“I haven’t told anyone anything!” Helen said, her voice pitching up to an unnaturally high register.
“Are youtryingto make me jealous or are you just so frustrated that you’re already looking for someone else? Someone who’ll give in to you?” He was so angry Helen could barely see him as he began to blur himself out, but she was angry, too.
“I am NOT looking for anyone else!” she howled at him.
Lucas took an involuntary step back as he stared at the halo of pale blue light crackling around Helen’s head and hands. Her lightning didn’t seem to respond to Lucas’s light control, and as the distortions he created were thrown back by Helen’s metallic glow he was forced to shade his eyes.
“Oh, boy,” she tittered nervously. She felt like she was going over the top peak on a roller coaster—and she was just about to drop down.
She threw an arm out to the side to steady herself. Lucas took a step forward to grab on to her, but wisely stopped himself before he touched her and got electrocuted. Then the blue light went out like a switch had been turned off and Helen plopped onto the floor like a half-baked soufflé.
“I feel awful,” she told him, a bewildered look on her face.
“Are you... grounded yet?” he asked her, practically vibrating with worry.
Helen looked at the floor and giggled insanely as the electricity running around her body tickled her brain.
“Nope. Linoleum,” she said, slapping the palm of her hand against the nonconductive floor. Her vision swam in static. “You were r.r.right. I should have learned to u.u.use this.” She had to get rid of the energy, stat.
“Luk.k.k. Run.n.n,” she said, her jaw jittering uncontrollably with energy as her bolt demanded to be released. She had held it too long.
Lucas wouldn’t leave her, and Helen knew she could kill him if she didn’t do this right. She racked her lightning-filled brain and luckily remembered fourth-grade science class. Desperate to rid herself of the monster she had summoned, she slid on her knees to the exit door at the end of the hall and rammed her shoulder against it.
As soon as she came in contact with the metal release bar that ran across the middle of the door it glowed orange with heat and started melting. She barely moved fast enough to open it before the whole door turned into a solid block of smoldering metal. Tumbling down the short flight of steps and crawling outside on her knees, she threw herself forward onto her hands. With a welcome sigh she discharged her bolt into the one place that it would be safely dismantled—the ground.
After a few seconds she felt herself get pulled up from the forgiving earth and carried away.
“Are you injured?” Lucas asked anxiously.
“Just wicked tired,” she sighed, a little surprised at herself for using the wordwicked. She was too weary to care. “Really, put me down,” she demanded when he didn’t respond. He stopped and balanced her on her feet. She rubbed her tongue across her teeth and then sucked at the roof of her mouth.
“Wow, I’m thirsty! And I think I know why! It’s like lightning, right? So that means I’m generating the electic—I mean, erlecic—I mean, the bolt—by ripping apart the water in my body! That makes total sense,” she said, hearing herself sound like a cheerleader who had suddenly figured out how her pom-poms were made.
“Helen? You’re scaring me. Here, sit, please. Do you need something?” Lucas asked, making her look him in the eye. She still seemed to be throwing off sparks.
“I do need something,” she said, struggling to control her diction and her fuzzy brain as best she could. “I need to tell you what’s going on, so that you and I don’t accidentally kill each other over a dumb misunderstanding, and I need you to promise me that if I tell you, you’re not going to beat anyone up.”
“I don’t think I like this deal,” he said dubiously.
“Tough.”
He nodded his agreement. She looked around for a moment and then decided to sit down on the top step of the outside stairs before she fell down.
“Zach was the one who saw me chasing Creon. He dropped some pretty threatening hints in class the other day, about me and about you and how abnormally fast and strong we all are. Now he keeps trying to talk to me alone and I think he might be trying to blackmail me or something. I’ve been dodging him for as long as I can because...”
“The longer you wait, the more likely it is that the whole thing turns into a big fish story and no one believes him, anyway,” Lucas finished for her with a knowing nod.
“Right. You aresosmart,” Helen marveled.
“And your brain is fried,” Lucas said, smiling at her indulgently. The smile fell away. “Because of me. I’m such an idiot,” he mumbled, looking down at his twisting hands.
“Correction, you’re ajealousidiot, and that has to change right now,” Helen replied seriously, still feeling light-headed, but fighting her way through it. “You have no reason to be jealous. I told you that I don’t want anyone but you. I never have.”
“You’ve lived your whole life on this island, you don’t know what ‘anyone’ means yet,” he sighed. “And you have no idea how...Attractiveisn’t the right word. It doesn’t fully describe the effect you have on men. On me. Look, I’m not a jealous person, Helen, really. All the other girls I’ve dated...” Lucas broke off, took a breath, and regrouped his thoughts before starting again.
“You know, I never believed in ‘The Face That Launched a Thousand Ships’ thing. I used to hate that part in theIliad. I even laughed at it,” he said. Then he paused and shook his head ruefully as he raised his eyes to the sky for a moment, mentally kicking himself. “It’s ridiculous, when you think about it. A ten-year war because some selfish coward ran off with an unfaithful woman? It made me angry, and I hated Paris and Helen for being so weak. Then I did something very, very stupid. I swore I would never have made the same choices they did—that I would have been stronger. Then, two weeks later, I saw your face for the first time.”
“Wait,” Helen said. She blinked with thirst, fatigue, and shock. “I’m not some spoiled queen who left her husband, ran off with another guy, and destroyed an entire city. I don’t care what my rotten mother named me, I’mnothinglike Helen of Troy.”
