Dead Beautiful

  With a start, I opened my eyes.

  Eleanor’s face was inches away from mine, her ringlets grazing my pillow.

  “Eleanor?” I asked. With a start, she jumped back. “What are you doing?”

  “Renée,” she said, surprised. “I was just checking to see if you were awake.”

  I sat up and backed against the wall, giving her a frightened look. “Are you sure?”

  Eleanor nodded. “Yes.”

  I kicked off the covers and rubbed my eyes.

  “Renée, are you scared of death?” She was looking intently at me, but seemed as if her mind were elsewhere.

  “No. I think I’m scared of dying, though.”

  “What do you think it’s like?”

  “I don’t know,” I said slowly. “I always imagined it’s like falling asleep and never waking up.”

  She paused. “Renée, there’s something I need to tell you.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  “I’m... I’m...” She sighed. “I don’t know how to explain it. Professor Bliss did such a better job in class.”

  I straightened out my pajamas. “You don’t have to explain. I know.”

  Eleanor paused, her forehead wrinkling with surprise. “You do?”

  “The Undead.”

  Upon hearing the word, Eleanor’s shoulders slumped. “Yeah. How did you find out?”

  “Dante.”

  Eleanor looked at her feet and then took a step away from my bed. “You must think I’m a monster.”

  I shook my head, silencing her. Finally I spoke. “What was it like?”

  “Being reborn?” She closed her eyes. “It felt like being woken up from a dream. Like the way you feel when you take a nap in the afternoon, and you wake up and you’re not sure where you are or what day it is, and the line between yesterday and today and tomorrow is blurry.”

  She let out a sad laugh, and there was a long silence as we both considered everything that had happened. I imagined Eleanor drowning alone in the basement. It was a harrowing image.

  “Life after death. It’s got to exist,” Eleanor said. I knew she wasn’t referring to life literally, but an emotional life after death. She looked at me for an answer, her eyes searching for meaning.

  “Yeah, I think it does.”

  This seemed to put Eleanor at ease. “So what would you do if you only had a few days left to live?”

  She waited for me to answer. I considered all the things I wanted to do—backpack through the Himalayas, see the pyramids, take a road trip across America, learn Spanish, live in the city and then in the country, write a novel—the list seemed endless. “I think I would try to spend as much time as I could with the people I cared about.”

  Eleanor considered it. “Me too.”

  I curled up beneath the covers. I told her about the files, about Cassandra and how she had accidentally killed Benjamin, and finally about Dante. “What do you think happened to Cassandra? Do you think the school buried her, like Minnie said?”

  Eleanor looked troubled. “No.”

  “Yeah,” I said quickly, “they wouldn’t do that.”

  We lay there until the early hours of the morning, talking about the things we wanted to do, the places we wanted to go, the kind of people we wanted to be.

  By the middle of March—the ides, as Professor Urquette ominously called them—the weather had warmed and the snow was just beginning to melt. As the water trickled down the sides of the pathways, the campus and all of its secrets were slowly revealed—the yellow grass, soggy and matted down; the benches and statues and fountains that punctuated the natural landscape; and the occasional Frisbee or garden spade or mitten.

  I had barely seen Nathaniel since break; he was busy with the school play, in which he had one of the leading roles as Electra. Sometimes I helped him practice his lines after lunch. I never imagined that he’d be interested in acting; it always seemed like numbers were his natural language, not English. But when he took off his glasses and delivered his lines, he transformed into a suave, confident hero, his voice deep and rich and entirely not his own. Otherwise, the only real time we spent together was in class. We had math in room π, commonly referred to as “the Pi Room,” not to be confused with the dessert section of the dining hall.

  Professor Chortle was round and cherubic, with thin lips and rosy cheeks that bespoke an uncorrupted innocence that he could only have obtained by spending all of his formative years indoors, thinking about math.

  Imaginary Numbers, he scrawled on the board.

