The next week at school was nothing short of torture. On Monday, Helen tried to stay away from the Delos family, but every effort she made to avoid contact seemed to lead her right to them. She went to school early to try to beat them there, only to see them pull up behind her in the black Hum-Scalade she had seen at the market. She rushed to lock up her bike and get her bags together, but her rush only put her in stride with Jason and Hector. Slowing down to let them get ahead of her put her next to Lucas, who was helping his little sister get her cello out of the back. Helen took a flustered step forward, then went back toward her bike to stand and wait there as long as it took for them to go inside and get out of her way.
Later that day, she got permission to eat lunch outside, only to find Cassandra was already out on the patio practicing the fingering without using her bow on her cello. When she saw Cassandra, Helen pulled up short. As she turned to go back inside, she smacked into Ariadne. The contact made Helen’s skin prickle so tight that her pores hurt, and although she tried to be gracious and smile apologetically, Ariadne’s hands balled into fists around her violin case. Helen stumbled to get away from her, both of them mumbling apologies.
“Cass and I got an outdoor pass to practice. We’ll be out here during lunch for the next few days,” Ariadne explained quickly, avoiding eye contact as she moved away from Helen.
“Thank you,” Helen managed to push out between her clenched teeth. She went back to the cafeteria to intercept Claire.
“Aren’t we going to eat outside?” Claire asked, still moving toward the exit. She spotted Ariadne and Cassandra out there and then turned back to Helen with an incredulous look on her face. “Seriously? It’s not like we have to sit at the same table as them.”
“I know. I just don’t want to be anywhere near them,” Helen said defensively as she fiddled with the clasp on her lunch box. Claire rolled her eyes.
“Hey,” Matt said, catching up to them. “I thought we were going out on the patio. There’re still plenty of tables . . .” His voice trailed off when he saw the Delos girls. Matt had just enough willpower to stifle a whistle at Ariadne’s glorious cleavage—pretty impressive since Ariadne was wearing a tank top and bending over at that particular moment. Helen knew she was ruining Matt’s eye candy and Claire’s sunshine, but she just couldn’t eat outside.
“You guys go out. It’s fine,” Helen said as she abruptly left them and headed toward the cafeteria.
“Lennie! What the hell?” Claire called after her in frustration. “Could you please get your head out of your ass?”
Claire’s voice carried right around the corner with Helen. The word ass seemed to echo in the air as she found herself facing Hector and Jason at their lockers. They were talking with Gretchen and Amy Heart, a senior girl on the cheerleading squad, both of whom were flirting their brains out. Gretchen and Amy looked at each other and then turned in unison to stare at Helen as though she was something they had just found in a hankie. The Furies started to whisper. Helen took a deep breath and tried to block them out.
“Hi, Helen,” Hector said with a bright voice and eerily blank eyes. His body leaned ever so slightly forward in her direction, as if he couldn’t stop himself from trying to reach out and grab her. Jason playfully smacked his brother on the chest with far more force than normal people like Amy and Gretchen could guess at.
“Rude?” Jason reminded Hector.
“Just saying hi to Helen. Hi, Helen. Helen Hamilton, hi. Get out to ’Sconset lately?” he jeered.
“No, she hasn’t,” Lucas said from behind her. Helen spun around and glared at him. “And I would know,” he said so quietly there was no way normals could hear it. But Helen could.
All of a sudden she felt like she’d had enough intimidation for one day. Goaded on by the Furies, she took a tiny step toward Lucas. She saw him inhale sharply, and understood in a flash that Lucas had probably spent just as much time trying to scrub away her scent after their little tumble in his front yard as she had spent trying to scrub away his. The thought made her so happy she almost laughed.
“Tell Noel the olive oil she sent was the best I’ve ever tasted,” Helen said with a wicked little smile. She saw Lucas’s eyes snap open a little wider with fear, and she knew she had guessed right. There was something different about his mother. “Anytime she wants to try my bruschetta she’s more than welcome to stop by.”
