When the bell for first lunch rang she rushed as fast as she could, intending to get some answers, but by the time she made it to the cafeteria, Ariadne was already seated at the geek table, surrounded by admirers.
Helen shouldn’t have been surprised that Ariadne would join their table, considering she was in all the AP classes. Unfortunately for Matt, Ariadne’s presence usually attracted an entourage of boys—the little lambs to her Mary. Helen tried to fight her way into the circle, and nearly gave up before she was spotted by Ariadne.
“Zach? Can you make a little room for Helen, please?” Ariadne asked as she flashed a dazzling smile.
“Don’t worry about it, Zach. She can have my seat,” Claire said in a caustically cheerful voice, vacating the place next to Ariadne.
Claire brushed close to Helen as she passed, whispering something about the “old friends” not being cool enough to sit at the same lunch table when someone suddenly has a popular boyfriend. Before Helen could get into a well-deserved fight with Claire, Ariadne pulled Helen down next to her to stop one of the hormone-infested boys from getting any closer to her.
By the time the bell rang for classes, all of Helen’s normal friends had been driven away from the table—a table that had been theirs since freshmen year. Matt’s sad look made Helen wonder how long it had been since the two of them had been able to talk. It must have been months.
Claire wasn’t waiting for her at the trail when track practice started. It was silly for her to try to avoid Helen by leaving without her, because they both knew that she could catch up with Claire no matter how far behind she was, but the intent was clear. When Helen came jogging up, Claire didn’t even turn to look at her.
“Just keep running, Hamilton. I am so not into you right now,” Claire said as she veered away and raised her arm in a “talk to the hand” gesture.
From many years of experience Helen knew that Claire needed to punish her a little before she’d be ready to move forward. Then they’d talk on the phone, make up, and the next day everything would be back to normal. Just this one time, Helen wished they could skip to the end of the fight, especially since she hadn’t done anything, but she knew better than to rush Claire. Instead, Helen dutifully ran past her.
After a few minutes of running alone, Helen started to get bored with the mortal pace. She looked at her watch to calculate exactly how much time she would need to kill before making her way back to the trailhead, and took off across the moors at an impossible speed. She knew Lucas could simply step up into the air and start flying, but so far that approach hadn’t worked for her. Maybe she needed to be running to get airborne, kind of like an airplane. Here was a chance to test that theory.
As Helen struck out off the trail and through the marshy land surrounding Miacomet Pond, she began to sense the lightness she associated with flight. There was a fluttery feeling in her stomach, a barely contained wildness that she assumed was an expression of Scion power. She felt static energy running over her skin. It was as if she had rubbed a balloon over her entire body and then held it just far enough away so that her whole surface felt the outward tug of an electrical field.
Taking an experimental leap, Helen soared up into the air. At first she thought she had done it, that she was flying, but she soon felt herself reach the top of a very large arc and begin to descend. She had merely jumped higher than ever before—too high—and her brain was still hardwired to believe that when she hit the ground she would go splat and die.
She tried to grab at the air, and although there was a part of her that knew how to make it hold her, she was either too scared or not scared enough to do the trick in time. She hit the ground at an angle and went into a skid, her feet digging up two loamy troughs in the mud.
She was fine, of course, but still deeply shaken. Her knees were wobbly and she had to laugh to let out the crazy feeling flapping around inside her chest. After