“Hey!” Isobel shouted. “Watch it!”
He ignored her, collecting the controller again, like he wanted to make up with it. Isobel settled back onto the couch and watched as he restarted the game.
“Can’t we watch TV or something?” she said with a sigh.
“Nooooo!” He groaned.
“Danny, you’ve been playing that thing nonstop. ” She reached for the TV remote.
“Don’t!” He swung around and lunged at her, grasping for the remote. Isobel dropped her phone to grapple with both hands.
“For real, Danny, don’t you have homework or friends or something?” She grunted, pulling the remote.
“Don’t you?” he snarled, yanking it back.
Her phone rang. Danny let go of the remote and snatched up her cell. “Hello?”
Isobel grabbed for her phone, but Danny, with faster reflexes than she’d thought him capable of, slid out of her reach.
“Yeah, sure,” he said, “hold on. ” Smiling, he waggled the phone. “It’s your boyfriend!”
Isobel clambered off the couch and charged her brother, ready for battle. No one messed with her phone calls.
“Trade,” he said, skittering back, holding the phone out behind him.
“Ugh. You’re such a fungus!” She threw the remote down on the carpet. He tossed the phone at her and dove for the remote. The phone bounced between her hands before she caught it, and the video game music started up again.
She pressed the cell to her ear, blocking her other ear with one finger.
“Brad?”
“Not likely,” said the cool voice on the other end.
A thunder started in her chest.
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“How did you get my number?”
“Relax. ” His tone went from cold to glacial. “My folks have caller ID. You called me. ”
“Oh,” she said, cringing. Oh? She glanced quickly at her brother, then slipped out of the room and out of earshot. “Well, listen,” she said, groping for what she’d originally planned to say. “I just wanted you to know that I didn’t tell Brad about the number thing. ”
“I wasn’t hitting on you,” he said, as if he was the one setting her straight. “If nothing else, you’re not my type. ”
Her mouth fell open.
“Uh, yeah,” she said, trying to ignore the heat that crawled its way up her neck. She felt like throwing the phone against the wall and curling up to die all at the same time. Who did this guy think he was? “I never said I thought you were—”
“Well, someone felt threatened. ”
“Look, I talked to him about it,” she said, the words coming out quick and jerky. She hated sounding so spastic, especially when he seemed so unconcerned. “He just gets like that. ”
“Well, I guess it doesn’t matter as long as he has you to make excuses for him. ”
Now he was making her mad. “You know what—” But he didn’t let her finish.
“If you’re not bailing on the project, I’ll be at the main library tomorrow,” he said, his voice hushed. She could hear a crackle on the other end, like he was moving around. “After one. ”
“But it’s Saturday. ”
“Christ,” he hissed, “you’ve got to be kidding me. ”
Isobel started to say fine, whatever, she’d meet him. She paused, though, at the sound of someone calling for him in the background—a man. “Never mind,” he snapped, “I’ll do it myself. ” The line went dead.
Isobel bit down on the insides of her mouth hard. She drew the phone away from her ear and squeezed it. She wanted to scream. She wanted to smash the phone to pieces or cram it into the disposal.
“Turn it down,” she yelled to Danny as she stormed through the living room. “I’m going to bed!”
“I can’t hear you,” he shot over one shoulder.
She mounted the stairs, her steps pounding hard enough to skew the picture frames.
What exactly was his type, anyway? Bride of freaking Frankenstein?
4
Entitled
Isobel checked her cell for missed calls first thing the next morning.
None.
Texts? None.
Apparently, the usual crew antics had all transpired without her and, perhaps worse, they had all gone on without a single “Hey, where are you?” or “How come you didn’t show?”
Nope. No Brad, no Mark. Not a single call from her squad—no Nikki, Alyssa, or even Stevie, who was usually the peacekeeper in their group.
Haters. All of them.
She set her phone aside, deciding to forget about the diss, but after taking a shower and a downing a granola bar, she gave in to the itch to call someone. Still not ready to talk to Brad, she dialed Nikki instead.
Nikki’s familiar ringer buzzed in Isobel’s right ear, a bad pop song about some player sweating some chick. Isobel sat back against her headboard, listening as she stretched out. The song went on, and she rolled onto her stomach, facing her pillow. She grabbed the Magic 8 Ball off the bottom cubby-hole. Shaking it, she peered into the black circular window.
Will Nikki answer her phone?
The little triangle bobbed to the surface through the murk, bearing one of its cryptic one-size-fits-all messages. “Ask again later,” it read. Isobel snorted. She was just about to hang up when the song stopped mid-chorus and Nikki’s voice broke through, chipper and bright.
“Izzy!”
Isobel sat up, letting the Magic 8 Ball roll aside. “You’re such a snitch. Did you know that?”
