Nevermore

18 The Other Half

Isobel came downstairs for dinner, but only for her mother’s sake. She was not hungry in the least, and even felt a slight pang of nausea. Under her parents’ scrutiny, however, she lifted her fork, took another bite of rice, chewed.

“Feeling any better?” her dad asked, finally breaking the silence. Isobel saw her mother shoot him a wary look. Apparently, they’d been discussing whether or not to commit her while she’d been wallowing upstairs in her room. “Yeah,” she said, “a little.”

Her mom rose from the table. “You finished, honey?” she asked, her hand pausing on Isobel’s plate. Grateful, Isobel nodded and set her fork down.

“Think you’ll go back to school tomorrow?” asked her dad in that tone that expected a yes. Sports geek that he was, he didn’t like her to miss cheer practice. Too bad she was going to anyway. Isobel nodded in response. She slumped in her chair, mulling over how to tell her parents she’d quit the squad.

“Well, that’s good,” her dad said, dragging his fork through the wilting leaves of his salad. Isobel glanced down to the empty place mat in front of her and traced the floral imprint with the tip of her finger. She opened her mouth and drew in a breath, deciding it would be better just to blurt it out now and get it over with. They’d have to go easy on her since she’d been sick, right?

In the kitchen, the phone rang.

Isobel’s back shot into a straight line. “Hello?” her mother answered.

She sat rigid in her chair, hoping it was a wrong number, or Danny’s troop leader, or her dad’s boss—or hell, even Coach Anne.

“Expecting a call?” asked her father.

Isobel’s attention snapped back to her dad, who sat eyeing her curiously, an odd smile on his face. Oh God, she thought, knowing exactly what that expression meant. He thought he had this all figured out, that this all must be over Brad.

“Isobel,” her mother said, and poked her head out of the kitchen. She held out the cordless handset. “Phone.”

He wouldn’t dare, she thought. She rose, took the receiver, and retreated with it into the kitchen. Her back to her mother, she answered with a quiet and warning, “Hello?”

“Oh, good,” a girl’s blunt, clipped voice said, “you’re not dead.”

“What? Who is this?”

“It’s Gwen.”

“Gwen? Gwen who?”

“Gwen Daniels. Our lockers are next to each other? Let me guess, you never knew my name to begin with, did you? Again, I fail to be surprised.”

“Uh, how did you get my number?”

“I looked you up online.”

“You can do that?” Isobel asked with a twinge of unease.

“Internet White Pages. Duh. What the heck is going on with you? Are you okay? Half the school thinks you’ve killed yourself.” There was a pause before Gwen added, “The other half thinks you and Varen eloped.”

“What?”

“Wait . . . Nobody told you what happened?”

“Happened? No. What happened?” Who exactly did Gwen think would tell her? Hello, news flash. Had she not witnessed firsthand her social demise in the lunchroom?

“Hold on,” Isobel murmured. Quickly she left the kitchen and went up the stairs. In her room, door closed, Isobel didn’t have to prompt Gwen to continue.

“So did you know your boyfriend knows your locker combination?”

“You mean Brad? We broke up. I thought that was obvious.” It irked her that people at school might still think they were together, or worse, just on the fritz.

“Oh, you know what I meant. That’s not the point. Did you really tell him your combination?”

“He knows it,” Isobel grumbled, getting more annoyed by the second. Was it any of Gwen’s business who she gave her locker combination to? They were locker neighbors, not locker roomies. “What does that have to do with what happened?”

“It was right after last period. Your big football player ex-guy—did you say his name was Ben?”

“Brad.”

“Right, well, for some reason, that guy was in your locker. Now, I wasn’t there yet, so I can’t say exactly what the deal was. I sort of figured out this much after the fact—from what other people said they saw.”

“Other people?” She cringed.

“Well, apparently, this Brad guy was getting stuff out of your locker, planning to take it with him, it looked like.”

Isobel tried to remember exactly what she’d stored in her locker. All she knew she had in there was her binder, some books, and a box of tampons—what could he want with any of that? Evidence, she realized at once. He must be looking for some kind of proof about her and Varen. Maybe. What else would it be?

“But then guess who shows up.”

“No.”

“Yeah.”

Something in her middle turned a wobbly somersault. Varen approaching Brad? Bad. Very bad.

