Nevermore

Isobel frowned at the rumpled folds of her pink comforter. Since when had they ever had an awkward silence?

“Anyway,” Nikki went on, “if you get out early or something, give me a ring on my cell.”

Translation: Call me if you change your mind or whenever you decide to stop sulking.

“Okay, later,” Isobel mumbled.

“Later.”

There was a pause, like neither of them really wanted to end the call.

“Bye,” Nikki said.

“Bye,” replied Isobel, trying to sound more cheerful than she felt.

She waited, but this time, Nikki hung up.

That afternoon Isobel got a ride to the library from her dad. He dropped her off by the side entrance, near the old solemn-faced statue of Abraham Lincoln, saying he’d be back to pick her up some time around three, after his haircut appointment.

Isobel hurried up the stairs and barely waved good-bye to her dad before heading inside to begin her search for Varen. After spending nearly fifteen minutes scouring through the stacks and checking the study rooms, she finally found him on the second floor.

It was obvious he’d purposely picked a spot well out of sight, sequestered away in a far-off corner just beyond the 800s. Feeling more than just a little agitated by this, Isobel made a point of dropping her purse on the table right in front of where he sat reading, lost in the open spread of some gigantic tome.

He glanced up with his eyes only, glaring at her past the ridge of his leveled brow. A soft glint from the desk lamps ran liquid smooth down the curve of his lip ring.

She twiddled her fingers at him in a wave. Ha, the gesture seemed to say, found you.

He stared at her as she lowered herself into the cushiony swivel seat across from his, and in turn, she eyed the enormous tome he’d been absorbed in.

“So.” She cleared her throat. “What are we doing?”

He did the prolonged silence thing again, like he needed the time to contemplate whether or not to banish her from his sight.

“We,” he said at last, “are doing our project on Poe.”

He shifted the huge book around and scooted it toward her, one finger indicating a black-and-white thumbnail photograph. The image portrayed was of a gaunt, deep-browed man with unruly hair and a small black-comb mustache. His eyes looked sad, desperate, and wild all at the same time. Sunken and pooled by enormous dark circles, they seemed to ache with sorrow.

To Isobel, he looked like a nicely dressed mental patient in need of a nap.

She sank farther into her chair, picking at the pages. “Didn’t he marry his cousin or something?”

“The man is a literary god and that’s all you have to say?”

She shrugged and grabbed a book from the stack on the table. She opened it, then flipped through the pages, glancing up at him. He leaned forward over the table and scribbled something onto a yellow steno notepad, which sat atop his black hardbound book. Her eyes fell to the book. She couldn’t help wondering if it was some sort of journal or something and why he seemed to carry it with him wherever he went.

“Who’s Lenore?” she asked, turning another page.

He stopped writing, looked up. Stared.

What? Had she said something wrong?

“His dead love,” he replied finally.

“Poe’s?”

“The narrator’s.”

“Oh,” she said, wondering if there was a difference but knowing better than to ask.

She crossed her legs and adjusted herself in her seat. “So, how are we going to do the presentation part? Do I get stuck playing the dead chick?”

It was supposed to be a joke, something to help smooth down his prickly defense.

“You could never be Lenore,” he said, returning to his scrawling.

At this, Isobel scoffed outright, trying to decide if she’d been insulted. “Yeah? Why not?”

“For one,” he said, jotting along, “you’re not dead.”

“Oh,” she replied, “so you’re going to be Lenore, then?”

He looked up. Isobel smiled, swaying back and forth in her swivel seat.

His pen made a point of disconnecting with the paper, and there was another pause, followed by a slow blink before he said, “You do the talking for the presentation, I’ll write the paper.” He pulled off the top sheet from the steno pad and slid it in front of her.

Isobel picked up the paper. Leaning back in her chair, she watched him over the frayed top edge as he bent to extract a dark purple folder from his bag.

“Write these down,” he said, setting the folder aside and returning his attention to the book with the thumbnail.

Isobel pulled her purse onto her lap, rustling around in the front flap until she found a pen.

“‘The Fall of the House of Usher,’” he said, and Isobel started writing on the sheet of steno paper, right under where he’d already written “Major Works.”

“‘The Masque of the Red Death.’ That’s ‘Masque’ with a q,” he said, and Isobel had to hurry up and write the word “Usher,” only she ended up dropping the e and adding an extra r so that it slurred into “Ushrr.”

“‘The Murders’—”

“Hold on!” she said, her pen flying.

He waited.

“All right,” she said, finishing up the th at the end of “Death.” She crinkled her nose at the word. Why did it feel like she was inscribing someone’s epitaph?

“‘The Murders in the Rue Morgue,’” he continued.

“This guy had some major issues,” Isobel murmured toward the paper, and shook her head as she wrote.

“That’s how most people choose to see it,” he said. “Next is ‘The Raven.’”

Isobel stopped writing. Lifting her pen from the paper, she looked up. “Well, how do you choose to see it?”

His eyes flashed up from the open book to stare at her again, a toned-down version of his death-ray glare.

“It’s a legitimate question,” she said. “And it totally has to do with the project.” She gave a small, sly smile, but he didn’t smile back. Isobel knew he wasn’t exactly the Ronald McDonald type, but she wished he would lighten up. Sheesh.

“Maybe he just knew something the rest of us don’t,” he said. He opened the purple folder, and his eyes shifted to the syllabus tucked inside.

“Like what?” she asked, genuinely curious.

For a long moment, he didn’t say anything, and Isobel picked her pen up again, figuring he was ignoring her so she’d get back to work. Her hand poised and at the ready, she waited for the next gruesome title.

“I don’t know,” he said instead, surprising her.

She watched him thoughtfully as he stared down into the open book, like he hoped to fall in, the ends of his feathery black hair nearly brushing the words. There was something odd about the way he’d just spoken. Sort of like, maybe he did know, or at least had an idea.

“How did he die?” she asked.

“Nobody knows.”

It was her turn to give the slow, patient blink.

Seeming to note her skepticism, he drew in a long breath before continuing. “He was found semiconscious, lying in a gutter in Baltimore. Somebody brought him into a nearby tavern—or some people say that they actually