The Unseemly Education of Anne Merchant (39 page)

Nothing has ever been so clear to me as what I feel right now. What I
know
right now. And that is this: I need to get my vial. Gigi may be okay with the randomness of waves determining if she is or isn’t vivified here, but I can’t risk anyone having control of my destiny but me. Even if it separates me from Ben; I know I won’t let us be forever parted.

“My vial or bust,” I whisper, stuffing my hair into a quick bun, pulling on my shoes, slipping on my school cardigan. I shove my hands into my cardigan pockets. And there I feel it. Like someone put it there for me.

I pull it out. The key to the closet off Valedictorian Hall. I forgot to put it back today when I ran from Teddy. What follows can only be described as an epiphany.

Valedictorian Hall is kept locked for a reason. The plaque outside the hall—I read it once, thinking it was a word game. What did the rubbed letters spell again? It started with the word
via,
but then it got messy. Could it have been
vials
?

I’ll find out soon enough. That’s where I’m headed.

As I jimmy the window up again, I glimpse the book Ben left for me; it’s open on my dresser.
Doctor Faustus.
I scoop it up and glance at the highlighted section on the page:

MEPHISTOPHELES

That I shall wait on Faustus whilst he lives,

So he will buy my service with his soul.

FAUSTUS

Already Faustus hath hazarded that for thee.

MEPHISTOPHELES

But, Faustus, thou must bequeath it solemnly,

And write a deed of gift with thine own blood;

For that security craves great Lucifer.

If thou deny it, I will back to hell.

As I read, I recall the words Teddy shouted that first day, when he and Villicus were pushing me to sign my forms in blood: “Thou must bequeath it solemnly!” And I recognize the final line—“If thou deny it, I will back to hell”—which I’d seen in Ben’s notebook, at the bottom of one of his sketches. Both phrases spoken by Mephistopheles, prince of Darkness, the demon who took Faustus’s soul…

I throw the window up. Holding onto the ledge, I teeter out onto the roof’s slick surface as rain continues down and freezes instantly. How Ben navigated this, I don’t know. And I don’t have time to think through every step. Plus broken bones heal fast here, right?

So I let go.

Feel my body slip through a cold blast of air.

And land in a heap on the ground, something cracking.

As I stagger to my feet, I hear a gun fire inside Gigi’s cottage and look up. Briefly, I think that perhaps Gigi came up to my room to shoot me. But I know that’s not true. I know how unhappy she was. And I know now that her speech only moments ago was not merely the rambling of an old drunk. She needed to escape Villicus’s hold on her—on her entire enslaved village—as much as I do. But rather than dragging her body to sea, as she wanted, I run.

To the school. To Valedictorian Hall. To find and destroy my vial before Villicus, evil incarnate, gets me.

twenty-five

STRANGER THAN FICTION

IT’S BLACK OUT, WET, ICY COLD. THE ROAD IS SLICK, AND
rain pours.

Bounding along at midnight, I realize that once Teddy knows I’m gone, I’ll have maybe half a second before Villicus tracks me down. And I’d better be damn ready to get out of here then. That means I’ll need to have my vial in hand. And a solid plan to destroy it—whether burning it like Molly was burned or throwing it off the island like Villicus threw Lotus’s and like Gigi, who may already be vivified in her cottage, wanted for her body.

“Say good-bye to Ben,” I tell myself, choking up as my fists cut through sheets of slushy rain.

Rain cascades over my face and clothes, but even if it didn’t, I’d be chilled to the bone with the thought of whom I’m abandoning Ben to. The more I think about it—and I really shouldn’t think about it—Villicus can only be some otherworldly evil being. As unfathomable as that is. Which means this is no fairy tale. And I am no hero, protected by the goodness of her intentions, en route to slay a common villain. I’m just a half-dead kid trying to outsmart a man who has powers over life and death. If I’m not smart, I’ll be dead before I know it.