  “Imaginary numbers are numbers that exist in a different world than ours. As a result, we can only sense their existence.” All of his lectures had a dreamy quality to them despite their content, making it seem like his natural habitat wasn’t here, but in some Renaissance landscape, where he would spend his days sprawled out on the grass, nibbling an apple and pondering the meaning of infinity.

  I chewed on my pen. Nathaniel was sitting across from me, his eyes glued to the board.

  “For example, when people act older than their age, it usually means they have a lot of imaginary years behind them,” the professor explained.

  I tore off a corner of my notebook paper.

  Do you think Eleanor is okay?

  I was pretty sure Nathaniel was Undead, but I hadn’t talked to him about it. What would I say? Are you dead? But now that Eleanor was Undead too, I couldn’t avoid it any longer. I folded up the note and tossed it into his lap when the professor wasn’t looking.

  Surprised, he looked down at it and turned around to scowl at Yago, who was sitting behind him. Then he brushed the note out of his lap and onto the floor.

  I tried to get his attention, but he was too involved in the lecture. I dropped my pencil on the floor, leaned across the aisle, and picked up the note. This time I made sure to write his name on it, and tossed it into his lap again. Nathaniel was about to turn around again when I caught his eye.

  Finally he figured it out. He unfolded the note and then scrawled something back.

  I think so? Why wouldn’t she be?

  I considered how to respond.

  She looks exhausted, but she can’t sleep or eat. She’s cold all the time but barely notices it. She doesn’t enjoy doing any of the things she used to do. She talks about death all the time.

  Nathaniel stared at what I wrote, clearly surprised that I knew. I waited until he tossed it back and unfolded the paper.

  She sounds depressed.

  His response was baffling. Nathaniel was Undead; I was almost sure of it. I was also sure that he fully understood what I was telling him. My message wasn’t that subtle. Yet for some reason he was being obtuse. I wrote back.

  I know what you are.

  Nathaniel avoided my gaze as he read it.

  I don’t know what you’re talking about.

  I shook my head, holding my pencil over the page, unsure of how to proceed. Why was he lying to me?

  You don’t have to pretend. There’s nothing wrong with it. I won’t tell anyone.

  He wrote a quick note back.

  Thanks, but there’s nothing to tell. Pretending to do what? Are you coming to the play tomorrow?

  I knew that Nathaniel was insecure, but I never realized he was in such denial. I crumpled the note in my fist and nodded.

  The performance was to take place in front of the great oak at sunset. Ever since coming back to Gottfried after winter break, Eleanor hadn’t felt comfortable in large crowds. Everyone always pointed and whispered, so instead of going to the play, she went to the library to catch up on her homework. I met up with Dante in front of the dining hall, and we walked over together.

  Rows of benches were set up on the edge of the green, which was lit by six massive torches positioned around the lawn in a semicircle. Dante took my hand and pulled me toward the back. We found a spot on the edge of the green under a large maple tree, and sat down. We couldn’t see much of the stage because of the benches in front of us, but neither of
us minded. Soon the din of the crowd grew hushed, and a line of students, headed by Gideon, filed onto the stage.

  I pretended to watch the play, but I was only paying attention to Dante sitting beside me, his shirt grazing my arm. Through the darkened silhouettes of the treetops I could just make out the campus buildings, each engraved and named after a philosopher or headmistress or master: a looming reminder that we were surrounded by the dead.

  Dante moved closer until our arms were touching. In the eerie torchlight of the far distance, the chorus recited words about murder and betrayal, enveloping us with voices from the ancient world.

  “‘Woman,’” Dante whispered in time with the chorus onstage. “‘Be sure your heart is brave; you can take much.’”

  My head resting in my palm, I looked up at him, perplexed. “Do you have every book memorized?”

  “I’ve been alive for a while,” he said. “It’s not as difficult as you think.”

  Taking my hands in his, he pulled me into his lap and wrapped his arms around me. “Two lovers, doomed to death,” he said, explaining the play as he nibbled on my ear. “Killed out of jealousy.”

  “Doomed,” I murmured, gazing out into the night.

  “‘There is a breath about it like an open grave,’” Dante recited in time with the actor playing Agamemnon’s lover, Cassandra, on the stage.

