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“I don’t understand,” Isobel murmured. “I don’t get what his problem is.” She traced a finger along the sleeve of her mom’s lavender top.
Her mother let her words out in a sigh. “I think he’s just afraid.”
“Of what? It’s not like I was out doing drugs or something. Mom, we were studying.”
“I know,” her mom said, patting her arm. “I think he’s afraid because he sees that you’re growing up.”
Isobel scowled and twisted around in her covers, huddling to one side. “Well, he’s just going to have to deal.”
That made her mom laugh. Isobel loved the sound of her mom’s laugh. It was light and airy, like something you might expect from a Disney princess. “Your friend is a bit different,”
she said. “I think part of it is that at first, he comes off as a little . . . stark and maybe a little . . . experienced. I think that, more than anything else, is what has your father spooked. He seems like a nice enough boy, though. Just a little eccentric.” Isobel felt her mother’s hand brush her forehead, fingertips stroking her hair. “It won’t take your dad long to see that. He’s just . . . I don’t know. I think he’s so used to Brad being around all the time.”
Isobel snorted into her pillow. “So then why don’t the two of them date?”
“Oh, Izzy.” Her mom sighed. “Don’t be like that. He’s just trying to look out for you. So cut him a little slack.”
“Cut him a little slack?” Isobel somehow doubted that her mom could be right about her dad getting over it, though she hoped he would. She hated fighting with either one of her parents, but for some reason, things always seemed especially bad when she fought with her father. Maybe it was because he was scarier when he yelled. Or more likely, maybe it was because they hardly ever argued to begin with, let alone outright screamed at each other.
“Izzy?”
“Mmm?” Isobel murmured, thinking.
“Do you want to talk about what went on between you and Brad?”
Isobel grimaced. She twisted again, trying to straighten the covers so they weren’t wadded around her in a tight cocoon. “No,” she said, “there’s nothing to talk about anyway. We broke up and that’s all.”
“Okay,” her mom said, and patted her side again. It reminded Isobel of someone trying to put out a small fire. “Just asking. I’m going to go read now, if that’s okay?”
Isobel nodded against her pillow. She wanted to be alone. To think.
“There’s some chicken salad left over in the fridge if you decide you’re hungry,” she said, then bent down and placed a kiss on Isobel’s temple. Magically, her headache seemed to subside a little.
After her mother left, Isobel lay staring at the gleaming title on the spine of The Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe. She knew she should probably sit up, prop the book open, and get to reading, but she also knew that after everything that had happened tonight, she wouldn’t be able to concentrate on a single word. Especially since reading Poe felt like trying to decode some ages-old dead language anyway.
Besides that, the book still gave her the creeps. Isobel grabbed it and held it out over one side of her bed. She let it drop onto the floor with a heavy thud, then reached an arm over her head and pressed the button to set her alarm. Curling to one side again, she shut her eyes, leaving her bedroom light on.
The trees stretched up high and thin around her, gathered together like innumerable prison bars, all black, all dead.
Withered leaves littered the ground of the circular clearing in which she stood. Still and silent, the woods seemed almost mute. Beyond the trees, a backdrop of deep violet bled through like a glowing cyclorama, casting everything into eerie outline.
She looked up. Above her, beyond the spiderweb mesh of tangled black limbs, there roiled a storm-purple sky. Snow drifted down around her gently. No, Isobel thought, holding out a hand to catch a flake—it wasn’t snow. She rubbed it between her fingers and felt dry grit. Ash.
Like a thin blanket of dust, it coated the forest. It clung to the sides of the trees and collected in the bowl-like bodies of shriveled grayish-purple leaves.
“Where . . .” she wondered aloud, if for no other reason than to test the silence.
“These are the woodlands known as Weir” came a voice from behind her. Isobel whirled to see him standing just within the perimeter of the clearing, draped in his long black cloak like before, the white scarf swathing his lower face, the fedora hat casting his eyes into shadow. “It is a mid-region. A place seldom consciously reached. One that lies in the space between dreams and all realities.”