Nevermore

upstairs after going back to get the Poe book. Was it something he’d planned? Revenge for the ice cream shop? With some of the dark stuff he said sometimes, she didn’t know if she would put it past him.

Over the whir of the hair dryer, she thought she heard a quiet tap, a knock on her door.

Isobel shut off the hair dryer. Glancing at her door, she gathered her still damp hair in one hand and said, “Come in.”

Her door remained shut. She stared at it, waiting. “Mom?” she said. “Dad?”

There was no answer.

She set her phone aside, left the dryer on her bed, and went to open her door. Poking her head out into the hall, she heard the blare of the TV from downstairs, the distant roar of a crowd over her dad’s enthused “Go, go, go!” The bathroom light was off, and she could still smell the remnants of the cherry blossom shower gel she’d used. Danny’s door stood ajar at the end of the hallway, blasts of blue-white light issuing forth, each burst accompanied by a zombie’s scream of anguish. Other than that, there was nothing.

Confused, Isobel shut her door again, then went to her dresser, pulling open the top drawer and rifling for her favorite pair of pink-and-black-striped pajama shorts, and matching T-shirt.

She got dressed, tossing her robe onto the floor, but paused after pulling the T-shirt down over her head because she thought she had heard the tap again, this time from behind.

Isobel looked up. She stared past her reflection in the dresser mirror, her gaze fixing on her window. She waited, and the sound came once more. A soft and quiet tap. It was accompanied this time by a low scuffle, like the scrape of rough fabric against wood.

She twisted around to stare at her window, ears straining.

The rustling came again, louder this time. There, beyond the lace of her curtains, under the tiny slit at the bottom of the shade, something moved.

Her heart rate quickened.

For a moment she thought about going to her door and calling downstairs for her dad.

Then the scraping shuffle seemed to shift. It became continuous now, and at this angle, she thought she could see a bit of black cloth, like the shoulder of someone’s shirt—somebody angling to try and get a good grip on her window.

In one quick move, Isobel reached out to her dresser, snatching the “Number One Flyer” trophy she’d won freshman year. It left behind a polished square of wood in the layer of accumulated dust. Clenching the trophy by the fake-gold cheerleader figurine, she held it upside down in one hand, brandishing the hard granite base like a club.

Each footstep soaked silently into the carpet as she drew closer to her window.

A long rustling shhirrk-sruuffshh sounded from just outside. Squinting, she thought she could see what looked like a set of long, thin, black-gloved fingers trying to reach under the sill.

With a quick step forward, Isobel yanked down on the shade. It rushed upward with a loud snap. Something screeched. Blackness, like spattering ink, spread across her window. With a short scream, she fell back. She hurled the trophy toward the window, missing the glass by inches, knocking a dent into the wall.

An angry flurry of dark feathers splayed against the glass, followed by the tap of a pointed beak and a low, grating croak.

“Stupid bird!” Isobel shouted, her heart pounding so hard that she could feel her pulse thudding in her temples. She pulled herself up from the floor, a stinging bite of rug burn chafing the back of her thigh. She ignored it, rushing to pluck two pink throw pillows from her bed. She chucked one right after the other at the window. The huge beast of a bird gave one giant flap of its black wings. It let out a squawk when the first pillow hit, and then, after the second, it swooped off into the darkness.

Isobel yanked the shade down again, pulling the lace curtains closed.

She made her way back to her bed. Fighting the shivers, she grabbed her robe along the way, throwing it back on over her pajamas. She chucked her dryer off her bed and onto the floor, swiping up her phone.

She paced. The view screen of her phone read 8:52 in electric blue. Cutting it close to nine, she thought. Well, he’d just have to deal.

Isobel punched in the number. The dial tone rang once . . . twice . . . three times. She’d give it one more—

“Yeah?”

Isobel blinked in surprise. She hadn’t expected him to answer. “Yeah, hey,” she said, trying to sound businesslike.

“Hey,” he said, but she could hear the underlying question in his tone: Why dost thou, O simplest of mortals, summon me from my grave?

All right, then, she’d get right to it. “Listen,” she said, “I need to talk to you. You weren’t in the park tonight, were you?” Okay, maybe that sounded a bit more accusatory than she’d meant it to. She winced but decided to wait and see how he reacted.

Nothing from the other end. Didn’t he even breathe? Jeez.

She let the quiet fizz of no response go until it reached the point of making her uncomfortable. “If it was you,” she said, breaking the silence, “then I don’t think it was funny, but I think you should just tell me.” There. She’d said it. It was better to make sure that it hadn’t been him first before she started spouting off about invisible pursuers, right?

She found herself waiting through another long stretch of silent phone-buzz before, finally, she heard him draw a breath to speak. “I don’t know what kind of acid you dropped between six thirty and now,” he said, “but I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”

“The park,” she said, though with less oomph. She was starting to think that maybe there had been a better way to go about this. She hadn’t been trying to say it had been him. She was only trying to figure out if it had.

“What about the park?” he said, impatient.

“Someone chased me,” she blurted.

“And you think it was me.”

Uh-oh. Isobel folded her free arm across her chest, linking it with her other at the elbow. Head down, she began to pace again. “I didn’t say that.”

“You insinuated it.”

Isobel cringed, hating to hear her own words turned around on her.

“I—”

“First of all,” he said without giving her a chance to finish, “if you were in the park by yourself tonight, you should realize that was stupid.”

“Yeah, thanks.”

“Consider yourself welcome. Secondly,” he continued, “you really must be on something to assume that I would follow you, let alone chase you. I’m sorry, but my existence isn’t that sad.”

Ouch.

“Okay, listen. I’m sorry,” she said, shaking her head. “I didn’t mean to accuse you. That wasn’t why I called.”

“But you did accuse me.” His tone dissolved into a patronizing drone. “And why else would you call? Certainly not to chat, I hope.”

Well, this had all gone straight to hell in a fat, flaming rocket.

“You know,” he said, plowing on, sounding more venomous by the second, “despite what everyone has always told you, the world does not revolve around you.”

“Look,” she growled, “I said I was sorry! You don’t have to be a jerk about it.”

“I’m only telling you what nobody else will.”

“Yeah?” she said, her voice rising. If he wanted to pull out the artillery, that was just fine with her, she had her own guns. Bring it. “Why don’t you speak for yourself?” she hissed. “I mean, what screams ‘cry for attention’ more than walking around looking like the grim reaper and scribbling creepy, tortured messages into some book?”

“Please,” she heard him scoff through a thin scratch of phone fuzz—he was