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mobile home after mobile home, each sprawled over greenish-brown lawns. They neared a dirt-and-pebble driveway that cut through

a lawn that was more dirt than grass. The drive wound crookedly to a lime-colored mobile home, and it was here that Persephone

said That’s it. The home had a shingle roof and what used to be white trim all over, including the tattered wood that worked as a sort of

decorative skirt, but time and weather had stripped it dingy and grey. A glossy black motorcycle sat at the end of the drive,

its showroom perfection out of place against the dirt.

Ruben slowed the car to a stop. “Getting anything?” he asked John.

John waited, and when no particular feeling came, tried to recall the unease he’d felt earlier, as if resurrecting it might

somehow trip something in the air. But he was forced to admit the truth. “Nothing.”

“Persephone,” Ruben said nervously, “I think your mom and I have the same gardener. As in, we don’t.”

No one laughed.

“I want to leave,” said Persephone.

Immediately, Ruben put the car into reverse. “All righty, let’s get settled,” he said as he pulled away from her home. “We

should probably grab some necessities for the room. Juice, Funyuns, Twinkies or whatever—I think I need new soap. Motel soap

is drying out this perfectly calibrated Dominican skin, and I need more lotion, too. I saw a supermarket back there.”

John watched Persephone from the side mirror, saw her stare at the house with what appeared to be equal parts loathing, sadness, and yearning.

3

A law firm.

The first ballet school Persephone had ever gone to, the one where she’d learned what she was born to do, was now a freaking

law firm. It wasn’t the last school she’d gone to before her year in New York—her mother had driven her to a school in San

Antonio three times a week so she could begin pointe work—but that was beside the point. What was the point? That other little

future ballerinas were missing out? It took nearly the entire ride to Winn-Dixie for her to realize that the school’s disappearance

meant a part of her had disappeared, too.

“Persephone!”

She ignored Ruben and walked through Winn-Dixie’s sliding doors with her arms crossed tight against herself. She relished

the cold supermarket air as she glanced around the aisles. It was early enough. People were at work. No one she knew would

be here.

Rushing past the magazines splashed out at the checkouts, she saw that she was on the cover of two of them, one tabloid and

one tabloid style edition. She’d seen them in gas stations on the way down (the style edition was All About Legs! Legs! Legs! The best denim to show them off this season ). Before, she’d imagined a triumphant Corpus Christi return in which she would scribble autographs over covers like these,

but the reality was this: Persephone had no acting gig and was speeding through Winn-Dixie in flip-flops and denim short shorts

and an oversized hoodie pulled over her head and sunglasses hiding (hopefully) half her face while in search of tampons. She

was seventeen all over again.

“There you are!” Ruben appeared from nowhere.

“Shouldn’t you be in the rancid oil and sugar aisle?”

“If you think they’ve got good stuff, lead the way. But we’ll get your things first. I brought a handbasket.”

“Don’t need one. Did you really have to wear the robe in here?”

“I wear the robe all the time.”

“But now you’re wearing it here walking with me , and if you haven’t noticed, I’m trying to lay low.” Persephone strode away but Ruben, of course, followed.

“I told you,” he said, “you didn’t even have to come in.”

“But I wanted to come in. To get my stuff.”

“Well, sometimes people need help with their stuff. You know, carrying their stuff, getting their stuff together. Talking

about their stuff.”

Persephone resisted the urge to hit him with a box of Wheat Thins. “I’ll meet you in the car.”

“OK, I’ll go. No, I won’t. See, normally, I’d just go. But I just...”

Persephone walked faster.

“Persephone.”

“I’m fine, Ruben.” She glanced at him and discovered that at some point he’d taken off his robe.

“You’d say that even if you weren’t. I’m just saying—I’m here. That’s all. I just want you to know that I’m here. For you.”

“Actually I do want something. Can you grab me a box of Wheat Thins? They were in the last aisle.”

Ruben made a gagging sound. “You eat that stuff?”

“Yes. Can you get them?”

“Absolutely.” Ruben turned and walked in the other direction.

Persephone turned into the toiletry aisle.

Lindsey.

Five years ago she would’ve had a volleyball in her hand instead of one in her stomach, but there she was, looking essentially

the same, baby on board notwithstanding. Lindsey had once lent Persephone her sweater to cover her period-stained butt—for

which she would be eternally indebted—but now Persephone eased her way out of the aisle.

“Hey.” Again, Ruben appeared out of nowhere. “What flavor—”

She shoved him around the corner. “Original.”

