Kelly Creagh - Nevermore

As if on cue, Nikki strolled by.

“Hey, Nikki! Wait up,” Isobel called, taking a moment to refold the cryptic note and slip it into the pocket of the periwinkle blue cardigan hanging in her locker. She’d worry about it later, she decided, and shut her locker door before giving her number dial a twirl.

When she turned again, though, Nikki had gone.

Had she not heard her?

That seemed unlikely, given she’d passed by less than six feet away.

Something must be up.

There was an ugly, twisty feeling in her stomach as Isobel began to piece the events of that morning together. Suddenly she realized exactly what the note meant.

Her lunch tray in hand, Isobel’s heart hammered in her chest as she neared the crew’s usual spot, a table near the long wall of big windows overlooking the courtyard.

“Here she comes,” she heard Alyssa whisper. In response, all chattering at the table ceased. Nikki examined her nails. Mark swirled the end of his corn dog into a mound of ketchup. Alyssa, hiding her cell in her lap, tinkered with her messages, and Stevie, suddenly distracted by a group of pigeons in the courtyard, stared out the window. Brad just sat there, not looking at anything. He pursed his lips.

Isobel clutched the sides of her tray in an effort to steady everything from shaking. These were her friends. Why was she so worried?

The only one who looked up when she got right to the table was Brad. He watched her blatantly with those gorgeous, almost neon blue eyes as she edged onto the bench across from him. Nikki huffed and moved down to make room, slamming her tray around.

Nobody said anything.

Act normal, she thought. Just act normal.

Brad took a swig of his Coke. Eyeing her, he said, “So . . .”

Isobel squelched her smile and met his gaze, not liking his all-too-casual tone.

“Me and Mark were wondering, Izo,” he continued. “Since, uh, you and I go to the same dentist . . .

When did Dr. Morton start taking Saturday appointments?”

“Yeah,” Mark chimed in from the other end of the table, gesturing at her with his corn dog. “Just curious.”

Isobel took a deep breath and focused on Brad, pleading to him with her eyes to stop this before it started and just let the rest of lunch be normal. He could do that. He could have everyone laughing it off and talking about the upcoming game on Friday against Ackerman.

He looked away from her, chewing his burger like it was a chore.

“I had something I had to do,” Isobel said, tearing open a ketchup packet. Maybe if she acted like it wasn’t a big deal, then it wouldn’t be.

“So you lied to us?” This came from Nikki, as she tossed her fork onto her tray. It clanged sharply, but the noise was lost in the surrounding cafeteria racket.

Isobel stared down at her food, her appetite replaced now by guilt-saturated nausea. Not knowing what to say, she squeezed her ketchup packet over her burger, still holding on to the slimming hope that they’d all just let it go. Yesterday on the phone, Nikki had acted like she’d known Isobel had been making it up anyway, right? So why did it matter now?

When she couldn’t think of anything not incriminating to say, Isobel tried shrugging. She realized quickly, though, when Nikki made her “Tch!” sound, that that had been the wrong response.

Nikki stood, gathering her tray. “Something smells over here, I’m switching.” And with that, she unthreaded her long legs from underneath the table and marched away to a distant, unoccupied table in the corner. No one dared try to stop her, least of all Isobel.

Without looking up, she felt the table shudder again as someone else stood. She could see varsity colors out of the corner of one eye, and she knew it must be Mark, moving to join Nikki, no doubt.

Alyssa followed next, and finally even Stevie got up with what Isobel thought was an apologetic cough.

It was just her and Brad now.

“Where were you for real?” he asked after a long moment, ending the uncomfortable silence that had stretched between them. He’d asked in that soft and reasonable way that said all could still be forgiven.

“I can’t tell you, because you’ll just get mad.”

“Then that’s probably a good indication that you should tell me,” he said with strained patience.

She’d been batting zero ever since last Friday, and now she was striking out. Big-time.

A sharp sting started behind her eyes. She shouldn’t have to make excuses to her boyfriend about doing her homework. Isobel lifted a finger to wipe a tear away before it could form. She thought that everybody in the whole cafeteria had to be watching. The thought made her face burn, and she tried to shield her eyes with one hand.

Then, before she could summon up the resolve to answer, Brad rose from the table, taking his tray and moving away toward the others, leaving her completely alone.

Isobel felt her shoulders hitch when she tried to take a breath. She hadn’t eaten lunch by herself since the fifth grade, when everyone had found out her mom had made her wash her hair the night before with mayonnaise.

The tears came freely now, to the point where she could be sure of mascara trails. She sat there, shielding her face from view with one hand and trying to convince the world with her other, by poking a fork through her salad, that she was just fine.

Everything turned blurry through the lens of tears, but she could still register the pair of black boots that stopped beside her table.

Oh God, she thought. Anything but this.

“Please,” she murmured at her burger, her voice no more than a squeaky whisper, “don’t do this.”

“It’s dead,” he said. “I don’t think it can hear you.”

“You’re making things worse!” she hissed, and still shielding her soppy eyes from the rest of the cafeteria, she angled her head to peer up at him.

“That’s a good look for you,” he said.

Isobel didn’t have to look in the crew’s direction to know they were watching. She could feel Brad’s gaze on them. And if he hadn’t been able to guess who she’d been with on Saturday, he certainly knew now. Was this guy dense? Brad could pave the courtyard with him.

“He’s going to kill you.”

“Can’t,” he said. “Already dead. Remember?”

“You pick a funny time to adopt a sense of humor,” she snapped, glancing back down.

“When are we meeting again for the project?”

Where did he get off? Did he not have a clue? “Go away. We’re not.”

“How about after school?”

“I have practice.” It was funny how she could tell him the truth but had to lie to her friends.

“So I’m doing it by myself after all?” he asked in that cold, unaffected way.

“Mr. Swanson will give you a new partner. Go away.”

And to her surprise, just like that, he did.

Isobel had not wanted to come to practice today. Not after the episode at lunch. But with a pep rally and game on Friday, she’d had no choice. If she had missed, not only would the crew despise her, but so would the rest of the squad. They’d been working on their routine for months now, and she was the middle flyer for most of the big stunts. Plus, there was Coach’s little rule of “Miss a practice, miss a game.”

Isobel put one hand on Nikki’s shoulder and the other on Alyssa’s, shoving her sneakers into their awaiting grasps, literally handing herself over to people who currently hated her.

This was the only way to get the day’s retribution, though, and she wasn’t about to give that up. You had to be small and strong to be a flyer, and while Nikki had killer legs, they stretched the length of an ostrich’s. Alyssa, on the other hand, had simply never been able to get up high enough.