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! Thats what I dont get, Claire exclaimed.
You have never hated anyone before, not even Gretchen whos
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? Its eating you up!
You have been so angry since he moved here. I dont understand it
at all. Its like the only explanation that makes sense is what everyones
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 wouldnt have to call you. Thats why
you flipped out when you saw him in the hallway, because he used
you and you were in love with him.
Wow. Thats 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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Id 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. Youre my best friend,
Gig. Helen squeezed her until Claire gave in and smiled. Ive
been strange lately, I know it, and Im really sorry. Some weird
stuff is going on with me. I want to tell you everything about it, but
I cant because I dont understand it yet. So please, please just stay
on my side, even if I am angry and miserable all the time.
You know Im always on your side, but do you want me to be
completely honest? Claire stopped again and turned to face Helen.
I know Im supposed to say that this is nothing, and that it will all
work itself out, and feed you all that supportive nonsense, but I
cant. I dont think this is going to get better on its own, and Im
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 nights 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 didnt 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 shes 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 couldnt let him lose another
person he loved. Hed never get over it.
Helen crooked her arm and rammed her elbow into her attackers
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 hadnt 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
shoulderaway 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 didnt 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. Shed 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 didnt 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, Helens plea w
as 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-PROOFNOT 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 artists studiounmoving, 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
blindgrabbing at the sharp stones, cutting his hands on their
edges. He was very afraid. She called out to him, but he couldnt
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
couldnt 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 didnt have
the strength to make any noise. She could hear the ocean close by,
but she couldnt 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
could finally open her eyes and focus them. All she could see in the
sweeping, blinding flashes sent out from some distant lighthouse
were walls of sand. Under her right cheek was a warm T-shirt.
After a few moments she realized there was a person in it. She was
lying on top of a man. The lumpiness under her head was his chest
and the bobbing sensation was him breathing. She gasped. The
Delos boys had caught her.
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Helen? Lucas asked, his voice faint and breathy. Make sound.
If alive, he barely managed to say. He didnt sound like he was going
to kill her so she answered.
Alive. Cant move, she whispered back. Every syllable sent
threads of pain radiating out from her diaphragm.
Wait. Listen to waves. Calm, he said, struggling with every
word as her body weight tried to press the air out of him.
Helen knew she couldnt so much as raise her arm, so she relaxed
like he told her to and just watched as the world swayed up and
then back down with every breath he took. They waited in the intermittent
light and dark of the lighthouse signal, listening to the
surf fizzing in the sand.
As the agony began to lessen into something semi-endurable,
Helen was able to notice more things about her body. From what
she could see, her outward shape seemed mostly normal, but her
insides felt gooey and soft, as if she were a freshly microwaved
chocolate chip cookie. Her bones were barely supporting the
muscles and tissue they were supposed to, and there was an itchy
heat in her marrow. She recognized that sensation as being similar
to the one shed experienced once when she was learning to ride a
scooter and accidentally flipped the thing. Some part of her knew
at the time that she had broken her arm, but by the time she got it
X-rayed it was as good as new. The itch meant she was healing.
Somehow, she had fallen out of the sky and survived. She really
was a monster. A freak. Maybe even a witch. She started to cry.
Dont be scared, Lucas managed to say in one try. Pain will
pass.
Should be dead, she whined quietly through her liquefied jaw.
Whats wrong with me?
No. Not wrong. Youre one of us, he said with a slightly
stronger voice. He was healing just as fast as Helen was.
And whats that?
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We call ourselves Scions, he said.
Offspring? Helen mumbled, remembering the definition from
one of Hergies despised Word of the Day assignments. Offspring
of wh
at?
Lucas answered her. Helen heard him, but she didnt. The word
demigod was so far from what she was expecting to hear she had to
think about it for a second. She had prepared herself for it to be
something horrific, possibly even evil, which made her the way she
was.
Huh? she blurted out stupidly, so confused she had stopped
crying. Her view jiggled, and Helen realized that Lucas was
laughing.
Ouch. Dont make me. Laugh, he said even though his chest
kept bouncing up and down.
It felt funny to have her head bobbing around like that so she
started laughing, regretted it, but couldnt seem to stop. It was almost
as if the pain was so awful she had to laugh it off.
This really hurts, he said as he started to get hold of himself.
If you stop, Ill stop, she said, her fit winding down as well.
In between recurring snickers, they went back to quietly managing
their pain and waiting for their bodies to knit themselves
back together. Despite the pain, the time ticked by soothingly. Out
of one ear, Helen could hear the steady thump of Lucass heart,
and out of the other she could hear seagulls. Dawn was on its way,
and she felt completely safe for the first time in weeks.
Why dont I hate you anymore? she asked when she felt like her
head bones were solid enough to enunciate properly.
I was just wondering the same thing. I think the Furies are
gone. Lucas sighed deeply, like a huge weight had just been lifted
off his chest, even though Helen knew her head was probably as
heavy as a bowling ball. I was scared for a moment when we were
in the air. It was very hard not to engage you.
We? Oh, you can fly! Helen said, realizing.
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She remembered how Lucas had a habit of appearing and disappearing
so suddenly, and how she had heard the thuds and scuffs
of his takeoffs and landings. She had never seen him fly because
she had never thought to look up.
How did you get under me? she asked, shifting her position
ever so slightly.
I caught you. I saw you faint and slowed your fall as best as I
could, but we were already close to impact when I got an arm
around you. He shifted as well, and then flinched in pain. I cant
believe were alive.
Neither can I. I thought you were coming to kill me tonight, but
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