Dead Beautiful

  When I got to the dorm, I opened the door only to step into a big puddle of water. Startled, I jumped back to discover that the entire first-floor foyer was flooded. I ran upstairs, where I found girls crowding the hallways. Everyone looked sleepy and irritated, the freshmen complaining about the wet carpets in their rooms. I wandered through the crowd, looking for Eleanor, pushing past throngs of girls wearing robes and slippers, nightgowns, flip-flops, and oversized T-shirts. Finally I spotted Rebecca. She was standing in the corner with Charlotte, Greta, Maggie, and Bonnie.

  “What’s going on?”

  “There’s no running water,” Rebecca said.

  “What happened? The entire first floor is flooded!”

  “We don’t know,” said Maggie. “Lynch is on her way up now to tell us, I think.”

  “Have you seen Eleanor?”

  Maggie shook her head. She hadn’t put her contacts in yet, and seemed self-conscious in her glasses. “We figured she was with you.”

  “Oh,” I said nonchalantly, not wanting to let on that I wasn’t in my room last night. “Maybe she’s still in the room.”

  “Or maybe she’s with Genevieve,” Charlotte said. Her hair was pinned around her head in rollers. She was clutching a loofah and shower caddy with dozens of shampoo and cosmetic bottles inside. “She wasn’t in our room this morning when I woke up.”

  “She probably had an early Board of Monitors meeting,” said Maggie, almost bitterly. “She’s never around anymore.”

  Charlotte shrugged and started talking about her plans for winter break, when the door to the hallway swung open. Mrs. Lynch bounded down the hall, her heels clicking on the wood floors.

  “Girls,” she shouted.

  Everyone quieted down.

  “It seems there’s been a plumbing malfunction in the bathroom. It’s likely that one of the pipes froze overnight and burst. Maintenance should be here within the hour to fix it and drain the water from the first floor. In the meantime, Professor Bliss has generously offered us the bathroom in the boys’ dormitory. He’s in the process of evacuating them as we speak.” Professor Bliss was their dorm parent.

  A murmur ran through hall.

  “So get dressed and gather your toiletries. We’re heading over in fifteen minutes.”

  Stepping into the boys’ dorm was like walking into a parallel universe. The layout of the building was exactly the same, but the walls were painted a deep shade of maroon, and the sunlight seemed to dodge the windows, creating a shadowy atmosphere that would have been more fitting in a cigar shop. Everything smelled faintly of leather. A pair of dirty gym shorts dangled over the banister.

  The boys’ bathroom was in the western wing of the second floor, just like our dorm. The door to the showers was propped open, and steam billowed into the hallway. Eleanor hadn’t been in our room when I’d gone back to get my towel and soap. Her bed was completely undisturbed, the pillows puffed and the covers folded and tucked. So where was she? I walked through the rows of showers, listening for her, but all of the voices belonged to other people: first years, second years, third years, but no Eleanor.

  After I showered and got changed, I dawdled outside the bathroom door, waiting to see if she’d come out, but after the last girl left, I gave up and went downstairs, out into the white, wintery morning.

  When I got back to the girls’ dorm, Mrs. Lynch was standing on the stoop with four maintenance workers. They were all at least a foot taller than her, and dressed in periwinkle coveralls that were soaked from the waist down.

  I slowed as I passed them.

  “Something went really wrong with the pipes down there,” one of the men said in a gruff voice, wiping the sweat off his temples. Gray stubble climbed up his neck, and a grease-stained rag hung out of his pocket. “It’s impossible to tell where the leak is coming from. We’ll have to shut off the water in the building and drain it. In the meantime, you’ll have to make do with space heaters and the fireplaces. We’ll work on getting enough wood.”

  I lingered on the top step to wait for Lynch’s reply, but she must have noticed I was listening, because she glanced up at me and glared. Not wanting to get into any more trouble, I hurried through the doors and went back to my room, unable to shake the three words that kept running through my mind: The Gottfried Curse.