Lucas made a move toward Helen, but Jason was suddenly at Helen’s elbow, pushing her gently to the side as he forcibly pulled Lucas to the lockers. Helen took the opportunity to be on her way, but she couldn’t resist one final jab before she left.
“Tell your aunt I said hi,” Helen breathed through bared teeth as she passed Hector, mimicking his menacing tone perfectly.
She didn’t stop to wait for a response. As she sauntered down the hall she could feel all three Delos boys staring holes in her back, but it didn’t make her the least bit nervous. She was so pleased with herself that she even forgot to slouch.
Tuesday wasn’t much better, but at least Helen had stopped trying to alter her schedule to avoid the Delos kids. Instead, they were altering their schedules in order to avoid her . . . so, of course, she was running into them all day long. It seemed like every time she turned down a hallway she bumped into one of them.
To make matters worse, her friends were starting to get annoyed with her. Claire thought Helen was being a spineless wuss. Matt got all sullen and huffy every time Helen flinched because she and Lucas had made eye contact.
On Wednesday, the Delos clan changed tactics. First thing in the morning, Helen went to her locker and found Jason waiting for her there, leaning up against the wall like he’d been put there to decorate the place. Jason had the kind of body that was built to lounge, very catlike, as if he was capable of stretching out and taking a nap at any given moment. He was more gracefully built than his cousin or his brother and when he stood next to them he seemed small, but in the same way a panther is small when compared to a lion or a bull. To Helen, seeing him by himself in the relatively empty hallway, he was big. She forced herself to keep walking forward, and when he glanced over at her she noticed that he had the most outrageously long eyelashes she’d ever seen on a boy.
“Do you have a sec?” he asked in a stiff but polite manner. Helen could see him concentrating, probably trying as hard as she was to block out the Furies.
“All right,” Helen answered, keeping her eyes on the floor. She could see that the kids with lockers near hers were taking their sweet time getting their stuff together. She really wished they would leave, but no one at Nantucket High would pass up an opportunity for a front row seat at another possible brawl.
“Some of us think it would be a good idea if we tried to smooth things over,” he said quickly, as if he wanted to get it done with as fast as possible. Helen thought for a moment.
“Some of you? You mean there hasn’t been any unanimous decision made yet? About me, I mean,” Helen said pointedly.
“No, sorry,” he said, understanding her meaning immediately. “But we think—well, at least a few of us think that we should at least try to be nicer to each other.”
“I don’t see how we’re going to be able to do that, do you?” Helen replied, not meaning to sound unfriendly but unable to stop herself. She heard one of the girls loitering nearby tisk at her.
“We just want to be friends with you. Or if not friends, then at least not enemies. Think it over,” he said, and then left.
It took Helen three tries to get her lock undone with everyone standing around staring at her. Using all her energy to not attack Jason as he walked away, she had none left over for patience. She wanted to scream at everyone for judging her, but that would never be possible. What would she say? I’m not usually a bitch—I’m just super-grouchy because I’m being stalked by three blood-crying ghosts who won’t let me sleep at night?
At lunch, she was surprised to see Ariadne and Cassandra sitting at her customary table with her friends. Even from a distance Helen could see that Matt was flushed with repressed hormones. Gretchen and Zach, who never sat at their lunch table, were there, too, kissing popular ass. Helen wavered in the doorway for a moment, thinking she might still have a chance to sneak away, when Ariadne spotted her and waved her over.
During that uncomfortable lunch, Ariadne was as nice as could be to Helen, and even though there was a brittle quality to Cassandra’s smiles, there were plenty of them. Despite this genuine attempt at friendship, Helen was so agitated by the insufferable presence of the Furies hovering just outside the corner of her eye that her testy behavior earned her several scandalized looks from Gretchen and a few worried ones from Claire. As they left the cafeteria, Claire pulled Helen aside.
“Would it kill you to be nice?” she asked.
“You have no idea how hard I’m trying,” Helen replied though tight lips.
