Nevermore

“I can’t believe you,” she said, her voice scarcely above a whisper.

But she was talking right to him. Right at him. Why wouldn’t he look at her?

Slowly, one by one, the rest of them followed his example. They each turned back to their lunches, chains clanking, black lace rustling—a few dark smiles gracing painted lips. Dismissed, they seemed to say.

No, Isobel thought, it wasn’t going to be that easy.

“You think you’re different.” Her voice wavered, and she hated sounding so weak. “You think you’re all so different,” she went on, louder this time. “You do everything to be different,” she spat.

The silence of the table—of the whole cafeteria—was reclaimed in an instant. “But you’re not,” she said at last. “You are just like every. Body. Else.”

Pivoting, Isobel swung away. She dumped her tray onto the vacant table she had passed earlier, where it landed with a loud clatter. Refusing to meet anyone’s eyes, she stormed out the cafeteria doors, using both arms to shove them wide.

Alone in the hallway, she bit down on the inside of her bottom lip, hard—hard enough to taste the copper sting of blood. She pounded her fist against a locker door.

Stupid.

Stupid, stupid, stupid!

She kept walking, straight to the nearest girls’ bathroom.

She pushed through the door and dabbed the sleeve of her sweater against her eyelids, hating the tears that soaked it, hating that she’d have to hand wash the fabric later in Woolite to get the mascara smudges out—hating most of all the thought that he might know she was crying.

Isobel grabbed the trash can, piled high with wadded paper towels and tissues, and hauled it over. It toppled onto its side, its metal body clanging against the tiled floor.

She really didn’t care. It was just embarrassing, was all. Humiliating. But then what had she expected? It shouldn’t be this big of a surprise. None of it should be. Not Brad, not Nikki—least of all him.

I don’t care. She said it over and over in her mind, pacing the floor, trampling wet towels.

All he’d cared about was the project.

All that had mattered to him was the grade.

She was expendable.

“I don’t care!” she screamed at the trash can, kicking it. The crash echoed, and the can upchucked more wadded paper towels onto the floor.

She was stupid for shouting. She was stupid for crying, and most of all, she was stupid for believing, for even a second, that they might have been friends.

Isobel grabbed a handful of paper towels from the metal dispenser. She would not go back out into the hall with her makeup smeared and her eyes puffy-red.

Drawing in a shuddering breath, she turned on the faucet and brought her gaze up to her reflection.

A dry croak caught in her throat.

He stood in the doorway of the stall behind her. A man, cloaked in black. He stared at her, a tattered fedora hat shading his features, a white scarf swathing his mouth and nose, hiding his face.

She opened her mouth to . . . to what? To scream? To say something?

Suddenly, in the mirror, the door to the bathroom popped open. The skinny girl, her locker neighbor, poked her head in. Isobel whirled around.

“Talk about crash and burn,” the girl said. “You all right or what?”

Isobel stared at the open space where she had seen the man. Behind her, she gripped the cold sink.

Her eyes darted to the girl and then, her head whipping around, she looked back into the mirror. In it she could see her own face, drained of color, and the stall behind her—empty.

Her lips formed words. “Did you . . . ?” The question withered in her mouth.

“I . . . ,” the girl started, “well, I thought I’d better, I dunno . . . check on you?”

“You didn’t just see . . . ?” Isobel turned, pointed at the stall.

The girl shrugged. “Well . . .” She gave a quick glance over one bony shoulder back into the hall.

“Hate to break it to you, but I think it’s pretty safe to say everybody saw.”

15

The Power of Words

“All right, ladies, take five!”

The shrill blast of Coach Anne’s whistle pierced through Isobel’s head, ringing in her brain like a fire bell, sending her headache officially into migraine status.

Without turning to talk and stretch with the others like she normally would, Isobel broke away from formation and trudged to the bleachers, where she’d left her gym bag. She tugged down on the hems of her blue practice shorts and plopped onto the bottom-most bench. She grabbed, opened, and drained the rest of her Gatorade in one smooth motion, then screwed the cap back on and stuffed the empty bottle into the bag between her street shoes and jeans.

Sitting there, she couldn’t seem to bring herself to form a single coherent thought. Not since she’d had to order her brain to stop its relentless attempts to assign a rational explanation to what she’d seen in the girls’ bathroom earlier that day: the dark figure that had stared her down and then vanished.