by Келли Криг
“Is it also true that you drank to excess?” Isobel asked, flipping to the next index card.
Poe scoffed at the question, his response simply “Nyeh.”
Varen’s head snapped so quickly toward her father that Isobel was surprised the sunglasses hadn’t flown off.
“Well, sometimes,” Poe corrected himself. Shifting, he stooped in his seat.
Varen’s stare remained.
“Often,” Poe growled, angling away, pulling his already tight jacket around himself even tighter.
This time Isobel thought she even heard Mr. Swanson chuckle. Good, she thought. Maybe that meant he’d let this whole thing fly.
“Though you can’t say that I wasn’t, at heart, a gentleman,” Poe argued, this directed outward. “And not to excuse myself, but when I drank, it was only to drown out the sorrowful pain brought on by the blackest despairs of my life, such as the long illness and ultimate demise of my dearest Virginia.”
Wow, Isobel thought, impressed, so he had remembered something after all. “After your wife Virginia’s death,” she said, “you attempted to remarry, correct?”
“Well, for a short while, I courted Miss Sarah Helen Whitman.”
“And Annie,” Varen interjected.
Poe paused, smiling. He lifted a finger to loosen his cravat. “And . . . Annie,” he conceded.
“Who was married.”
“See, that’s an interesting story indeed. I—”
“And then Elmira.”
“And then Elmira, yes, fine.” Poe crossed his arms, slumped, and looked away. There came a mix of laughter and several teasing “ooh’s” from the back of the class.
“What can I say?” Poe muttered. “Chicks dig the mustache.”
Laughter again. Isobel shut her eyes and held them closed, trying to halt the crawl of color over her face. Take it down a notch, Dad, she thought toward him, opening her eyes again.
Then she grinned in spite of herself, because the plan was working better than she had hoped. As she asked more questions, Varen continued to interject between her father’s misty replies, supplying the real facts, eliciting laughter with his dry coolness. Soon they had only one subject left to cover: death.
“Mr. Poe, the details of your end are, at best, cloudy.” Her mom had told her to phrase it that way, though Isobel thought it made her sound like a cheesy soothsayer. “No one knows exactly what happened to you on that fateful night. There are theories ranging from rabies to murder.”
“Mmm. Murder,” Poe mused, “that most hideous yet somehow fascinating of human pastimes.”
“You admit that you were somehow involved in foul play?”
“I admit nothing,” Poe said. “I enjoy mysteries too much. I invented them, remember? And so I am obliged not to reveal the answer to the riddle of my death.” He stood slowly and began pacing, hands clasped behind his back. “Besides, I fear I cannot fully recall what happened to me that night so long ago, so many eons ago. . . .” He reached a quivering hand out toward his audience, his fingers curling into a rueful fist. Isobel rolled her eyes. She never would have thought he had it in him!
“I was on my way from New York to Richmond.”
“Richmond to New York,” Varen corrected.
“That’s right,” Poe whispered, bringing his hand toward his brow, bracing his head. “The musty air of the grave! The lull of death’s sleep. These things can congest the brain, clog the memory—but you’re right. I was leaving Richmond, yes, where I had finally become engaged. I was to be married. Yes, married. But first! First I was to return to my home in New York to collect my dear aunt Moody.”
“Muddy.”
“That’s what I said.” Poe stopped then, tilting his head as though listening to something far off. “I remember traveling by train with my trunk full of manuscripts and lectures. The train stopped and then I . . . I . . .”
Isobel let her eyes stray from her father to scan the faces of her classmates. Everyone stared. Even Bobby Bailey, who usually laid his head on his desk, had sat up to listen.
“Perhaps, Professor Nethers,” Isobel ventured, “you can enlighten us about some of the details surrounding this mystery?”
Varen, maybe remembering Isobel’s whispered plea, took his cue. “For five days Poe went missing,” he said, his voice slicing into the stillness of the room. “He was found near a tavern in Baltimore in a state of delirium, wearing someone else’s clothing. He was then taken by his cousin and a doctor friend to the hospital.”
“Yes, I remember now . . . ,” Poe whispered.
