by Келли Криг
“Danny!”
“Sorry, Mom. Darn raccoon!” he yelled.
“Both of you,” her mom snapped, “get in here. Right now. You can finish taking out the trash after dinner, Danny. Not you, Isobel. You look like death warmed over. Get inside before you get sick.”
When their mother turned away to open the screen door for them, Isobel felt Danny’s elbow shoot into her side, causing her to jump with a residual jolt of adrenaline. Where the hell were you? he mouthed. But he didn’t wait for an answer. Instead he scowled and, shaking his head, hustled into the house and past their mom. Isobel drifted toward the open door and her worried mother. She wiped her nose on her sleeve again, sniffing.
“I hope you two weren’t out here fighting,” her mom said, leaning down to brush the chalky dirt from the knees of Isobel’s jeans. “You’re both getting too old for that. You especially, Isobel.”
Stepping in, Isobel glanced over her shoulder and into the darkness one last time.
Perched in the branches of Mrs. Finley’s oak, she noticed a single black bird, swiveling its head around. Its gaze seemed to stop on her.
They had turkey and mashed potatoes for dinner, but Isobel hadn’t been able to force down more than a few bites. Between her dad repeatedly asking her if she felt all right and her mom reaching over every three seconds to feel her forehead, Isobel couldn’t concentrate on her food anyway. Eventually she excused herself and went to take a shower.
There was something about warm water and being alone that made it easier to think.
Isobel could feel the tension slide off her shoulders and swirl down the drain with the grime and the sweat. Her muscles relaxed, and closed up in the small warm space, she felt safe.
Shutting the water off and stepping out of the shower, she wrapped her hair in a towel and pulled on the fluffy pink robe her mom had given her last Christmas.
She guessed she had Danny to thank for not getting in trouble. The raccoon story had been pretty swift, since something had been coming around and knocking over the trash cans at night. Of course, she knew the reason he’d come to her rescue had nothing to do with any brotherly sense of duty, but because of the pact they’d made. If she didn’t get a car in the spring, then he didn’t get a chauffeur.
Isobel gathered up her dirty, sweat-stained clothes. She left the steamy, warm bathroom, huddling into her robe as she passed through the frigid hallway and made the ten-foot trek to her room. She shut her bedroom door behind her and, looking around, noticed that Danny hadn’t bothered to close the curtains like she’d told him to do after she’d left. With a grunt, she dropped her clothes in her hamper and went to draw the shade down. She stopped, peering into the night. That bird. It was still there, still sitting on the same branch of the knot-limbed oak across the street. It seemed to be staring right at her.
Isobel pulled her shade and yanked the lace curtains closed.
Sitting on the edge of her bed, she unwrapped her hair from the towel-turban and patted it to soak up the extra moisture. She set the towel aside and reached for the metallic green hair dryer on her nightstand (which she seldom unplugged or put away) and flicked it on to the lowest setting. She turned her head to one side, idly waving the blow dryer back and forth through her hair. With her free hand, she picked up her cell from the bedside table where she’d left it to charge. She flipped it open and checked for missed calls. None. She checked for texts. Again, none.
She sighed. All things considered, it didn’t surprise her.
She stared at the wall, and her eyes went unfocused. The warm air felt good against her scalp, and combined with the low drone, it began to make her drowsy. She wouldn’t have guessed she’d be able to sleep tonight, but now that she was home, surrounded by normalcy, the memory of her terror began to subside, as though it had been something that had happened a month ago, and not an hour.
Like she’d done a dozen times already, she replayed the run in her head. If she hadn’t been so scared, so completely out of it, she might have seen who it was. But she hadn’t wanted to stop long enough to wait for someone to appear. While the thought had made sense outside, when she’d been swinging a stick at nothing, she now tried to come to terms with the idea that she’d been chased by someone who knew her. And if that was the case, then more than anything, it had probably all been just a sick joke, right?
