Oblivion (6 page)

“Mm,” Isobel said, thinking back to how she'd sat waiting for something to happen during first period. How her stomach had churned with nauseating anticipation. Any second she had expected Mrs. Tanager to call for her over the intercom. Or for someone to echo the horrible static warning of “code red.”

Over and over again, she'd imagined Varen appearing as he had in Mr. Swanson's room that day of the project. Like in last night's dream, he would stalk down the hall in full view, a damning specter in that awful black coat. Everyone would pull away in shock and fear, but he wouldn't care. This time he'd do more than just shatter the lights in their fixtures. He'd bring the school down, flooding it with nightmares, loosing the demons of Poe's stories—and of his own mind—into this reality that no longer held a place for him.

And he wouldn't stop. Not until he found her. And maybe not even then . . .

That's why Isobel had to head him off at the pass. To intercept him at the only opportunity she would have to reach him. The funeral of his best friend.

“In other news,” Gwen prattled on, “Marcus Tomes asked Candice Weiss to tomorrow's dance. She said no. Felicia Rowen is out with the chicken pox, aaaand there's a ceiling leak in Mrs. Lory's classroom. Also, huge mess in the first-floor north hall this morning. Busted lights. Weird dust all over the walls. But . . . you knew about
that
already.”

Isobel's eyelids fluttered. “What?”

“I said you knew about that.” Gwen's hands tightened on the wheel, her shoulders going rigid. “'Cause
everybody
knows about that. Per your usual way of dealing with things these days, however, you just weren't going to say anything.”

Isobel locked her jaw. Swallowing, she forced her focus forward.

Given that Gwen never missed even the tiniest blip on the radar of Trenton's day-to-day grind, Isobel figured she would have known about the ash. But it surprised Isobel that Gwen had linked
her
to the incident, especially when Gwen knew so little about the dreamworld itself. But since she had made the connection, why hadn't she brought it up first thing, before they'd left?

Isobel frowned, realizing now that if she'd been thinking, she'd have guessed Gwen's plan to corner her in a moving car—where walking away wasn't an option—ahead of time.

“Of course, the admins think someone broke in last night,” Gwen explained, her voice adopting a mock-casual tone. “Did it all as a bad prank. That's why they called the police. Did I forget to mention they called the police?”

Isobel grasped the cuffs of her coat, fidgeting with the fabric.

Straight ahead, an enormous clock tower loomed into view. It stood like a sentry over Cave Hill Cemetery's main entrance, casting its slanted shadow over them. An angel, her wings unfurled, stood at the pinnacle of the tower, an arm raised in proclamation of some unnamed triumph.

The clock's golden hour hand pointed at the roman numeral nine, the minute hand slightly beyond twelve, making them officially late. But at least the clock's hands weren't spinning. At least she knew for sure that she was awake.

“Everybody else seems to think it was the work of a ghost,” Gwen scoffed. “But oh, those sad, silly, superstitious schnooks.”

Refusing to look away from the clock, Isobel watched its hands until the Cadillac crossed the last street, bumping up the short drive that led through the cemetery's iron gates.

“You and I,” Gwen said, flashing her a tight smile, “weeeee know better.”

To their left, a white-haired cemetery guard sat on an iron bench. Gwen offered him a wave as they drove past. Rising to his feet, he nodded in response, though his expression remained stern; Isobel had no doubt he could tell they were too young to be college kids on a photography excursion.

Gwen stiffened her arms as she maneuvered the car down the long, tree-lined lane, the crooked shadows of twisted limbs skimming the interior of the car, sliding over Isobel's lap, up her arms and behind her. She envisioned them gathering there, transforming into creatures with clawed hands and jagged-toothed grins.

Impulsively, she grasped the rearview mirror and, tilting it toward her, eyed the backseat.

Empty . . .

“He went inside,” Gwen said.

Isobel froze for an instant, then pushed back the mirror.

