Nevermore

As soon as practice ended, Isobel threw on a pair of blue sweatpants over her shorts and pulled on her yellow Trenton T-shirt. Grabbing her gym bag and backpack, she stormed through the doors but stopped when she didn’t see anyone. Inexplicably, that feeling crept over her again, an echo of what she’d felt earlier that afternoon in the courtyard. She heard the sound of scuffling gravel and turned toward the patch of warm sunlight that leaked in through the parking lot doors, which someone had propped open. A cool breeze wafted in, and she glanced down as a few dead leaves swept inside, tumbling to a stop at her feet.

The patch of light on the floor flickered. A quick shadow flashed across. Isobel’s head popped up, her eyes wide on the open, empty doorway. Outside, she thought she heard a stifled laugh.

Isobel stepped into the door frame. “Brad?”

“Guess again,” came a voice from behind her, separate from the laughter.

She turned to find Varen standing with his back against the wall, her own stunned expression reflected in the pair of sleek sunglasses he wore.

“Jeez, you scared me” was all she could manage while trying to kick-start her breathing again.

“I’ve been told I have that effect,” he said in that deadpan way of his.

Isobel tilted her head at him, a new thought dawning on her. “Did you stay after school?”

His gaze fell to his boots before lifting again. He leaned his head back until it rested against the wall behind him. “I do,” he said. “Sometimes.”

Isobel couldn’t seem to help the small smile that edged its way along her mouth.

“Um, how long have you been out here?” she asked.

Stuffing his hands into the pockets of his jacket, he shrugged.

“Hold up,” she said, eyes narrowing. “You weren’t . . . Were you watching me?”

It took him a full beat to respond. “I . . . prefer the term ‘observing,’” he said. “The connotations are far less voyeuristic.”

“So what, now you speak French?”

That got a smirk out of him.

“Sooo . . . what’s up?” she asked.

He said nothing for a long moment, only stared at her from behind those glasses that shielded from her sight the eyes that might have told her more. At last, he pushed off from the wall. “Thought you might need a ride,” he said, brushing past her, walking through the open doors.

Doing her best to suppress her grin, she followed after him.

23

Dearly Departed

“So how did you know to look for me at practice?” Isobel asked as he opened his trunk. “I told you I quit.”

He took her gym bag and threw it in, then relieved her of her backpack as well. His trunk was remarkably clutter free, she noticed. Besides her stuff, there was only a set of neatly wound jumper cables tucked to one side and a case of CDs, which he traded out for his satchel.

She kept sneaking glances at him out of the corner of her eye while she waited for him to say something, but where it had been hard enough to read him without the sunglasses, with them on, it felt like trying to gauge a block of stone.

He reached into his satchel and retrieved the Tupperware container from lunch. He held it up.

“Little bird told me.”

Gwen. Isobel found herself smiling at the thought of her newest, most unlikely friend as she climbed into the passenger side of Varen’s car.

He got into the driver’s seat, sweeping aside his wallet chains and turning the key in the ignition.

The Cougar rumbled to life, and the portable CD player sitting between them began to spin. A racing beat surged through the car speakers, complete with electric guitars, crashing drums, and someone screaming a ragged plea to please save their soul.

Isobel picked up the Discman, eyeing the scraped casing and the patch of black duct tape holding it all together. “How do you still have one of these things, anyway?” she asked.

“Because I have car payments,” he said. “Seat belt.”

“Oh,” Isobel mouthed, and deciding to leave her inquiries there, she drew the old-fashioned seat belt across her lap and clicked it into place. He handed her the case of CDs, instructing her to put in

“the one with the trees.” She flipped through the discs while he toggled the stick shift and put the car in reverse.

Conquering the urge to watch him drive (she’d never thought anyone could make the act of operating a car seem graceful), she finally found the album he wanted, one with a white background and the silhouette of twisted, bare-limbed trees. Isobel recognized the band’s emblem right away on the outer rim of the CD. The image was of the same upside-down dead bird on the back of the green jacket he always wore. She pressed the eject button, and for the moment it took her to exchange albums, the car went blessedly silent.

“You’re grounded,” he said before the new CD could start wailing out a soulful, darkly angelic ballad. “Why?”

Isobel recognized this as an opportune time to lie, or at least practice some good truth omitting.