Nevermore

50 From Out That Shadow

That night, Isobel waited until everyone was asleep before sneaking down the hallway to Danny’s room. She pressed in on the door, and it creaked slightly as it opened.

Her little brother lay in his bed, snoring, huddled to one side, his arm slung around a giant Transformers pillow. Drool pooled on the robot’s plushy shoulder. She shook her head, taking in the scene. If her mood had been any different, she might have risked snapping a blackmail photo. Instead, she crept inside, tiptoeing around the minefield that was his bedroom floor.

Quietly she slid into his computer chair. It squeaked as it swiveled into place, and her ears pricked up as she heard Danny stir behind her.

She ignored his groan and wiggled the mouse, causing the sleep screen to disappear. The PC hummed to life and, when the window for Google popped up, she started typing.

“What are you dooooing?” Danny moaned. “Get out of my roooooom.”

“Shh,” Isobel said. “Go back to sleep.”

The web page for University of Baltimore popped onto the screen.

It had been Gwen who, despite her reluctance concerning Isobel’s plan, had thought of using the excuse of visiting colleges to get to Baltimore. After Nationals, if Trenton won the championship this year, then there would be no way her mom and dad could deny her the request. Especially if she happened to utter the word “university” all on her own.

Of course, that meant Trenton would have to win.

From there, things wouldn’t get truly difficult, until she was in the city, in Baltimore. It would be sneaking off and getting into the locked cemetery that was going to be the tough part.

“I was having a good dream,” Danny mumbled. She heard him roll to face the wall. “I was an only child.”

“So go back to sleep.”

Isobel typed “Athletics” into the search field. The only return was for an athletics club. “Damn it,” she hissed. She pressed back and, returning to Google, typed, “University of Maryland + Athletics.” When the page loaded, she clicked the first option, and the sports page splashed onto the screen in a flash of red, yellow, and black. And there, dead center, was a photo of the football team.

“Home of the Terrapins?” she whispered aloud.

“It’s two a.m.,” Danny whined. “Aren’t you still banned from life?”

Isobel squinted at the little image of the mascot. Apparently, a terrapin was some sort of turtle. Weird.

She went to a drop-down menu and clicked “Spirit Squad.” The page went black before the Terrapin cheerleaders flicked onto the screen. Girls wearing big ear-to-ear smiles and bright red uniforms trimmed in black dominated the monitor. A few of the pictures showed squad members suspended in midair, doing high-difficulty stunts. Not too shabby, she thought.

She scrolled down and there, just below a championship portrait, was the info she needed. Yes—they competed.

“Turn the screen off!” Danny growled. “You suck.”

Isobel closed out of the page. She powered off the monitor, then stood.

Stepping around Danny’s beanbag chair and kicking aside his school shoes, she lowered herself to sit on his bedside.

“Guuuh,” he snarled into his pillow. “What do you want?”

Isobel pulled up her knees and lay down on the edge of her brother’s narrow twin-size bed. Turning to face his back, she looped an arm over him.

“Get off me,” he growled, but made no move to pull away or push her off.

For a long time, he let her lay there, and she stared at the back of his head, at the part in his dark hair, and then at the wall, at the Darth Vader poster that loomed over them.

“You’re a freak,” he muttered.

“I know,” she whispered.

The hum of Danny’s computer slowed and went out, the PC going back to sleep.

“I’m sorry your boyfriend’s still missing,” he said, his words startling her, catching her off guard.

She felt a sudden straining pinch behind her eyes. Her throat constricted, and she swallowed against the impulse to cry. She shut her eyes, and despite her best efforts, a warm tear tumbled from her cheek, hitting the sheets beneath her.

“I hope they find him,” he said.

“Yeah,” she managed, the rust of emotion caking her voice, “me too.”

Danny grew quiet again, and beneath her arm, she felt his breathing deepen. She watched and felt his side lift and lower. The steady motion rocked her arm and, like a balm, smoothed the pain back down.

