Starcrossed Read Online Free PDF Page B

like a sore thumb in a
    town that otherwise was an ode to four-hundred-year-old Puritan
    architecture. And maybe that’s why Helen loved it. The Atheneum
    was a gleaming white beacon of strange smack-dab in the middle
    of forget-me-now drab, and somehow, Helen identified with both
    of those things. Half of her was no-nonsense Nantucket through
    and through, and the other half was marble columns and grand
    stairs that just didn’t belong where they had been built. Biking
    past, Helen looked up at the Atheneum and smiled. It was consoling
    for her to know that she might stick out, but at least she didn’t
    stick out that much.
    When she got home, she tried to pull herself together, taking a
    freezing-cold shower before calling Claire to apologize. Claire
    didn’t pick up. Helen left her a long apology blaming hormones,
    the heat, stress, anything and everything she could think of, though
    she knew in her heart that none of those things was the real reason
    she had flipped out. She’d been so irritable all day.
    The air outside was heavy and still. Helen opened all the windows
    in the two-story Shaker-style house, but no breeze blew
    through them. What was with the weird weather? Still air was
    practically unheard of in Nantucket—living so close to the ocean
    there was always wind. Helen pulled on a thin tank top and a pair
    of her shortest shorts. Since she was too modest to go anywhere
    dressed so scantily, she decided to cook dinner. It was still her
    father’s week as kitchen slave and technically he was responsible
    for all the shopping, meals, and dishes for a few days yet, but she
    needed something to do with her hands or she’d use them to climb
    the walls.
    Pasta in general was Helen’s comfort food, and lasagna was the
    queen of pasta. If she made the noodles from scratch, she’d be
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    occupied for hours, just like she wanted, so she pulled out the flour
    and eggs and got to work.
    When Jerry came home the second thing he noticed, after the
    amazing smell, was that the house was swelteringly hot. He found
    Helen sitting at the kitchen table, flour stuck to her sweaty face and
    arms, worrying the heart-shaped necklace, which her mother had
    given her as a baby, between her thumb and forefinger. He looked
    around with tense shoulders and wide eyes.
    “Made dinner,” Helen told him in a flat voice.
    “Did I do something wrong?” he asked tentatively.
    “Of course not. Why would you ask that when I just cooked you
    dinner?”
    “Because usually when a woman spends hours cooking a complicated
    meal and then just sits at the table with a pissed-off look
    on her face, that means some guy somewhere did something really
    stupid,” he said, still on edge. “I have had other women in my life
    besides you, you know.”
    “Are you hungry or not?” Helen asked with a smile, trying to
    shake off her ugly mood.
    Hunger won out. Jerry shut his mouth and went to wash his
    hands. Helen hadn’t eaten since breakfast and should have been
    starved. When she tasted the first forkful she realized she wouldn’t
    be able to eat. She listened as best as she could while she pushed
    bits of her favorite food around her plate and Jerry devoured two
    pieces. He asked her questions about her day while he tried to
    sneak a little more salt onto his food. Helen blocked his attempts
    like she always did, but she didn’t have the energy to give him
    more than monosyllabic answers.
    Even though she went to bed at nine, leaving her dad watching
    the Red Sox on TV, she was still lying awake at midnight when she
    heard the game finally end and her father come upstairs. She was
    tired enough to sleep, but every time she started to drift off she
    would hear whispering.
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    At first she thought that it had to be real, that someone was outside
    playing a trick on her. She went up to the widow’s walk on the
    roof above her bedroom and tried to see as far as she could into the
    dark. Everything was still—not even a puff of air to stir the