Starcrossed

loves, stepping around the broken pillars of unkept vows and dusting the headstones in the graveyard of love with her hands. Every kind of death had a resting place in the dry lands.
    She walked until her feet bled.
    Helen woke to a room filled with sad blue light. She tried to roll over and felt tied to her mattress, like she had been jumped by the Lilliputians in the middle of the night. Somehow in her sleep she had shucked off her shirt and shoes, but her jeans were so tangled up in her sheets that she had to push herself off the bed and fight it out on the floor to unwrap herself. It was an ugly battle, especially since she was still covered in dirt from the trench Lucas had dug with Hector’s body, dried blood from her cut feet, and a gray, powdery dust from the dry lands. Her feet had healed themselves, of course, but still there were blood-encrusted foot smears all over her sheets. They were ruined, and she would have to buy new ones. Luckily, her dad was too squeamish about girl stuff to ask questions.
    She shimmied out of her jeans on her way to the bathroom and climbed into the shower before the water even had a chance to heat up. Opening her mouth, she gulped down as much of the cold spray as she could catch. She was so dry inside. Her body ached from walking hundreds of miles under a dead sun—the cold water was like a blessing even though it made her shiver. Helen looked down at her skin and watched the water get forced into little rivers by the raised hairs of her goose bumps. It made her think about the river she had seen from a distance right before she woke up.
    She couldn’t remember it.
    She knew she had felt a sigh-worthy relief, and only one thing could have made her feel that way in the dry lands. Water. But she couldn’t remember anything about it. How could she forget a river in the dry lands? It was unthinkable, so she stopped thinking about it.
    It bothered her that her brain refused to think about it. She walked, still naked and dripping wet, to the vanity in her bedroom, picked up some old viper-green eyeliner Claire had left the last time she slept over, and wrote THE RIVER I CAN’T REMEMBER on the mirror, just in case she forgot again. Then she got dressed.
    It was getting cold out, and the air was damp with fog. Helen zipped her jacket up to her throat and regretted not bringing gloves. As she rode to school she had to keep one hand in her pocket and one on the handlebars, and then switch off when the hand she was using to steer got too numb.
    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?
    “You’re serious, aren’t