Nevermore

At the mention of the fight that had broken out, her dad had phoned the police. Then he and her mom had gotten into the car and started for Henry County. They’d left Danny behind to wait in case Isobel showed up at home. When she did, Danny recounted the drama, and Isobel reluctantly forced herself to dial her father’s cell.

There had been lots of yelling, and in the background, Isobel could hear her mother sobbing with relief.

When she hung up, Isobel felt exhausted to the point of passing out. Still, she managed to fumble through a shower and change her clothes before her parents got back. She put on jeans and long sleeves to hide the bruises and cuts, and stuffed what was left of the pink dress into the bottom drawer of her dresser. Then she folded Varen’s jacket and hid it away within the deepest recesses of her closet, where it would wait until she could return it to him.

The lecture she’d received that night had been long despite how late it was and filled with scathing questions of the rhetorical kind as well as threats both empty and loaded. That she would not be allowed to go to Nationals was among the emptiest. That there would be no car for her birthday, however, would most likely turn out to be true. That she was grounded until further notice was a given. Number one on her father’s list of restrictive punishments, though, was that she was not allowed to speak or communicate in any way ever again with Varen outside of school, or in school if it could be helped.

She was given no room to argue, and this time her mother did not intercede.

Finally she was exiled to her room, and she had only reached the stairs when she was stopped again by her mother’s voice. She told Isobel how Brad had undergone emergency surgery on his knee that night. That he’d had an allergic reaction to the anesthesia, that he’d suffered delirium and had almost gone into a coma.

Isobel thought back to the coffin, the graveyard. The screaming.

“Is—is he okay?” she asked. She turned back, taking in the sight of her mother’s wan face and drawn features.

“Okay considering,” she answered. “He’ll be out of school for a while.”

Isobel nodded once. She started up the stairs again.

“Izzy.”

She stopped.

“His mom called to tell me tonight because . . . because while he . . . she said he called out for you.”

Her hand tightened on the banister. She felt her shoulders go rigid.

“I think you should go see him when he’s up for visitors,” her mom said. “I’ll take you if you want.”

Again, Isobel only nodded. She couldn’t tell her mother that she doubted that Brad would ever want to see her again, and she had to wonder how much he remembered. Would he recall being in the dreamworld at all? Or becoming the Red Death? At the very least, Isobel thought he would not forget what had happened on the football field.

Eager to escape, she hurried up the stairs. In her room at last, she collapsed under the overwhelming weight of her exhaustion. Her body gave her no choice. She slept.

Isobel awoke late the next morning to the sound of knocking. The noise echoed in her head, starting her from sleep, causing her to rocket upward. She felt her chest tighten as her heart leaped into triple speed.

She gasped and scrambled out of bed, gripping her comforter beneath her with clawed hands, surprised when she did not feel the coarse dryness of dirt or the brittle bite of grit. She grew still and listened, her gaze darting.

There were no tombstones. No dead trees or black birds. No phantom figures or looming shadows. Only cold, white daylight. Lurid but still midmorning hazy, the light streamed through her window, bathing her powder pink walls in a translucent glow, giving each object in the room its own thin halo.

Isobel squeezed her eyes shut before letting them flutter open again.

To her relief, her surroundings remained. Her breathing slowed, and she allowed herself to believe that she was really home. Safe.

As she relaxed, the painful aches in her frame seeped into the forefront of her consciousness, bringing with them the memory of last night. It all rushed back to her in a series of flashes.

The game. Brad. The Grim Facade. The dreamworld. Reynolds. Lilith. Varen . . .

The knocking came again, louder this time, more insistent. Her body tensed once more, an automatic response.

The sound was coming from downstairs. That’s when she realized that there must be someone at the door.

Varen.

Isobel was still clothed in the long-sleeved shirt and jeans she had thrown on the night before. She tore out of her room and onto the landing, swinging around the banister, her bare feet thudding on the carpeted stairs.