Chapter Four #2
It was worse than she’d imagined. A group of underclassman girls literally gasped and huddled up to gossip as soon as they saw Helen come through the front doors.
A senior boy with a leather fetish leered at Helen and called her “hellcat” just as he was passing by.
When she turned to stare back at him in astonishment he mouthed the words “call me” before continuing on.
“I don’t think I can do this,” Helen whispered. Claire put a hand on her back and pushed her forward.
Every time someone’s eyes landed on her and widened with recognition she got closer and closer to a panic attack.
Was she going to have to suffer through the rest of junior year like this?
Helen tried to melt into Claire’s shadow and realized that if it was cover she was after, she was going to have to find some bigger friends.
“Quit stepping on the backs of my feet!” Claire complained. “Why don’t you just go hide out with Hergie while I get your stuff out of your locker?”
Gratefully, Helen ducked into homeroom and tried to blend in with her desk. Mr. Hergeshimer asked if she was feeling better, and then ignored her completely as soon as she answered that she was feeling fine. She could have kissed him for that.
Matt just waved and sat down without a word.
Helen guessed correctly that he had been threatened by Claire to act like he’d forgotten the whole thing, but he kept trying to stop himself from glancing over at her, so Helen knew he was still really worried.
She caught his eye and smiled warmly, and after that he seemed a little less preoccupied.
Zach turned his head and looked out the window as soon as he took his seat, making a big show of not looking at her.
She made it through the rest of the morning without incident, right up until lunch.
As she walked to the cafeteria she realized too late that she was going to pass by Lucas’s locker.
She was about to turn and go another way, which was ridiculous because that would mean she would have to literally go around the entire school, when she was spotted.
Gretchen and Zach noticed her as she stood wavering indecisively in the middle of the hall.
They were at their lockers, which just so happened to be right next to Lucas’s and Jason’s.
Some of the fuzz fell off of Helen’s memory and she recalled Gretchen’s and Zach’s petrified faces floating around in the background as she tried to choke Lucas.
It made alphabetical sense for their lockers to be together, Brant—B, Clifford—C, Delos—D, but Helen blamed her terrible luck for the fact that all of the most popular people in her grade had been firsthand witnesses to her moment of utter humiliation.
She had no choice—she was just going to have to walk past them. Gretchen and Zach didn’t say a word and their faces didn’t show any expression at all as Helen hurried by with her shoulders practically in her ears. At least Lucas wasn’t there, she thought, ducking into the cafeteria.
“Stand up straight! You’re going to give yourself scoliosis,” Claire scolded when Helen got to their table.
“Sorry. I just had to go by his locker,” Helen explained quietly. Matt made a disgusted sound.
“You can calm down, Lennie,” he snapped. “None of them are here today.”
“Supposedly they all took the day off because the aunt and the eldest Delos kid finally got to the island this morning,” Claire said.
“Oh yeah, great,” Helen mused. “There’s another one.”
“Hector. He’s a senior,” Claire added helpfully, although she could have no idea that saying his name didn’t help Helen at all. In fact, for some inexplicable reason, it ticked her off.
“No news on him yet. Zach will probably call me with an update this weekend,” Matt said with a shrug. “He always knows where everyone is and what they’re doing.”
The rest of the day dragged by, although there was some relief in knowing that she wasn’t going to bump into the Delos kids or the wraiths that seemed to appear whenever they did.
She even started to enjoy herself during track practice as she ran through the fog and splashed in muddy puddles with Claire.
Coach Tar didn’t say a thing about Helen’s pathetically slow run time when she came in, although Helen knew she wouldn’t be able to get away with that for much longer.
She had an athletic scholarship to win, and Coach Tar was not about to forget it.
Dodging her way through the day, Helen made it to work that evening with something like relief, until she realized that a lot of kids from her school were coming in to buy a single piece of candy or one can of soda.
“Why don’t you go to the back and do some stocking for me?” Kate asked, giving Helen a gentle pat on the arm. “They’ll stop coming in to gawk if they think you’ve left for the day.”
“Don’t they have anything else to do on a Friday night?” Helen asked hopelessly.