“The doctor’s reports say that Poe raved for days, talking to imaginary people and invisible objects on the wall.”
“Demon!” Isobel’s dad shouted suddenly, shooting a finger out to point at the ceiling. With a collective shriek, the entire room jumped in their seats. “Thing of evil!”
A strange feeling stole its way over Isobel. Her brow knotted, and she felt her jaw tighten and set. As she watched her father improvise, her hands pressed down on the desktop while her thoughts and her memory slowly wound around reawakening fears. She remembered now that Varen had mentioned this in the library, that first time they’d met for the project—how Poe had screamed out to invisible beings while on his deathbed.
“On the night before he died,” Varen continued in a solemn tone, “he began screaming out a name, shouting it for more than a day, calling for someone no one knew. Someone Poe never reportedly knew, either. Someone named Reynolds—”
Isobel gasped audibly. Prickling white spikes of fear and panic shot through her, freezing her mind and stalling her body. She sat stunned, her eyes on Varen while her memory projected onto her mind the image of a black-shrouded figure.
Isobel had no way of telling how much time trickled by before she registered Mr. Swanson’s voice. Apparently, however, it had been long enough for him to guess that this wasn’t just another part of the presentation. “Isobel,” he said, “are you all right?”
Dazedly she looked for her father, who had all but dropped out of character to stare at her with a “What’s going on?” look on his face.
“Uh,” Isobel croaked, fumbling for the radio. Flustered, she pressed play, then pause, then stop. “That’s the—all—all the time we have today,” she stuttered, pressing play again in an attempt to cover her mangled lines. The tail end of another round of clapping trickled lamely through the boom box before dying out.
Her father made a hesitant bow, now to the live though somewhat sporadic applause of the class, whose attention had begun alternating between Isobel and Varen. No doubt they were wondering what they’d missed.
“I, uh, shall take leave of you now,” her father said, backing toward the door. He shot a questioning look at Isobel. She nodded at him. It was all she could manage. “Yes,” he affirmed, turning back to the class. “Here I take my leave, to return to this realm— nevermore!”
Isobel watched numbly as her father swept dramatically from the room, pausing at the door long enough to jiggle the light switch before ducking out. The bird dropped from his shoulder and onto the linoleum. A black-cuffed hand shot back in and snatched the bird out again. Isobel scowled, vaguely recalling having begged him to leave out the light switch part.
The bell rang, ending the class in what felt like a whirlwind. Everyone shot up from their seats, papers flapping, notebooks dropping, laughing and talking. Mr. Swanson rose too, announcing over the clamor, “Okaay, then. Very good job, everyone—and their parents, I suppose,” he added with a pointed look at Isobel that normally would have made her gulp.
“Papers up front, if you please. Your grades will be ready some time next week and, from there, we’re going to talk a little bit more about Mr. Poe, the antebellum era and the Romantics, then we’ll pick up on writers of the Civil War era. Have a very safe Halloween tonight, go Trenton Hawks. Pull up your pants, Mr. Levery, I don’t need to see your boxers—everybody please stay out of trouble!”
Trouble. Isobel’s gaz
e fell to the swirling grain of Mr. Swanson’s desktop, her brain repeating the word. She was in trouble.
Reynolds.
Hadn’t he been something purely out of her subconscious? Or could Varen have mentioned him before? No. No, she would have remembered that. Her dreams. Had they been real? It was the only explanation, she realized. It was the only thing that explained everything. The Poe book. She had thrown it away. The figure in the door at practice. The image in the mirror.
The run through the park. The voice in the attic. She wasn’t crazy—or maybe she was? Isobel funneled her focus onto a single black knot in the wood as she tried to recall something else Reynolds had told her. What he’d said about . . .
“Varen?” she asked breathlessly.
She stood abruptly and looked into the seat next to hers. She saw only their paper, bound neatly in a plastic report cover. She watched dully as all the others began piling on top, burying the neat Gothic typeface he’d chosen for the title. She looked up, her eyes locking on his desk in the corner. Empty. His satchel, his black book—gone.
