There were also, she noticed, several DVDs tucked between the games, titles like Edward Scissorhands, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, The Tomb of Ligeia, The Nightmare Before Christmas, and Donnie Darko. There were other shelves in the room too, all of which seemed to be inhabited by—big surprise—books.

As Isobel drew farther into the room, she passed a folding-door closet and let her fingers brush against the painted white slats. She watched as Varen deposited the food on a simple writing desk tucked beneath a window, one with three vertical panels crosshatched by white X s. Isobel immediately recognized the window as the one she’d seen from outside. The other window was smaller, lower to the floor, and on the side wall near the bed, allowing for yet another stellar view of the neighbor’s roof.

She stopped when she became aware of a pair of cool blue eyes following her. She turned her head to stare at the cat curled on top of his bed, a plump Siamese nestled on the gray comforter where she could have sworn it hadn’t been a moment before. The creature blinked at her slowly, squeezing its eyes shut, then opening them to piercing slivers.

“That’s Slipper,” she heard him say.

“Oh my gosh, he’s gorgeous,” Isobel murmured.

“She,” Varen corrected.

Isobel drew closer to the bed, then perched on the edge, setting the Cokes and forks aside. She offered a hand to be sniffed, per proper cat etiquette, which Slipper snubbed with a turn of her head.

“Don’t let the elegance act fool you,” Varen said, drawing out his notepad. “She farts.”

28

Ulalume

They’d spread out on the floor to work, sitting on the white throw rug beside the bed. The small red and white Chinese food containers had been opened and passed back and forth between them indiscriminately—neither of them, Isobel had noted, keeping track of which fork was whose.

At first Slipper had watched them from the bed, blinking cool, disinterested eyes. She had waited, it seemed, until they’d become fully engrossed in their work before slinking off the bed and, after making a big show of stretching and yawning, unfolding herself across their papers. From there, she purred loudly and flopped her tail against the floor.

They had decided to divide the presentation into three major categories: Poe’s most famous works, his influence on modern literature, and, last but not least, the strange circumstances surrounding his death. Tackling each category one at a time, they thumbed through their combined stack of library books, picking out key facts. Isobel insisted on being the one to copy them down onto numbered index cards, wanting something from the project to be in her own handwriting, just in case Swanson suspected she’d done less than her part. Varen hadn’t protested, and even seemed to enjoy this method of locating long stretches of information and condensing them out loud, speaking slowly so that she could finish writing each word.

Working like this, it took them a little more than an hour to get to the last category, and Varen, who had flipped to the back of one colossal door stopper of a biography, grew suddenly quiet as he read.

Isobel glanced up from her own perusing and wiggled her pen, waiting for him to prompt her to jot down the next fact. When he didn’t, she pursed her lips and tapped her pen against her chin in thought. She glanced to the spread of papers, index cards, and poster board around her, wondering if she should interrupt him with her newest concern. Deciding it couldn’t hurt, she lowered her pen and spoke up. “Um,” she began, “do you think our presentation is going to be too, I don’t know . . . I mean, it’s kind of boring, don’t you think?”

Without looking up from his book he said, “Seeing as how down to the wire we are, what other choice do we have?”

She nodded, knowing that the same thought must have already occurred to him. She also knew that he was right. Even though this was how things were going to have to go, she still couldn’t help but wonder what their project might have been like if they’d actually been able to concentrate from the very beginning. Then at the same time, Isobel reminded herself that she wasn’t exactly a Poe enthusiast, and it would be a huge relief to have the whole thing over and done with. Well, the project at least. If nothing else, she hoped that whatever they managed to pull together tonight would be enough to keep her on the squad so that she could go back to being a cheerleader for a change.

Isobel sighed. Slipping her note cards between the pages and shutting her book, she diverted her attention to a pile of printouts of pictures from the Internet and a neighboring stack of poster board. There were several pictures left to glue onto poster board, pictures that Varen would hold up at certain moments during their presentation, and then place along the chalkboard tray. Nothing fancy. Very run-of-the-mill high-school project-esque.