Every few minutes she scanned the stands behind her, keeping a watchful eye out for more of those creatures—what had Reynolds called them? Nocs? How many of those things were there, anyway? Distractedly, she wondered why she hadn’t seen any of them since she’d left school. She wanted to think that it was a good sign, but that felt like a false hope.
On the field, the squad disbanded and let the marching band take over. Isobel turned to look toward the stands again, this time hoping to find some evidence of Reynolds’s presence. He said he’d be near, but where? Why did he always have to be so cryptic?
“Iz?” She felt the sensation of someone taking the seat next to her. She turned.
Nikki gazed at her, her dark blue eyes wide, her eyebrows knitted together. She cradled her wrist, which had been wrapped tightly in beige gauze.
“Hey, Nikki,” Isobel offered. “Let me guess. Coach benched you, too?”
“Yeah,” she said, holding up her bandaged wrist. “Sprained. Not too bad, though. Do—do you care if I sit here?”
Isobel shook her head, and they sat for a moment in uncomfortable silence.
“Isobel,” Nikki started, “I didn’t think I was going to come tonight. But I decided to at the last second because I knew you’d be here. And I have to tell you this. I—I know you won’t believe me, but I still have to say it. No matter what you think, I—I didn’t drop you today. At least not on purpose.”
“I know,” said Isobel simply. She turned again to look over her shoulder. She wished the game was over. She wished she could fast-forward through time so that she and Gwen could be on their way to wherever the Grim Facade was surely starting. She wanted to find Varen, to see his face, to know that he was all right. She wanted to know the truth about what was happening. She wanted to know how to make it stop. How to just be normal again.
“No. I mean, I didn’t. I swear. I’ll swear on anything. It was like . . . It was like something had hold of me.” She grabbed her bound wrist for emphasis. “I know it sounds crazy, but—”
“Nikki.” Isobel turned to meet her gaze straight on. “I believe you.”
Nikki’s tortured expression melted into worried confusion, as though she half expected Isobel to take her statement back. This reaction made Isobel realize that Nikki had been spending far too much time hanging around Alyssa.
“Does . . . does that mean you’re—that you’re not mad at me anymore?”
Wouldn’t go as far as to say that, Isobel thought. Wasn’t stabbing you in the back and running off with your ex the first two no-nos listed on the first page of the best friend bible? Then again, Isobel wondered—why not? What did any of it matter now if Nikki wanted to make up? She and Brad were over, the crew was over. These days it was starting to seem as though reality itself was over. If the sky was falling, wasn’t it better if Ducky Lucky and Loosey Goosey hugged and made up beforehand? Isobel opted for a noncommittal shrug but then, embarrassed by the stinginess of her gesture, added, “No. Not really.”
“I miss you,” Nikki said. “I miss us.”
Looking down between her shoes, Isobel nodded, not certain if she could say the same. She had too much else swirling around in her head. Too much had happened since they fought.
Too much that she could never tell Nikki. Nikki and her, well, that all seemed like a lifetime ago. How could she explain to her that she was different? Changed. And that right now she could think of only one person she could truly say she missed.
“I’m jealous, you know.”
Isobel’s head popped up, eyes angled toward Nikki, who smiled at her. A sweet and sad sort of smile. Isobel was guarded. “What do you mean?”
Nikki shook her head, her eyes glistening. She swept a manicured thumb at each, then laughed instead. “Everyone’s jealous of you, Isobel.”
Isobel blinked several times, uncertain how to react.
“But I’m jealous because . . . well, because I’ve never known what it feels like to be in love.”
Isobel stiffened. All at once, she ceased to breathe.
“Oh,” said Nikki, laughing. She swept at her eyes again, this time with the knuckle of her first finger, trying to save her mascara. “Don’t look at me like that. You’re not that clueless.”
She laughed harder then, though, Isobel thought, more in an effort to keep from crying.
“I guess maybe you are,” Nikki amended, taking in the stricken look on Isobel’s face. “At least for once I’m not the last one to know something.” She laughed genuinely now, and her mirth was so contagious, the weight of her words so startlingly plain, that in spite of everything, Isobel found that she had to laugh too.
In love. In love with the stoic, the sullen, the eternally morose Varen Nethers?
He would never allow it.
Isobel sobered quickly. Suddenly the prospect of seeing him became terrifying, because she knew it was true and that the only way she’d hidden it from him before was because she had never allowed herself to put her feelings into words. And Nikki, the least perceptive being on this planet, had seen through it all.
“Hey, Izzy!”
Isobel jumped, nearly bouncing off the bench. She and Nikki both swung around.
Isobel’s dad was there, leaning against the fence. He waved her over.
Isobel stood, murmuring, “Be right back,” to Nikki, who remained where she was while Isobel jogged to meet her father. She was glad for an excuse to leave the bench, glad for a moment to recover.
“What’s going on with you guys tonight? You’re choking out there. Major.”
“What?” Was he talking about the squad? She hadn’t been paying attention.
“You guys are losing. Big-time. Haven’t you been watching the score?” He pointed.
Were they really losing? Isobel scanned the scoreboard. Wow. Thirty-one to zero. They were losing.
“Hey, what’s the deal with Brad out there?”
“Brad?”
“Yeah.” He folded his arms over the top of the fence, trying to act nonchalant now that he’d brought up the B word. “Didn’t you see him drop the ball? Have you been sleeping out there on that bench or what? This is the worst I think I’ve ever seen him play.”
Isobel looked around for Brad now. She saw him standing with the team on the sidelines, filling up a cup of water and pouring it down his shirt, despite the chill of the fifty-degree night.
While the rest of the team headed for the locker rooms, Coach Logan, his face purple, stood two heads below Brad, berating him the way a yappy dog might bark at a squirrel up a tree.
“Sheesh. Looks like Coach is really laying it on thick,” Isobel’s dad said. “Hey, Iz, I’m not trying to get in the middle of things here, but maybe you should go talk to him. See what’s going on?”
“Isobel! There you are!”
Isobel turned her head, her eyes narrowing on the blue-and-gold-decked, pom-pom-pigtailed stranger who now bounced toward her along the other side of the fence. Holy cheer catastrophes—it was Gwen.
“Isobel!” she shrieked again, and bounded to a stop beside her dad. She threw her arms over her head, the sleeves of her impossibly huge sweatshirt waggling—no, Isobel corrected as she took note of the yellow T—the sleeves of Stevie’s impossibly huge sweatshirt. Isobel stepped back from the fence to give Gwen an astonished once-over. She’d never once seen her friend in a pair of pants, let alone anything resembling school colors (did Gwen even own a pair of pants?). After closer scrutiny, Isobel couldn’t help but notice a certain familiarity about the Trenton sweats she wore. They looked a lot like the ones she herself had shed earlier in the locker room. And then there were the long pigtails, held up by a set of equally familiar blue and gold pom-pom hair-ties. Suddenly it was easy to figure out where Gwen had been all this time.