With my pulse pounding like a villager’s drum, I arrive, chest heaving, at the enormous locked doors of Valedictorian Hall. I fly toward the plaque I noticed last week, shove the vines aside, and let my eyes skip over the missing letters:

       
-aled-ctori-n, you shine, you exce-,

       
Now to each of your peer-, bid a blessed f—well

       
From this isle of -ope to success, do proce-d,

       
Eve- active, ever after, with endl-ss Godspeed.

“
Vials are here
,” I piece together.

But my stomach quickly sinks.
Why
are the letters rubbed away? Students over the years must have tried to do exactly what I’m doing now. To retrieve their vials and escape Villicus. How did those valiant attempts end?

Racing around the side of the building to the closet, I fumble with icy fingers for the key in my cardigan, which is slicked against me now. Clumsily, I shove it into the keyhole. Storm in. Leap over boxes and brooms. Pull the cord for the light.

Still high on adrenaline, I shove a heavy steel shelf directly under the opening in the shaft and scurry up it like I’m climbing a ladder.

I hop in the opening. Shimmy through the ducting.

I’m moving so quickly, I barely notice the end of the shaft: it’s wide open. The cover into Valedictorian Hall has been removed. I’m a half-foot away from it when it occurs to me that this is a very, very bad thing.

At exactly that moment, a long, thin arm reaches into the duct, clutches my hair, and yanks me forward. I half-scream, half-choke on dust as I’m jerked out of the shaft and, stunningly, with incredible force, thrust fifteen feet down to the floor.

My bones crunch.

A sob pushes out of me with the last breath in my lungs. Gasping, I lift myself to my knees and turn.

Standing before me is the girl with the bobbed brown hair. She is alone in here. And she is dressed in her smartly pressed school uniform, as if it’s the beginning of a school day, not the middle of the night.

“Hiltop?” I choke out.

“Hiltop P. Shemese—a pleasure,” she says, making an unnecessary formal introduction.

My gaze darts back to the duct she just ripped me out of. It’s high on the wall, much higher than she could possibly reach. Yet, somehow, she did. Without a ladder. A cold sweat washes over me, head to toe, although the room is sweltering, lit end to end by candles. Thousands of them. The heat they emit quickly dries the icy water that soaked my hair and clothing. “What are you doing here?” I ask.

Tilting her head sweetly, she crouches next to me and caresses my hair. Even before her soft touch changes, even before her hand clasps my curls, every cell in my body comes awake—and I realize that
Villicus
may not have been the problem.

“Please,” Hiltop sings, gripping my hair at the roots,
“come in.”

With that, she drags me, grunting and kicking, by my hair across the vast wooden floor and, with strength unfathomable, flings me smack into the center of the room. I cry out and grasp at the lacquered floor to slow myself; as my cries fade, I spin, struggling to get a grip, and eventually stop revolving. Dizzy, I notice that the rows of chairs I saw yesterday are gone. The hall is bare, save the candles, the perimeter of oversized framed portraits of valedictorians, me, and her.

At the far end of the room stands the wall of tiny drawers, nameplates on each, running the height of the arched ceiling.

That wall must be used to store our vials. Those nameplates are ours. My vial—my freedom—is in there.

I hear a waltz I recognize by Franz Liszt. Fingers on an unseen piano pound furiously, dance madly. The music sends a shiver like an electric current through me as I watch this thin, simple-looking girl pace the floor just beyond my reach. I search the empty hall. The only way out is through the front doors, which are impossibly far away and always locked.

“How can it be
you
?”
I haven’t yet caught my breath when I try to scream at her, “Who are you?”

“Look closer,” she begins, smoothing her skirt. “That’s your
prosperitas thema,
after all. It’s ambitious, to say the least. Too bad for you, you’re not ambitious enough to rise to it.”

“I got here, didn’t I? I figured this much out.” I counter, my veins filling with electricity. “It barely took me two weeks to learn, on my own, the truth about this place.”

“The truth? Coming from a girl who’s been asleep for over two years just to
hide
from the truth.” She smiles as Liszt turns gay and light. Surrounding her are more than fifty years of valedictorians, also smiling in their portraits. “Enlighten me.”

