Dead Beautiful (25 page)

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.

“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.

The bell rang, signaling the start of class, and the sound of footsteps pounded on the stairway above us. “I’ll be waiting,” Dante said, and smiled.

During lunch, Mrs. Lynch and Professor Lumbar searched our room. When they found nothing, they searched it again. It felt odd watching them going through my underwear drawer, tossing around Eleanor’s things. They even confiscated Eleanor’s notebooks, though after reading them they found nothing of interest except illegible scribbles and pages and pages of love notes written to Professor Bliss.

Mrs. Lynch confronted him about it just before fourth period. I was walking down the hall when I saw them in his classroom through the window in the door. I crouched outside and watched as Mrs. Lynch handed him Eleanor’s History notebook and crossed her arms.

Mr. B. flipped through it, reading the notes slowly. Suddenly he dropped the notebook and stood up, gesticulating wildly with his hands. They got into an argument. I pressed my ear against the door and listened.

“If you have an explanation, now’s the time,” Mrs. Lynch threatened.

Professor Bliss claimed he had no idea the love notes existed. “Eleanor was my student. Nothing more. It isn’t abnormal for a teenage girl to have a crush on her teacher. These things happen all the time. It doesn’t mean I abducted her.”

Unexpectedly, the knob on the door turned and the door swung open. I threw myself out of the way just before Mrs. Lynch stormed into the hallway with so much force that she didn’t even notice me pressed against the wall behind her.

I met up with Nathaniel and told him about Eleanor and what I saw as we walked to Philosophy.

“So the last time you saw her was after Grub Day?” he asked.

I hesitated. I had lied to everyone in order to hide the fact that I’d spent the night at Dante’s. But someone had to know the truth. I needed Nathaniel’s help. “No. It was actually the morning of Grub Day.”

Nathaniel looked confused. “What? But why did you tell everyone that—”

I cut him off. “I spent the night with Dante,” I said quickly. “Please don’t tell anyone.”

Nathaniel went silent. “So you don’t know when she disappeared?”

I shook my head.

“This is bad, Renée. Really bad.”

I swallowed. “I know.”

“Well, if we assume that whatever happened to her happened on Grub Day, then it couldn’t have been Professor Bliss. I even saw him later that night patrolling the boys’ dorms, so either way, he’s safe.”

“Why do you think it happened on Grub Day?”

“I mean, think about it. It’s perfect. Everyone is in town, including most of the professors and the Board of Monitors. So the real question is, who wasn’t in Attica Falls that day?” But the question was impossible to answer. There were far too many people, and besides, we hadn’t been keeping track.

“Do you think it could be...” My voice trailed off.

“The Gottfried Curse?” Nathaniel said, finishing my sentence. “Maybe.”

When we walked into class, Annette LaBarge was sitting on her desk, her legs dangling freely like a child on a swing. A glass of water sat by her side. Unlike my other professors, she taught everything as if it were a story.

“A long time ago, we used to believe that people were made of two things—the body and the soul. When the body died, the soul lived on and was cleansed and reborn into someone new. The idea was explored by many, though namely in Western culture by Plato, and then René Descartes.

“Descartes was a famous philosopher in his time. He was obsessed with death—he wrote about it incessantly. He even claimed to have discovered the path to immortality. He was going to reveal his secret in an essay he claimed would be his lifetime achievement, and which he worked on up until his death. He called it his
Seventh Meditation.
When he died, people believed that his death was a hoax, an experiment. They thought he had found a way to cheat death and become reborn.

“That, of course, was never proven, and Descartes was never heard from again. All that remained were his papers. People combed through them, searching for the
Seventh Meditation,
but they only found six, none of which contained anything about the key to immortality.

“After everyone had given up hope, rumors began to surface that they had found something buried beneath the foundation of his house. Descartes’
Seventh Meditation.
But the book was banned just before it was released. According to rumor, all copies were immediately burned, as were the men who had printed it. And before it could even be read, the book was gone, along with all of its secrets.”

While she spoke, I looked out the window, and watched the branches of the trees sway in the wind. A boy ran into Horace Hall holding a messy stack of papers, clearly late for class. A maintenance worker shoveled snow along the edge of the green. The flood, followed by Eleanor’s disappearance, seemed to fit with all of the other “accidents” that had been reported on in the article from
The Portland Herald.
And if Eleanor’s disappearance was related to Benjamin’s, then there was a good chance she would soon be found dead of a heart attack.

