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“An illegal pass,” he corrected her.
“The double just sort of happened,” she said. “Or actually, it didn’t. ”
“Coach said you almost landed it. ”
“I . . . ” Isobel frowned. Glancing up, she watched her father’s face carefully, trying to gauge not only where this calm, almost detached reaction was coming from, but where it was going. Shouldn’t the yelling have started by now?
“How many rotations?” he asked, and took a sip of his ginger ale.
Isobel’s eyes darted to Danny, who remained absorbed in his game. Then she glanced back to her dad. “I . . . don’t . . . know. ” She shrugged. “I just—”
“Coach said it was more than three at least,” he cut in, sounding strangely excited. “Whatever you did, she seemed pretty impressed by it. But don’t tell her I told you that. Anyway, do . . . uh . . . do you think you could do it again?”
“Do it . . . again? Dad. I think it’s fairly safe to say I’m off the squad. ”
He scrunched up his face and waved her off. “I talked to Coach,” he said. “Told her about us going up to Maryland. She said you hadn’t mentioned it to her. I told her that’s probably why you did what you did. She seemed to calm down after that. ”
Isobel watched her father push his half-full plate away and fold his arms across the table. Chin down, he angled his gaze up at her, several creases running across his broad forehead.
“You’re really serious about cheering, aren’t you?” he asked.
Isobel remained silent, opting to just nod.
“Good,” he said. “Because I called the university today and made arrangements for you to meet with the head coach. I told her about Nationals, and she mentioned that you might show her a few things. Sort of like an unofficial tryout. ”
“You what?”
Isobel’s fork slipped. It clattered against the table, causing Danny to flinch. Her brother scowled, and this time left the room, taking his plate with him to the kitchen.
Her dad paused, his ginger ale poised just in front of his lips. He lowered the can, setting it down before he spoke again. “Thought you’d want to meet her while we were there,” he said, studying her closely.
Isobel stared at him in abject horror. He had gotten her a one-on-one with the head coach? And an unofficial tryout? It seemed unthinkable. How?
Her heart constricted in her chest, clenching tighter with each beat.
In that moment, she knew she should never have involved her father in the plans to reach Baltimore. She should have figured something else out, found some way to make it there on her own.
“You know . . . ,” he prompted. “At this super-special university we’re flying up to see week after next?”
Mouth open, Isobel’s lips trembled in an attempt to form words.
He’d meant this to be a surprise—a good surprise.
She did her best to force a smile. Meanwhile, her mind shot into overdrive, trying to calculate how much this would complicate things.
“Are—are we going to have time for that?” she asked.
“I mean . . . that’s the whole reason we’re going, isn’t it?”
She sat back. Gripping the table, she nodded. “Yeah,” she said. “Wow. I—it—Thanks . . . Dad. ”
He gave her a funny, squinty-eyed look. “Gosh, Iz, I thought you’d be a little more excited than this. ”
“I am excited,” she insisted. Leaning forward in her chair, she touched his arm. She smiled again but didn’t push it, not wanting to lay it on too thick too late. “I just . . . got nervous there for a second is all. I don’t really have anything prepared, you know?”
“Well, like I said, kiddo, it’s not official or anything. Right now, I think they just want to see a little of what you’ve got. You’re still only a junior. And you’ve got some time to practice, though you ought to be in pretty good shape from the competition. You don’t have to do the pass if you don’t want to. ” He nudged her elbow. “I mean . . . you’re not having second thoughts about the whole thing, are you?”
“No!” she shouted.
Her dad cocked an eyebrow at her.
Isobel sank back in her chair. She ducked her head and stared at the soupy contents on her plate. The smell of the food began to make her already knotted stomach churn in loop-de-loops. She felt suddenly light-headed and queasy, like she’d spent the entire day on a carnival ride that had only just begun to slow down.
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“I mean no,” she said more quietly. “I do want to go. ”
“Okay,” he said. “Well then, we’re still on, don’t worry. I booked our hotel, too. We’re flying up that Sunday, and we’ll be staying in the city two nights, right in the Inner Harbor. Then we’ll check out Tuesday morning, load up the rental, and drive to the school. That’ll be a long day, because we’ll have to turn around and come back later that night to catch our flight home. I’ve got to be back in the office the next morning, too, so we gotta—Isobel, are you listening?”
Isobel nodded. In truth, she’d tuned him out right after he’d mentioned the day of the flight. Sunday was the eighteenth, the same night she needed to be in the graveyard. That meant she’d have to ditch him almost as soon as they arrived.
“Yeah,” she said. “Sure. That works. Um, hey, Dad?”
“Yeah?”
“Can I . . . be excused?”
He pointed to her plate. “You didn’t eat much. ”
“I know,” she said. “I’m not that hungry. ”
She needed to get away from the table, away from her father and all his well-meaning plans. She didn’t want to think about hurting him, because that’s what she was going to do. She wouldn’t make it to the special meet-and-greet tryout he’d arranged. Neither of them would, because she would be long gone. And he would be there, alone in that huge city, doing whatever he could to find her.
