Kelly Creagh - Nevermore

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 began 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.”

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.

She glanced up from the table, chewing, and squinted down the hallway, to where Danny’s backpack lay beside the umbrella stand. Vaguely she wondered what she’d done with her own. Then she remembered.

Isobel dropped her spoon. It clanged loudly against her bowl.

She launched up from her seat.

“Isobel?” her dad asked from the other end of the table. She didn’t bother to answer. She raced down the hall, then burst through the front door.

The morning air hit her cold, its moisture flooding her lungs, reawakening all the pangs from last night. A deep ache seeped from her bones and resurfaced in her muscles as she forced herself to move. Wet grass whipped at the hems of her jeans.