Nevermore

“It doesn’t start till late.” He stole another glance at her.

“You mean . . . sneak out?” It wasn’t until after she’d uttered the words that she recognized them as composing the most duh question of the year.

She thought he smiled.

He pulled up to her mailbox and shifted the car into park. When he still didn’t say anything, she knew that for sure must mean yes—it was going to be a sneak-out kind of deal.

He turned off the ignition and reached into his back pocket, tugging from it a red envelope, one just like the envelope she had seen Lacy give him. Like the one he’d pulled out of his pocket at lunch today, only this one was addressed to her. He handed it to her.

“What sort of thing is it exactly?” she asked, opening the envelope.

Inside, she found a cream-colored card, laced with a red ribbon. She recognized it as some sort of ticket, though it took her a moment longer to realize that it had been fashioned to look like a mortuary toe tag. Ew.

“The Grim Facade” it read in ornate lettering across the top. The date was listed simply as “All Hallows’ Eve,” and below that, on the “Case No.” line, it said, “Admit one.” Where the tag called for a name she saw hers, printed in his elegant hand (in purple ink, of course), and underneath, she saw his name filled in on the “Tagged By” line.

“It’s not exactly a school-sanctioned function,” he said, “so think about it.”

She looked up from the tag. “Uh, news flash. Your friends hate me.”

“They don’t know you,” he said. Opening his door, he climbed out. He turned back, though, and leaned in on the door frame, peering at her. “Besides,” he said, “you’d be with me.”

Isobel gaped after him as he shut the door and went around to the back of the car, the tag almost slipping out of her fingers.

Did that just happen?

She stared down at the little card again, at their names printed together like that.

Isobel fumbled for the door handle and let herself out.

She found him at the rear of the car. From the open trunk, he handed her her gym bag and then her backpack. Then he turned and leaned against the bumper, hands stuffed in the pockets of his black jeans. She stood, watching him, once again faced with his hidden gaze, masked by her own duel reflections. Her heart stumbled. Her mind groped for something to say.

“Are—are you coming in?” she asked, the words sounding so stupidly simple in her own ears, like something a little kid would ask a friend they knew was too cool to hang out with them.

He removed the glasses. His eyes, those jade stones, locked with hers. “I don’t know,” he said, “am I?”

“Mom!” Isobel yelled into the house. Behind her, she held open the storm door for Varen. He stepped in and then politely to one side, next to the umbrella stand and in front of the coat rack, his hands folded neatly in front of him, where he looked slightly uncomfortable and very much out of place. She felt a sudden lurch of panic at seeing him there like that, her mom’s embroidered framed copy of the Lord’s Prayer partially visible behind one safety-pin-studded shoulder.

“Mom!” she turned to shout again. “Uh, wait right there,” she said. Dragging her gym bag along, Isobel pounded up the stairs to her room.

Her mom wasn’t in her room or in the bathroom, though.

Isobel dropped her gym bag off in her own bedroom. Quickly she peeled off her practice gear and wiggled into her favorite pair of jeans. She threw on a clean T-shirt and rubbed on some deodorant. Next, while she was thinking about it, she grabbed The Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe from her nightstand.

It was strange how far away the dream with Reynolds seemed now. She shook her head, holding the book between her hands, suddenly glad she hadn’t had the chance to finish telling Varen about the dream, or about the book reappearing, or that she’d thrown it away in the first place. Or thought she’d thrown it away.

All that seemed to matter now was that she had the book and that they were going to finish the project. That is, if she could find her mom and tell her not to freak.

Isobel raced back down the stairs. She stopped before she reached the foyer, startled to find the space in front of the coatrack and umbrella stand empty.

She rushed to look out the front door, relieved to see Varen’s car still parked outside.

“I actually did a study on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle during my undergrad when I was at Wash U,” Isobel heard her mom say as she drew nearer to the kitchen. “But when I found out that Poe’s Dupin was the inspiration for Doyle’s Holmes, I tell you, I really got swept up in reading Poe’s detective stories. I remember wishing I’d done my term paper on him instead.”