Oblivion

Isobel took the phone from Danny and saw the tension knotting his brow ease slightly.

“Isobel, damn it,” her dad said, his voice growing louder, more frantic. “I said answer me!”

She didn’t raise the phone to her ear. Instead she stared at that picture. Studying it, she took in all the details—memorizing every last one. Just in case.

“Izzy?” her father said, and now his voice came soft, almost too quiet to hear. “If you’re there, for the love of God, please say something.”

“I love you—Mom, too,” she said. “And I’m sorry,” she added before driving her thumb into the end button.

26

Crisscrossed

Isobel turned her back on her brother, unable to meet his gaze again.

Re-entering the house, she dropped his cell to the floor and, dodging the cracked picture frames that littered the foyer floor and steps, pounded up the stairs.

The eyes in the photos seemed to watch her as she passed: Danny in his Scout uniform, Isobel in last year’s cheerleading portrait, all four members of her family beaming in front of the Christmas tree two Decembers ago.

Their mother and father’s wedding photo . . .

The storm door slammed a second time.

“Isobel, stop!” Danny yelled, and she heard him thundering after her.

Veering down the hall, Isobel hurried into her bedroom. She shoved the door closed just as Danny reached it.

“Open the door!” he yelled, banging, twisting the knob, but she’d already locked it.

She spun to face her room, which someone had ransacked.

The contents of her dresser drawers lay strewn across the floor, and nearby, the sheet she’d thrown over her mirror sat in a heap.

Atop her cubbyhole headboard, the numbers on her digital clock flickered and jumped.

In the center of her bed, laid out like it was waiting for her, rested Isobel’s tattered pink dress. The same one Gwen had bought secondhand and altered for her to wear to the Grim Facade.

But Isobel had buried the gown away in the bottom drawer of her dresser.

Seeing it exhumed from its resting place and arranged with such care across her comforter, she now doubted her father or mother could have been responsible for the raid.

But who, then?

“Dad’s coming,” Danny said. “He’s on his way. You won’t get far, so you might as well open the door.”

Tuning out her brother’s frantic knocking, Isobel ventured with slow steps to stand at the foot of her bed.

She remembered how Gwen had chosen the gown specifically for its hue, knowing Isobel would be the only one in such a color at the underground goth party.

In a way, the dress had been meant as a beacon, a signal that had allowed Varen to spot her easily amid the sea of black-clad bodies. To make her a light in the dark.

Gwen’s plan had worked, too. Varen had found her right away.

What was more, he’d known her right away.

Isobel placed a hand on the dress, fingers grazing the hemline and torn tulle of its poufy underskirt.

Along with the grit and grime embedded in the material, once pink but now pale gray, black blots of her own blood dotted the dress’s lace overlay and stained the underlying skirt.

The dress had changed so much since she’d first put it on. Almost as much as she had . . .

Varen, Isobel thought. All this time, he’d been seeing different versions of her. The scar-free Party Pink Isobel, Cheerleader Isobel, Bleeding Black Dress Isobel. Dead Isobel.

But . . . what if she dared appear to him as a blended version of herself? The past and present merged together? Would that help him believe it really was her?

Sitting out in plain view this way, the dress seemed to suggest the idea all on its own. As if that had been the exact intention of whoever it was who had pillaged her things.

Isobel glanced at the door, which had gone quiet.

Danny, she figured, must have retreated down the stairs. Had he gone outside to try calling their parents again? Or even the police? Maybe he’d gone to retrieve her phone, like she’d wanted him to, to see what she’d texted.

Whatever the case, Isobel would be gone by the time he returned.

Quickly she shucked her clothes and donned the dress, managing somehow to zip up the back on her own.

The cool satin lining hugged close to her skin, the bodice only slightly looser than it had been on Halloween.

Pulling on Varen’s jacket as a final touch, Isobel turned to face the door. She stopped, though, caught off guard by the sight of herself in her unveiled dresser mirror.

With her face smudged, her hair caked with grime, and her dingy skirts crinkled and stained, she looked as if she’d just survived an explosion.