! Noella wants an omelet.”

“Then Noella can come get them with me,” she had replied.

“Sure, I’ll go,” Noella was reclining on the couch. She had tied her hair in a series of complicated twists that held up the bathroom for twenty minutes, and that was after she took a shower. One of three showers a day. Jillian still hadn’t bathed; Noella smuggled all of her elixirs and shampoos and body creams into the bathroom and stayed there for at least an hour at a time.

“You want to go?” Jillian popped a defying stance.

“I’m here, so why not? I’ll go get my sneakers!” She bolted off of the couch and ran into the basement where she was sleeping for the summer. Jillian heard her squeal, “Exciting!’”

Now Jillian was stomping through the trail to the barn with Noella wincing as her rain boots glazed over with muck.

“How are we going to carry the eggs?”

“With our hands. Keep up, El.”

“We can’t carry all of those eggs!”

“There’re usually only a couple.”

“Is there something wrong with the chickens?!”

Jillian walked a little faster.

The barn welcomed the cousins with a burst of eau de animaux. The paint was peeling off of the building, dandelions hugged the walls, and it stood alone in the knolls. During this time of day, the sun enveloped the tip of the barn, and the butterflies were awakening. Jillian thought it was as relaxing as Noella found it foul.

The interior was a bobbery of pigs and roosters and scurrying mice, and Jillian glared at her cousin as she covered her ears. Noella switched between shielding her nose with her lace shirt and corking her eardrums with baby-pink fingernails. As she walked to where Jillian was climbing the ladder, she stepped gingerly to avoid any animal droppings.
“The chicken house is up there?” She yelled over the noise.
“Can’t hear you,” Jillian lied. She stood on the second level of the barn staring at her older cousin.
Noella slowly wrapped her fingers around the side of the ladder, wrinkled her nose, and lifted her foot to a rung, then snapped it down to the floor again.

“Spot me?”

Jillian did as she asked, and once she made it to the top, she led her into the room with the chickens. She didn’t bother to warn her about the chaos inside.

The hens and the lone, pavonine rooster thrust their necks out even further when the girls entered. Sawdust covered the floor, and Jillian stepped through it like it was a lush Persian rug. Noella, on the other hand, almost jumped out of her skin.

“Oooh my goodness, please let’s get these stupid eggs and get out! It smells so bad in here! Jillian, get the eggs! Get the eggs!”

Rolling her eyes, Jillian reached in the nest and pulled out a plump egg and handed it to Noella.

“Eww! It was in the nest?! I’m holding something that touched a chicken butt?”

“Do you even know where eggs come from?”

Jillian pulled out two more eggs and handed them to Noella. She fanned her hand out and felt for more eggs in the nest box. It was toasty and the hay was coarse, but as she felt the back left corner of the third box, something like a needle pierced her middle finger.

“Ouch!”

“What?” Noella asked through a pinched nose.

“Nothing…Let go of your nose and take care of the eggs if you want an omelet.”

Jillian stuck her hand to the back left corner again, and this time the “needle” had a fuzzy, slimy coating. She peered into the box.

A baby chicken was worming itself out of the egg.

“Noella! Come see this!”

Noella tiptoed over and nudged Jillian against the wall. She squinted into the nest.

“That’s disgusting. It’s all wet.”

Jillian pushed her away and stared at the baby. The egg it was encased in wriggled and wobbled while the chick’s delicate body ebbed up and down with deep breaths. The fur was a dirty mustard color. Jillian had the urge to touch it just so it could realize that something warm would be welcoming it into the world. In the process of watching the baby hatch, she had not even noticed that Noella was climbing down the ladder and had dropped an egg in the process.

The chick emerged with a smart look on its face. Jillian fluttered her eyelashes, amazed at this bundle of life that she could easily cup in her palm. It stumbled along the nest, and while on the ground after a tough tumble, it lifted its metallic eyes to Jillian’s smiling face.

The baby and Jillian were hooked for life at that moment.

She resisted the urge to touch it. She built a little pile of hay and sawdust for the chick, and ran all the way back to her house to get water.

The shower was running back in the house, and Jillian’s mother informed her that Noella felt “like she had rolled around on Wal-Mart’s floor” after being in the chicken house.

“I saw a baby hatch!”

Jillian’s mother nodded up from her laptop. “Have you emptied the dishwasher yet?

“I’m bringing it water! I’ll be back!”

After sprinting back to the barn, Jillian was breathless and eager to watch the chick again. She inspected it and determined it was a hen, and her name would be Persephone.

She had first heard the name from Noella. When Noella had visited her last year during Christmas break, the girls emptied all of their stocking candy on the floor of Jillian’s room. Noella crumpled her chocolate Santa wrappings in a tight ball and tossed each in the trash right away while Jillian split the foil with her fingernail and gnawed at whatever was exposed. They began to talk.

Noella mostly talked about how much she missed her father and the difficulty of her Western Civilizations class. Jillian did not say much. Perhaps due to the fact that the problem with her uncle was still new, hushed, and raw, or because she crammed so much candy in her mouth her tongue could not move.

Noella expressed that she read Greek myths in order to stay calm and keep her mind off of things. They were intertwined and lyrical, and she said with a smirk that she almost believed them. Her favorite story was Persephone’s. She said it gave her a sense of security to know that when there was an early heat wave or snow flurry that Hades or Demeter had snatched the coveted girl up too early. Jillian explained to her how the weather worked just in case she did not know, but Noella simply stroked the back of her hand and stared down at it. When Jillian finished, Noella said that when she turned eighteen she would change her name to Apheleia, after the spirit of simplicity.