Carefully, Isobel unfolded herself from Danny’s bed, doing her best not to wake him again. She put her bare feet onto the carpet and wove her way through his room to the door. She slipped down the darkened hallway and into her own room, taking care to ease the door shut behind her, turning the knob to silence the click of the latch. Then she did what until that very moment she had forbidden herself to even think of: She retrieved Varen’s jacket from her closet and, sitting with it on the edge of her bed, clutched it to her chest.

She pressed the collar to her lips, breathed him in. The coarse fiber still held his essence, reminding her of the moment they had been so close. She traced the length of one sleeve with her fingertips, remembering the feel of his body pressed against hers and the taste of his lips.

Isobel pulled on the jacket, threading her arms through one sleeve at a time. The weight of it settled onto her shoulders. She hugged herself, imagining that it was him who now held her and not this vacant shell, this last remaining relic.

She felt, and heard, the right pocket crinkle.

Isobel froze.

Without looking, she slipped a hand inside . . . and touched the edge of smooth paper.

She pulled free the folded slip. A note.

Its ash coating powdered to nothing at one pass of her thumb. Lips parted, she gaped at it, half expecting it to dissolve from her touch.

It didn’t.

She slowly opened the paper, handling it as though it were a wounded sparrow. She could tell from the uneven, crushed folds that it had been crammed into the pocket, hastily stowed away by its author, as though to put it out of sight before it could be seized.

Purple writing, his writing, dominated the page in quick yet beautiful curves and loops. Her eyes traced the lines, soaking up each sentence, one word at a time.

In the shadows of the dreamland, he waits. He watches the gaping window to the world he had so longed to open. Now flown wide, bleak and empty, ravaged—like him—it grants his wish. He belongs.

It cannot compare to the memory of her eyes. Blue azure, warm as a summer sky.

If he could but fall into their world.

Would that he had.

Now he writes the end to the story that past its Midnight Dreary—that too late an hour—has its own without him. It was always, he knows now, meant to end this way.

Like that circle that “ever returneth into the selfsame spot.”

My beautiful, my Isobel. My Love. You ask me to wait. And so I wait.

For all of this, I know, is but a dream.

And when, in sleep, at last we wake,

I will see you again.

Isobel stared at the paper in her quivering hand, able to do little more than trace and retrace, through her searing vision, the deep violet ink that comprised that final line.

Despite its literal meaning, she knew that he had meant it to say “good-bye.”

Never, she thought, trailing a fingertip over the swirl of those carefully crafted letters. A thousand times never. They were entwined now, irrevocably. Ever since that day he had set his pen to her skin. And if this rift that stretched between them now extended beyond the confines of time and space, of dreams and reality, she still had to believe that there was a way to cross it, still a way to keep her promise. There had to be.

Slowly, Isobel lowered the note, lifting her free hand to brush away the tears that fell.

A chill of ice air rushed up behind her, causing her to start. The breeze stung her dampened cheeks and combed cold fingers through her hair. She twisted to peer over her shoulder.

Her window. It was open. She frowned, unable to recall having raised it.

The lace curtains fluttered and whispered in the brisk wind, the white gauze of their fabric slipping and uncoiling against the panels of her wall with every swell, creating a sound like the rush of distant waves.

The winds picked up again, growing fiercer, with a hint of the sharp, bitter tang of the oncoming winter. The breeze tugged and jerked at the note in her hand, as if to snatch it from her grasp.

Refolding the paper, Isobel stood with a shudder. She pulled the jacket tightly around herself, wrapping her arms in close. She rounded her bed and went to her window, but paused at the sight of its reflection in her dresser mirror. There, around the square of black and empty night, she watched the white lace curtains flutter and snap. They waved at her like twin ghosts in the wind until, she thought, one took the shape of a familiar figure—a shrouded, translucent form—with skin the perfect whiteness of snow.