“I want to go someplace with you, but I don’t want to get the bubonic plague if I do.”
“Come to the backyard,” I told her. “I’m in the woods.”
Isabel’s voice managed to convey equal parts disgust and disbelief. “The. Woods. Of course, I should’ve known; that’s where sick people always go. Personally, I would rather go someplace and let off some steam with some good nonproductive retail therapy, but I guess the woods would be a rewarding and socially acceptable alternative. All the kids are doing it now. Should I bring skis? A tent?”
“Just you,” I said.
“Do I want to know what you were doing in the woods?” she asked.
“I was walking,” I told her. The truth, but not all of it.
I didn’t know how to tell her the rest.
Later, Isabel had to shout for me beside the trees a few times and wait a few minutes for me to come out of the darkening forest, but I didn’t feel guilty about it—I was still too lost in the revelation I’d had while surrounded by the wolves.
“Aren’t you supposed to be dying or something?” Isabel demanded as soon as she saw me picking my way back in the direction of my house. I’d made my point with my mother; now it was time to go back, and I figured she wouldn’t try to initiate a serious conversation if I had someone else in tow.
Isabel stood by the bird feeder, hands shoved in her pockets, the fur-lined hood on her shoulders hunched up around her ears. As I approached, her eyes flicked between me and a faded white stain of bird poop on the edge of the feeder. It was clearly bothering her. She was done up in full Isabel style—slashed haircut brutally and beautifully styled around her face and her eyes ink stained and dramatic. She really had been planning on going someplace with me; I did feel a little guilty, then, as if I’d refused her for frivolous reasons. Her voice was a few degrees colder than the air. “What part of your treatment involves trooping out through the woods when it’s thirty-seven degrees outside?”
It was getting pretty cold; the ends of my fingers were bright pink. “Is it thirty-seven? It wasn’t when I went out.”
“Well, it is now,” Isabel said. “I saw your mom when I was walking back here, and tried to convince her to let you go for a panini in Duluth tonight, but she said no. I’m trying not to take it personally.” She wrinkled her nose when I came up alongside her, and together we headed back toward the house.
“Yeah, I’m trying to ignore how mad I am at her right now,” I confessed. Isabel waited for me to slide the back door open for her. She didn’t comment on my anger, and I didn’t expect her to; Isabel was always angry at her parents, so I doubted it even registered on her radar as unusual. “I can fake paninis here, sort of. I don’t really have good bread for it.” I didn’t really want to, though.
“I’d rather wait for the real thing,” Isabel said. “Let’s order pizza.”
“Ordering pizza” in Mercy Falls meant calling up the local pizza joint, Mario’s, and paying a six-dollar delivery charge. A price too dear after Sam’s studio visit.
“I’m broke,” I said regretfully.
“I’m not,” Isabel replied.
She said this just as we came inside, and Mom, who was still parked on the couch with Sam’s book, looked up sharply. Good. I hoped she thought we were talking about her.
I looked at Isabel. “Why don’t we go to my room? Are we getting—?”
Isabel waved a hand at me to be quiet; she was already on the phone with Mario’s, ordering a large cheese and mushroom pizza. She kicked off her fat-heeled boots on the back-door mat and followed me into my room, flirting effortlessly with whoever was on the other end of the phone as she did.
In my room, it seemed hideously warm in comparison to outside. I started to peel off my sweater as Isabel clicked her phone off and crashed sideways on the bed. She said, “We’re getting free toppings. Bet me we’re getting free toppings.”
“I don’t have to bet,” I said. “That was practically phone sex on an extra-thin crust.”
“It’s what I do,” Isabel said. “So look. I didn’t bring my homework. I basically did it in my free period in school.”
I gave her a look. “If you crap out of school now, you won’t get into a good college, and then you’ll be stuck here in Mercy Falls forever.” Unlike Rachel and Isabel, I wasn’t filled with horror at that idea. But I knew that neither of them could imagine worse fates.
Isabel made a face. “Thanks, Mom. I’ll keep that in mind.”
I shrugged and tugged out the book that Rachel had brought over earlier. “Well, I do have homework, and I want to get into college. At the very least, I have to do my reading for history tonight. Is that okay?”
Isabel laid her cheek on my comforter and closed her eyes. “You don’t have to entertain me. It’s enough to get out of the house.”
I sat down at the head of the bed; the movement jostled Isabel but she kept her eyes shut. If Sam were here, and if he were me, he would have asked Isabel how bad things were and if she was doing okay. It wouldn’t have occurred to me to ask the question before I’d met him, but I’d heard him ask things like that often enough now to know how it was done.
“How are things?” I asked. It felt weird in my mouth, like it must not sound as sincere as when Sam asked it.
Isabel made a loud, bored noise and opened her eyes. “That’s what my mom’s therapist asks.” She stretched in a way that defined the word languorous and said, “I’m getting something to drink. Do you guys have soda?”
I was sort of relieved to be let off the hook so easily and wondered if I was supposed to ask again. Sam might have. I couldn’t think like him for that long, though, so I just said, “There are some in the door of the fridge, and some in the drawer on the right.”
“You want any?” Isabel asked, sliding off the bed. One of my bookmarks had fallen to the floor and stuck to her bare foot, and she made a triangle of one of her legs while she pulled it off.
I considered. My stomach felt a little twisty. “Ginger ale, if there’s any left.”
Isabel stalked out of the room and returned with a can of regular soda and a can of ginger ale, which she handed to me. She clicked on the clock radio by the bed stand; it began humming out Sam’s favorite alt station, a little fuzzy because it was from somewhere south of Duluth. I sighed; it wasn’t my favorite music, but it reminded me of him, even more than his book sitting on the bed stand or his forgotten backpack on the floor beside my shelves. Missing him seemed bigger now that the sun was almost down.
“I feel like I’m at an open-mic night,” Isabel said, and switched to a stronger Duluth pop station. She stretched on her stomach next to me where Sam would normally lie and popped the top of her soda. “What are you looking at? Read. I’m just chilling.”
She seemed to mean it, so there was no reason for me to not open my history text. I didn’t want to read, though. I just wanted to curl my arms around myself and lie on my bed and miss Sam.
• ISABEL •
It was nice at first, just lying in bed doing nothing, with no parents or memories intruding. The radio played quietly next to me, and Grace frowned at her book, turning her pages forward and occasionally backward to frown harder at something. Her mother clunked around in the rest of the house, and the smell of burnt toast wafted under the door. It was comfortingly someone else’s life. And it was nice to be with a friend but not have to talk. I could almost ignore the fact of Grace’s illness.