Dead Beautiful

  But just before our lips met, he turned his head. “Not on the lips.”

  Suddenly, everything inside me began to deflate. “What?”

  “Do you feel different when you’re around me?” he asked.

  I nodded.

  “How?”

  “My skin tingles and everything goes numb, like my body is starting to freeze. Do you feel it too?”

  He took my hand and traced it down his arm. He closed his eyes. “Desire,” he breathed. “That’s what it means. And yes, I feel it too.”

  I leaned against the blackboard, my chest warm and flushed. “Why...why won’t you kiss me?”

  He let his hand slide down my leg, and I felt my insides melt. “I want to. I’ve always wanted to. But please, just trust me.”

  “Why do I feel so strange whenever I’m near you?”

  He leaned his forehead against mine, his hair brushing against my cheeks. “I don’t know.”

  Outside, the rain had let up. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s get you home.”

  Our fingerprints and chalky silhouettes were imprinted on the blackboard, smudging the Latin scrawled across it. Dante slipped his hand into mine, and together we escaped from the building, into the night. We didn’t speak. We didn’t have to. We both knew that some things couldn’t be translated into words.

  “Where were you?” Eleanor asked. She’d been pacing around the room when I climbed in through the chimney. “You’re soaking wet!”

  “I was outside. And then in Horace.”

  “Horace Hall? What were you doing there? And why did you run off like that?”

  While wiping my face with a towel, I told her about my father, about Vivian and Gideon, about Dante and their conversation in Latin, about Mrs. Lynch, and finally about our time in the classroom.

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa, back up. You made out with Dante Berlin in Horace Hall?”

  “Sort of...”

  She gave me an expectant look, waiting for me to continue. “Well, was it good?”

  I considered all of the events that led up to the moment in the Latin classroom. Why wasn’t my father by the tree, like I’d seen during the séance? And what had happened between Dante and his old friends? Why wouldn’t Dante kiss me? It was confusing and frightening and unexplainable and surprising. And strangely wonderful. It didn’t even matter anymore if I liked it or if I didn’t like it. I felt something...something too delicate and ephemeral for words. “It was unreal.”

  “So you thought you were going to see your parents, but instead you found Dante and Vivian and Gideon?”

  I nodded. “I don’t know why my dad wasn’t there, though.”

  “Maybe you got the location wrong. Or maybe it wasn’t your dad that you saw.”

  “It was definitely him. I mean, who else could it be?”

  Eleanor shrugged. “I don’t know.”

  I thought Eleanor would offer some absurd suggestions or ask me to recount every detail like she normally did, but instead she sat at her desk and looked out the window.

  I wiped my cheeks with my hands and began to wring out my hair, when I noticed her standing in front of my bed. “What?”

  “Now you’re supposed to ask me about my night.”

  A wave of guilt passed over me. I had been talking about myself and my problems all week. All month, in fact, never once asking Eleanor about how she was. “Right. Sorry. I’m terrible. What happened?”

  Eleanor sat cross-legged on my bed. “I summoned Benjamin Gallow.”

  I was pulling a sweatshirt over my head when her words registered, and I froze. “And?” I asked, my voice muffled through the cotton.

  “And there are complications.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked, fumbling with the arm and head holes until I finally forced my shirt on.

  “Well … I don’t think I did it right, exactly. First I was thinking of him, but then I was thinking of him and Cassandra, and then I was thinking of Cassandra even though she wasn’t dead, and then I sort of summoned both of them.”

  “But that’s impossible. Cassandra isn’t dead; she transferred.”

  “Not according to her.”

  CHAPTER 8

  The Gottfried Curse

  MONDAY MORNING, MY ALARM CLOCK WOKE me from the best dream I’d had in months. The autumn sunlight streamed through the windows, and I stretched beneath the sheets, smiling to myself as Dante kissed my wrists, my arms, my shoulders, my neck. “I love you,” he said, running his fingers through my hair.

  He leaned in, and all at once I opened my eyes.

