Nevermore

5 A Note of Warning

“Hey, Dad, what time is it?”

Isobel wondered if the crew might still be at Double Trouble’s.

“Little after three,” her dad said as the sedan rolled to a stop at an intersection. “Why?”

“Just wondering.” She shrugged.

“You didn’t say anything about my haircut,” he said, lifting a hand from the steering wheel to primp imaginary curls at the back of his head.

Isobel tried to keep from grinning while she surveyed the cut. It was really more like a trim, though, a grooming of his usual style, which Isobel often referred to as shaggy à la hobo.

Isobel had not inherited her dad’s dark brown, nearly black hair, like Danny had, though hers did have the same thin, almost straight texture.

“Oh, yes. Ravishing,” she told him.

He watched her with a goofy grin until she said, “Light’s green.” Then he looked ahead again, both hands on the wheel.

“You’re awfully glum today,” he observed, making a turn west, toward their neighborhood. “Something going on with Brad?” he asked.

“No,” she said, then thought better of leaving it at that. “Brad and I just wanted to hang out separately this weekend. That’s all.”

Her dad liked Brad because they could talk sports, Danny not exactly being the athletic type. What her mom and dad hadn’t been too keen on was how “serious” they thought she and Brad had become since the beginning of junior year. “You should be thinking about college,” her mom would say. Only problem with that was that Isobel wasn’t sure where she would go yet, or what she would major in. It was an argument she didn’t want to revisit.

“I see.” After a beat, they came to a stop sign, and he asked, “So, what is this project about, anyway?”

“Poe.” She sighed.

“Poe? As in Edgar Allan ‘quoth the raven, nevermore’?”

“That’s the guy,” she said. She picked up one of the books in her lap and leafed through to find a picture. She found one of the bigger ones (they all looked the same to her) and held the book open in his direction.

He took a quick glance away from the road just before pulling into the driveway, then, putting the car into park, turned in his seat to look directly at her. He raised one eyebrow.

“Next time, maybe I should just let my hair grow out like that.” He tilted his head to one side, eyeing her for a response. “And what about the mustache?” He draped an index finger over his top lip. “What do you think?”

She smiled at the visual and nearly snorted, because she hadn’t expected to laugh. She pictured her father with a crazy crop of black locks and a neat little mustache. He looked, in her mind’s eye, more like Charlie Chaplin than Poe.

A victorious smirk tugged at one side of his mouth.

Isobel slammed her locker closed.

“Ah!” she yelped, her notebook landing on the floor.

Varen. Right behind where the door to her locker had stood open. His eyes, calm to the point of emptiness, seemed to stare straight through her.

“Would you not do that!” she piped.

He said nothing, just stood there and stared, like she’d suddenly gone transparent or something.

“What?” she demanded.

He moved to walk past her and Isobel thought about telling him off right then and there, in front of the whole hall, for trying to pull this Dawn of the Dead crap with her.

That was when she felt his hand, which still held the morning’s chill, slip against hers.

Isobel’s breath caught in her throat, and her eyes widened.

What did he think he was doing? What if someone saw?

He pressed something into her palm. Her fingers curled to secure it and, for the briefest moment, clenched his.

In the next, he moved on, and she felt herself turning to stare after him, rubbing her thumb over the smooth slip of folded paper.

She felt it crinkle in her hand as she watched his back, clad in a dark green mechanic’s jacket. On a piece of white fabric, safety-pinned to the jacket, was the silhouette of a dead bird lying on its back, its legs crooked upward.

He walked to the group of goths standing in front of the window by the radiator and, lifting a hand, touched the shoulder of a dark-haired, copper-skinned girl. She turned, a sultry smile gracing her full, darkly painted lips. She had a red envelope in her hand, which she held out to Varen.

As the crowded hallway absorbed them, Isobel felt as though someone were lifting their finger off the slow-mo button.

She took a cautious look around to see if anyone had noticed, then casually pretended that there was something she’d forgotten in her locker and reopened it. It swung out without a fuss this time and she leaned in, unfolding the piece of notebook paper inside the darkened space.

They know you lied.

At first Isobel wasn’t sure what it meant. When had she lied and to whom? And how would he even know? That thought in particular sent a chilling spark running along her spine and tingling through her shoulders. Maybe Nikki had been right. Maybe he was trying to freak her out.

As if on cue, Nikki strolled by.

“Hey, Nikki! Wait up,” Isobel called, taking a moment to refold the cryptic note and slip it into the pocket of the periwinkle blue cardigan hanging in her locker. She’d worry about it later, she decided, and shut her locker door before giving her number dial a twirl.

When she turned again, though, Nikki had gone.

Had she not heard her?

That seemed unlikely, given she’d passed by less than six feet away.

Something must be up.

There was an ugly, twisty feeling in her stomach as Isobel began to piece the events of that morning together. Suddenly she realized exactly what the note meant.

Her lunch tray in hand, Isobel’s heart hammered in her chest as she neared the crew’s usual spot, a table near the long wall of big windows overlooking the courtyard.