“What happened?” Her voice almost cracked.

“Well, this is the part that I saw. Apparently, Varen wanted Brad to give him all your stuff. Then Brad grabbed a fistful of Dr. Doom’s shirt and slammed him into the lockers. Hard. I mean, I saw his head bounce. One-handed, too—Bruno never even had to put your stuff down.”

Isobel gasped. Suddenly she couldn’t breathe. The room around her seemed to tilt. She cringed, and the hand holding the phone felt weak.

“And that’s what triggered it, I think.”

Oh God. There was more? Isobel needed to sit down. She sank onto one corner of her bed, waiting for the worst. How bad could it be? she thought. If Varen had called her from work, then he had to be at least somewhat okay. He couldn’t be in traction if he was at work, right?

“Well,” Gwen said, her voice flattening out, “let me just say that when he banged into the lockers—the lockers banged back.”

“What do you mean they banged back?”

The line went quiet and fuzzy for a moment. Isobel squished the phone in hard against one ear, blocking her other ear with a finger. She turned her head to one side, and another roll of static fizzed against her eardrum.

“All the lockers . . . they knocked back,” Gwen said. “One right after the other. Everybody hit the floor, because it sounded like gunfire—I swear. I saw some of the locks jolting around. It happened so fast—and it wasn’t like some sort of crazy chain reaction that had been set off or something,” she interrupted herself to say, as though she’d already wrestled with this theory in her own mind, “because it started at the total opposite end of the hall, on the other side. It only stopped when it reached your locker. Which slammed shut—by itself. And even though he tried, Goliath couldn’t get it open again.”

“Gwen,” Isobel said, standing, a note of hysteria in her voice. Her eyes fell to the Poe book still sitting on her carpet where she’d left it. She kicked it under her bed. “You’re making this up.”

“Sorry, but I’m not that creative.”

“Did somebody set you up to call me and say all this?”

“Look,” Gwen said, “I didn’t call because of some prank. I called you because there’s something really freaked out goin’ on, and since it transpired in the direct vicinity of your locker, I thought you might like to know.”

A scuffling noise had Isobel turning to face the window.

“Of course,” Gwen prattled, “if I’d known I’d be accused of conspiracy on top of lying, I’d have written about the whole ordeal in an article and submitted it to the school newspaper instead.”

“Shh!” Isobel hissed. “Gwen, shh!”

The sound came again. A low, grating noise.

“I don’t think I should have to shush. You know, I didn’t have to call you. I had better things to do. My trig homework, for example.”

“No, Gwen,” said Isobel. She dropped her voice as the dull, scraping noise grew louder. “I hear something.”

For a moment the line went silent.

“Gwen?” Isobel said, afraid she’d hung up.

“I’m here, though I’m startin’ to wonder why.”

“Listen,” said Isobel as another long scratching noise issued from behind her drawn shade. “I believe you. There’s been a lot of weird stuff happening, actually. But I can’t tell you about it right now, because I think there’s something outside my window.”

There was a moment of tense silence. Isobel strained both ears, listening.

“You want me to call the police or somethin’?” Gwen whispered.

“No, not yet. Listen, I want you to stay on the line with me while I try to get a look. It could just be . . . y’know—a bird or something,”

“A bird? Are you kidding me?”

“No,” Isobel murmured, distracted as the scratching continued, closer this time. Something shuffled right up against her window ledge. Whatever it was out there, it sounded a lot bigger than a bird.

“Hold on,” she said. She crept forward, the phone held tight against one ear, her other arm outstretched, fingers reaching toward the shade.

“Isobel? What’s going on? Are you there or what?”

Transfixed by the large, moving black shape shifting in and out of the visible edge around her window shade, she watched her own hand as it drifted closer—remarkably steady

—toward her window. Touching a finger to the edge, she peeled back the canvas ever so slightly, squinting, trying to peer past the glare and into the dusk.

A thin, spidery hand, almost glowing white in the twilight, slammed against the glass. Isobel shrieked and stumbled back, tripping and falling on the carpet. The shade flew up. The phone jumped from her grasp and landed out of her reach.

On and off, she could hear Gwen’s distant, frantic voice calling her name.

Isobel stared up in terror through the dark square of her window, at the pale, luminous face that stared back.