Life Eternal (25 page)

“Don’t say that,” he said, hurt. “You know me better than anyone.”

“It doesn’t feel that way.”

“I’m sorry,” he said, his eyes a soft brown. “I was in Vermont. A town called Breaker Chasm. I haven’t been telling you because I thought it would be safer if you didn’t know.”

I leaned against my bedpost. “Breaker Chasm?” I said miserably, the words deteriorating as they left my mouth.

He nodded. “Do you know it?”

“No,” I whispered. “What—what were you doing there?”

Dante hesitated. “I was in hiding,” he said. “Like I told you I was.”

My lip began to quiver. I bit it and turned away, hoping he hadn’t seen. “What do you do when you’re in hiding?”

“I’ve been searching for an answer for us,” he said, beginning to grow worried. “You know that.”

I gripped the bedpost. “Searching where? In mailboxes?”

A flash of recognition passed over him. “Mailboxes?”

“Eleanor’s mother is dead,” I said.

“What?” he said, confused. “How do you know?”

“Don’t pretend like it’s a surprise,” I said. “You went to a farmhouse and took a piece of paper from the mailbox. It had Cindy Bell’s name on it.”

“It’s not what it seems,” Dante said, guilt etching itself into his face as he stepped toward me. But when he saw me grow rigid, he stopped.

“What was it, then? Why did you go there? What did you do with that slip of paper?”

Dante gripped the edge of the dresser. “Please,” he said. “Don’t ask me these questions.”

“Why not? I have a right to know.”

“You don’t understand,” he said. “If I tell you, I’ll be putting you in danger.”

“Why?” I closed my hand into a fist to stop it from shaking. “What kind of danger?”

Dante searched for an answer. “I can’t—”

Suddenly I was crying. “Did you kill her?” I said, so softly I wasn’t sure he heard me. “Did you kill Eleanor’s mother?”

“No,” he said, his voice wavering. “Of course I didn’t. You know I couldn’t.”

“You’re lying,” I said, studying him in horror, and backed away until I was against the wall. “And Miss LaBarge? Did you chase her boat in Lake Erie? Did you take her shovel and then follow her to the island and kill her?”

Dante’s expression widened with bewilderment. “I—I never killed her,” he asserted, though his voice cracked when he said it. He didn’t deny the rest.

“My visions,” I whispered. “They’ve been yours the entire time. You were looking for the secret of the Nine Sisters, and you never told me. Why? Why didn’t you just tell me the truth? What’s so bad about what you did that you had to keep it from me?”

“I wanted to tell you. I wanted to tell you more than anything.”

I waited for him to go on, to give me some explanation, but instead he seemed to shrink into the shadows.

Downstairs, the clock chimed midnight. “I don’t understand,” I said, my voice wild with desperation. “Tell me why you chased her. Why you took Cindy Bell’s name from a mailbox. Why you kept it a secret from me.”

Dante raised his hand to me, and then let it drop, as if he were apologizing. “Please,” he said, pleading. “You have to trust me.”

“Why?” I cried. “Why should I trust you? I don’t even know who you are.”

Dante’s eyes darted to the door, worried that I would wake someone up. “Of course you do,” he said in disbelief, his shoulders sinking as if I had wounded him.

I moved away from him to my bed, suddenly frightened. “You’re a murderer. I have the soul of a murderer.” He sucked in his breath like I’d slapped him, but I didn’t care.

“Don’t say that,” he said, shaking his head.

“What do you want from me?” I yelled. “Why are you here?”

“Because I wanted to see you,” he said. “Because I love you.”

Out my bedroom window I noticed a downstairs light turn on, casting a long yellow rectangle across the snow on the front lawn. Dante froze when he saw it. Dustin must have woken up.

“I don’t believe you,” I breathed.

Dante blinked, his chest collapsing as if there were nothing left inside him. And for a moment I could see him the way he used to be—the Dante that ran with me through the rain and pressed me against the blackboard, kissing my neck, my arms, my hands. The Dante that carried me through the field of flowers behind the chapel and gave my soul back to me.

And for reasons I can’t explain, I wasn’t scared when he came toward me, his hand gentle on my waist as he lowered his face to mine. This is it, I thought as he studied me. He is going to take my soul, and I am going to die. I closed my eyes, not wanting to see him when he did it. I felt his weight pressing against my body, his breath cool against my skin…and then, delicately, he kissed my cheek.

