Nevermore

“Because of yelling outside last night,” she said. There. She hadn’t had to lie at all. She’d just leave out the part about her originally being grounded for returning home past curfew in a strange car the previous Friday—his car, to be exact.

She frowned suddenly. What was she going to tell her mom when they got to her house?

“Your parents pretty strict?” He asked this like he already knew the answer.

“I guess,” she admitted. “Why?”

She turned to watch him now, glad to have the excuse of conversation. The brakes squeaked as they slid to a gradual halt at a red light.

“I want to ask you something,” he said.

Isobel was startled by the abruptness of that statement. It didn’t help that his focus remained forward, either. It gave her that plummeting feeling inside, the one she always got when she knew she was in trouble for something even though she couldn’t think of what. The light turned green, he shifted, and they were moving again.

“Yeah?” she said. She tried to ignore the flood of internal questions that assaulted her, while at the same time, she racked her brain for anything she might have done or said.

“There’s this thing happening on Friday night,” he said, “something that happens every year, but not everybody knows about it.”

Isobel tensed. She turned her head to stare forward, trying her damnedest to keep from turning either ash pale or fire truck red. There was no way this could be happening. He could not possibly be asking her out. It had to be something else. Whatever it was, she knew without a doubt that there was absolutely no way on this earth he could be asking her“I want you to go,” he said.

Her mouth popped open. She shut it quickly, before he could see.

“With me,” he added.

There it was.

He shot her a quick glance before pulling past the fountain and into her subdivision, and it was only when she caught a glimpse of her own dumbstruck expression in his glasses that it occurred to her that he was waiting for an answer.

“I—we have a game on Friday,” she said, her mouth seeming to move on its own. The words just jumped out, as though her alter ego, the obsessive cheerleader, had taken upon herself to overthrow all motor skills. For a moment she almost regretted having rejoined the squad that afternoon.

Almost.

“It doesn’t start till late.” He stole another glance at her.

“You mean . . . sneak out?” It wasn’t until after she’d uttered the words that she recognized them as composing the most duh question of the year.

She thought he smiled.

He pulled up to her mailbox and shifted the car into park. When he still didn’t say anything, she knew that for sure must mean yes—it was going to be a sneak-out kind of deal.

He turned off the ignition and reached into his back pocket, tugging from it a red envelope, one just like the envelope she had seen Lacy give him. Like the one he’d pulled out of his pocket at lunch today, only this one was addressed to her. He handed it to her.

“What sort of thing is it exactly?” she asked, opening the envelope.

Inside, she found a cream-colored card, laced with a red ribbon. She recognized it as some sort of ticket, though it took her a moment longer to realize that it had been fashioned to look like a mortuary toe tag. Ew.

“The Grim Facade” it read in ornate lettering across the top. The date was listed simply as “All Hallows’ Eve,” and below that, on the “Case No.” line, it said, “Admit one.” Where the tag called for a name she saw hers, printed in his elegant hand (in purple ink, of course), and underneath, she saw his name filled in on the “Tagged By” line.

“It’s not exactly a school-sanctioned function,” he said, “so think about it.”

She looked up from the tag. “Uh, news flash. Your friends hate me.”

“They don’t know you,” he said. Opening his door, he climbed out. He turned back, though, and leaned in on the door frame, peering at her. “Besides,” he said, “you’d be with me.”

Isobel gaped after him as he shut the door and went around to the back of the car, the tag almost slipping out of her fingers.

Did that just happen?

She stared down at the little card again, at their names printed together like that.

Isobel fumbled for the door handle and let herself out.

She found him at the rear of the car. From the open trunk, he handed her her gym bag and then her backpack. Then he turned and leaned against the bumper, hands stuffed in the pockets of his black jeans. She stood, watching him, once again faced with his hidden gaze, masked by her own duel reflections. Her heart stumbled. Her mind groped for something to say.

“Are—are you coming in?” she asked, the words sounding so stupidly simple in her own ears, like something a little kid would ask a friend they knew was too cool to hang out with them.

He removed the glasses. His eyes, those jade stones, locked with hers. “I don’t know,” he said, “am I?”