  Outside it was gray and drizzling, and the dream dissipated into the November mist. Across from me, Eleanor was still asleep, shifting beneath the blankets, her blond hair spilling over her pillow like corn silk. Everything that had happened now seemed like a dream. Eleanor and I had spent the entire weekend trying to piece together what had happened to Benjamin and Cassandra, but with no luck. Maybe today would be different, I thought as I got dressed and headed to class. But by second period we were just as confused.

  “The last thing Benjamin remembered doing was kissing Cassandra. After that, everything was blurry,” Eleanor was explaining to Nathaniel. We were sitting in the back of class before the start of Philosophy. “So romantic,” she added.

  Nathaniel groaned.

  “Anyway,” I said, interrupting her, “since Eleanor had envisioned both of them at the beginning of the séance, she summoned Cassandra too.”

  “Which means she’s dead!” Eleanor added loudly.

  “Shhh!” I cautioned, glancing around to make sure no one heard. “Which might mean she’s dead,” I corrected. I still couldn’t figure out what had happened at the séance. I had definitely summoned someone—a man who I had assumed was my father. But then why hadn’t he been at the great oak like he’d shown me? Something about it didn’t seem right. “The séance didn’t exactly work for me, so we don’t actually know if it worked for you either.”

  Eleanor ignored me. “But the craziest part is how she died,” she continued excitedly. “She was buried alive.”

  Both Eleanor and I watched for Nathaniel’s reaction, but he didn’t seem as shocked by it as we were.

  “Who did it?” he asked, biting his fingernails.

  “She didn’t know. She had some sort of bag over her head when they did it,” Eleanor explained. “I wonder if it happened at school or somewhere else. The last thing she remembered was being brought to the headmistress’s office. After that it went black, until suddenly she was being carried somewhere outside. She was put into a wooden box that was then nailed shut. And then she heard the sound of dirt pounding on top of her until everything faded into nothing. But even if that was her last memory, it doesn’t mean that’s what did her in. I mean, Benjamin’s last memory was kissing Cassandra, and that had nothing to do with his death.”

  “Did he say how he died?” Nathaniel asked.

  “No. Every time I asked, he kept showing me the same scene of him kissing Cassandra. It was kind of romantic. That’s how I started thinking about her in the first place, and then suddenly I heard her voice in my ear.”

  “But if she died, why would the school lie and say that she transferred?” I countered.

  “Maybe they didn’t know,” Eleanor said. “Maybe she died after she transferred. Maybe she was summoned to the headmistress’s office just before she left, for transcripts or whatever. And then it happened.”

  We both turned to Nathaniel. “What do you think?” we said, almost simultaneously.

  Nathaniel pulled at his tie, trying to loosen it. “Why are you telling me all of this?”

  “Because we’re not sure if we should believe it or not,” I said. “And you’re the smartest person we know.” Well, that wasn’t exactly true. Dante was the smartest person I knew. Nathaniel was really just nerdy.

  “And because we know you won’t tell anyone,” Eleanor added in a low voice. “You won’t tell anyone, right?”

  “I won?
??t tell anyone.”

  Eleanor and I exchanged glances and smiled.

  “Why don’t you just do another séance and try her again?” Nathaniel suggested.

  Eleanor shook her head. “Proper séances only work on Halloween.”

  “Either way, the séance sounds iffy,” Nathaniel said to Eleanor. “If it didn’t work the right way for Renée, you can’t trust what you heard either. But if I were you, I’d talk to Minnie Roberts.”

  Our smiles quickly faded. What was he talking about? Minnie Roberts? The mousy girl who had dropped her bag in Horace Hall on the first day of classes? I turned to ask Eleanor, who put a hand to her forehead. “Oh my God. Why didn’t I think of that?!”

  “Think of what?” I said.

  Eleanor turned to me as if just remembering I was there. “Last spring Minnie exploded in the dining hall.”

  “I... I remember hearing about that. You mentioned it,” I said to Nathaniel.