“I would die for you again if you asked me to,” he said so softly that I wasn’t even sure if I had actually heard him.

From down the hall, I heard footsteps. Surprised, I opened my eyes just as Dante vanished into the shadows of my room.

There were three soft raps on the door. Confused, my eyes darted about the darkness. What had just happened?

“Renée?” Dustin’s voice was muffled through the door. “I…heard something. May I come in?”

I rubbed my cheeks with my palms. “Just a minute,” I said, and, wiping the tears from my eyes, I opened the door.

Dustin looked a bit groggy, the left side of his face red from sleeping on his hand; but his eyes were sharp as they darted around the room.

“Is someone here?” he said, his voice more stern than I had ever heard it before.

“No,” I said, steadying my voice. “I was only reading.”

Dustin followed my gaze to my nightstand, where one of my textbooks was resting. “I’m going to go downstairs and clean up a bit. If you need anything, I’ll be in the kitchen.”

“I’ll help you,” I said, eager to take Dustin’s attention away from my room. “I wanted a glass of milk, anyway.”

Turning off the light, I closed the door, my eyes lingering for the briefest moment on the spot where Dante had just been standing.

Downstairs, I helped Dustin with the dishes in silence. When we were done, I poured myself a glass of milk and went upstairs. I entered my room cautiously, a gust of cold air enveloping me as I opened the door. But once inside, I realized that it was just an open window. Dante was gone. It was just cold air now. Pushing the window closed, I looked down to the lawn, where his footprints were already being filled in with snow.

R
ENÉE?” MY GRANDFATHER’S VOICE CALLED FROM
outside my bedroom door. “It’s time for lunch.” He paused. “Renée?”

“I’m not hungry.”

“You’ve barely eaten anything all week.” He turned the knob, and when he realized it was locked, he rattled it. “What are you doing in there?”

“Nothing,” I said, dragging a chair into my closet, which was still filled with my mother’s childhood things from when it was her room. “Go away.” I propped it against the wall, and when I thought my grandfather was gone, I climbed on top of it and patted around the top shelf until I felt a long leather case. Wedging it out, I pulled it onto the floor, where it landed with a thud.

“What was that sound?” my grandfather called. “Are you almost packed? We’re leaving in an hour.”

“Yes,” I yelled, opening the clasps on the case. “I’m fine. Just leave me alone.” Inside was a shovel, its wooden sheath dark with oil from my mother’s hands; its head speckled with rust. My fingers grazed the metal. It was surprisingly heavy when I lifted it from the box and held it upright. I gazed across the room to the mirror, trying to see myself for who I was. A Monitor.

I pulled down the back of my shirt and stared at the reflection of the mark on my back, watching the way it subtly changed from white to pink as I rolled my shoulders, the way its shape seemed to transform when I moved my neck, distorting from an oval to a skull to the silhouette of Dante’s face.

“There’s nothing between us,” I whispered, my eyes dark and heavy. And quickly, before I changed my mind, I tore a Band-Aid out of its wrapper and pressed it over the spot, covering him, embalming him, deleting him from my life.

Montreal was three feet deep in snow when I arrived later that evening. The wheels of my suitcase left two wobbly trails in the street as I pulled it down the alley that led to St. Clément. Just before I reached the gates, I stopped. My suitcase had gotten stuck in a ridge of ice. Turning, I tugged on the handle, when I noticed that it wasn’t just a ridge. It was a shape: a giant letter drawn into the sidewalk. I stepped back, pushing my hood from my face as I realized there wasn’t just one letter, there were many letters. Carved deep into the snowy ground beneath the streetlamp was a message written in Latin.

FORGIVE ME,
it read.

I let go of my bag as I spun around, searching the alley and the buildings for any trace of Dante. A doormat slung over a fire escape flapped in the wind. Otherwise, all was still. Pulling my coat closer, I stood over the message, my cheeks stinging from the cold as I watched the falling snow slowly fill in the letters. Forgive him? How could I? He still wasn’t being honest with me about what he had been doing.

After dropping off my suitcase, I went straight to Anya’s, where I knocked on the door and hovered by the broom closet across the hall, fidgeting with my skirt while she yelled through the door that she would just be a minute.

She answered the door in a silk robe. “Renée, I didn’t know you were back.”

“We have to go to Vermont,” I said.

She gave me a steady gaze. “Come inside.”