  I didn’t tell anyone else about the curse or my night with Dante. I would have told Eleanor, but she never showed up for Latin. Or Philosophy. In fact, she didn’t go to any classes at all. I sat taking notes while Miss LaBarge scribbled something about Descartes on the board. Every so often I forgot that Eleanor wasn’t there, and leaned over to whisper to her, only to be met with an empty chair. But I didn’t think much of it. Finals were coming up in a few weeks, and Eleanor’s grades were terrible. She’d been skipping meals all semester to go to the library.

  Without her, classes dragged by, and I grew frustrated with her for being gone when I had so many important things to talk to her about. Eleanor would surely have a theory about the heart attacks. “Radiation below the school grounds,” she might say. “Or a mass murderer equipped with a new kind of weapon that induces heart failure.” And the cloth in both my parents’ mouths and Benjamin’s were used as gags. Maybe they were electrocuted. Maybe someone was out to get Gottfried students. But why them in particular? Nathaniel was right: there was no such thing as curses. Only people and science. So that’s what I focused on, watching the clock, counting down the minutes until the last period, when I would see Dante in Crude Sciences. Last night seemed like a dream, except I could remember every detail—the way my stomach fluttered when he kissed my neck; the way the books fell at our feet, making us stumble around them; the way our bodies left a crescent-shaped crease on his bed. I unwrapped each memory like a gift, letting Dante’s velvety voice envelop me while I drifted off in class or waited on line in the dining hall. It didn’t matter that Professor Lumbar was in a particularly bad mood or that Professor Chortle made us solve proofs for an hour and a half.

  When fifth period rolled around, I walked to class anxiously, inspecting my reflection in the windows before opening the door to the Observatory.

  Professor Starking bustled in behind me just as the bell rang, carrying a box of films and a messy pile of papers.

  Dante was already sitting at our bench, his tie crisp around his neck and his blazer slung around the back of his chair. I approached slowly, watching him from a distance. A lock of hair dangled in front of his face as he wrote something in his notebook.

  I walked up the side of the aisle until I was just behind him, and looked over his shoulder. He was writing notes in Latin. Suddenly I felt nervous, as if everything I’d ever wanted in my life was on the verge of happening and I only had to reach out and take it. But just as I lifted my hand, Dante grabbed it without looking away from his notes. I gasped. He turned to me, and with the beginnings of a smile, he brought my palm to his lips and almost imperceptibly kissed it.

  We barely spoke during class. The sky was overcast, and Professor Starking switched off the lights and turned on a projector. Suddenly an image appeared on the wall. It was a photograph of outer space, of a rust-colored cloud of dust cresting upward like fingers.

  “The Pillars of Creation,” Professor Starking said. “This is what stars look like before they’re formed. They’re called celestial nebulas.”

  He flipped to the next slide, and then the next—each of different nebulas, their otherworldly forms projecting onto the darkened wall of the Observatory.

  “What did you want to tell me?” I whispered to Dante.

  “I can’t tell you here,” he replied, studying the images. “It’s too important.” In the blue light of the projector, his face emerged out of the darkness like a ghost. I tried to imagine what it was he wanted to say to me. He’d profess his undying love. Renée, he would say, I love you. Run away with me. We’ll go north into the wilderness and live desperately, dangerously. And I would say yes. Or maybe that’s not what he had p
lanned at all. If it was, why couldn’t he just say it here, in the darkness of the Observatory? Things said in private were usually bad things: things that were too shameful, too embarrassing to declare in the light of day, in front of other people. If he loved me, wouldn’t he want to tell me as quickly as possible? I self-consciously adjusted my skirt. Maybe he’d changed his mind. It had been dark in his room last night; maybe now he could see flaws he hadn’t noticed before—blemishes, the scar under my chin, the way my ears always seemed too large.

  Professor Starking stepped back to admire the nebula projected on the wall. “At first glance, they may seem strange and alien,” he said. “But all of us are made of the elements you see here. Their beauty lies in confusion. It gives them a kind of energy that fully formed stars don’t have.”

  While the slides were shifting, Dante inched closer to me and slipped his hand into mine. I trembled at his touch, his palms cool and dry.