She frowned, knowing that it didn’t make much sense. In fact, nothing about it made sense. It didn’t seem likely that Brad or any of the others would do something like that. She couldn’t picture it. Besides, Brad would have to have followed her to the bookstore, then waited for her outside. And while she could picture him spying, something about the idea of him chasing her through the park at dusk just didn’t add up. He was too straightforward for that. Not to mention too proud.
No, even if he had been anywhere around, even if he’d been spying, she thought she knew him well enough to say that he would never try to scare her so badly. In fact, even if he had followed her, breakup or not, she knew he wouldn’t have let her go into the park by herself to begin with. It had been a stupid move—she knew that now. He was always getting after her for doing stupid, impulsive things.
Isobel bit her lip. Her hand tightened on her phone as she battled the sudden wave of longing to dial Brad’s number. She wanted to call him, to tell him what had happened.
But she knew what he would say. First, he’d be smug because she’d called him, because she’d caved after only a day. Then he’d ask all sorts of reasonable-sounding questions. Then, finally, he’d say it was Varen and go into an all-out “I told you so” blowup. And then . . . then what? Do more of what he had already shown himself capable of?
Isobel scowled at the thought. There was something about the memory of Brad slamming Varen around that made her whole body wince, like someone breaking a Ming vase just to prove that they could.
Then again, she thought, pausing—what about Varen?
Could he have followed right behind her after she’d left the bookstore? It would have been easy to do. But why would he? To play a joke on her? Prove some morbid point? She had heard voices upstairs after going back to get the Poe book. Was it something he’d planned? Revenge for the ice cream shop? With some of the dark stuff he said sometimes, she didn’t know if she would put it past him.
Over the whir of the hair dryer, she thought she heard a quiet tap, a knock on her door.
Isobel shut off the hair dryer. Glancing at her door, she gathered her still damp hair in one hand and said, “Come in.”
Her door remained shut. She stared at it, waiting. “Mom?” she said. “Dad?”
There was no answer.
She set her phone aside, left the dryer on her bed, and went to open her door. Poking her head out into the hall, she heard the blare of the TV from downstairs, the distant roar of a crowd over her dad’s enthused “Go, go, go!” The bathroom light was off, and she could still smell the remnants of the cherry blossom shower gel she’d used. Danny’s door stood ajar at the end of the hallway, blasts of blue-white light issuing forth, each burst accompanied by a zombie’s scream of anguish. Other than that, there was nothing.
Confused, Isobel shut her door again, then went to her dresser, pulling open the top drawer and rifling for her favorite pair of pink-and-black-striped pajama shorts, and matching T-shirt.
She got dressed, tossing her robe onto the floor, but paused after pulling the T-shirt down over her head because she thought she had heard the tap again, this time from behind.
Isobel looked up. She stared past her reflection in the dresser mirror, her gaze fixing on her window. She waited, and the sound came once more. A soft and quiet tap. It was accompanied this time by a low scuffle, like the scrape of rough fabric against wood.
She twisted around to stare at her window, ears straining.
The rustling came again, louder this time. There, beyond the lace of her curtains, under the tiny slit at the bottom of the shade, something moved.
&nbs
p; Her heart rate quickened.
For a moment she thought about going to her door and calling downstairs for her dad.
Then the scraping shuffle seemed to shift. It became continuous now, and at this angle, she thought she could see a bit of black cloth, like the shoulder of someone’s shirt—somebody angling to try and get a good grip on her window.
In one quick move, Isobel reached out to her dresser, snatching the “Number One Flyer” trophy she’d won freshman year. It left behind a polished square of wood in the layer of accumulated dust. Clenching the trophy by the fake-gold cheerleader figurine, she held it upside down in one hand, brandishing the hard granite base like a club.
Each footstep soaked silently into the carpet as she drew closer to her window.
A long rustling shhirrk-sruuffshh sounded from just outside. Squinting, she thought she could see what looked like a set of long, thin, black-gloved fingers trying to reach under the sill.