32
Pinfeathers
Halfway out the door, Isobel slammed into her father, the makeshift raven flopping off his shoulder and once again onto the floor.
“Hey, whoa, Iz! I’m still here.” He gripped her shoulders to steady her. “How do you think we did? Hey, listen”—he dropped one arm to check his watch—“I better get on to the office so I can be back to pick you up before the game.” He bent to get the bird, and before Isobel could utter a syllable, six-foot-something Bobby Bailey stepped between them, blocking Isobel completely.
“Hey, man, that was awesome,” he said, engaging her father in a complicated series of handshakes and fist bumps.
“Hey, thanks,” her dad replied, navigating through the grips and punches as best as he could. “Uh, glad you thought so . . . man.”
Isobel peered down the hall both ways, searching for Varen’s familiar dark figure. Not seeing him, she elbowed Bobby aside. “Dad, this is important. Did you see which way Varen went?”
Bobby butted fists with her father one last time before passing on. Her dad, stuffing the bird under one arm, frowned. “Yeah,” he said, pointing, “he took off down that way. Didn’t even say hi or, you know, thanks.”
“Daddy, thanks. Listen, that was great.” She hugged him quickly, then shoved the boom box into his grasp. “Can you take this for me? I gotta go!” She turned without waiting for a reply and ran off through the crowd, jumping up to see over the tops of bobbing heads. It was at times like these that she hated being so short. She also hated leaving her dad like that, standing in the middle of the chaotic hall, still dressed as Poe and carting around her blue stereo.
At first she didn’t see him. Then the way cleared, and suddenly he was there. Isobel shoved her way through.
“Varen!”
Hadn’t he heard her? She shot after him, almost catching up. She called to him again—why wouldn’t he turn around? He rounded the corner without looking back. She swung around the bend right after him—then skidded to a halt.
He was gone.
He’d been right there in front of her not two seconds ago and now, in the space where he should have stood . . . nothing.
Isobel peeked into the nearest classroom. Vacant. She turned again, this time in a slow circle. Lockers slammed. Somewhere in the distance, she recognized the shouts of her favorite call-and-response chant: “When I say Trenton, you say Hawks! Trenton! Hawks! Trenton! Hawks! When I say down, you say Bulldogs! Down! Bulldogs! Down! Bulldogs!” More students streamed by her, laughing and chattering, no one seeming to have noticed one person’s total evaporation.
* * *
When Isobel entered the lunchroom, she found Gwen right away, sitting at their table. Stevie was there too, which wasn’t a big surprise. Someone she hadn’t expected to find, though, sitting at one far end, picking through her untouched taco salad, bedecked in cheerful dangling earrings yet still managing to look mopey, was Nikki.
For a moment their eyes met. Isobel resisted the urge to look away, to steal a glance toward where she knew the crew would be sitting. Or, she corrected herself, where what was left of the crew would be sitting. With Nikki attempting to cross over and merge with the light side (if that indeed was what she was trying to do), Isobel figured the crew should be neatly split somewhere down the middle.
At this newest complication, Isobel found herself more annoyed than anything, wishing Nikki had picked another day. Yesterday, for instance. She didn’t have time for drama right now.
She switched her gaze to Stevie, who waved, no doubt on Nikki’s side for her attempt at a smooth convergence.
“Hey, Iz,” he called, “where’ve you been?”
Isobel came to a stop beside the table, letting her bag drop to the floor. “Long story.”
“You know,” said Gwen, after swallowing a mouthful of what looked to Isobel like a peanut butter and banana sandwich, “I’ve seen that look before. Not on you”—she shook her head—“on somebody else. I think his name was Rambo.”
“Gwen.”
“Isobel,” Gwen said, echoing her tone of seriousness.
Isobel swiveled where she stood, then sat so her knees faced out instead of in. This put her back to Stevie and Nikki. “Listen,” she said in a low voice, “can you still get me to that thing tonight?”
Gwen took another bite of the goopy sandwich and smiled. “I thought you said you didn’t want to go.” The words were barely decipherable.
Isobel frowned. She’d never said she didn’t want to go. She had wanted to go, only more so now because she had a gut feeling that if she was going to catch up to Varen at all, she would need to find him there, tonight, at the Grim Facade.
