Nevermore

Isobel’s lips parted with a tremble. She started to speak, to deny it. But the truth was that she did know where he was. There was just no way to reach him. How could she tell Gwen that it was impossible to save him because the link between worlds had been destroyed? How could she expect anyone else to understand any of it when she’d scarcely been able to grasp what had happened herself?

A glower hardening the normally soft angles of her face, Gwen turned away to dial the combination to her own locker. She opened the metal door and, reaching inside, grabbed something from the top shelf, shoving it into Isobel’s hand. Her pink cell phone.

“There. Now it’s your turn.” With that, Gwen looped her purse strap over her head, her movements fast and jerky. “When you figure out how to use one of those again, well . . . I logged my number in at the top of your address book. And here,” she added, yanking out Isobel’s gym bag. She let it drop onto the floor between them, right on top of the smattering of papers. “My locker’s not a storage unit.”

With a flip of her long hair, Gwen stalked off, leaving Isobel to stand there, staring at her rumpled gym bag, wondering how it was possible that she could feel any emptier.

Mechanically, she sank to one knee in front of her locker and with slow, deliberate movements, began to gather her things.

Then something about one of the papers made her pause. Her cell phone slid from her grasp. It cracked against the floor, but Isobel hardly seemed to notice, too distracted by the black-and-white photo mixed within the spread of loose white sheets.

She grabbed one corner of the printout, tugging it free from the others. Isobel’s eyes scoured the page, certain that she had to be imagining what she saw there.

At the top of the paper, the header read Baltimore Sun in bold block letters, and she knew it was the article Mr. Swanson had wanted her and Varen to see, the one he had handed back with their paper. There, in the middle of the page, Isobel focused on the dim and misty black-and-white image that had first drawn her attention. Head bowed, a man knelt before a large gravestone. On the headstone itself, she could scarcely make out the outline of a carved raven. The man, however, she could see more clearly.

He wore a dark coat, and a black fedora covered his bowed head. In his hand, he offered flowers to the grave. Roses? Around the lower part of his face, a white scarf concealed his features.

Isobel read the caption:

The only known photo of the “Poe Toaster,” taken in 1990 for Life magazine. This mysterious figure visits Poe’s Baltimore grave during the early morning hours of January 19, marking the poet’s birthday each year with roses and a toast of cognac. First observed in 1949, the ritual has continued over the years, though the Toaster’s identity, along with the details of how he enters the locked cemetery, remain a secret to this day.

“Reynolds,” she hissed, gripping the page until it crumpled in her fist.

Isobel stared with sheer disbelief. She gawked at the image of Reynolds, kneeling in front of the headstone, paying homage before Poe’s grave, blatant and visible to all who dared to watch, imprinted forever on film.

She looked up and, at the far end of the hall, caught sight of Gwen’s swaying broom skirt. Something inside of her clicked on, and for the first time since she had found out that Varen had never returned, her mind switched to life. Her awareness spread out. Suddenly, the external world reentered her sphere of existence. She heard the lockers slamming around her, and people laughing and talking. Sneakers squeaked by on either side of her, everyone heading for the buses. Clutching the article in one hand, Isobel fumbled for her phone. She flipped it open and turned it on, thankful that she still had some battery life left. She thumbed through her address book, highlighting the first entry before pressing the send button.

Even from a distance and with the clamor in the hallway, she still heard the trill of Gwen’s cell phone. Through the net of interweaving students, she saw Gwen stop, and watched as she reached one hand into the patchwork purse slung at her side. Isobel studied her friend as she fished out her ringing phone and eyed her view screen, as though trying to decide whether or not to pick up.

Isobel stood.

Please, she pleaded in her mind. Please. I need you.

Slowly, Gwen lifted the phone to her ear. Then Isobel heard her voice just as she saw her lips move. “So, you let me get through that whole spiel, my entire tirade, but you weren’t going to let me have the dramatic walkaway, were you?”

“Baltimore,” Isobel blurted. “January nineteenth. I have to be there.”

Gwen turned to face Isobel. Phones pressed to their ears, they stared at each other from across the expanse of the clearing hallway.