Her room was cluttered with clothes and shoes and lacy underwear. She pushed them off her couch and sat down next to me. “You had another vision.”

In her upper ear was a new piercing, which she rotated as I told her about the farmhouse and Cindy Bell’s name, about taking my mother’s shovel with me. I wavered before mentioning Dante. I wanted to tell her about him more than anything; the burden of it had been weighing down on me for so long that it seemed only natural to let it go. But for some reason, I couldn’t.

That was the first time I realized that I really wasn’t a great Monitor. If I were, I would have turned Dante in. I would have stopped him from leaving my room that night. I would have told my grandfather about him the next morning, and helped them hunt him down. So why hadn’t I?

When I was finished, Anya frowned. “But Cindy Bell wasn’t killed in Breaker Chasm. She was killed in Colorado. So what exactly did you see?”

“I don’t know. That’s why I have to go. I have to find out. Something could be hidden there. The last piece of the riddle, even.” What I didn’t tell her was that it wasn’t just the prospect of finding the riddle that was pulling me to Breaker Chasm. I needed to understand what Dante had been doing.

“So what do you think?” I said. “Will you come? I was thinking we could go on Saturday. We could take a train.”

“The day after tomorrow? I can’t.”

I gave her a puzzled look. “Why not?”

She stood up and went across the room to light a votive. “I have to help my dad at the store.”

“Can’t you take one day off?”

“No. It’s really busy this time of year,” she said, and blew out the match.

“It’s the middle of January in Montreal,” I said slowly. “Nothing’s busy. You can barely walk outside without getting windburn.”

“You haven’t been wearing the necklace I made you.”

I shook my head in confusion. “What?”

“You don’t like it?”

“The one with the beans?” I said. “It’s…not really my style. But why are you dodging my invitation? Do you just not want to go? Because you can tell me.”

“Fine,” she said. “I just don’t want to go.”

“Because you’re scared?” I pressed.

“Because I just don’t want to go,” she repeated. “And I don’t think you should go either.”

“Why not? Since when are
you
the voice of reason?” I said, picking up a wishbone charm adorned with feathers.

Anya’s face went taut, her lips parting as if she were about to snap at me, but instead she sank back into the couch. “Why don’t you take that?” She gestured at the charm. “You might need it.”

I stood up and tossed it on the couch. “Thanks, but I think I’ll manage on my own,” I said, and slammed the door.

Maybe she was right, I thought as I walked back to my room. Only an obsessed person would want to follow a dream to a strange farmhouse in Vermont. But what else could I do? Everything had already been set into motion; I couldn’t stop now.

Through the window, I could see the boys’ dormitory across the courtyard, its windows lit up. One of them belonged to Noah. He would understand that I had to go. He wouldn’t even need an explanation. And without thinking, I stood up and threw on my coat.

It was a frigid and still night, the trees white and motionless, as if the entire campus had been frozen over. I was halfway across the courtyard when I noticed a tall, huddled figure walking toward me. We crossed paths in front of the fountain, which was covered in a glossy layer of ice. I tightened my hood around my face.

“Renée,” a voice said.

I stopped walking and spun around. “Noah?” I pushed back my hood to get a better look, my hair prickling with static.

Noah was wearing a heavy fleece coat and leather boots. Snowflakes caught on his hair. “I saw the light in your window and wanted to say hi.”

“You know which window is mine?” I blurted out. The thought made me happy.

“But you’re going somewhere, I guess?”

“No,” I said, unable to stop the smile spreading across my face. “I was actually going to see you.”

“Do you know which window is mine?” he said, flattered.

I shook my head and stepped closer to him, hugging myself in the cold. “No. I guess I didn’t really have a plan.”

“Me neither,” he said. Unwrapping his scarf, he looped it around my neck.

“So how was your holiday?” he said, studying my face. His lips were pale red, the fog of his breath dissipating into the night just before it reached me.

“Can we go somewhere?” I said.

He motioned toward the back of campus. “This way.”

The lights in the gymnasium buzzed as he flipped them on. It was dark, empty, and the only sound was the trickling of water coming from somewhere in the locker room. Chlorine, I thought, trying to remember the way pools smelled, trying to will my senses to life. But it was no use. My shoes squeaked against the wooden floor as we ran through the basketball court and down the stairs, until we reached the pool. The water was blue and so still that I could see the ceiling’s reflection in it, making me feel like I had entered some backward, alternate world.

