Nevermore

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Isobel sat at the kitchen table, staring down into the floating bits of cereal in her breakfast bowl, feeling not unlike day-old roadkill—soggy, drained, and flattened. She was achy and congested, too; like little magic bunnies had visited her sometime during the whole four hours she’d slept and stuffed her head full of wet cotton. Every noise—the clank of dishes in the kitchen sink, the shuffle of footsteps in the hall, the crinkle of her dad’s newspaper—sounded as though it was coming from somewhere deep underground.

She glanced up from the table, chewing, and squinted down the hallway, to where Danny’s backpack lay beside the umbrella stand. Vaguely she wondered what she’d done with her own. Then she remembered.

Isobel dropped her spoon. It clanged loudly against her bowl.

She launched up from her seat.

“Isobel?” her dad asked from the other end of the table. She didn’t bother to answer. She raced down the hall, then burst through the front door.

The morning air hit her cold, its moisture flooding her lungs, reawakening all the pangs from last night. A deep ache seeped from her bones and resurfaced in her muscles as she forced herself to move. Wet grass whipped at the hems of her jeans.

Oh, please, be okay. Please be okay!

In the grass—it was still there. Thank God.

Isobel ran to crouch beside her backpack. It was covered in a spray of dew, the nylon wet but not drenched. Fingers anxious and fumbling, Isobel pulled open the zippers, pried the bag open. Fixing her hands on The Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe, she drew the book carefully out, turning it over in her grasp, feeling along the spine. She inspected the pages. It felt dry. It felt whole. She breathed a sigh of relief.

Isobel jerked the zippers closed. That was when she noticed the glittery goop on the front of the bag, right under her embroidered initials. Her eyes narrowed, following the trail of glitter that led up to her heart-shaped key-chain watch.

“Oh, no,” she moaned, picking the silver watch up with her fingertips. The glass in the middle, right over the face of the watch, had shattered, leaking decorative pink glitter goo from inside onto the face of the watch and down the front of her bag, like fairy guts. She must have broken it when she’d slammed her bag down last night, the weight of the book crushing her watch.

Isobel unclipped the watch from her bag and held it in her palm.

She stood, pulling her backpack onto one shoulder with her free arm while staring down at the broken trinket in her hand. She walked slowly back inside the house and dumped her bag by the front door, then wandered into the kitchen, where she slumped once more into her chair.

“What’ve you got there?” her dad asked, not bothering to fold down his paper.

“My watch. It’s broken.”

“Ohhh,” he said, “I’m sorry, sweetheart.”

“Yeah,” she muttered, setting the watch aside on her place mat. She picked up her spoon and prodded her cereal.

“Well,” Danny said from his end of the table, half the milk in his spoonful of Lucky Charms sloshing back into his bowl, “next time you’ll know not to look at it.”

Isobel didn’t have the energy to quip back. It was already going to be a long day. She had practice that afternoon and with half of the crew, too. And if that wasn’t bad enough, she was certain the day wouldn’t end without her running into Brad at least once.

Oh, no, she thought, looking up. Brad. How was she supposed to get home from practice?

Isobel glared down at the table, bracing a hand against her forehead. She felt like just giving up. Could she do that? Where was the eject button on life? It wouldn’t have to be this way if her parents would just go ahead and let her take her driver’s test instead of making her wait until she turned seventeen in the spring. Unfortunately, waiting and keeping a permit longer had been part of the deal when she’d first asked them for a car.

“Dad?”

“Mmm?”

“Can you pick me up today after practice? Around four thirty?”

“Don’t you usually catch a ride home with Brad?” he asked.

“He—his car is in the shop.”

“Oh? I thought he was pretty good with cars.”

Oh, come on, Dad.

“It’s just one of those things. Can you come?”

“Well,” he said, “I guess I could drop by on the way home from work. Does Brad need a ride home too?”

“No.”

That did the trick, and her father put down his paper. He eyed her before asking, “You two still getting along okay?”

“Fine, Dad.” She sighed, slouching. “Fine.”

“You sure you’re feeling all right, Izzy? You don’t look so good.”

