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Isobel scowled at her brother as he bit into his egg roll, but she knew that on some level he was right. Even if Danny had been teasing, the phone call definitely pertained to her.
3
Disillusions
Midday sunlight streamed through Trenton’s tall hall windows.
All around, lockers slammed. Girls laughed, and sneakers screeched against linoleum. Two boys shared a fist bump before splitting off in separate directions.
Isobel recognized faces and voices. Even the sensation of her own breathing.
But she knew she was in a dream. She knew it the moment she saw him.
Because she saw him.
With his back to her, he walked down the center of the crowded hall, his gait even and slow, as graceful as ever.
Unable to move or look away, she watched him while her mind scrambled to come up with an answer as to how she’d gotten here, and how real “here” actually was.
The dusty hem of his long coat swayed at his ankles. His once-black combat boots, now white with ash—as white as the crow emblazoned on the back of the coat she’d come to hate—left tread marks of soot on the floor.
Ahead of him, the other kids stepped out of his path, most without daring to give him more than a sidelong glance. Then the crowd folded around him.
Isobel started forward, keeping her sights on the still-visible line of his angular shoulders. Sleek and jaggedly cut, his jet hair caught a gleam from the fluorescent light fixtures as he passed beneath them. That detail, so minute, so real, prompted her to second-guess herself.
Sparing a quick glance at the walls, she checked for the hallway clock that would confirm what she already knew—that she had to be asleep.
That there wasn’t one at all gave her the last shred of evidence she no longer needed.
When her eyes found him again, however, she saw that he’d traveled twice as far down the corridor as before, as if time had skipped while her gaze had been diverted.
A jolt of terror spurred Isobel to stumble after him on shaky legs. Then her mind caught up to her actions, commanding her to stop, to slip into the crowd so he wouldn’t see her.
Wake up, wake up, wake up, she told herself, even while her feet kept moving, following the thrumming command of her heart.
A deep ache pulsed inside of her, urging her to yell out to him. To repeat the words she’d written that morning, and make him hear what he’d already proven he couldn’t.
But then he vanished around the next corner, into the stairwell.
Isobel stopped, her chest constricting with a debilitating mixture of sorrow and fear. Sorrow that he’d once again evaporated. That this glimpse of him had happened within the realm of her imagination, and not in that midregion where she knew he truly dwelled.
The sensation of fear welled higher. It consumed her longing and warned her not to let him discover her here—in his world.
Wake up, she told herself again, before he finds you.
Her body didn’t want to listen, though, and her soul, the part of her that dreamed, moved forward again.
She wove her way between tall basketball players, dodging their book bags. She sidled past girls with rose bouquets who threw their arms around their boyfriends’ necks, past teachers collecting papers. The bodies began to squeeze in tighter, closer and closer with every step until she felt herself getting crowded out. Blocked. Shoved back.
Then the bell rang, shrill as a scream, and still more students poured out of classroom doors. Kids carrying books and holding hands bumped into her from every angle, knocking her from side to side.
Isobel squeezed between one of the kissing couples, forcing them apart.
The boy rounded on her with a glare. “What are you staring at?” he asked. But neither he nor the girl had any eyes. Just peeling, burned-out holes, as if their faces were made of paper.
Isobel shrank from the couple and collided with one of the teachers, who thrust a stack of blank pages at her.
“You forgot to sign our name,” said a girl’s voice.
