Starcrossed (Starcrossed 1)

dreaming??

Helen thought about the three women, three sisters she thought,

and she knew she couldn?t tell her father about them. She shrugged

her shoulders and lied. She managed to convince Jerry that

murder was a pretty normal thing to have nightmares about, and

swore that she would never watch scary movies by herself again.

Finally, she got him to go back to bed.

The glass on her nightstand was empty and her mouth was so dry

it felt tender and sore. She swung her legs out of bed to get water

from the bathroom and gasped when her feet touched the hardwood

floor. She switched on her lamp to get a better look, but she

already knew what she was going to see.

The soles of her feet were cut deep and peppered with dirt and

dust, and her shins were scratched with the hatch-mark pattern of

thorns.

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HarperCollins Publishers

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Chapter Three

In the morning when Helen woke up and looked at her feet,

the cuts were gone. She almost believed that she had imagined

them?until she saw that her sheets were dirty with

dried, brown blood and grit.

In order to test her sanity, Helen decided to leave her

sheets on the bed, go to school, and see if they were still dirty when

she came home. If they were clean when she got home, then the

whole thing was an illusion and she was only a little crazy. If they

were still dirty when she came home, then she was obviously so

crazy that she was walking around at night and getting dirt and