Starcrossed (12 page)

to break it up, but it was still too late. And . . . well . . . they all

got kicked off the football team. That’s why the whole school hates

you, including the boys,” she said, bringing the story to its conclusion.

“All three of the Delos boys are supposed to be these amazing,

legendary athletes, and everyone is saying you destroyed Nantucket

High’s one shot at a winning season.”

“You have got to be kidding me,” Helen said slowly. “They’re ruining

my life.” Even in the depths of her self-pity, it didn’t escape

her notice that she was also ruining their lives.

They had been in town for two weeks and all three boys were

already singled out as disciplinary problems. If these incidents

kept happening, they could get kicked out of school, and then

where would they go? They would have to commute to the mainland

every morning because there was only one high school on the

island. And all this—the fight, the suspension, the entire school trying

to trip Helen—had happened after they all agreed to try to get

along.

A terrible truth was starting to sink in. Even if she got control

over her anger and the Delos family got control over theirs, the

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Furies would not allow them to coexist. The fight between Lucas

and Hector proved that the Delos kids would have to come after

her or they would start going after each other. There was no liveand-

let-live solution to this. For some reason that Helen still could

not fathom, the Furies demanded blood, and they would get it no

matter how it was shed.

“You’re really not seeing Lucas?” Claire asked with care. Helen

snapped out of her morose reverie.

“Seeing him? Every time I look at him I want to tear my eyes

out,” Helen replied honestly.

“There! Right there! That’s what I don’t get,” Claire exclaimed.

“You have never hated anyone before, not even Gretchen who’s

been nasty to you since fifth grade. You just walked away from her

like it was nothing, and you used to be just as close to her as you

were to me. But this thing with you and Lucas? It’s eating you up!

You have been so angry since he moved here. I don’t understand it

at all. It’s like the only explanation that makes sense is what everyone’s

been saying.” Claire stopped herself abruptly.

“What is everyone saying?” Helen asked, pulling up short. They

had been jogging at a slow pace to begin with, but Helen needed to

get a straight answer. She forced Claire to stop and look at her.

“What are they saying?” she repeated. Claire sighed and got it over

with.

“That you and Lucas met randomly on the beach right before

school started and slept together. Then he lied to you and said he

was just on vacation so he wouldn’t have to call you. That’s why

you flipped out when you saw him in the hallway, because he used

you and you were in love with him.”

“Wow. That’s pretty dramatic,” Helen said, feeling detached.

“Yeah, but is it true?” Claire said, her eyes pleading. Helen sighed

and put her arm around Claire, leading her to a walk.

“First of all, Lucas and I never even met before that day in the

hallway, let alone slept together. Secondly, I would have told you if

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I’d even kissed another boy since the disaster with Matt in the

closet in seventh grade. Third, and probably most important, I was

never as close to Gretchen as I am to you. You’re my best friend,

Gig.” Helen squeezed her until Claire gave in and smiled. “I’ve

been strange lately, I know it, and I’m really sorry. Some weird

stuff is going on with me. I want to tell you everything about it, but

I can’t because I don’t understand it yet. So please, please just stay

on my side, even if I am angry and miserable all the time.”

“You know I’m always on your side, but do you want me to be

completely honest?” Claire stopped again and turned to face Helen.

“I know I’m supposed to say that this is nothing, and that it will all

work itself out, and feed you all that supportive nonsense, but I

can’t. I don’t think this is going to get better on its own, and I’m

worried about you.”

After track practice, Helen went to hold down the store. She had

offered to give Louis the night off so that his marathon weekend

manning the store while Kate and Jerry were in Boston would start

on a full night’s rest.

Customers were still looking at her funny as news of her meltdown

made its way to every year-rounder on the island, but she

had too much to do to get bent out of shape about it. By the time

she was done cleaning and setting everything up for Louis in the

morning it was after midnight.

There was a moment while she was locking up and walking to the

Pig when she was alert and listening for danger, but it passed by

the time she was backing out and on her way home. She had been

cautious, but that didn’t matter. It was after she had parked in her

driveway and was walking toward her house that she got jumped.

The first thing she felt was gratitude. At least the Delos clan had

waited until Jerry was safely out of the way before they came to kill

her. A wiry arm wrapped around her neck, simultaneously pulling

back and pressing down until Helen fell to her knees. Her breath

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was cut off, and she was bent forward in such a way that she could

see nothing of the person behind her. She wondered who had won

that whole “she’s mine” argument, Lucas or Hector? White and

blue blobs bloomed across her field of vision from lack of oxygen.

Then she pictured her dad coming home to find her dead body in

the driveway, and she knew that no matter how outnumbered she

might be, she had to fight back. She couldn’t let him lose another

person he loved. He’d never get over it.

Helen crooked her arm and rammed her elbow into her attacker’s

solar plexus with every bit of juice she had in her tank. She heard

the person suck wind and then she felt herself get dropped. The

heels of her hands scraped against the ground as she stopped her

forward momentum. She took two deep breaths before she looked

up, surprised that one of the others hadn’t jumped in to secure her.

Lucas stared down at her, his right arm thrown out and gripping

Hector by the shirt. Strangely, Hector was looking over his

shoulder—away from Helen. She barely had time to register that

fact before Lucas spoke. As he did the Furies began wailing behind

him. Helen wondered why it had taken this long for them to show

up, but she didn’t have a chance to dwell on it.