  Neither of us dared to look at the other. Instead, we remained stoic, keeping our eyes trained on the pictures. I shifted closer to him, pressing my leg against his. To the rest of the class we looked like a boy and girl sitting side by side. But beneath the surface, everything within me was trying to burst out into a swirling cloud of particles, ephemeral and constantly changing, like stardust.

  By curfew Eleanor still wasn’t back. It was unusual: she always came back before lights-out, but I was too excited about meeting Dante to dwell on her absence. She was probably in the library, asleep in one of her books, or out working on the school play for the Humanities department. I would see her when I got back tonight, and then I could tell her everything.

  I sat on my bed, hovering over my books but not looking at them. Instead, I was gazing impatiently at the clock, counting down the minutes until I would see Dante. When the hands finally reached 10:45, I opened the flue, pulled myself into the chimney, and began to climb down to the basement. I was still wearing my school clothes—a herringbone skirt, black tights, and an oxford shirt with an overcoat on top to keep me from getting sooty.

  The climb didn’t seem so bad now that I had something to look forward to at the end. I was so anxious to see Dante that I barely noticed the cobwebs and dust and crumbling brick. But when I reached the bottom of the chute, something wasn’t right.

  The flue was only partially open, just enough for me to squeeze my body through. Instead of the normal hissing sounds that the furnace gave off, it was completely silent. In the distance, I could hear water trickling. And then drips, like a faucet leaking into a bathtub full of water.

  I climbed down a rung, and then another, until I was almost completely out of the chimney. But as I lowered my foot to the last rung, my leg became submerged in water. I pulled it back and leaned out the bottom of the chute to see what was going on.

  The entire basement was flooded with water, which had risen to just feet below the ceiling. I sighed, only now remembering what the maintenance workers had said to Mrs. Lynch outside the girls’ dormitory. The water was dark and placid, barely rippling from the disturbance of my foot. The hanging lights reflected dim yellow orbs in its surface, like beams of flashlights shining up from beneath.

  For some reason I felt pulled to the room, as though an invisible force were towing me down. I scanned the basement, searching for some way to get outside, but it was useless. Reluctantly, I climbed back into the chimney. My left shoe was soaked, and squeaked as I ascended, each step taking me farther and farther away from Dante. When I got back to my room I called his landline, but the phone rang and rang and rang, and I went to bed imagining him waiting for me in front of the chapel, leaning against the stone beneath the gargoyles, his face slipping into the shadows.

  It took ten days to drain all of the water from the basement. The Maine winter crept up on us early, preserving the entire campus in a thin layer of ice. It was early December and the ground outside was hard and impenetrable, so they pumped the excess water into the lake, using long floppy hoses that trailed across the pathways like the arms of a jellyfish. Every morning I stepped over them as I walked to class, unaware that the water inside was freezing, preventing them from emptying the basement sooner. If it had been eight days, or even nine, things might have turned out differently. But numbers are strange and uncontrollable; they operate under their own set of rules. And as I would soon discover, ten was an entire rule unto itself.

  In the meantime, we used the boys’ bathroom every morning at eight a.m., and every evening at eight p.m. But the problem in the basement was more than just an inconvenience. It meant that I could only see Dante in class. The basement was the only way out of the dorms at night, or at least the only way that I knew of.

  But let me start from the beginning. On the night that I discovered the flood, I had trouble getting to sleep. I paced around my room, staring at the fireplace, waiting for Eleanor to climb through it, but she never did. Eventually I gave up and collapsed in my bed. Pulling the covers over my head, I fell asleep, dreaming about Dante and our night together, and hoping that he was dreaming of me too.

  But the flood was just the beginning of a strange chain of events that was taking place at Gottfried.

  Eleanor didn’t come back the next morning. I woke up from a dream only to be sobered by the sight of her unruffled bed. I immediately went next door to Maggie and Greta’s room. Maggie opened the door with a yawn. She hadn’t seen Eleanor since Grub Day, which was already two days ago. I went to see Bonnie and then Rebecca, and finally Genevieve. They hadn’t seen her either.

