Unraveling Isobel

Chapter 32

I sat there until I didn’t have any tears left. The whole thing was a waste. Trying to talk to the ghost was stupid; thinking I could have a relationship with someone like Nate was even more absurd. If I wanted to take control of some part of my life the way Dr. Mike recommended, then what I needed to do was come up with a plan for getting the heck off this island. I needed to make up with Anita, who was at least a real friend.

I called Anita’s phone, and her voice mail clicked on. I shook off the feeling that she had seen my number and decided not to pick it up. “Hey,” I said into the phone, suddenly unsure of what to say. “I know you’re ticked at me and I can’t blame you, but I need to talk to you.” I felt the hot fist of fresh tears threatening to spill out all over again. “Things with me aren’t so good. Call when you can, okay?”

I clicked the phone off. I’d talk to Anita and that would help. I’d also ask Dr. Mike if it made sense for me to try some kind of medication. Getting help wasn’t losing, it was taking control.

I was considering digging out a calendar and calculating exactly how many days were left until graduation when I noticed that the room was colder. Much colder. The hair on my arms stood up as I broke out in goose bumps.

You’ve to be kidding me. Now she shows up?

“You better not start that knocking again,” I called out softly. “There’s no need to repeat yourself after all. One, two, three. I got that part.”

My eyes slid around the room as I waited to see what would happen. The room was even colder. I could see the mist of my breath in the air every time I exhaled. I pinched my thigh. This was real.

Thump.

I jumped. One of my books had fallen over on the shelf.

Thump.

Another book fell over and slid onto the floor. I pressed my back against the door and wished Nate hadn’t left.

Thump

My remaining books started to fall off the shelf, onto the floor, one after the other. My clock radio next to the bed clicked on, blaring the radio.

“This is WXJZ, the voice of the island, wanting to know—who’s listening tonight?” The radio clicked back off.

Thump

The numbers on the digital display began to spin around so fast that they were nothing more than a red blur.

THUMP

“Stop. Stop it,” I begged, squeezing my eyes shut as if I could keep everything away by just not seeing it … and just like that, it stopped. I kept my eyes closed for a second. I opened them slowly. Every book I owned was in a pile on the floor. The cold was leaving, too. I could feel the room warming up around me, almost as if the furnace had kicked on full blast. I looked over at the radio. The time on the face was 1:23. Whatever had been in my room was gone now.

I stood up and shuffled over to the pile of books. I picked one up. It didn’t look any different. It didn’t feel any different. It was a copy of The Phantom Tollbooth. It had been one of my favorite books as a kid. My dad had gotten it for me. I turned the pages. There was a smear of what I guessed was chocolate on one of the pages. Much like Nate’s mom, I came from a line of well-loved-book people who didn’t mind a smear here and there. I scraped the chocolate blob off the page so the page number could be seen again.

I dropped the book. It felt like my heart had stopped. Was that it? It might be nothing, but it was the first idea that had made any sense in a long time. I looked at the clock one last time, and then I left.

I stopped at Nate’s room and tapped on the door softly. Mom and Dick’s room was just a few doors down, and the last thing I wanted was to wake them up. I turned the knob slowly and pushed the door open.

“Nate? Are you here?”

His room was pitch black, but even though I couldn’t see very well, I could tell he wasn’t there. He must have snuck out of the house and gone to the party. I didn’t know if I should wait for him or check things out on my own. An image of him sitting on a piece of driftwood at the cove came into my mind. He had a beer in one hand and Nicole in the other. Forget it. I wasn’t waiting for him. For all I knew, it would turn out to be nothing anyway. If I found anything, we could talk about it later.

I tiptoed down into the kitchen and grabbed the flashlight that Dick kept by the back door. I clicked it on. There wouldn’t be any lights in the west wing. I stepped quietly through the foyer, listening for any sounds coming from upstairs, but everything was quiet. The west wing was cold, but normal cold, the way it should feel. There wasn’t the same chilling cold that had been in my room. The smell of mildew and rot tickled my nose.

When I got to the library I closed the door behind me with a quiet click and panned the room with the flashlight to confirm I was alone. I crossed the room and checked the window. It wasn’t locked. I suspected Nate had left through here to keep Dick from knowing he was out on a school night. I was half tempted to lock the window to teach him a lesson, but decided against it. I slid the thick green velvet curtains shut so that any light from the flashlight wouldn’t bounce off the window, just in case Dick was looking out from upstairs. I started on the farside, trailing my finger along the shelves. I tried to figure out if there was any sort of rhyme or reason to how the books were kept, but everything seemed sort of clustered together. Tom Sawyer next to a Tom Clancy. A bunch of boring looking books on economics, broken up by a hardcover Calvin and Hobbes collection. They weren’t even organized by size or color. There was a serious lack of the Dewey decimal system in this library. If Mandy were here she would whip this place into shape in no time.

I climbed the rolling ladder so I could check the shelves at the top of the bookcase. I heard a floorboard creak and I shut the flashlight off quickly. There was a rustle outside the door. I pressed against the ladder, my face between two rungs, and tried to hold my breath. I must have breathed in some dust, because instantly I wanted to sneeze. I wriggled my nose back and forth to make the urge go away. My ears strained to pick up any other sounds, but I didn’t hear anything. It must have been the house settling or maybe a mouse. I refused to think rat.

Unless whatever was out in the hallway was being quiet so it could listen too.

I shook off the heebie-jeebies. I had to stop winding myself up. There was enough creepy stuff going on without asking for more. I let out a tiny sneeze, but no one called out. I slowed my breathing and counted to a hundred.

Nothing.

I clicked the flashlight back on and waited to see if Dick would fling open the door and demand to know what I was doing, but it stayed quiet. I turned my attention back to the shelves. The only things on the top shelves were books I was pretty sure no one had read for decades and a gray flannel blanket of dust. I sneezed again and almost dropped the flashlight but caught it just in time in the crook of my arm. I shivered at the idea of losing my light, and hurried to examine the last row of shelves.

I was about a third of the way down the next shelf when I saw it, a book with greenish-tan binding and red detail. I slid the book out. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. The cover had an illustration of Alice being attacked by a wall of playing cards.

I sat down in one of the leather chairs. I couldn’t tell if I wanted to find anything or not. I opened the cover and thumbed through the first few pages. I thought the book might smell a bit musty, but it didn’t. The book opened to an illustration of Alice following the white rabbit. I flipped ahead to page 123.

The pages were stuck together, and I didn’t want to tear them. This first-edition book probably cost more than I could imagine. Dick could probably tell me to the penny what this thing was worth. While Nate’s mom might have been a fan of letting books be broken in and loved, I was pretty sure Dick would make me pay him back for any lost value if I so much as sneezed on a page. I slid my finger between the pages, slowly breaking them apart.

The pages fell open. There were two pieces of paper tucked in between pages 122 and 123.