There might be more Lindseys in the store. Persephone went two aisles down to wait, but two minutes later she peeked around

the corner to see the girl was still standing in the aisle, this time picking up various bottles of shaving creams and reading

the packaging. Persephone headed for the cereal aisle. Now that she was here, a box of breakfast bars wouldn’t be such a bad

idea.

“Pst!” Ruben stood several feet away.

“You could never be a spy.”

“Seriously, you have to see this.”

“See what?”

“The biggest collection of barbecue sauce I’ve ever seen in my life. It’s amazing.”

Persephone turned away. “I’m grabbing breakfast bars.”

“For real, look.”

“I didn’t come here to stare at sauces.”

“Everything doesn’t have to be part of your plan.”

“What?”

“Sometimes the best stuff happens when you just go with it. Last month you never would’ve thought you’d be back home, right? But here we are. It’s OK if life doesn’t look exactly

how you thought it would all the time. Just... go with it.”

“Barbecue sauce.” Persephone rolled her eyes. “Yeah, I so gotta go with that.”

He gave her a pointed look before disappearing around the corner.

She made her way back toward the tampons, cautiously looking down each aisle for the all-clear.

When she reached the checkout line, Persephone stared from behind her mirrored lenses at her image on the two magazines.

Her blonde hair (pre–Overlay stripe) was windswept in both, and on the style edition she wore medium blue jeans that cut off right at the ankle above her pumps; her legs looked a mile long.

Long legs, windblown hair, aviators, big white teeth, and a paper cup in one hand.

Slight airbrushing on her chin—she’d had a hormonal pimple that week, she remembered.

She was perfect on that cover. Exuberant.

Persephone wanted to say to that girl, How can I live such a great life and be so perfectly put together and happy all the time? Tell me your secrets, so my life

can look like yours. Because that girl wasn’t her; that there was an Idea made to look like a person, because no one could be that damned enthused

24/7. But you can try , the girl on the cover seemed to say through her smile. You can hope.

“Miss? Miss?”

“Sorry.” Persephone handed the box of tampons to the cashier and after she paid, took the plastic bag. Winn-Dixie, Corpus

Christi; one of the last bastions of the plastic grocery bag.

Ruben hurried over. “I have never seen anything like it. I mean, I know we’re in the South, but—you’ve gotta see.”

“Keep it down!”

“Sorry,” he said, grabbing Persephone’s hand and leading her into the aisle. “Check it out. Honey pecan, Georgia mustard,

Jack Daniel’s No. 7, bourbon brown sugar—It’s like the Baskin Robbins of barbecue! Like Willy Wonka’s BBQ Factory!”

Persephone looked exasperatedly down the wall of barbecue sauces.

Stilled.

When Persephone imagined this moment, and she had, indeed, imagined this moment happening at some point in her life, she hadn’t

imagined standing on grocery-cart-scuffed linoleum beneath a sea of fluorescent lights with an infinite array of barbecue

sauces to one side and a wall of baked beans to the other. But life never did seem to play out the way it did in her head.

It’d become a theme.

So here she was.

And there she was, standing at the end of the aisle in a simple blue t-shirt and a long denim skirt that revealed she’d gained a few pounds

but still had her figure, a mix of white and orange enamel bracelets at her wrist, the same she wore when Persephone was younger,

her hair looking freshly washed and set and bobbed just above her shoulders.

Mama stood gazing over barbecue sauce bottles, a shiny red nail pointing to each jar as if to ask if it were up to the challenge.

Persephone took a tiny step back, and then, as if there were some everlasting cord running between Persephone’s right flip-flop

and her mother’s coiffed head, her mother turned to face her.

Maybe she recognized Persephone’s jawline, maybe she recognized her legs, or maybe it was the simple fact that she’d given

birth to her, but her mother knew her immediately. She saw beneath the hoodie and through the mirrored Ray-Bans and saw her

daughter with those piercing, hard-to-please eyes and they widened and her mouth formed an O and the barbecue sauce she’d so meticulously deemed worthy slid from her hand and crashed to the floor to splinter into a

gazillion pieces.

4

“I don’t understand,” John said as he and Ruben walked across the car park of the small plaza for the third time. He looked

down at his legs, which had faded since the morning, and attempted to stay positive.

Above them, the tae kwon do studio was filled with an army of children in multicolored belts, the air punctuated with tinny

hiyas .

“I felt something here,” John said. “And Persephone—you saw her.”

“No, I was too busy driving.” Ruben looked down the street at the fast food restaurants and back to the plaza.