the word wicked. 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 are so smart,” 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 a jealous idiot, 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 . . . Attractive isn’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 the Iliad. 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’m nothing like Helen of Troy.”
“It doesn’t matter what either of our mothers named us,” he said with an ironic laugh. “Trust me.”
“Hamilton!” yelled Coach Tar, clutching her clipboard and marching toward them with her eyes wide. “Are you on fire?!”
Helen looked at where Coach was pointing and realized that the ground all around her was seared and black. The exit door looked like something out of a Dali painting.
Luckily, Lucas was a fantastic liar. As a bevy of teachers came rushing to their aid, he explained that there had been some kind of electrical sparking from above the door, suggesting that perhaps the exit sign had shorted. He and Helen had run outside to stomp out the sparks that had drifted onto the