“Try harder. You’re coming off like a total snob, and I know you’re not one so don’t even start.” Claire continued over Helen’s protestation: “I can tell there’s something weird going on. Something that you’re not telling me about. I’m fine with that. But you have to start pretending you like them or people like Gretchen and Zach are going to make sure that your life here is miserable until graduation.”
Helen nodded submissively. She knew she was getting good advice, but her life was already miserable enough without cozying up to the Delos family. Still, the next day she did her best to make an effort and smiled at Ariadne and Jason as she passed them in the hall. The attempt wasn’t pretty—it came off more like a toothy grimace than a grin—but it was well received by the twins.
Hector was a different story. Apparently, he didn’t share in the opinion that they should all try to get along, and after another harrowing day of forcing herself not to flinch when she saw Lucas, Helen had to pass by Hector on her way to track. As if pulled by invisible wires, Hector changed direction and started following her across the field. He was calling her name under his breath, like he was singing a song to himself. Helen glanced around desperately for another person, a witness in case something happened, and sighed out loud when she saw a few girls headed in her direction. They looked at how Helen was practically running away from Hector and stared at her like she had grown horns. Most girls at school would have run toward Hector if he was smiling at them like that.
All Thursday night, Helen was kept awake by the moaning of the Furies, as though one of the Delos kids were near. On Friday, Helen had to get up at dawn to drive Kate and Jerry to the airport. They were flying to Boston to attend a small-business owners’ conference for the weekend, and Helen was looking forward to a few days on her own. Between the lack of sleep and the daily harassment, Helen felt ground down to bare bone. All she had to do was make it through one more day at school and then she could crawl into bed and hide until Monday. Maybe, eventually, she would even be able to fall asleep.
Unfortunately, what she thought was the Friday Finish Line was actually a trip wire, as she found out when she got to school. At first she didn’t understand why she was getting bumped into so much, and assumed it had to be some new trend that she had missed, until Claire began yelling at everyone to back off. Then Helen started to listen to what everyone was saying when they bumped into her.
People she had never even spoken to were whispering “bitch” and “slut” as they passed her in the hallway. The whole day brought one insult after another. Three separate times Helen had to run into the girls’ room to hide. She managed to make it through the day without seeing any of the Delos kids, but in exchange she had become the bull’s-eye on everyone else’s target. By the time she was changing for track, she was such a nervous wreck she didn’t know if she was going to cry or throw up. Once outside, she caught up to Claire on wobbly legs. Thankfully, the other girls gave them a wide berth as they ran the trail.
“Why do they even care?” Helen burst out in frustration. “What does it matter if I like the Delos kids or not?”
“Because that’s not the whole story,” Claire said gently.
“What did you hear?” Helen asked, desperate for any explanation.
“There’s this rumor that Lucas and Hector are fighting over you, so of course all the girls hate you now,” Claire said like she hoped the rumor was ridiculous, but wasn’t entirely sure if it was.
“You’re joking, right?”
Claire shook her head. “I guess Lucas and Hector got into an actual fistfight after school yesterday at football practice. That’s why they weren’t in school today. They got suspended.”
“What happened?” Helen asked, stunned quiet.
“Lucas saw Hector following you out of the girl’s locker room and he lost it. He started yelling at Hector to stay away from you. I guess Lucas sort of said . . . that you were his,” Claire said timidly. Helen shook her head. Lucas had meant that Helen was his to kill, but she couldn’t exactly explain that to Claire.
“All the girls hate me because Lucas is a delusional stalker? How is that fair? I loathe him,” Helen said passionately. She paused. Another thought occurred to her. “But that only explains the girls hating me. There’s more, right?”
“Oh, yeah. It gets way worse, because they didn’t just get suspended,” Claire continued, her brow scrunched with worry. “Zach said that Hector and Lucas went at it in this really scary way, right there in front of the whole football team, the coaches, everyone. It was bad. Like death-match bad. Jason got in between them and managed 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 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 live-and-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 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 Luis 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 Luis 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 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.
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.
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.