“Hey, where were you last night?” Nikki asked, her voice staying breezy. “Stevie finally beat Mark’s score on Fighter Borg X. ”
“Nikki, I told you not to say anything about yesterday. Brad totally freaked out, and we had a fight. ”
Quiet fizz filtered through from the other side and Isobel waited, picturing Nikki in deep thought mode. No doubt she was using the dead air time to Photoshop, airbrush, and gloss-coat a good response.
“No,” she said at last, “you told me not to tell Brad. And I didn’t. ”
“So you did the next best thing and told Mark. Why?”
“Why not? What is with you, anyway? Brad said that all he did was talk to the guy and that you were the one who freaked out. ”
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“Nikki, no one would have freaked out in the first place if you hadn’t said anything!”
“Whatever,” Nikki said. “Listen, we’re going out for Chinese at Double Trouble. Brad’s coming too. ” Nikki’s voice adopted gooey sweetness as she said, “I’m sure if you caaaaalllled him, he’d swing by and pick you uuuuppp. ”
“I can’t. ”
“Why not?”
“I have to . . . I have a dentist appointment. ” The lie was out before she could stop it.
“Eeww. Bummer,” said Nikki after a beat, though Isobel could hear in her voice that she didn’t buy it. No, Nikki knew her better than that, and Isobel knew that they both knew that it all boiled down to her keeping the holdout on Brad.
Of course, there was that little thing about not being able to tell Nikki that she’d made other plans. Or, more important, who she’d made them with. Even though she hadn’t really made them per se.
Isobel shook her head, her brow creasing. This felt weird, lying to her friends, sneaking around over some stupid project.
“Oh, well,” Nikki said, breaking the awkward silence.
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 e
nd 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.
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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 found him in the tavern. ”
Isobel listened, loosely twisting her pen between her fingertips.
“He was on his way home from Richmond, heading to New York, when he went missing for five days. Completely gone,” he said. “He never made it, and some people say that for whatever reason, he tried to turn back. Then, when they found him in Baltimore, he couldn’t say what had happened because he kept going in and out of consciousness. But he wasn’t making any sense anyway. ”
“Why?” Isobel asked, her voice going quiet. “What did he say?”
Varen lifted his brows and cast his gaze toward one of the nearby windows, his eyes narrowing in the light. “Nothing that made sense. When they took him to the hospital, he talked to things that weren’t there. Then, the day before he died, he started calling out for somebody. But nobody knew who it was. ”
Page 12
“And then he just died?”
“After a few days in the hospital, yeah, he died. ”
“And nobody know
s where he’d been or what happened to him? Like, at all?”
“There are a lot of theories,” he said. “That’s why we’re covering it in the project. ”
“Like, what are some of the theories?” she asked.
“Well. ” Varen’s chair creaked as he leaned back. His eyes went distant again, and for the first time, that iron gate guard of his seemed to lower an inch. “A lot of people stick to the theory that he drank himself to death. ”
Isobel’s gaze trailed down to his hands. She’d never seen a boy with hands like that, with long, delicate fingers, beautiful but still masculine. His fingernails were long too, almost crystalline, tapered to points. They were the kind of hands you’d expect to see under lace cuffs, like Mozart or something.
“And it was election day,” he said, “so a lot of people think he was drugged and used as a repeat voter. That’s one of the most popular theories. ” He shrugged. “Some people even say it was rabies, just because he liked cats. ”
“Yeah, but wouldn’t they have been able to tell if he’d been drinking?”
“The accounts got mixed up,” he said. “And he had enemies. A lot of gossip got spread around. ”
“So what do you think happened to him?”
To Isobel’s surprise, he made a face like that question bothered him. His eyebrows furrowed, his gaze darkened, and he frowned. “I don’t know,” he said. “I think a lot of those theories are too convenient. But at the same time, I don’t have any of my own. ”
Moments passed. A balding man in a gray suit got up from a nearby table. Gathering his books, he passed them, taking a path through the stacks, leaving them even more alone than they had been before. A palpable silence took his place and seemed to condense the air between them.
Isobel flipped open another one of the books on the table, this one small and as thin as a magazine. She opened her mouth, ready to say something, though she didn’t know what.
Anything to break the silence.
He beat her to it, though, when without warning, he got up from the table, looming tall.
“Go through that one,” he said, indicating with a stiff nod the book she held, “and see if you can find the poem ‘Annabel Lee. ’ I’ve got to go check the shelf again. ”
Unable to help a small smirk, Isobel raised one hand in a salute. “Aye, aye, O Captain! My Captain!”
He turned. “Right era,” he muttered, “wrong poet,” then vanished between the shelves.
When he was out of sight, Isobel snapped closed the little book of poetry and leaned forward. She shifted away the yellow steno notepad and lifted the corner of his black hardback book. She peeked into the opening and peeled apart the pages, keeping the book open just a crack. She took a quick glance up to the row of shelves he’d slipped between. At no sign of him, she returned her eyes to the book, halfway standing to get a better look.