With a quick step forward, Isobel yanked down on the shade. It rushed upward with a loud snap. Something screeched. Blackness, like spattering ink, spread across her window. With a short scream, she fell back. She hurled the trophy toward the window, missing the glass by inches, knocking a dent into the wall.
An angry flurry of dark feathers splayed against the glass, followed by the tap of a pointed beak and a low, grating croak.
“Stupid bird!” Isobel shouted, her heart pounding so hard that she could feel her pulse thudding in her temples. She pulled herself up from the floor, a stinging bite of rug burn chafing the back of her thigh. She ignored it, rushing to pluck two pink throw pillows from her bed. She chucked one right after the other at the window. The huge beast of a bird gave one giant flap of its black wings. It let out a squawk when the first pillow hit, and then, after the second, it swooped off into the darkness.
Isobel yanked the shade down again, pulling the lace curtains closed.
She made her way back to her bed. Fighting the shivers, she grabbed her robe along the way, throwing it back on over her pajamas. She chucked her dryer off her bed and onto the floor, swiping up her phone.
She paced. The view screen of her phone read 8:52 in electric blue. Cutting it close to nine, she thought. Well, he’d just have to deal.
Isobel punched in the number. The dial tone rang once . . . twice . . . three times. She’d give it one more—
“Yeah?”
Isobel blinked in surprise. She hadn’t expected him to answer. “Yeah, hey,” she said, trying to sound businesslike.
“Hey,” he said, but she could hear the underlying question in his tone: Why dost thou, O simplest of mortals, summon me from my grave?
All right, then, she’d get right to it. “Listen,” she said, “I need to talk to you. You weren’t in the park tonight, were you?” Okay, maybe that sounded a bit more accusatory than she’d meant it to. She winced but decided to wait and see how he reacted.
Nothing from the other end. Didn’t he even breathe? Jeez.
She let the quiet fizz of no response go until it reached the point of making her uncomfortable. “If it was you,” she said, breaking the silence, “then I don’t think it was funny, but I think you should just tell me.” There. She’d said it. It was better to make sure that it hadn’t been him first before she started spouting off about invisible pursuers, right?
She found herself waiting through another long stretch of silent phone-buzz before, finally, she heard him draw a breath to speak. “I don’t know what kind of acid you dropped between six thirty and now,” he said, “but I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”
“The park,” she said, though with less oomph. She was starting to think that maybe there had been a better way to go about this. She hadn’t been trying to say it had been him. She was only trying to figure out if it had.
“What about the park?” he said, impatient.
“Someone chased me,” she blurted.
“And you think it was me.”
Uh-oh. Isobel folded her free arm across her chest, linking it with her other at the elbow. Head down, she began to pace again. “I didn’t say that.”
“You insinuated it.”
Isobel cringed, hating to hear her own words turned around on her.
“I—”
“First of all,” he said without giving her a chance to finish, “if you were in the park by yourself tonight, you should realize that was stupid.”
“Yeah, thanks.”
“Consider yourself welcome. Secondly,” he continued, “you really must be on something to assume that I would follow you, let alone chase you. I’m sorry, but my existence isn’t that sad.”
Ouch.
“Okay, listen. I’m sorry,” she said, shaking her head. “I didn’t mean to accuse you. That wasn’t why I called.”
“But you did accuse me.” His tone dissolved into a patronizing drone. “And why else would you call? Certainly not to chat, I hope.”
Well, this had all gone straight to hell in a fat, flaming rocket.
“You know,” he said, plowing on, sounding more venomous by the second, “despite what everyone has always told you, the world does not revolve around you.”
“Look,” she growled, “I said I was sorry! You don’t have to be a jerk about it.”
“I’m only telling you what nobody else will.”
“Yeah?” she said, her voice rising. If he wanted to pull out the artillery, that was just fine with her, she had her own guns. Bring it. “Why don’t you speak for yourself?” she hissed. “I mean, what screams ‘cry for attention’ more than walking around looking like the grim reaper and scribbling creepy, tortured messages into some book?”