“Or wait. Let me guess.” Gwen slapped the dashboard, as if pressing a game-show buzzer. “You weren't checking for the guard, were you? Please, if we're about to get pelted with mutilated pigeons, I'd appreciate a warning this time. Given that I forgot to pack my inhaler and that defibrillator stations would be totally beside the point in a place like this—not to mention vaguely insulting to the residents.”

“It's nothing,” Isobel mumbled. “There's nothing.”

Reaching up, Gwen fixed the mirror. “Riiiight. Of course it's nothing. That makes total sense. What else would any of this be adding up to besides a big fat steaming pile of nothing?”

Isobel gripped the seat beneath her. She waited, and as she'd hoped, the quiet quickly settled into place again. Yet the tension radiating from Gwen refused to fade. Anger rolled off her in invisible waves while, outside, the ticking of a rock stuck in the tread of one tire grew louder.
Tick tick tick tick tick tick tick.

They rounded the first bend in the road and wound farther into the sprawling and seemingly endless cemetery.

Another stone angel emerged on the right. Draped in flowing robes, the statue stood atop a rectangular gravestone, the first of too many to count. Isobel waited for the moment when the figure would turn its head to look at her. The statue remained a statue, though, and soon it was behind them along with the guard and the tower and the clock hands she'd sworn hadn't been spinning.

Awake,
Isobel told herself,
you are awake.

“You know everyone thinks the boot prints are Varen's, don't you?”

Isobel's grip on her seat tightened, fingernails digging into the vinyl.

She hadn't heard
that
rumor. Of course, there had been the usual stares and whispers that morning, but she'd gotten out of the habit of paying attention. She had been preoccupied with the dream itself, replaying it again and again in her head. And then she'd been waiting for Detective Scott to appear in the doorway of her first class. He'd never shown up to question her, though, and neither had Mr. Nott or any of the other administrators. And maybe that was because they'd been preoccupied themselves—not with
her
, she now grasped, but with the possibility that Varen had been in the building.

“I know hearing his name bothers you,” Gwen said. “Actually, I can tell it does worse. I can tell that it rips your heart out and crushes it every time. You know that's why I don't talk about him or ask what happened, don't you? Not because I believe you when you tell me you don't remember. And it's not because I think you need space, either. It's because I can tell it kills—literally kills you to remember. And because until this morning, I thought the truth could wait until you were ready. Because I thought it was all over. Clearly, though, it's not. Is it?”

Isobel sucked in a sharp breath and held it. Prying one hand free from the seat, she latched onto her door handle and squeezed hard, wishing she'd decided not to come after all. Really, what did she think she was doing? Hurrying the inevitable?

If talking to Varen hadn't worked before, why had she thought it would do any good now?

“I know you think you can wait me out,” Gwen said. “I know you think you can keep giving me the silent treatment just like you do everybody else. But I promise you, I am the bad haircut photos you wish you could delete from the Internet. I am the dumb cheer-mixed pop-song mash-up beat-boxing in your head. I'm not going to go away. We've been through too much. ‘We' as in ‘me too.' That crap in the hall, Izzy. What the hell was it?”

“Please,” Isobel said, “don't ask me.” She tried to release the sharp breath she'd taken moments before, but it stuck in her lungs, lodged inside of her along with everything she wasn't saying.

“Listen to me, Isobel,” Gwen began again, “I am tired of tiptoeing and I'm tired of being shut out. This involves me, too.”

“I don't want it to,” Isobel said. “Not anymore. I'm sorry. We—we shouldn't have come. We need to go back.”

“Errrh. Wrong answer. Sorry, but you don't get to be sorry. And I think we both know it's waaaay too late to turn back now.”

Open this door,
Pinfeathers had once told Isobel,
and no matter what, you'll never close it.

“Isobel.” Gwen snapped her fingers. “Wake up!”

“I
am
awake.”

“Then start talking.”

“I don't know what you want me to say.”

“Try the truth this time,” Gwen said. “You might feel better. I know
I
will. But then, this isn't about me, is it? I mean, I only risked my life. I only hauled my ass across three states to help you find him. I only had my arm cracked on a tombstone. I listened when no one else would. I believed you. I believed
in
you. For what? For you to ignore me like I was never a part of it? I want you to tell me why Varen isn't here. Why he didn't come back. There. That's a good place to start. One, two, three—go.”