“We do, however, have glimpses into what his final work contained, facts that scholars have gleaned from other books published back then. In the
Seventh Meditation,
Descartes stated that children couldn’t die. He said that, unlike adults, the bodies of children only appear to be dead. After ten days, they wake up and live again, soulless. According to Descartes, children stop rising from the dead at the age of twenty-one. Some philosophers speculate that this is why the age of twenty-one now embodies the idea of adulthood.”

If I had only found a way to get to those files in the headmistress’s office, I might have found some piece of information that would have helped prevent whatever had happened to Eleanor. Quietly, I tore out a piece of paper from my notebook.

We have to find a way into the headmistress’s office

I folded the note, and when Miss LaBarge wasn’t watching, I passed it to Nathaniel. He gave me a cautionary look, as if he knew what I was planning to do and didn’t approve. Nonetheless, he scribbled down a response and passed it back to me.

I don’t think you need my help doing that.

I immediately felt stupid. Why hadn’t I thought of it before? I didn’t have to break into the headmistress’s office; I just had to get into trouble and be sent there. I had no idea how I would get to the files once I was inside, but I would deal with that later. Satisfied, I crumpled up the note and slipped it into my pocket.

After classes, the investigation for Eleanor began. One by one, we were called in for questioning. Solemnly, we watched each girl walk downstairs to Mrs. Lynch’s quarters. A door slammed. After fifteen minutes it reopened. And then the next name was called. No one spoke after their interview. With Eleanor missing and Mrs. Lynch arousing suspicions among the student body, the atmosphere in the dorm was grim.

Finally it was my turn.

“Winters!” Mrs. Lynch’s voice echoed from downstairs. On the way down I passed Minnie Roberts, who had gone in before me. I tried to say hello, but she kept her head bowed.

Mrs. Lynch’s quarters were strategically positioned right next to the entrance so she could hear anyone sneaking in or out. When I got there, the door was slightly ajar. I knocked. When no one answered, I pushed it open.

Mrs. Lynch was sitting in an overstuffed plaid armchair, her stubby feet resting on a matching ottoman. She was scribbling notes on a yellow legal pad.

“Shut the door,” she said without looking up.

The room looked like something a grandmother might live in. It had a low ceiling, dingy floral curtains, and a shag carpet. It smelled like potpourri and mothballs. The walls were decorated with pictures of lighthouses, which, upon closer examination, were not paintings, but needlepoint.

Finally Mrs. Lynch stopped writing and looked at me. “Miss Winters.”

There was nowhere to sit, so I stood in the middle of the room.

“Eleanor Bell has been missing for what seems to be two days now. You are her roommate, correct?”

I nodded.

“Eleanor never went to Attica Falls on Grub Day.”

“She said she was going to the library.”

“And did she return to the room that night?”

“No,” I said. “Wait, yes. Yes she did.”

Mrs. Lynch gave me a suspicious look. “In your short time here at the Academy, you have garnered quite the reputation for troublemaking.”

I gave her a confused look. “What?”

“Called to the headmistress’s office three times.”

“But the first time I hadn’t done anything—” I tried to say, but she continued.

“Caught severely out of dress code; breaking curfew with a boy; blatantly disobeying the authority of professors...”

“But that was all really just one time—”

“Talking out of line,” she said with contempt. “Where were you on Grub Day?”

“I was in Attica Falls. People saw me there; you can ask Nathaniel Welch. I was with him.”

“Where were you that evening?”

I hesitated. “I was in my dorm room, studying.”

“And what were you studying?”

“Latin,” I said quickly.

“And Eleanor was there that night?”

“Yes,” I lied.

“And you can produce no other witnesses of your whereabouts that night?”

“It was after curfew. We were alone in our room.”

She put down her pencil and clasped her hands together on her lap.

“Miss Winters, where is Eleanor Bell?”

“I... I don’t know.”

She sighed and then jotted something down on her pad. “I think you do.”

“But I don—” But she cut me off before I had a chance to respond.

“And you said that she wasn’t”—she picked up her pad, referring to her notes—“No, forgive me, that she
was
in your room that night?”

I swallowed and nodded.

“Yet conveniently, no one else saw her. Or you.”

I shifted uncomfortably, staring at a persian cat that had sauntered into the room and was glaring at me from the windowsill.

“So really you have no alibi for the night after Grub Day.”

“I do, but—”

“And you didn’t report her disappearance until today because you weren’t sure she was gone.”

“I would have, but—”

She jotted down one last note and shut her pad. “That will be all.”

By twilight, the search parties came. Professors and school administrators flocked to the green with flashlights and flares. They looked odd outside the context of class. Their casual clothes, boots, and raincoats made them look puttering and old, exposing the fact that they were vastly outnumbered by a campus full of teenagers.