“Please,” she heard him scoff through a thin scratch of phone fuzz—he was probably using a cordless handset, she realized, and it made her wonder if he even owned a cell. “I don’t have to explain myself to you, of all people. Aside from the fact that you wouldn’t get it, you—”
“Hey,” she cut in. She’d had enough of his more-competent-than-thou condescending crap. If anyone went around thinking themselves superior, it was him. “Just because I live in the sunlight, enjoy being blond, and wear a cheerleading uniform, that doesn’t mean I’m stupid. I’m so sick of that.”
“Just because I wear black and keep a private journal, that doesn’t mean I’m going to blow up the school. Or terrorize mindless cheerleaders, for that matter.”
“You’re so mean.”
“Like you care.”
“What if I do?”
Isobel immediately covered her mouth with one hand; she could feel her cheeks growing hot beneath her palm. Where had that come from?
“You don’t,” he assured her. “You care about your fluffy pink ego.”
“That’s not true,” she said, walking to plop back down on the corner of her bed, frowning at the hem of her fluffy pink robe. She shut her eyes and ground her fingers into her forehead.
When had this gone all screwy? Hadn’t they been fine in the attic? What about the ice cream shop? Didn’t that count for something? “I didn’t know how else to tell you, is all.”
“Tell me what?”
“About the park.” She sighed, raking a hand through her damp hair. “Just—never mind. I’m sorry, okay? I didn’t really think it was you. I just didn’t want you to think I was crazy or something.”
“By telling me that someone chased you through the park and that I should confess? Crazy? No. Experiencing visions of grandeur? It’s possible.”
“I just thought it might be your idea of a joke or something. I couldn’t see them, whoever it was,” she said, her voice going small and weak, her conviction having since curled under like a withering plant.
“Well, as rousing as that sounds,” he said, “I was still at the bookshop an hour after you left. I should also let you know, by the way, that I pawned my invisibility cloak last week. You might want to check with the shop to see if someone bought it.”
“I just,” she be
gan softly, “I just needed to tell somebody.”
The line went quiet again. She heard a crackle of movement. His voice lowered as he said, “Are you sure you didn’t just imagine it? I mean, you were reading right before you left.”
Did he think she was in kindergarten? “I know the difference between a story and reality. Besides, I heard voices, and the gate rattling behind me after I got out of the park.”
“And aside from the obvious choice that is me, you can’t think of anyone else?” His tone dripped sarcasm, and she didn’t have to guess to know who he meant.
“He wouldn’t,” she said.
“I can see there’s a lot you assume he wouldn’t do.”
To this, she remained silent.
“You didn’t see who it was at all?” he asked.
“No, that’s just the thing—”
“Hold on,” he said.
Isobel went quiet and listened. She could hear him moving around on the other end again, a door opening, and then a man’s voice.
“Varen, it’s nine,” the voice said. “No phone after nine. You know that.”
Uh, say what? He had a phone curfew? Horrors.
“Who is that? Who are you talking to?” asked the voice.
Isobel heard Varen mumble some kind of a response, though she couldn’t hear what he said because it sounded like the phone had been wrapped in cloth.
“Well, time to say good-bye,” the man’s voice said. “Tell them you’ll talk tomorrow.”
Isobel heard the shuffle of movement again, and then Varen’s voice returned.
“I gotta go,” he said.
“Okay. . . . Uh, I’ll see you at school tomorrow?”
Silence.
“Hello?”
“Yeah,” he said. “Sure.”
13
Watched
Isobel sat at the kitchen table, staring down into the floating bits of cereal in her breakfast bowl, feeling not unlike day-old roadkill—soggy, drained, and flattened. She was achy and congested, too; like little magic bunnies had visited her sometime during the whole four hours she’d slept and stuffed her head full of wet cotton. Every noise—the clank of dishes in the kitchen sink, the shuffle of footsteps in the hall, the crinkle of her dad’s newspaper—sounded as though it was coming from somewhere deep underground.
