Starcrossed

they stood at her locker together. He seemed distracted. His brow was furrowed and his gaze tuned in, but most disturbingly he seemed to be all blurry.
    “What is that you’re doing? It’s giving me a headache,” Helen said quietly while she turned the combination on her lock.
    “Sorry,” he said as he snapped back into focus. “I’m bending the light. It happens sometimes when I’m concentrating.”
    Helen remembered from her reading that Apollo was the god of Light, and at that moment Lucas was doing things with light that were impossible outside of a magic show. She realized she had seen him do this before in the locker room at his house, but she had taken so many knocks to the head at the time she thought it was just her vision that was off.
    “Aren’t you worried someone will notice?”
    “Actually, sometimes I do this to make people stop noticing me when I want some privacy to think. People have a hard time forcing themselves to look at things that they can’t see clearly, or things that shouldn’t be possible.”
    “Because their eyes slide right off,” Helen interjected, remembering how her gaze was diverted from Lucas’s face in the locker room even though she had really tried to focus on him.
    “Exactly. If I look far away or too hard to see, most people just block me out,” he said, and then he gave her a knowing smile. “You slouch to get people to stop staring at you. I blur. It’s useful in a fight, too, only it’s nearly impossible to do when you’re moving fast.”
    “Are you giving me all your fight secrets?” Helen said cheekily as she put her books in her bag and shut her locker. “Not so smart, Houdini.”
    “Really? Well, come and get me, Sparky ,” he said with a grin as he backed away.
    Sparky? Helen thought, puzzled. But he was already through the double doors at the end of the hall and she had to go to class.
    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