Nevermore

“Iz?” She felt the sensation of someone taking the seat next to her. She turned.

Nikki gazed at her, her dark blue eyes wide, her eyebrows knitted together. She cradled her wrist, which had been wrapped tightly in beige gauze.

“Hey, Nikki,” Isobel offered. “Let me guess. Coach benched you, too?”

“Yeah,” she said, holding up her bandaged wrist. “Sprained. Not too bad, though. Do—do you care if I sit here?”

Isobel shook her head, and they sat for a moment in uncomfortable silence.

“Isobel,” Nikki started, “I didn’t think I was going to come tonight. But I decided to at the last second because I knew you’d be here. And I have to tell you this. I—I know you won’t believe me, but I still have to say it. No matter what you think, I—I didn’t drop you today. At least not on purpose.”

“I know,” said Isobel simply. She turned again to look over her shoulder. She wished the game was over. She wished she could fast-forward through time so that she and Gwen could be on their way to wherever the Grim Facade was surely starting. She wanted to find Varen, to see his face, to know that he was all right. She wanted to know the truth about what was happening. She wanted to know how to make it stop. How to just be normal again.

“No. I mean, I didn’t. I swear. I’ll swear on anything. It was like . . . It was like something had hold of me.” She grabbed her bound wrist for emphasis. “I know it sounds crazy, but—”

“Nikki.” Isobel turned to meet her gaze straight on. “I believe you.”

Nikki’s tortured expression melted into worried confusion, as though she half expected Isobel to take her statement back. This reaction made Isobel realize that Nikki had been spending far too much time hanging around Alyssa.

“Does . . . does that mean you’re—that you’re not mad at me anymore?”

Wouldn’t go as far as to say that, Isobel thought. Wasn’t stabbing you in the back and running off with your ex the first two no-nos listed on the first page of the best friend bible? Then again, Isobel wondered—why not? What did any of it matter now if Nikki wanted to make up? She and Brad were over, the crew was over. These days it was starting to seem as though reality itself was over. If the sky was falling, wasn’t it better if Ducky Lucky and Loosey Goosey hugged and made up beforehand? Isobel opted for a noncommittal shrug but then, embarrassed by the stinginess of her gesture, added, “No. Not really.”

“I miss you,” Nikki said. “I miss us.”

Looking down between her shoes, Isobel nodded, not certain if she could say the same. She had too much else swirling around in her head. Too much had happened since they fought.

Too much that she could never tell Nikki. Nikki and her, well, that all seemed like a lifetime ago. How could she explain to her that she was different? Changed. And that right now she could think of only one person she could truly say she missed.

“I’m jealous, you know.”

Isobel’s head popped up, eyes angled toward Nikki, who smiled at her. A sweet and sad sort of smile. Isobel was guarded. “What do you mean?”

Nikki shook her head, her eyes glistening. She swept a manicured thumb at each, then laughed instead. “Everyone’s jealous of you, Isobel.”

Isobel blinked several times, uncertain how to react.

“But I’m jealous because . . . well, because I’ve never known what it feels like to be in love.”

Isobel stiffened. All at once, she ceased to breathe.

“Oh,” said Nikki, laughing. She swept at her eyes again, this time with the knuckle of her first finger, trying to save her mascara. “Don’t look at me like that. You’re not that clueless.”

She laughed harder then, though, Isobel thought, more in an effort to keep from crying.

“I guess maybe you are,” Nikki amended, taking in the stricken look on Isobel’s face. “At least for once I’m not the last one to know something.” She laughed genuinely now, and her mirth was so contagious, the weight of her words so startlingly plain, that in spite of everything, Isobel found that she had to laugh too.

In love. In love with the stoic, the sullen, the eternally morose Varen Nethers?

He would never allow it.

Isobel sobered quickly. Suddenly the prospect of seeing him became terrifying, because she knew it was true and that the only way she’d hidden it from him before was because she had never allowed herself to put her feelings into words. And Nikki, the least perceptive being on this planet, had seen through it all.