“I—he—” Isobel jerked her head in the direction of a passing mausoleum, her eyes meeting for an instant those of the alabaster angel who watched from within, clutching the hilt of a sword between her hands.

“Yeah, I don't think that's summing it up enough for me,” Gwen said. “You're gonna have to do a little better.”

Isobel squeezed the door handle harder, resisting the urge to pull. Her other hand went to her seat-belt latch, her thumb pausing on the release button.

This all felt wrong. Her surroundings felt wrong. The conversation felt wrong.

She wasn't dreaming, though. She couldn't be.

“You found him,” Gwen said. “You talked to him. I
know
you did.”

Feeling suddenly too warm in her coat, Isobel pressed her forehead to the cold window, wanting out—out of the car, out of this cemetery, out of her own skin.

“Fine,” Gwen snapped. “Let's skip that one and come back. Moving on to the more immediate question. Whose boot prints were those in the hall?”

Nausea crept over her, causing her head to swim. Saliva rushed into her mouth.

“Stop the car,” Isobel said, but Gwen sped up, taking the twisting turns harder.

On either side of the winding blacktop, endless granite markers and squat tombstones dotted the hilly landscape, crowding all the way to where pavement met with grass. No cemetery could be
this
big, could it? And that obelisk . . . Hadn't they passed it already?

“Tell me what happened,” Gwen demanded, her voice trembling with equal parts hurt and fear. “I deserve to know.”

In the distance, Isobel spotted an awning tent. Beneath it, an open pit. A pile of fresh red earth waited to one side and, next to that, rolls of fake green turf meant to make things appear more natural. The scene flew by and dizziness slammed into her, bringing with it the memory of being buried alive in just such a trench, dirt pouring over her in heavy clods, pressing her down, crushing her chest and filling her mouth.

The cemetery around her became a rolling sea of stone and grass. Craggy trees cropped up with more frequency, blurry black skeletons between the markers that seemed to creep ever closer. Or was the lane growing narrower?

Robed statues sprang up everywhere, some with wings, others without, some holding rings of flowers, others clinging to crosses, all of them looking straight at her.

She
was
awake. She
knew
she was.

Wasn't she?

“Isobel!”

“Stop. Please. I need to get out.”

“Not until—”

“I said stop the car!” Isobel screeched.

Gwen hit the brakes, causing the tires to scream. The sound, combined with the lurching halt of the Cadillac, prompted Isobel to inhale at last. She gasped for air, and then she gasped again. And again.

All this time, she hadn't been able to take a single breath. She'd forgotten to try, but now she was breathing too much, too fast.

The cab of the car seemed to squeeze inward, the roof threatening to collapse.

Isobel pulled on the sweat-slicked handle still in her fist and the door swung open. She unlatched her seat belt and stumbled out into the winter air.

Her feet found the lawn, but her cold surroundings continued to orbit her. Names and dates swirled in her vision. Bile rose in the back of her throat and she staggered to one side, afraid she might hurl right there on Eloise McClain's name plaque.

Instead she started running, bolting headlong through the rows of graves, the wind licking sweat from her skin.

“Isobel!” she heard Gwen shout.

Isobel dodged headstone after headstone. Then the terrain dipped. She felt her ankle twist. Faltering, she cried out before dropping, nearly tumbling into the stump of a stone topped by a tiny, acid-rain-eaten lamb—an infant's grave.

She gripped the grass beneath her, crawling away from the distorted marker until her back met with the cold side of another.

Unable to look away from the child's stone, Isobel covered her eyes.

“Isobel!” The sound of feet rushing over grass grew louder, and Isobel heard Gwen fall to her knees at her side, her bracelets clanging. Isobel dared not lower her hands to look, however, too fearful that Gwen would be like the paper people she'd seen in the hall—that her friend's face would erode right before her, another nightmare she couldn't escape.

“What,” Gwen huffed, “are you doing? Why . . . did you run . . . like that?”