  “It was the night before finals,” Eleanor continued, running through the history quickly. “After Ben died, after Cassie left. Everyone was in the Megaron when Minnie burst in and started screaming about how Cassandra Millet was murdered by the headmistress and the Board of Monitors. She claimed that she saw them burying Cassandra just outside of campus by the woods. She’d been trying to tell the professors, but no one would listen to her.”

  “What?” I said, incredulous. “The Board of Monitors?”

  “Everyone in the dining hall went nuts, and the professors ended up carrying Minnie out and bringing her to the nurses’ wing.”

  “That’s why everyone thinks Minnie Roberts is insane,” Nathaniel added.

  “She still might be,” Eleanor murmured. “Rumor has it that her parents sent her to the loony bin last summer.”

  “Why would she come back?” I asked.

  “Her parents are big-time donors,” Eleanor said. “They probably wouldn’t let her leave. I know mine wouldn’t.” She looked at Nathaniel.

  “So you think she was telling the truth?” I asked.

  Eleanor snorted. “No. Not the whole truth, at least. Why would the Board of Monitors and the headmistress bury Cassandra Millet alive? My brother would never kill anyone … let alone Cassie. Why would anyone kill her?” Her voice trailed off. After the séance, after Eleanor had finished telling me everything she’d seen, I questioned her for hours about her former roommate. Did she have any enemies? Was there anything out of the ordinary about her behavior? The same questions the police had asked me about my parents. And just like me, Eleanor had nothing new to add. Cassandra was beautiful, a straight-A student, no enemies, and no strange behavior; kind and generous to everyone she met. The least likely person to be murdered.

  Just like my parents, I thought.

  “She might not even be dead,” Nathaniel reminded us.

  “He’s right,” I said. “I summoned someone, but I don’t think it was my father.”

  “Either way, we need to ask Minnie,” Eleanor concluded.

  When the bell rang, Miss LaBarge stood up and began talking about Plato and something about the soul and a cave, though I was barely paying attention. Halfway through class, her lecture was interrupted by two raps on the door. Without waiting, Mrs. Lynch flung herself inside, wearing a gray frock and loud square shoes.

  “The headmistress wishes to see Renée Winters.”

  Miss LaBarge put down her lecture notes and looked at me. “I suppose you have no choice.”

  I gathered my things and followed Mrs. Lynch into the hall, glancing back at Nathaniel and Eleanor, who were giving me questioning looks.

  “Out of your room after curfew,” Mrs. Lynch barked as she held me by the elbow. “With a boy. Outside without a pass. Running from a teacher.”

  “You’re not a teacher,” I muttered, but if she heard me she didn’t let on.

  “Better start packing your things,” she said with a sneer. “The headmistress has an extremely low tolerance for blatant disobedience.”

  The list of rules I’d broken was longer than I thought.

  Suddenly, the possibility of expulsion became frighteningly real. When I had first arrived at Gottfried, being expelled might have been the answer to all my problems. But now the thought was unimaginable, and not only because I didn’t have a home to go to. I loved my classes; I was leagues ahead of everyone in Horticulture, and I found Philosophy to be far more interesting than any of the classes I’d taken in California. For the first time in my life I was actually learning things that correlated to my interests. To my surprise, the classical subjects that Gottfried offered were far from outdated; in fact, I had a feeling they would be useful in the future, though I wasn’t sure how. Not to mention meeting Dante and Eleanor, and even Nathaniel. Yes, the only thing we shared was Gottfried, but now that my parents were gone, that was all I had.

  The headmistress’s office was in the northern wing of Archebald Hall. Calysta Von Laark was standing by a tall stained-glass window, petting a Siamese cat on the sill. A second Siamese twined between her ankles. Her wintery hair was parted to the right and pinned up with a silver comb, a frizzy wave of short white tresses falling across her left eye.

  When she saw us enter, she left the window and took a seat in a plum velvet chair behind her desk. Soundlessly, the cat jumped off the windowsill and followed her, leaping into her lap.

