Free Blood Secret by Kathryn Lasky Page B

It felt like dread, and it rose and spread slowly like a shadow in her mind: The words were creeping back down into the cellar, through a trapdoor. They were her words, but they were separate from her. They would take on a life of their own—down there. It was a devastating thought.
    Jerry crouched on the shower floor and let the hot water beat down on her. I’m mute. I’m not crazy. I’m mute I’m not crazy. She repeated these words in her head over and over to the rhythm of the beating water. They roiled in her head like a chant, nearly breaking up in meaning and becoming a kind of senseless song: I’m mute. I’m not crazy I’m mute not crazy mute not crazy mute not crazy older than the stars not crazy older than the stars mute stars not crazy stars…
    But Jerry did not even realize what she was silently saying when the stars slipped into song. She did not even know that some of the words she chanted were spoken by the other girl in another place, in another country, in another time, morethan six hundred years ago.
    By the time Jerry dressed and went into the cook yard, she felt good, in control, calm, and most important, normal. It had been a dream. She knew this. It would dissolve like the dust particles in the stream of sink water. It had already swirled away. She picked up one of the long-handled wooden pallets and began to slide the round loaves into the ovens.
    “Thank you, Jerry. My, you’re up early again,” Aunt Constanza said, her head half in a dead oven that she was repairing with something she called “Aunt Constanza’s mixit up stickit up fixit up,” which she claimed had the hair of a prairie dog mixed with cactus juice and dried cow patties, and was perfect for sealing cracks in a horno.
     
    The next morning, Monday, Jerry was early for school. She went to her homeroom and began to work on her English assignment. It was not due for a week. They were supposed to select their favorite passage from Romeo and Juliet and explain why they loved it. There was a passage she kind of remembered. It was in act three after Tybalt has been killed by Romeo, and Juliet finds out that Romeohas been banished and she is all torn up. She is even imagining what would happen if he were to die. Poor Juliet. “What to do? What to do?” The words bounced around silently in Jerry’s head as she flicked the pages of the play searching for the passage. Too bad she couldn’t get hold of the Cliffs Notes. But Miss Lafferty flunked anyone caught with Cliffs Notes. Ah, there it was, scene two. Jerry began to read the words. And although she did not realize it, her lips tried to move around the lovely shapes. “For thou wilt lie upon the wings of night, / Whiter than new snow upon a raven’s back. / Come gentle night, / Come, loving, black-brow’d night, / Give me my Romeo, and, when he shall die / Take him and cut him out in little stars / And he will make the face of heaven so fine / That all the world will be in love with the night, / And pay no worship to the garish sun.”
    The meter flowed into her senses and into the very core of her mind. And then she stopped. She could not read it, nor copy it. She did not want to think of the stars, those stars older than Juliet, and Juliet soon to be older than the stars. Jerry clamped her eyes shut and flipped quickly back through the pages. She made a deal with herself—whateverpage she turned to, she would look at, point her finger, take the quote closest to her finger, and write about it.
    Oh my God, she muttered silently as her finger stopped in the middle of the left-hand page of act one, scene five. That stupid over-the-top speech by Romeo. She took her pen and began copying it down: “O! she doth teach the torches to burn bright. / It seems she hangs upon the cheek of night.” Cheek of night, give me a friggin’ break! “Like a rich jewel in an Ethiop’s ear;” “Whoever she is! Ethiop, what the hell is an Ethiop? Person from Ethiopia?” “Beauty too rich