She could practically hear her parents arguing over the phone, her mother’s frantic I-told-you-sos, her father beside himself with guilt and self-blame.
She could feel the fissure forming in her family now, before any of them were even aware the crack existed. Or that she had been the one to put it there.
Isobel’s breath hitched. She balled her napkin in her fist, trying to play it off as a hiccup. Cringing inwardly, she decided to pull the fail-safe girl card. “Cramps,” she said.
Her dad leaned back in his chair. “Mm,” he said.
Isobel stood. She slid a hand under her plate, but her dad held up a palm. “I’ll get that,” he said.
She backed away. Turning, she hurried up the steps.
Ducking into her room, she shut the door behind her.
17
Inversion
Isobel sat on the corner of her bed closest to her dresser mirror. She watched the glass from an angle that did not show her own reflection, only that of the room itself.
From here, she could see the dark square of her window and the white-lace curtains that flanked it. The mirror also showed her nightstand and fringed bedside lamp, which she’d switched on.
The darkness seemed to press in around her, as though waiting for her to make a move or dare to step beyond the cone-shaped pool of yellowish lamplight.
But Isobel wasn’t afraid.
Her eyes remained steady on the surface of the mirror as she spoke.
“I don’t know if you can hear me,” she said. “I can’t tell if you’re listening. I’m not even sure how this works . . . if it works . . . but I know that you’ve seen me. And . . . and I know what you saw today. What it must have looked like. ” Glancing down, she took in a breath, then let it out in a long sigh before continuing. “But it wasn’t what you think it was. You know that’s not who I am anymore. Don’t you?”
She lifted her head, her eyes returning to the mirror.
“Varen . . . if you c
an see me, if you can hear me, why won’t you appear like before? Speak to me. Tell me how to reach you. Show me how to find you. Because right now, I don’t even know if what I’m doing is right anymore. ”
The mirror remained clear.
Pushing off from her bed, Isobel went to stand in front of it.
Not liking the way the dim light exaggerated the shadows on her face, Isobel glanced at the reflection of her digital clock and the inverted neon numbers that blazed through the gloom.
“Varen,” she whispered, “I miss you. ”
She saw the last digit twitch, a minute having passed by. She waited, and when another sixty seconds elapsed, the number changed again.
Time continued to crawl by, yet Isobel stayed in front of her mirror, hoping that any moment she would see his face appear at her window, that he might step up behind her, or that she would hear him say something. Anything.
But the only thing that changed was the time.
After several more long minutes, Isobel heard the front door open, and her ears perked at the sound of her mother’s voice calling through the house, “I’m home!”
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Only then did Isobel break her gaze with the mirror.
She crept to her door and, opening it a fraction of an inch, peeked out into the hall. Through the banister rungs of the landing, she saw her mother standing in the foyer below. Stepping out from the living room, her father took her coat while they exchanged words too low for Isobel to make out.
“Upstairs,” her dad said.
Before her mother could look in her direction, Isobel took a quick step back. Hearing shuffling on the stairs, she hurried to her bed. She threw back the covers and slipped under them, then rolled to face her window and shut her eyes.
The hinges of her bedroom door squeaked as it opened.
Even though no other sound came for some time after, Isobel could still sense her mother watching her.
Isobel kept her breathing even and heavy.
She heard the rustle of clothing and then the quiet click of her bedside lamp.
The darkness behind her lids became absolute.
A moment later and she felt her mother’s lips, still chilled from the night air, brush her temple. The remnants of that morning’s spritz of perfume invaded Isobel’s nostrils, an airy blend of apricots and field flowers in full bloom—a breath of midsummer in the bleakest part of winter.
Even after Isobel’s mother left her room, the calmness she had brought with her remained, soothing Isobel’s nerves and robbing the pressing darkness of its power.
In its place, sleep closed in to claim her.
STANDING ON THE SIDEWALK, RIGHT at the edge of the curb, Isobel tilted her head back to peer up at the front of the bookstore.
Above the pointed rooftop, just beyond the crumbling chimney, a thin layer of low-lying clouds rushed by. The fast-moving backdrop created the optical illusion that the narrow building housing the shop was tipping forward, on its way to crush her.
A high-pitched squeaking noise drew her attention directly overhead, to the once straight-hanging sign for Nobit’s Nook. Now, though, the wooden board dangled lopsided from its iron bracket. Suspended by only a single link, the sign whined as it rocked and swiveled.
But why was the lettering . . . backward?
The wind swished past her in a low hush, dragging cool fingers through her hair.
Isobel looked toward the front window of the shop when she heard someone inside begin to cough.
She listened as the hacking grew distant and knew it had to be the elderly bookshop owner, Bruce.
Stepping forward, she peered through the glass. Though the lights were on in the main room, she saw no one standing near the book-swamped checkout counter or amid the tall rows of packed shelves. The shop appeared deserted, identical in every aspect to how she remembered it—save for one difference.