  Spanning the wall was a giant mural of The Last Judgment by Michelangelo. The mere sight of the painting was frightening. Crowning the ceiling were angels sitting atop a bed of clouds, the paint peeling off of their chubby faces in rosy flakes. Below them, throngs of men, women, and children clutched each other, covering their eyes and hiding their half-naked bodies, their faces contorted in pain while they waited for the final fall. Demons carrying clubs and pitchforks pulled them toward the abyss by their ankles while they thrashed about in the air, trying to grasp anything that would keep them in the blue world behind them.

  The floor was made of a dark marble. Words, engraved into the floor in Latin, circled the edge of the room and spiraled down to its center. I translated it roughly with the Latin I had learned from Dante. To capture the mind of a child is to gain immortality. It was the same phrase that the headmistress had recited at the Fall Awakening when she had tapped the Board of Monitors.

  “Renée,” the headmistress said, stroking the Siamese. A heavy sapphire ring rested around her slender middle finger. “Welcome.” Her tone was surprisingly gentle. Behind her, a wood and glass hutch filled with what looked like golden walking sticks was partially obscured by her desk. Above each stick was a plaque with a nameplate and a set of dates. Could this woman have buried Cassandra alive? Now that I was sitting across from her, watching her pet her cat, the idea seemed preposterous.

  Mrs. Lynch spoke up immediately. “She was outside past curfew with that boy Dante Berlin. And when I told them to stop, they ran away from me. And the girl is out of dress code.”

  “She didn’t tell us to stop,” I blurted out, before realizing that I had admitted I was guilty. Sighing, I looked down to inspect my skirt. It wasn’t out of dress code.

  “Untucked shirt,” Mrs. Lynch said. “And a run in the stockings.”

  I twisted around to look at the back of my legs, only to see a long run inching up my left heel. “That’s not my fault!” I protested.

  “Thank you, Lynette,” the headmistress said soothingly. “Would you give us a moment alone?”

  Mrs. Lynch gave a stiff nod and stepped outside.

  “Please,” said Headmistress Von Laark, “have a seat.”

  I sat in an upright leather chair across from her, staring at her brooch, which looked something like a bear. On top of her desk sat an hourglass filled with white sand, a globe, a stack of papers, and a small pile of books. Behind the desk, a narrow spiral staircase was carved into a stone wall, probably leading down into the bowels of the building.

  Headmistress Von Laark smiled. “So, you snuck out after hours to meet a boy?”
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  I swallowed and nodded. “Just a friend.”

  “How did you get out?”

  I couldn’t tell her about the chimneys, or they’d block them off for good. “I waited until Mrs. Lynch was on a different floor.”

  The headmistress gave me a curious look. “I see. And you ran away when she saw you?”

  I nodded. “But I didn’t mean to. I wasn’t thinking. It was dark and rainy. I couldn’t really see her.” I paused. “Please don’t expel me,” I said softly.

  The headmistress laughed. “I would have done the same thing.” The second Siamese cat leaped onto her desk. “Have you met my darlings?”

  “No, I don’t think so.”

  “This is Romulus.” The cat sauntered across her desk, meowed, and curled around the hourglass. “And this is Remus,” she said, stroking the cat in her lap. “Aren’t they handsome?”

  I nodded. “Very.”

  The headmistress leaned back in her chair. “So, tell me about this Dante Berlin.”

  I must have looked puzzled, because she continued, “You two are dating, no?”

  “No. We’re just friends.”

  Von Laark put a finger to her lips. “Hmm,” she murmured. “Are you sure?”

  I swallowed. Even if the headmistress had somehow found out about us, the best I could do was deny it. “Yes.”

  She gazed at me pensively, her blue eyes fixed on mine. “Professor Mumm tells me you’re excelling in Horticulture. She says you’re the best student she’s had in at least a decade.”

  I blushed. “It doesn’t feel that way. There’s still so much to learn.”

  She clasped her hands on her desk. “You’re just like your mother. Very modest.”

  “You knew my mother?”

  The headmistress nodded. “I was a professor of Philosophy here when your mother was a student.”

  Questions flooded my head. What was my mother like? What were her friends like? What did she look like? And had the headmistress also had my father as a student?