We took off our shoes and sat beneath the diving board, dipping our feet into the water as I told him about the farmhouse in Vermont, about the slip of paper with Cindy Bell’s name, and how I thought the last piece of the riddle could be there.

“Let’s go,” he said immediately. “Classes don’t start till Monday. It’s too late to go now, but could leave tomorrow. What should we bring?”

We sat there talking and laughing and planning our trip, our shadows melting together as he fell asleep by my side in a pile of towels. I watched him, his chest rising and falling, and wished that I could fall asleep in the crook of his arm; that a single word from his lips could remind me of how beautiful it was to be alive; that a touch from his fingers could inspire me to breathe deeper, to live slower, to be better; that I could fall in love with him.

On Saturday morning, Noah was waiting for me by the school gates, holding two coffees and a brown paper bag. It was a cold, yellow day, the sun partially obscured by clouds as we took a taxi to a boat station in lower Quebec, where we boarded a ferry.

The boat traveled slowly across Lake Champlain, the drone of the motor churning beneath us as we sat by a dingy snack bar near the window. Noah opened the paper bag and took out two dry brioches. “Chocolate or almond?”

I took the chocolate one and smiled. “Thanks.”

The boat was empty save for a few people loitering around deck, their parkas bloated with wind. Leaning over, Noah wiped a flake of pastry crust from my lips, his fingers lingering there for a moment too long.

The loudspeaker hummed and then amplified the captain’s voice. He spoke with a rural French-Canadian accent. “We are now leaving Canadian waters and entering the territory of the United States of America.”

“We’re in between worlds now,” Noah murmured, gazing out the window.

The water was a deep blue and extended as far as I could see, the sky reflecting off of it as if there were no beginning or end to the horizon, and we were suspended somewhere in the middle. Just like I was suspended somewhere between life and death, between my world and Dante’s.

It was late in the afternoon when we disembarked on a desolate dock on the northern tip of Vermont. The sky was streaked with red as the sun sank behind the mountains in the distance.

Three taxis were waiting in the parking lot. Noah and I approached the closest one. The driver was asleep, his head perched on his fist. A newspaper was spread open over the dashboard. Hesitantly, I knocked on the window. After jolting awake, he rolled down the glass.

“Where are you headed?” He was a gaunt man with gray stubble and wild, overgrown eyebrows.

Unfolding the scrap of paper from my pocket, I read him the address from my vision. With a grunt, he motioned to the backseat. As we climbed in, he pushed the newspaper to the passenger’s seat and drove off.

Unrolling the window, he lit a cigarette. A cherry air freshener swayed beneath the rearview mirror. “How far away is it?” I asked, leaning in between the seats, when a bump sent me toppling into Noah’s lap. His warmth caught me off guard, and I jumped, surprised at how outside of me he felt. Is that what it would feel like to touch Noah, to kiss Noah, to be with Noah—a shock of the unfamiliar? The driver mumbled something back that sounded like
twenty minutes,
and turned on the radio to easy listening.

The landscape was frozen and glassy, the trees coated in a delicate layer of ice as we drove past dimly lit farmhouses and snowy fields protected by wooden fences. Just before dusk fell over the treetops, we passed a familiar sign. breaker chasm welcomes you!

“We’re close,” I said, gazing at the streetlights, the closed shops, the gas station; each looking exactly as they had in my vision. With a finger, I wrote the phrase
Fait Accompli
in the fog of the window.

“
Irreversible Action,
” Noah translated. “Why did you write that?”

I stared at the phrase. “I don’t know,” I said, before wiping it away with my palm.

The road was potholed and slippery as we rolled past a crooked tin mailbox standing at the entrance of a long driveway. I turned around and watched it through the rear window, remembering the way it had looked in my vision, buried in snow.

“Wait, stop!” I said, pointing to it. “That’s it.”

Putting the car in reverse, the driver looked over his shoulder, his face impatient as he backed up over the ice. Before he stopped, I opened the door and jumped out to read the side of the mailbox. It was printed with the same address as the one in my vision. Beyond it was a yellow farmhouse and barn.

We paid the driver to wait for us for an hour. “Any longer, and I’m gone,” he said, and pulled over to a flat spot beneath a tree, where he turned off his headlights. Just as they went out, a thin breeze blew through the trees, wrapping itself around my neck.