Dreamless

mother, and got thrown out of his house? Helen finished in her mind.
    Claire seemed to know exactly what Helen was thinking, and she squeezed Helen’s hand in support as she explained.
    “No, he’s been home a few times since then. He apologized to his parents and they forgave him, of course. But he’s never around anymore. No one knows where he’s been going or what he’s been doing, and honestly? Everyone’s too afraid of him to ask. He’s changed, Lennie. He doesn’t talk to anyone, except maybe Cassandra. He vanishes right after school, and sometimes he doesn’t come home until one or two o’clock in the morning, if he comes home at all. His parents are letting him go because, well, without Hector around, no one can really stop him. Jason is worried,” Claire said before glancing sideways at Helen. “You haven’t seen him lately, have you?”
    “Today. But only for a second, way down the hall,” Helen said, ending the line of questions before Claire could ask her how she felt. “Look, I gotta pick up the pace. Are you okay, or do you want to talk some more?”
    “You go ahead,” Claire said with a troubled frown.
    Helen gave Claire a little smile to let her know she was okay, even though she kind of wasn’t, and then sped up to finish her run in a time that Coach Tar would think showed initiative.
    Lucas saw Helen at the end of the hallway, and forced his face into an angry shape, willing her to hate him or fear him—whatever it took to get her the hell away from him. For her own good.
    But Lucas didn’t see hate or fear in her eyes. She didn’t turn away from him like she was supposed to. She just looked lost.
    It felt like chewing glass, but Lucas forced himself to turn his back on her and continue down the hallway.
    All he had intended was to push Helen away.
    But then things got out of hand: striking his father; his mother, bleeding; the blind rage he felt. Lucas knew what anger felt like. He and Hector had been fighting tooth and nail since they were big enough to stand. But this was like nothing he had experienced before. He’d woken something up inside of himself, something that he’d had no idea existed in him.
    The genie was out of the bottle and it wouldn’t fit back in.
    Finishing her run long before Claire, Helen decided that she wanted to walk to work so she could think. She sent Claire a text explaining that she didn’t need a ride to the News Store that afternoon and stifled the suspicion that Claire would probably be pleased with Helen’s decision to go it alone.
    They had never avoided each other before, but things had changed. Their lives were pulling them in different directions, and Helen was beginning to wonder if their friendship would ever be the same again. The thought made her want to cry.
    The temperature started to plummet as Helen walked up Surfside Road toward the center of town. Her jacket was unbuttoned and the straps from the book bag over one shoulder and the gym bag over the other pulled the two sides of her jacket apart so she couldn’t close the front properly. With an exasperated cluck of her tongue, Helen unslung her bags. As she bent over to put them down on the ground, she experienced a strange vertigo. It seemed for a moment that the sidewalk didn’t quite match up to the street, like there was something terribly wrong with her depth perception.
    Straightening up with a gasp, Helen put an arm out to the side in case she fell over, waiting for the rush of blood to her head to end. The vertigo was gone in a moment but an even more disturbing sensation replaced it. Helen felt like she was being watched, like someone was standing right in front of her, staring directly into her eyes.
    She took a step back and reached out, but touched nothing but thin air. Glancing around nervously, Helen spun on her heel, grabbed her bags, and jogged into the town center. Cassandra had foreseen that Helen was safe from attack for the next few days at least, but she’d never promised that Helen would be left in peace. Helen knew someone from the Hundred Cousins was most likely watching her, she just hadn’t expected to feel so paranoid about it. Suddenly, Helen imagined that she could feel someone’s breath on her neck. The thought made her bolt into the News Store like she was being chased.
    “What is it?” Kate asked. She looked behind Helen for whatever had spooked her. “Is someone following you?”
    “It’s nothing,” Helen replied with a phony smile.