“Hey,” said Gwen, jabbing a bony elbow in Isobel’s ribs, “what’s with you? You’re doing that creepy stare-off thing again. What made you change your mind, anyway? Not that I was really going to give you a choice in the first place since I got Mikey to tag me. How come you’re not eating? Where’s your lunch? Talk to me here. Did you guys get the project done or what? And where is the Dark One, anyway? I haven’t seen him all day.”
He should be here at this table, Isobel thought, clenching a fist.
A new thought dawning on her, she lifted her gaze to scan the room. She looked toward the goths’ table. The congregation there was sparse, probably in aversion to the pep rally and the chaos of rival game day. And it was Halloween. No doubt they were all somewhere getting ready for their own celebration, for the Grim Facade. Among those missing from the table, Isobel couldn’t help but notice, was Lacy.
“Are you just going to sit there and ignore me?” came a quavering voice. Nikki.
Isobel pulled her feet up, turned around, and slid her legs underneath the table. She wished that she didn’t have to deal with this, of all things, right now.
“Just tell me if you hate me,” Nikki went on. She propped her elbows on the table and put her head in her hands—a condemned prisoner begging the executioner to hurry up with the ax already. “Tell me off or something.” Her chin trembled. “But don’t just sit there and ignore me.”
Isobel averted her eyes with an actual pang of guilt. “Nikki.” She sighed.
All at once, she sucked her breath back in.
“Omigod, Gwen.” She reached out, fixing a clawlike grip on Gwen’s arm. Her banana sandwich missing her mouth, it tumbled to the side and onto the floor.
“Omigod what? I was so gonna eat that.”
“Who’s that guy?”
“What guy?”
“That guy,” Isobel said, her hand tightening on Gwen’s arm. “Sitting with Brad.”
Both Stevie and Nikki swung around to look.
Sitting right next to Brad was a boy with porcelain white skin, his dark bloodred hair slicked back, sleek yet somehow spiky. His clothes were black leather and chains. Beneath the table, she could see he wore boots, and his pants were covered with buckles and dull si
lver chains. He had on a thin strap-covered black coat that almost looked like a straitjacket. It fitted snugly against the boy’s spindly frame.
“Where?” asked Gwen. “I don’t see anybody.”
“He’s sitting right there. Right next to Brad. Nikki, you see him, right?” Isobel glanced at her former best friend, only to be met with an expression of hurt and doubt.
“Are you making fun of me or something?”
“What? No! I—”
“Iz,” Stevie interjected, “Nikki has been trying to say she’s sorry.”
“No, I know!”
“Tch!” Scooting her tray aside, Nikki pulled her ostrich legs out from the table and rose. “I knew you wouldn’t listen.” Leaving her tray behind, she stalked off, hurrying toward the courtyard doors. With a heavy sigh, Stevie drew himself up. Before turning to follow, he eyed Isobel with baleful disapproval.
She shook her head. “No, this isn’t about that! Look!” She pointed. “He’s right there! He’s sitting right there. He’s got . . .” Ignoring her, Stevie turned to head Nikki off at the door.
Isobel let her gaze trail after them for a moment until, looking back, she saw that the boy sitting next to Brad had turned to stare at her. She quickly lowered her arm, something in her gut telling her she shouldn’t have pointed.
“Isobel,” Gwen started, “no offense, but I’m gonna have to go with the cheeries on this one. Not funny.”
Transfixed, Isobel watched as the blood-haired boy raised a thin, abnormally long hand, the tips of which ended in long, red, talonlike claws. He waved at her, and she felt her stomach plummet to the floor. Her mouth went as dry as paper.
They couldn’t see him. No one could see him. No one but her. Even Brad, who was sitting closest to the boy, hadn’t been paying any attention. He’d been bent low over the table, conferring with Mark, who hadn’t seemed to take any notice either. And Alyssa, indifferently listening in, sat coating her nails in polish, oblivious.
“I’ll . . . I’ll be right back,” Isobel mumbled, gripping the table for support as she rose.