It was all reversed, everything completely flipped.
Just like the image in a mirror.
Isobel backed away from the window. She spun to look around, suddenly realizing where she was, that she was not only currently asleep in her bed and dreaming, but that somehow she was also standing within the dreamworld.
As far as she could see, the woodlands stretched long in every direction, their darkened borders occupying the space that in the real world would have held a string of storefronts.
The trees themselves stood in thick union, close as grass blades, almost as though they had conspired to merge nearer to one another in order to block anyone who might dare cross their boundaries. Or, she thought, try to escape them.
Layers of ash spilled out from between the blackened tree trunks. The dust reached far enough to swallow the legs of a bus stop bench as well as the bases of signposts and all the streetlamps, which gave off an eerie glow through the mist-filled air.
Like a slumbering black dragon, a certain vintage car sat parked close to the curb, only a few feet away from where she stood. White ash caked the treads of its tires.
Varen. He was here.
Isobel hurried up the short stoop to the door. Though the flip sign read CLOSED in reverse, she tried the handle anyway.
The belt of bells jangled as the door swung open. Isobel entered the shop, the floorboards moaning underfoot.
“Hello?”
At first there came no answer. But then a small, soft voice, that of a woman’s, sliced through the silence.
“Hello there. ”
Isobel halted.
Raising a hand to her throat, she groped for the pendant Gwen had given her. The hamsa felt warm and solid in her fist, and again, she had to remind herself that this wasn’t real. Or at the very least, that it wasn’t reality.
Willing herself to stand her ground, Isobel waited for something else to happen, steeling herself to move in the event that it did.
“It’s okay. ” The woman’s voice, overlapped by a faint crackle of static, broke through the quietness of the shop, her tone reassuring. “You can come in. ”
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Isobel turned her head in the direction of the voice, which seemed to be coming from somewhere near the checkout counter.
“I shouldn’t play so late,” the voice said. “Did I wake you? Since you’re up, if you like, I could let you hear the rest. It’s our song, after all, and it is almost finished. Here, let me sing you the last verse. ”
As the tinkle of piano notes trickled through the shop, Isobel’s initial fear began to subside, and she pressed on toward the counter. There, sitting amid the stacks of books, stationed atop an enormous pair of thick volumes, she saw what looked to be an old-fashioned gramophone.
The device had a hand crank, which turned itself around and around as familiar music poured forth from its enormous funnel-shaped horn. Then the voice began to sing.
“And side by side we’ll fight the tide
That sweeps in to take us down
And hand in hand we’ll both withstand
Even as we drown. ”
Isobel sidled up to the counter, drawing closer only to discover that the gramophone held no record. Its needle hung suspended off to the side, too, away from the empty turntable, which spun at a lazy speed.
She listened, hypnotized, as the piano notes carried on anyway. Then the music faded off, ending in a sharp clang of keys as though something about the song’s execution had frustrated its composer.
“I don’t know. ” The voice on the gramophone sighed. “Do you think that last part’s too sad? Well, don’t just stand at the door, silly,” she said through a laugh. “Come, sit with me on the bench awhile. Let me play you the whole thing from start to finish, and then you tell me what you think. ”
The gramophone’s crank continued to rotate. It circled around and around as though propelled by the hand of a ghost, the hushed overlay of crackling continuing through the brief mom
ent of silence. Then the melody picked up again, that same sad song Isobel had heard three times before now—the lullaby.
“Sleep now a little while
Till within our dreams we wake
Unfolding our Forever
If only for Never’s sake. ”
A low creak from overhead drew Isobel’s gaze to the ceiling.
Beside her, the gramophone began to skip.
“Till within our dreams we wake—
Till within our dreams we wake—
Till within our dreams we wake—”
“I am awake,” Isobel whispered.
The moment she spoke out loud, the gramophone stopped playing, its crank halting mid-rotation.
As she continued to listen, she heard footsteps—booted footsteps, their gait even and slow—begin to make their way across the upper floor.
There was somebody upstairs, in the attic.
Isobel headed toward the rear of the shop, but a distant sound, hissing from behind, stopped her before she reached the open archway.
Glancing over her shoulder, back toward the gramophone, Isobel watched as the crank began to revolve again, this time in the opposite direction as before. The hissing transformed into whispers. Then the whispers became words, which began to drift from the horn’s black hole, growing louder and more discernible with each revolution of the crank.
“Believe me,” a girl’s voice cut through the static, “that would so never happen. ”
Isobel’s mouth fell open as she recognized the voice as her own.
“In fact, we never saw each other outside of class except those times we had to meet for the project. To be honest,” the voice—her voice—continued, “we didn’t even get along. But I had to put up with it because I needed a passing grade. ”
Isobel shook her head. “No,” she said.
“At this point, I’m just kind of ready to forget about it and move on, you know? But . . . as far as knowing anything about what happened that night? I’m honestly the last person who would—I’m honestly the last person who—I’m honestly the last person—the last person—honestly—hoooonnestly—hooooneeessstly. ”