When she arrived she saw Lucas waiting in the parking lot, leaning up against an Audi she’d seen in the Deloses’ garage but had never seen him drive before. It reminded her how stupid she’d been to think he was going to kiss her that night in his garage. She dropped her head and hurried toward the school without waving to him. He took a step after her and opened his mouth to say something, but stopped himself and let her go.
When Helen got to the door, she heard Claire call out from behind. She paused and waited for her to catch up.
“Are you two fighting?” she asked, glancing back at Lucas’s stooped form. When she got a good look at how terrible Helen looked she burst out, “Holy crap! What the hell happened to you?”
“I didn’t sleep well last night,” Helen mumbled.
“Your eyes look black and blue, Len. Like you haven’t slept in weeks,” Claire responded, sounding seriously worried. “Were you crying a lot?”
“No. Not at all,” Helen said. It was true, too. She was sad, but she never felt like crying when she was depressed. She felt like sleeping.
“Can you tell me what the fight was about?” Claire asked cautiously.
“There was no fight, really. Lucas just doesn’t want to be with me,” Helen said. She rammed her fists into her pockets. She found that if she tensed her muscles she could keep herself from giving up on moving.
“I don’t believe that,” Claire said doubtfully. “He punched Hector in the face for just talking to you and pretty much announced to the whole school that you were his girlfriend.”
“Well, I guess he must have changed his mind since then,” Helen said, shrugging. She didn’t have the strength to argue. She barely had the energy to turn the combination on her locker. She was so tired from walking for weeks, but that had been a dream, hadn’t it? How could she be physically worn out from something that had only happened in her mind?
“Uh-huh. He doesn’t want me, Gig. He told me so himself. Can we drop it now? I’m just too tired.”
“Yeah. No problem,” Claire said, rubbing Helen’s back. For a second, Helen let herself lean against Claire in a sideways hug.
“Shit. I’ll kill him,” Claire offered. Helen tried to laugh at that, but what came out of her sounded more like a hacking cough.
“Thanks, but no. I don’t want him dead,” Helen said. She shuffled after Claire to homeroom.
Mr. Hergeshimer asked about her health as soon as he had a chance to process how wretched she looked. Helen assured him she was fine, and after studying her face skeptically for a moment he gave up and went back to harassing Zach about his choice for the Word of the Day. Matt asked Helen in a whisper if her stomach felt better, and then restated his opinion that she should quit track.
“You’re wearing yourself too thin,” he said, sounding an awful lot like her father.
The rest of the morning went similarly. Every teacher asked if she needed to go to the nurse, and all of her acquaintances worried that she wasn’t better yet from her “fit” during track the other day. Except for Zach.
“I had no idea you were so fast, Hamilton,” he said as he ran to catch up to her in the hall.
“Yeah, I’m pretty fast,” she countered, trying to sound disinterested.
“Right before you collapsed I saw you chasing that shirtless guy and I realized that I’ve had it backward all these years. See, I always thought you were the one who liked to be chased, you being such a tease and all,” he said with a faint sneer. “But it’s hard to believe any guy could outrun you. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone run that fast.”
“Wait, you told Gretchen?” Helen asked, a sinking feeling in her stomach. “I thought it was the other way around.”
“I gotta admit,” he said, taunting her, “when you want to, you can move so fast it’s, like, inhuman. The only other time I’ve ever seen anyone move that fast was when one of those Delos kids was playing the hero during football practice and this freshman went down on the other end of the line—” Zach was cut off by Helen’s history teacher, who gestured for Helen to hurry up and get in the room.
For the moment, Helen was saved, but from the way Zach was looking