Nevermore by Kelly Creagh

Author:Kelly Creagh
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Fiction, Children: Young Adult (Gr. 10-12, Science Fiction, Horror & Ghost Stories, All Ages, Schools, School & Education, Secondary, Love & Romance, Magic, Biographical, Juvenile Fiction, Fantasy & Magic, Poe, United States, American, Edgar Allan, Education, Children's Books, General, Fantasy, Literary Criticism, High schools, Horror stories, Children: Young Adult (Gr. 10-12)
ISBN: 9781442402003
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Published: 2010-08-31T01:33:54.804000+00:00

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.

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