Nevermore

by.

Isobel jumped again, shaken from her reverie, her breath catching when the mystery hand reappeared. This time it looped over the top of her locker door, the fingers clutching a familiar pistachio-green cylinder.

Cautiously Isobel took the tube of Pink Goddess lipstick and watched the hand of her locker neighbor slither away once more. She glanced at Nikki, who made a show of blinking before grasping Isobel’s locker door and moving it aside. But the girl—Isobel thought her name was Grace or Gabbie—slammed her own locker shut, swiveled away without a word, and walked off.

“Creepers,” Nikki muttered. She plucked the lipstick from Isobel’s hand and, repositioning the locker door, stooped to use the mirror inside. “Back into the Middle Ages she goes.”

Isobel watched the retreating back of the girl, whose too long, too straight brown hair swished in time with her floor-length broom skirt. With a final faint tinkle of bracelets, the girl swept around the next corner and out of sight.

“Anyway,” Nikki said, finishing with the lipstick and tucking the tube back into Isobel’s makeup bag. She blotted her lips and popped her mouth. “I still think you should tell Brad.”

“Drop it, Nikki. I’m not going to tell Brad,” Isobel snapped. “And don’t you tell him either,” she added, slamming her locker door shut. At this, Nikki’s expression morphed, fading at once from scandalized coyness into wounded annoyance, and Isobel had only half a beat to regret her words before her friend twirled away.

“Nikki,” Isobel moaned, starting after her.

“Whatever,” Nikki shot over her shoulder. She fluttered one hand dismissively and quickened her pace. “You know,” she called, “he’s going to keep that stalker crap up if he thinks he can get away with it.”

Watching the bounce of Nikki’s ponytail, with its tiny blue and gold puff-ball hair tie, Isobel felt a tug of guilt. So maybe she’d been a little too insistent on keeping the whole phone number incident a secret. Then again, if she caught up to her, if she apologized now, Nikki might think it wouldn’t be such a big deal if she did blab to Brad.

Isobel found herself hating that she’d told Nikki the truth when she should have just made something up. Of course, she hadn’t wanted to play secrets, either. Nikki was her best friend.

She was on the squad and part of the crew.

She slowed her steps and let Nikki walk ahead of her to lunch. When she was out of sight, Isobel ducked into the nearest girls’ restroom. At the sink, she turned the water on warm and pumped soap from the dispenser into her hand. She lathered it thick over the numbers.

Like curls of smoke, the deep purple ink loosened into violet swirls and then slid down the drain.

* * *

At practice that day, she missed a jump.

She never missed a jump.

At the end of a round-off, back handspring, back tuck, she overrotated and had to catch herself on her heels. She hit the gymnasium floor hard, landing straight on her butt, bones jarring, teeth rattling.

Coach Anne ripped her for it, of course, blowing the dust off her old “no tumbling without someone spotting you” rant. Nothing made Coach more nervous than sloppy or botched stunts, especially with December Nationals looming. Their choreography was tight and sharp. Too tight and too clean to sit a hurt squad member in the stands and still expect to place.

Not surprisingly, Nikki didn’t wait around to chat after Coach blew the final whistle. Isobel found she didn’t mind too much, knowing that it was probably less about her still being peeved from earlier and more about wanting to catch up to Mark after football practice. Either way, she was grateful not to have to relive the locker argument and even more grateful that it was Friday. She needed a break.

It was good that they didn’t have a game for another week, too. It would give the already purpling baseball- size bruise on the back of her thigh time to fade before she had to don her uniform again.

Isobel left the gym locker rooms and took her usual route through the hall toward the back parking lot, but slowed when she thought she heard Brad’s voice. Had he come looking for her? She’d probably spent too long glaring at her bruised thigh in the locker room mirrors.

“—talk to her again. Do you understand?”

Turning the corner, Isobel halted.

A black-clad figure stood in a slump, his back pressed against a row of cobalt blue lockers, his tattered black hardback journal tucked beneath one arm. Brad hovered over him, wearing his blue and gold letter jacket, which bulked up his already hulking shoulders.

Varen, comparatively thin and frail-looking, appeared able to do little more than endure, his head hanging, his wispy black hair draped in his face.

An anger she couldn’t explain flashed inside of her.

“Hey!” she called, closing in on them.

Varen’s eyes lifted, locking on her, a look as stark as it was accusing, and it stopped her cold.

So help her, Isobel wanted to strangle Nikki till those stupid little blue and gold puff-balls popped off.

“What’s going on?”

“Nothin’, babe. Nothin’,” Brad said, pushing away from the lockers, running a palm through his thick amber hair, glossy in the fluorescent lighting and still wet from the showers. He stuffed a hand into the pocket of his jacket and walked to meet her, slinging his other arm around her shoulders and planting a kiss on the side of her head with an audible “Mmwah.”

Varen’s expression remained blank, though his gaze chiseled into her, causing the world around her to smudge into oblivion, and she found herself unable to break away.

Did he think she ran off to tell Brad? Then again, what else was there for him to think?

Isobel opened her mouth to speak again, to set the record straight, but Brad’s arm tightened around her shoulders, jostling her against him. This, combined with his deodorant and Zest soap smell, reminded her that he was there. Still in macho mode and still in reach of the strange boy who had asked her what she was staring at and who was now, intently, staring at her.

Isobel closed her mouth.

She let Brad angle her away. He dropped his arm to pat her tender rear.

“Don’t,” she said, wincing, but kept moving.

Anything to get away from those eyes.

3 After Nine

“You want to meet the crew at Zot’s?” Brad asked as he pulled out of the school parking lot, joining the flow of traffic.

“I’m supposed to eat with my parents tonight,” Isobel lied, shifting in her seat to stare out the passenger- side window. She knew she was doing the girl thing, the full-on “you should know why I’m mad” tactic straight out of the Petty Playbook, but she didn’t care.

“Going to invite me?” he asked, not bothering to put on his turn signal when they reached the light.

“No.”

“Oh,” he said, “okay.”

That was it. She jerked around in her seat to face him. “What did Nikki tell you?” she demanded, deciding to forgo the whole dance-around chitchat thing and cut to the chase.

“Nikki didn’t say a thing,” he said, making the turn. He reached up to pull down his sun visor, and a pack of Camels fell into his lap. Isobel sneered and turned to look back out her window. She hated when he smoked, and lately it had become more than just an after-school fix.

“Mark told me,” he said.

Of course, she thought. It all made sense now. After lunch, Nikki, two shades short of bursting, must have told Mark, who, being Brad’s best friend, must have then blabbed to Brad sometime before football practice. Just