Starcrossed (Starcrossed 1)

off the water, but as soon as she woke up, Helen could

feel the hot, humid air lying on her body like a wet fur coat.

She had kicked her sheets off in the middle of the night, wriggled

out of her T-shirt, drank the entire glass of water on her nightstand,

and still she woke up exhausted by the heat. It was very unisland

weather, and Helen absolutely did not want to get up and go

to school.

She pedaled slowly in an attempt to avoid spending the rest of

the day smelling like phys ed. She didn?t usually sweat much, but

she?d woken up so lethargic that morning she couldn?t remember if

she had put on deodorant. She flapped her elbows like chicken

wings trying to catch a whiff of herself as she rode, and was relieved

to smell the fruity-powdery scent of some kind of protection.

It was faint, so she must have put it on yesterday, but it only

needed to hold on until track practice after school. Which would be

a miracle, but oh well.

As she cruised down Surfside Road she could feel the baby hairs

around her face pulling loose in the wind and sticking to her

cheeks and forehead. It was a short ride from her house to school,

but in the humidity, her carefully arranged first-day-of-school

hairdo was a big old mess by the time she locked her crummy bike

to the rack. She only locked it out of tourist-season habit and not

because anyone at school would deign to steal it. Which was good

because she also had a crummy lock.

She pulled her ruined hair out of its bonds, ran her fingers

through the worst of the tangles, and retied it, this time settling for

a boring, low ponytail. With a resigned sigh she swung her book

bag over one shoulder and her gym bag over the other. She bent

her head and slouched her way toward the front door.

She got there just a second before Gretchen Clifford, and was obliged