  I couldn’t believe that this was, in many ways, my story too. I closed my eyes, listening to the words, wishing we were somewhere else, anywhere else, as if that would help the fact that Dante was going to die and there was nothing I could do to stop it.

  Dante faced me, his eyes sad and watery as they gazed into mine. “‘I am going in, and mourning as I go my death and Agamemnon’s. Let my life be done.’”

  “‘Let my life be done,’” I repeated, pressing my forehead to his, our fingers and legs intertwined as if we were two people sharing one body. And together we listened to students recite the lines that Aeschylus had written thousands of years ago, about obsession and desire, about vengeance and curses and lovers, doomed to die side by side.

  But our reverie was interrupted by an unnaturally long silence. We turned to the stage, where the boy playing Orestes was standing onstage, blinking blindly into the audience as if he were confused.

  All was quiet as everyone watched him. He repeated his line and leaned back, signaling Professor Urquette urgently.

  The crowd began to murmur. “Did he forget his lines?” someone said.

  I stared at the stage. “This is where Nathaniel is supposed to come in,” I said to Dante. “I helped him practice his lines. Where is he?”

  Then, from behind the torches, someone pushed a skinny boy out onto the lawn.

  “That’s not Nathaniel,” I said, staring at the pasty redhead.

  And it wasn’t; it was his understudy, a lanky third year named Kurt Mayburg. He wasn’t in costume, and looked wholly unprepared. Orestes repeated his line, and Kurt was just about to give Electra’s response when the ground beneath him collapsed. All at once he fell, grasping at the air until he disappeared into the earth.

  The audience went silent for a moment, unsure of whether or not it was part of the performance. I arched my neck, trying to see what was happening between all of the heads in front of us. Someone in the front row screamed. The crowd erupted in chaos.

  Dante and I stood, trying to see what had happened. Headmistress Von Laark, Professor Bliss, Professor Lumbar, and Miss LaBarge were pushing through the throngs of people to the front. They knelt around the hole in front of the great oak, the headmistress shouting inaudible commands at Professor Bliss, who lowered himself into the hole.

  Around us, people were running down the aisles; some were screaming, while others were gathering at the front, trying to see what had happened.

  Suddenly a hand shot out from the top of the hole, grasping at the edge of the dirt. Professor Lumbar and Professor Chortle grabbed it and pulled, dragging Professor Bliss out of the hole and onto the soggy grass. He was holding a body.

  I clutched my collar. It was Nathaniel; I knew it was, even though he was so covered in dirt, I couldn’t see his face. Pushing through people, I forced my way to the front. Dante followed a step behind. Amid the chaos of the crowd I couldn’t see anything except for Kurt climbing out of the hole, coughing and shaking dirt from his hair. Everyone else was standing over Nathaniel. Two nurses from the audience had run to his side and were checking his pulse, feeling his chest for a heartbeat, opening and closing his eyelids, shining a tiny flashlight into his pupils. Nathaniel remained unresponsive.

  By the time I made it to the front, they were already carrying Nathaniel to the nurses’ wing. Mrs. Lynch and a few of the administrators were attempting to keep students away from the hole. “Is he okay?” I kept asking over and over, but no one seemed to know the answer.

  Up ahead, I spotted Annette LaBarge. She was standing with the headmistress and Professors Lumbar and Urquette in a secluded area of the lawn. I moved behind the trees until I was within earshot, and listened, with Dante just behind me.

  “Did you authorize this?” Professor Lumbar said in a voice so low I thought I might have misheard her.

  I looked at Dante. “What does she mean, authorize it?”

  Dante shook his head and put a finger to his lips. Maybe she meant authorize the play being performed over the catacombs.

  The headmistress looked agitated at the question, and hesitated before answering. “No. And this is not the appropriate place to discuss such matters.”

  “Students are being attacked, Calysta,” Professor Lumbar said firmly. She stood like a stone fortress next to Miss LaBarge’s slender body, her hands braced over her enormous hips like a jail warden. “Appropriate place doesn’t apply anymore.”