“Jason! Ariadne! Bring her back alive,” he commanded, stressing

the word alive as he looked pointedly at Hector. The twins took off

in the same direction Hector had been looking. Helen took that

moment to jump up and run for her life.

She had never tried to run at full speed before. She’d always

known that if she did she would discover every nightmare she had

ever had about herself was true. Monster, freak, animal, witch: all

of the names she had whispered to herself when she did something

impossible would come gushing to the surface if she ever let herself

loose. But when she heard Hector snarl her name she didn’t think

about what it would mean, or how it would feel, to run as fast as

she could. She just did it.

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Something led her out onto the moors. The dark, flat lands that

stretched out under the color-bleaching light of the moon were

somehow safer than the roads and the houses of her community. If

she was going to die, it would be alone, with no weak normals sacrificing

themselves to save poor Helen Hamilton, their lifelong

neighbor and friend.

If she was going to turn and fight, she wanted to be under the

broad, low sky of the uninhabited parts of her island and not

hemmed in by the quaint shingle-sided whalers. She went west,

across the northern side of her island, the calm waters of Nantucket

Sound sighing somewhere off to her left, and Lucas and Hector

calling her name from behind. They were gaining on her.

Helen crossed Polpis Road, skirting Sesachacha Pond until she

saw the true Atlantic, not its calmer cousin, the Nantucket Sound,

but the wild water at the end of the continent. She needed to hide,

but the land was flat and open and the air was clear and bright.

Helen looked out over the dark waves sparkling like inky tinfoil in

the moonlight and begged for some kind of mist or haze to come

and cover her. That damn ocean owed her for almost taking her life

as a child, she thought hysterically, and it should pay. After a few

more huge strides, Helen’s plea was miraculously answered. She

ran north up the coast, out onto the uninhabited sand spit on the

northern tip of the island, into a damp, salty fog.

In the wet air, Helen could hear her pursuers even more clearly,

and she knew they could hear her better, too. Panicked and exhausted,

she blindly tossed herself into the fog and asked her body

to go even faster. On the edge of collapse, she felt her body grow

light and her labored breathing unexpectedly eased up. The jarring

impact on her joints and spine from her gargantuan strides ended

abruptly. She was still moving, but she no longer felt anything except

the cold and the wind that spun her hair into whips. She burst

through the edge of the fog and saw nothing but darkness and stars

around her. There were stars everywhere. She looked down.

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Below her were twinkling lights outlining the edges of a familiar

sideways comma in the middle of the ocean. Looking around for

the airplane that would normally be housing her body at this altitude,

Helen saw her limbs floating in the air, buoyant and sinuous

as if they were submerged in water. She looked down again and

realized that the twinkling comma was her beautiful little island

home. Her vision contracted into a narrowing tube of blackness.

Without a sound, she fainted and fell out of the sky that had so recently

claimed her.

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UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

.....................................................................

Chapter Six

It was nighttime in the dry lands. Helen was surprised that

there was such a thing as time here. It confused her so much

that she glanced around, uncertain as to where she was.

After a few moments she decided that, yes, she was in the

dry lands, but this time the hilly terrain was flatter and

more open. The dark, empty sky seemed lower and heavier somehow.

Then she looked over her shoulder. It took her a few moments

to understand what she was seeing.

Miles away, there was a line across the land and sky, where the

flat nightscape turned back into the more familiar, hillier dayscape.

The different time zones sat next to each other like two

paintings in an artist’s studio—unmoving, unchanging, and both

equally as real. Here, time was a place and it never moved. Somehow

that made sense.

Helen walked. It was cold in the night version of the dry lands,

and her teeth chattered uselessly. In the dayscape, there was no

relief from the heat, so Helen knew that in the nightscape there

would be no warmth no matter how much she rubbed her arms

and shivered. She saw someone up ahead. He was panicking.

She hurried forward until she could see that it was Lucas. He

was on his hands and knees, feeling around as if he were

blind—grabbing at the sharp stones, cutting his hands on their

edges. He was very afraid. She called out to him, but he couldn’t

hear her. She knelt down next to him and took his face in her

hands. He flinched away from her at first and then reached out

blindly with relief. He mouthed her name, but no sound came out.

In her arms, he felt very light. She made him stand up even

though he was so frightened he hunched over on shaking legs. He

cried silently, and Helen knew he was begging her to leave him

behind. He was too frightened to move, but Helen knew she

couldn’t heed him or he would never leave this dark, dry land.

Even though he screamed, she forced him to get up and walk.

Helen was in terrible pain. She wanted to groan but she didn’t have

the strength to make any noise. She could hear the ocean close by,

but she couldn’t move or open her eyes to see where it was. She felt

her head bob gently up and down, as if she were lying, stomach

down, on a lumpy raft, and her lips twitched in the faintest of

grateful smiles. Something had broken her fall and was gently supporting

her. She concentrated on that bit of good fortune as she divided

her pain up into manageable little bits, one heartbeat at a

time. After ten heartbeats she counted to twenty. At twenty she

asked herself to get to forty, and so on. She heard another steady

rhythm under her, and after a short time her heart was in sync

with the sound coming from her life raft. They beat together, each

encouraging the other. She kept very, very still.

After what seemed like hours Helen was still immobile, but she