“I know everyone’s dead. I know they’re vivified here. I know the villagers would rather be killed than sent to this hellhole.”

“
And
? Do you know about this?”

Hiltop snaps her thin fingers. The doors to the hall fly open with a gust of wind that sends me careering helplessly backward. I gain my balance and peer at the doorway. Panicked whispers sneak in from the darkness, beyond where I can see. And then two people float in from beyond the doorway. Followed by another two. And another.

Except they aren’t people at all. They’re translucent apparitions.

Dressed in cap and gown, they march into the hall.

Then, all at once, they
stop.
In unison, the ghostly graduates turn silently my way, their shadowed, decaying faces gawking, their long teeth yellow and exposed in their mouths, dark like coal. Deep, sorrowful gashes crease their faces. And their eyes. Empty sockets flickering as they follow my every flinch.

“Fifty candidates attend the graduation ceremony,” she calls over the wind. As the last apparitions enter, the doors slam shut. “Only one walks out, free to roam the world at will. Did you know
that
?”

Returning her glare, I boldly nod. “Yes, I know all about the Big V.”

Her grin thins. “Someone told you.”

“No one told me.”

I can see that she doesn’t want to believe I was capable of figuring things out on my own, as if her demonic mind can’t allow me to show any signs of intelligence. So I decide not to tell her that I know our blood needs to be on this island to vivify us. Because it might wake a bigger beast than I can handle, and because I don’t want to tell her that I know our vials are kept in the wall behind her—the wall I need to get into.

She saunters toward me, staring at me on my knees. With a violent shove I didn’t see coming, she sends me onto my back and swiftly lowers her small foot onto my chest, pushing firmly down on me, so firmly I sputter while trying to exhale. For the most endless moment, she holds me there like a beetle whose leg she’s caught under her shoe.

“Did you know about
me,
Miss Merchant? Do you know who I am?”

“You,” I stammer, “are a surprise.”

That pleases her, and she lets up on me, turning to walk toward the wall of drawers.

“The Zin boy didn’t tell you about me?” she calls back. “I know he tried, sweet little lovesick moron. The literary game you played outside this very hall. The book he left on your bed. If it wasn’t for his father’s utility, your pathetic boyfriend would be dead. Again.”

“Ben didn’t do anything or tell me anything. I promise.”

Spinning back to me, Hiltop feigns a gleeful grin and pulls her hands to her chest, mocking me, mocking Ben.

“Oh,
love
!”
she cries. “How
wonderful
that you would protect him now when he has never protected you. He’s more worried about his dead sister than he is about you—even though you still have the chance to live! Dear, sweet Ben had nothing but time to simply tell you the truth about me. He lived next door to you. He had limitless access to you. And yet he gave you only hints and chose to protect Jeannie. What kind of love is that?”

“Don’t act like you
know
about love,” I hiss. “Ben trusted that I could figure everything out in time, and I did.”

“Not everything,” she tsks.

Suddenly, she dashes at me and, holding my fists, straddles me. Her impossibly hot hands slide to grip my wrists as she pins me to the floor. Under her unnatural weight, I can’t budge, not even to kick, a fact that infuriates me and delights her.

“You don’t know
this
,” she says.

And then Hiltop’s transformation begins.

The plump, firm skin on her youthful face droops and runs like a mudslide. Deep wrinkles etch like streams around her eyes and mouth. Her irises turn from daylight to the inky night sky. My breath catches as I witness her grotesque transformation: she has, without a sound, morphed from a shy student to the hideous secretary I encountered on orientation day.

My lips form a curse that goes unspoken. I can’t utter a word.

Her metamorphosis continues, accompanied now by her dark, pointy smile. Her face swells; her cheeks balloon. Dark, curly brown fur spreads over her aged body in patches that swiftly interlock, as the fingers that hold me become claws, and the hands paws. To my horror, her nose and mouth extend and become a snout, mouth wide open, gray tongue hanging above my wide eyes. Her dark eyes are small black beads lit by an unseen fire. She has transformed from the secretary into a dark
poodle.