  “Edith is right,” Miss LaBarge said. “We should send the students home. It isn’t safe here. The incident last spring, and then Eleanor Bell, and now this.”

  “Last spring has nothing to do with this,” the headmistress said, gazing at the hole in the ground. “I have it under control.”

  “Last spring has everything to do with this,” Miss LaBarge said. “You can’t ignore the facts. Three students are dead. Nathaniel might never fully recover from this. And if we can’t find the person behind it, we shouldn’t allow students to stay at this school.”

  When the headmistress finally replied, her voice was sharp and cold. “Enough. You’re out of line, Annette. This matter is closed.”

  They dispersed as the headmistress strode off to Archebald Hall. “Fill that hole,” she said to the maintenance workers as she passed them. “It’s a safety hazard.”

  I motioned to Dante and we snuck past Mrs. Lynch, making our way to the edge of the hole. The dirt crumbled as I knelt down. It was deep and gaping, and opened into some sort of chamber that must have been part of the tunnel system. The catacombs, I thought, staring at the roots of the great oak, which broke through the ceiling of the chamber, their tendrils hanging over the center of the cavern like a gnarled wooden chandelier.

  At the bottom was a giant mound of dirt and sticks and grass where Kurt had fallen. “Someone must have buried Nathaniel alive,” I said to Dante. “Just like they did to Cassandra. And then Kurt fell through under the weight of the actors. But who would bury him? And right below the school play?”

  “Someone who wanted him found,” Dante murmured, deep in thought. “Just like Eleanor. The person who killed Eleanor wanted her to be found too. A flood isn’t the easiest way to kill someone, or the most inconspicuous. The person who trapped Eleanor wanted her to become Undead....”

  Behind me, Mrs. Lynch was ushering everyone back to the dormitories while the professors convened in a group by the oak to discuss what to do next. Hoisting myself up, I felt something hard in the soil. I pushed the dirt away until I found, buried beneath it, Nathaniel’s glasses. I wiped them off with the bottom of my shirt and joined the crowd. I slowed as we walked past the professors.

&nbs
p; “I don’t know how this went under the radar,” Professor Lumbar said. “The Board of Monitors has been patrolling the grounds at night, and the headmistress wasn’t aware of it.”

  Aware of what? That the board was patrolling?

  “Who was on patrol tonight?” Miss LaBarge asked.

  “Brandon Bell,” replied Professor Lumbar, her tone ominous, as if the fact that this had occurred while he was patrolling made it all the more distressing.

  “Do you think a student is behind this?” Professor Urquette asked.

  “I don’t know. At this the point, all we can do is conduct a thorough search, and hope the boy saw his attacker,” Professor Lumbar replied.

  But I knew they wouldn’t find anything, because at Gottfried, as in a Greek tragedy, the violence always seemed to happen offstage.

  CHAPTER 16

  The Burial of Nathaniel Welch

  I COULDN’T SLEEP. AND SINCE ELEANOR COULDN’T either, we kept each other company until the sun rose over the mountains. From the window of our dorm room we watched the professors run back and forth between the nurses’ wing and the boys’ dormitory, their flashlights bouncing around on the patches of yellow grass like fireflies. I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was reliving the past.

  When morning broke, I went directly to the nurses’ wing. It was on the fifth floor of Archebald Hall. I knocked. Suddenly it cracked opened, and I stumbled forward, catching myself in the door frame.

  A nurse stuck her head out. “Yes? May I help you?”

  She was short and stubby, with thick fingers, a tight bun encased in a hairnet, and a name tag that read Irmgard. Dark bags hung under her eyes. She looked like a person who had spent the majority of her life being miserable.

  “I’m here to see Nathaniel Welch.”

  “I’m sorry, but no visitors are allowed in right now.” She began to close the door.

  “But I’m his friend.”

  “Mr. Welch is still unstable,” she said, her voice stern. “Unless you also have a health problem, I’m afraid it will have to wait until tomorrow.”