“Hundredth time, Dad, yeah.”

Apart from losing all her friends in one weekend, being chased by phantom stalkers, and feeling like a sock puppet personified, she was just peachy, Dad, thanks for asking.

“Humph,” he said, flipping his paper back up. He leafed noisily through a series of pages before snapping the paper straight again. “You’ve been acting kind of funny lately.”

“Hormones,” she murmured.

Danny slammed his spoon on the table. “Gross!” he shouted.

Her dad’s only response was a short “Mm.”

Then her mom came in. “You two ready to hit the bricks?”

Eager for an excuse to bolt, Isobel scooped up her broken watch. Pulling on her brown corduroy jacket from the back of her chair, she started for the door. She grabbed her backpack along the way.

“It’s still early. Who wants a ride to the bus stop?” her mom asked. “I think we even have time for drive-through lattes.”

“Me,” Isobel growled in coffee lust, while Danny shook his head and groaned.

At her locker, Isobel tucked a strand of her half-blow-dried, half-air-dried, pillow-crimped hair behind one ear and leaned down to pick up her binder. Next to her, she heard a furious rustle of papers, followed by books clunking. She looked over to see the weird skinny girl, her locker neighbor, on her knees, rooting through an impossible tangle of papers, bracelets clanking.

Wispy and long-necked, she reminded Isobel of a goose. She always wore long, flowing, flowery broom skirts with black leotard pants underneath and fitted sweaters layered over tank tops. She also wore oval-framed glasses and had straight, mouse brown hair so long she could sit on it. The girl usually secured her hair with a bandanna or a low ponytail tied at the nape of her neck.

She wasn’t someone Isobel would normally talk to, but for some reason, at that moment it struck her as kind of funny how they saw each other every day and had never spoken.

Didn’t having lockers together make you at least acquaintances? It was one of those situations where you had to be around someone you wouldn’t normally hang out with.

Like being paired for a project.

“Hey,” Isobel said before she could stop herself. “What are you looking for? Did you lose something?”

“She speaks,” the girl said, “imagine that.” Using both arms, she shoveled the pile of papers into her locker, then rose, angling, using her foot to stomp down the contents. “And she, who drops everything, asks me if I’ve lost something. No, I haven’t lost anything. Except, perhaps, my ability to be surprised.”

Isobel couldn’t help but stare as the girl gripped the sides of her locker, switched feet, and stomped again to compress the papers. She had some sort of New York accent, short, sharp, and a little brutal-sounding. Not at all what she’d expected. Suddenly the girl looked at her. “What did you do to your hair?”

Isobel felt her mouth open and a draft float in. Nice. The most fashion-challenged girl in school had just noticed her hair issues. “Slept on it sort of wet,” she murmured. She set her backpack down and crouched to scrounge through her emergency pouch for a hair tie.

So much for making acquaintances.

“Looks good,” the girl said, shutting her locker door. “Makes you look a little less stuck-up.” With that, she turned away and floated off in a swish of hair and skirts.

O-kay, Isobel thought. Despite the dig, she couldn’t keep from smiling just a little. She took the hair tie and looped it around her wrist. Maybe today wasn’t going to be so bad after all.

That’s when she saw them.

Brad. And Nikki. Walking down the hall— together—in her direction, holding hands.

Oh. My. God.

Isobel looked away quickly. She slammed her locker shut and wrestled to get her combination lock back in place and snap it closed before they got close enough to see her. Giving the combination pad a twist, she risked another glance and, sure enough, Brad was staring straight at her, his hand linked with Nikki’s—fingers intertwined.

And Nikki. Just look at her, smiling away at everything around her, like she just won Miss America or something.

Well, they could have each other.

Isobel spun away to take an alternate route to class. She wasn’t going to give them the satisfaction of a public display. She knew that was what Brad wanted.

But when she entered the stairwell, out of their sight, she felt her swollen sense of pride deflate. She had to fight down a whole swell of emotions she hadn’t expected to feel. She was mad— really mad—but she was confused, too. Then again, she hadn’t expected to see Brad practically welded to Nikki not two days after she’d broken up with him.

But maybe she should have.