“Here she comes,” she heard Alyssa whisper. In response, all chattering at the table ceased. Nikki examined her nails. Mark swirled the end of his corn dog into a mound of ketchup.

Alyssa, hiding her cell in her lap, tinkered with her messages, and Stevie, suddenly distracted by a group of pigeons in the courtyard, stared out the window. Brad just sat there, not looking at anything. He pursed his lips.

Isobel clutched the sides of her tray in an effort to steady everything from shaking. These were her friends. Why was she so worried?

The only one who looked up when she got right to the table was Brad. He watched her blatantly with those gorgeous, almost neon blue eyes as she edged onto the bench across from him. Nikki huffed and moved down to make room, slamming her tray around.

Nobody said anything.

Act normal, she thought. Just act normal.

Brad took a swig of his Coke. Eyeing her, he said, “So . . .”

Isobel squelched her smile and met his gaze, not liking his all-too-casual tone.

“Me and Mark were wondering, Izo,” he continued. “Since, uh, you and I go to the same dentist . . . When did Dr. Morton start taking Saturday appointments?”

“Yeah,” Mark chimed in from the other end of the table, gesturing at her with his corn dog. “Just curious.”

Isobel took a deep breath and focused on Brad, pleading to him with her eyes to stop this before it started and just let the rest of lunch be normal. He could do that. He could have everyone laughing it off and talking about the upcoming game on Friday against Ackerman.

He looked away from her, chewing his burger like it was a chore.

“I had something I had to do,” Isobel said, tearing open a ketchup packet. Maybe if she acted like it wasn’t a big deal, then it wouldn’t be.

“So you lied to us?” This came from Nikki, as she tossed her fork onto her tray. It clanged sharply, but the noise was lost in the surrounding cafeteria racket.

Isobel stared down at her food, her appetite replaced now by guilt-saturated nausea. Not knowing what to say, she squeezed her ketchup packet over her burger, still holding on to the slimming hope that they’d all just let it go. Yesterday on the phone, Nikki had acted like she’d known Isobel had been making it up anyway, right? So why did it matter now?

When she couldn’t think of anything not incriminating to say, Isobel tried shrugging. She realized quickly, though, when Nikki made her “Tch!” sound, that that had been the wrong response.

Nikki stood, gathering her tray. “Something smells over here, I’m switching.” And with that, she unthreaded her long legs from underneath the table and marched away to a distant, unoccupied table in the corner. No one dared try to stop her, least of all Isobel.

Without looking up, she felt the table shudder again as someone else stood. She could see varsity colors out of the corner of one eye, and she knew it must be Mark, moving to join Nikki, no doubt. Alyssa followed next, and finally even Stevie got up with what Isobel thought was an apologetic cough.

It was just her and Brad now.

“Where were you for real?” he asked after a long moment, ending the uncomfortable silence that had stretched between them. He’d asked in that soft and reasonable way that said all could still be forgiven.

“I can’t tell you, because you’ll just get mad.”

“Then that’s probably a good indication that you should tell me,” he said with strained patience. She’d been batting zero ever since last Friday, and now she was striking out. Big-time.

A sharp sting started behind her eyes. She shouldn’t have to make excuses to her boyfriend about doing her homework. Isobel lifted a finger to wipe a tear away before it could form.

She thought that everybody in the whole cafeteria had to be watching. The thought made her face burn, and she tried to shield her eyes with one hand.

Then, before she could summon up the resolve to answer, Brad rose from the table, taking his tray and moving away toward the others, leaving her completely alone.

Isobel felt her shoulders hitch when she tried to take a breath. She hadn’t eaten lunch by herself since the fifth grade, when everyone had found out her mom had made her wash her hair the night before with mayonnaise.

The tears came freely now, to the point where she could be sure of mascara trails. She sat there, shielding her face from view with one hand and trying to convince the world with her other, by poking a fork through her salad, that she was just fine.

Everything turned blurry through the lens of tears, but she could still register the pair of black boots that stopped beside her table.

Oh God, she thought. Anything but this.

“Please,” she murmured at her burger, her voice no more than a squeaky whisper, “don’t do this.”

“It’s dead,” he said. “I don’t think it can hear you.”

“You’re making things worse!” she hissed, and still shielding her soppy eyes from the rest of the cafeteria, she angled her head to peer up at him.

“That’s a good look for you,” he said.

Isobel didn’t have to look in the crew’s direction to know they were watching. She could feel Brad’s gaze on them. And if he hadn’t been able to guess who she’d been with on Saturday, he certainly knew now. Was this guy dense? Brad could pave the courtyard with him.

“He’s going to kill you.”

“Can’t,” he said. “Already dead. Remember?”

“You pick a funny time to adopt a sense of humor,” she snapped, glancing back down.

“When are we meeting again for the project?”

Where did he get off? Did he not have a clue? “Go away. We’re not.”

“How about after school?”

“I have practice.” It was funny how she could tell him the truth but had to lie to her friends.

“So I’m doing it by myself after all?” he asked in that cold, unaffected way.

“Mr. Swanson will give you a new partner. Go away.”

And to her surprise, just like that, he did.