“What island did you grow up on?” Kate replied sarcastically. Helen rested her forehead briefly on Kate’s shoulder, stealing a second of comfort before she straightened up. “You may as well do the inventory, too. And take as long as you want,” Kate added as Helen headed toward the back.
Inventory was not usually Helen’s favorite job, but it was that night. She was so occupied counting every object in the store that before she knew it, they were locking the front and going through the ritual of closing down.
“So. What really happened between you and that Lucas kid?” Kate asked without looking up from the stacks of bills she was sorting.
“I wish I knew.” Helen sighed as she rested on her broom handle.
“Everyone’s talking about you two. And not just the kids,” Kate said with a half smile. “So what’s up?”
“Look, if I had an explanation, believe me, I’d be shouting it in the streets. I don’t know why I attacked him,” Helen said. “And the worst thing is that the attack isn’t the worst thing.”
“Oh, you’re going to have to explain that,” Kate said. She put aside the money. “Come on. Tell me. What’s the worst thing?”
Helen shook her head and started pushing the broom around.
There had always been a voice in her head that would whisper possible explanations for her strangeness, words like freak or monster or even witch. No matter how deftly Helen silenced that voice, it always came back eventually.
The absolute worst thing that Helen could think of would be to find out that she really was one of those things.
“It’s nothing,” Helen said, unable to look up.
“It isn’t just going to go away because you don’t talk about it, you know,” Kate pressed. Helen knew she was right, and she also knew she could trust Kate. Besides, she needed to talk to someone about it or she’d go crazy.
“I’m having nightmares. Actually, it’s the same nightmare that I keep having over and over, and it feels so real. Like I’m going someplace while I’m sleeping.”
“Where do you go?” Kate asked gently. She came out from behind the counter and made Helen stop sweeping and focus.
Helen pictured the barren, hopeless world she had been forced to visit the last few nights.
“It’s a dry place. Everything is bleached and colorless. I can hear running water in the distance, like there’s a river somewhere, but I just can’t reach it. It’s like I’m trying to find something, I think.”
“A dry land, huh? You know that’s pretty common in dream imagery,” Kate assured her. “It comes up in every dream book, in every country I’ve ever been to.”
Helen swallowed her frustration and nodded. “Yeah, but I wake up in the morning and my feet . . .” She stopped herself, hearing how crazy she sounded. Kate studied Helen for a moment.
“Are you sleepwalking, honey? Is that it?” Kate took Helen’s shoulders, encouraging Helen to look her in the eyes. Helen threw up her hands and shook her head.
“I don’t know what I’m doing. But I’m so tired, Kate,” she said.
A few exhausted tears slipped out. “Even if I manage to fall asleep, I wake up and I feel like I’ve been running and running.
I think I’m going crazy.” She let out a nervous laugh.
Kate pulled Helen into one of her pastry-scented hugs.
“It’s okay. We’ll figure it out,” Kate said soothingly. “Have you talked to your father yet?”
“No. And I don’t want you to, either,” Helen insisted, drawing back to look directly at Kate. Kate gave her a searching look, and Helen continued. “Next week, if I’m still crazy, I’ll tell him, but I think we’ve both had enough drama for one week.”
Kate nodded. “You decide when you’re ready to talk about it with your dad, and I’ll be there. My little loca,” she teased smilingly. Helen smiled back, grateful that she had Kate, who could listen to her seriously when she needed it, and then stop being serious at just the right time.
“I think we can leave the rest.” Kate gave Helen one final squeeze. “Ready to go?” she called over her shoulder as she went behind the counter and put the money in the safe.
Helen stowed her broom and made her way to the back door. Switching off the lights, Helen turned to lock up as Kate headed across the alley toward her car, keys in hand.
Neither of them heard a thing. There was a blur and a faint flash of blue light in the corner of Helen’s eye, and a smell.
It was a nauseating yet hauntingly familiar odor of sizzling hair mixed with stale ozone.
Then Kate dropped to the ground like a puppet with her strings cut.
Helen instinctively bolted forward, holding out her arms to try to break Kate’s fall, but the attacker took the opportunity to put a bag over Helen’s head from behind.
She was too startled to scream. As she was pulled backward against a soft chest, it suddenly registered in Helen’s head that her attacker was a woman.