  The last door I went to was on the first floor of the girls’ dorm. It was my last resort, and I lingered in front of it for a moment before building up the gumption to knock. But just as I raised my fist, the door swung open. I gasped and jumped back.

  Mrs. Lynch’s squat figure greeted me, her short hair making her look more like a man than a dorm mother. She looked me up and down. I checked my outfit, making sure all of my buttons were buttoned and buckles snapped, worried she was going to reprimand me for being out of dress code.

  “Yes?” she said, eyeing me with a quiet distaste.

  In a low murmur, I informed her of Eleanor’s disappearance.

  “What do you mean she’s missing?” she said sharply when I was finished.

  “She wasn’t here last night or this morning.”

  Upon hearing this news, Mrs. Lynch threw on a scarf and coat. “Why didn’t you report it sooner?”

  “I... I thought she was at the library.” Which was the truth.

  Mrs. Lynch slammed the door. “Come,” she said, already four steps ahead of me.

  I trailed behind her as she walked to Archebald Hall, asking me questions the entire way. When was she last seen? Did she have any reason to run away?

  I didn’t know. Maybe yesterday? And as for running away, she hadn’t packed up any of her things, and even if she had tried to leave, there was nothing beyond Attica Falls for miles.

  Our destination was the headmistress’s office, but she was exiting the building just as we were entering. The headmistress was dressed in a long luxurious coat, plush and blue with a deep hood. Her snowy hair fluttered in the wind, making her look like an aged nymph. “Headmistress Von Laark,” Mrs. Lynch called out. “This young lady has something to tell you.”

  After I finished, the headmistress addressed Mrs. Lynch. “Inform her parents immediately, and make a call to the ranger’s office. In the meantime, I’ll dispatch a search party.”

  The headmistress then inspected me, her blue eyes icy and unreadable.

  “I can help,” I said, verging on pleading. I couldn’t shake the feeling that Eleanor’s disappearance was somehow my fault. If I hadn’t stayed with Dante, if I had gone home that night or reported her missing earlier, maybe it would have been different. “I want to join the search.”

  “Certainly not. You are to go to class and focus on your studies.”

  “But she’s my roomma—” I tried to protest before the headmistress cut me off. br />
  “You are dismissed.”

  “Where were you?” said Dante, appearing out of nowhere in the hallway and pulling me beneath the stairwell. “I waited.”

  “I tried calling but you didn’t pick up,” I said softly. “The basement in the girls’ dorm is flooded. There’s no other way out after curfew.”

  Dante frowned. “I was worried something had happened. When you didn’t show up I waited outside the dorm trying to find your window, but they were all dark. By the time I got back to my room, it was so late that I didn’t want to call, in case Mrs. Lynch heard.”

  I meant to apologize to him, to explain how I had tried to meet him last night, but instead I blurted out, “Eleanor’s gone.”

  “What do you mean?” Dante asked, leaning over me against the brick, his brow furrowed in confusion.

  “She never came back last night. I don’t think she was there the night before, either. I... I don’t know if she ran away or if she was kidnapped, or I don’t know what. I mean, where could she go?”

  “You’d be surprised. There are a lot of places to go in this school if you don’t want to be found.”

  “But what if she does want to be found?” The thought made me feel sick.

  “Then she’ll be found,” he said pensively, though his mind was clearly somewhere else. “When was the last time you saw her?”

  “Just before Grub Day. She said she was going to skip it and go to the library to study.”

  Dante raised his eyes to mine as he pulled his bag over his shoulder. “I have to go.”

  “What? Where? Do you know something? Do you know where she is?”

  Dante shook his head. “If I did, I would find her for you.”

  “I know,” I said softly.

  “When can I see you again?”

  “We have class together in three periods,” I said, confused.

  “Alone, I mean.”

  I bit my lip. “With the basement off-limits, meeting after curfew is basically impossible. Maybe during study hall? I can meet you outside the Megaron after dinner.” His tie dangled in front of me, and I twirled it around my fingers.