It had been a year since then, and now her cousin was no longer bubbly. She had a melancholy aura that could not be shaken. Jillian could not have fun with Noella anymore, and she found herself irritated by her new persona. Sometimes she had to close her bedroom door to block Noella’s iPod speaker playing while she took her evening shower.

Persephone was a good name for the chick. Jillian felt like if she was stolen from her, then she would journey to the underworld to get her back too.



She visited Persephone after lunch and before dinner: her two favorite times of the day. She stuck twigs in the spongy ground near the barn in a circle and wrapped the ring with an old rag. She carried Persephone into the arena and watched her peck the ground. Sometimes she nudged her way out. When she did, she would stand close to Jillian.

Sometimes Jillian ran around the barn with Persephone following behind. She thought of it as a game of tag, but Persephone’s feet were too small to keep up with Jillian’s size-nines.

Jillian would carry the chick onto the trail. She would perch Persephone in a low tree branch and tell her that she was up so high, so incredibly high. When Persephone emitted terrified squeaks, Jillian took her down and coddled her until her miniscule heart stopped fluttering ferociously. At times like those, Jillian felt like a tormentor to a helpless baby chicken, so she gave Persephone more feed than usual.
She now had her own precious Persephone, and she returned every day for the next week to care for her chick. Noella never returned to the chicken house or got her omelet, so she lounged around the house as usual.

At dinner one night, Noella complained that Jillian smelled worse than the chicken house itself. Jillian’s mother agreed.

“I’ll take a shower then.”

“Jillian, you haven’t taken a shower in forever,” Noella said.

“Because you’re always in there!”

“I think,” her mother intervened, “that you should start your summer homework. Did you start yet?”

“I finished before I came up here,” said Noella.

“Not you. Jillian.”

Jillian wiped her saucy fork off on her napkin, so she could dig into the side salad.

“Jillian, you have to start!” Noella took a tiny mouthful of linguini and chewed like a chipmunk. Jillian, for some reason, found it irksome. Even the way she blinked bothered her. Did Noella have to be so involved? How about a little detachment?

“High school is really important. All of your habits begin freshmen year.”

“Okay.”

“It’s no joke, Jillian.”

“I get it.”

“This stuff means a lot!”

“All right!” Jillian dropped her fork, and it clanged with the plate. “If you want to be somebody’s mom, go live with your dad and his brand new baby. No wonder he left. You’re unbearable!”

Noella’s chair screeched across the linoleum floor. The hanging light illuminated her terrene face, contouring her philtrum, cheekbones, and forlorn eyes.
She left her dinner on the table and walked to the bathroom holding her head the entire way. It was not long before Jillian heard the shower running.

Jillian’s guilt faded in the way that guilt associated with family always does. It lingered in the air when Noella was reading in the living room while Jillian fixed a snack and sizzled when they passed each other in the hallway. Little puffs floated away when Noella asked Jillian to toss her the peanut butter, or when they both laughed at something on television.
One particular Wednesday afternoon Jillian sat with Persephone, and the wind pulled individual tufts of fur from the chick’s head. As she admired what looked to her like a Mohawk on a chicken, a howl from the house’s direction jolted Jillian. She raised her body on its elbows and listened intently.

Breeze…

Chick footsteps…pit…pat…

Bee…

Noella.

Noella was shouting to Jillian. Her voice did not weave all the way through the trail; bits of it were caught in spider webs or tree branches. Anticipating a tantrum, Jillian brought Persephone back into the chicken house and jogged to her house.

As she got closer, Noella’s cries of “Jillian! Jillian!” melted into sobs. She was gasping for air because she did not want to weep, but Jillian knew that was another one of Noella’s new traits. She needed to cry, but would not allow herself to.

Noella was sitting on the edge of the couch. She was hunched over. Her body convulsed, battling tears that would plummet and soak into the carpet fibers. She looked demonic, and Jillian could not begin to guess what had happened.

Jillian looked at her mother, but she left the room with the house phone clenched in her hand.

She sat next to Noella, her hand wavering over her cousin’s

“What’s wrong, Noella?”

A tear, bloated and shiny, trickled down Noella’s cheek. Jillian watched it curve down her face until Noella replied:

“I have to live here now…my mom is still processing-“

“Oh.” Jillian clipped off Noella’s sentence. Her uncle did not need to be mentioned.

One whimper and a half-hearted nod came from the girl who never let her hair be undone around the house. Now, however, her pride was gone.

“I didn’t even get to say goodbye to what I’ll miss the most. My friends are the only ones who seem to want me anymore.”

Jillian opened her mouth, astonished at the statement. “Your mom loves you.”

“I’m not wanted anywhere. My dad left, my mom is having a mental breakdown because of it-“

“She’s just having a hard time with it. It’s not a breakdown.”

“-and you don’t even want me here. You go to the barn to get away from me.”

Jillian sat on her hand, and even though it was tingling and tight, she pressed on it harder.




The next day Jillian ambled to the chicken house, where she kissed Persephone and said goodbye. It felt like mourning, but not for only Persephone, who was chirping, an ignorant look on her face. It was for Noella too.

Because before this year, Noella was who she looked forward to seeing every day. She considered her older cousin the epitome of what she wanted to be and would defend her to no end.

Noella had been her Persephone, but no one wanted to change the season for her anymore.