Dead Beautiful

by Yvonne Woon

  “Incredibly sharp, your mother. Your father too. And ambitious. You never would have guessed they were from wealthy backgrounds. Always so humble.”

  “My father was wealthy?” I didn’t know. His parents had died when I was a baby, and I had only met my four aunts, who were each fussy, overweight, inclined to hats, and generally auntlike.

  “Why, of course. You weren’t aware? The Redgrave fortune. Redgrave Architects? They specialized in custom-made foundations, cellars, enclaves, wells, and so on. Quite artful, actually. Tragic that it’s a dying form.”

  “I... I didn’t know. He never told me.”

  “Robert was a private boy,” she murmured. “Clearly you take after him. Professor Mumm told me that just last week you identified the only form of shrivel root in the field, and were also able to identify the appropriate soil and plot for it to be planted in.”

  It was true.

  “Very impressive for someone your age,” remarked the headmistress.

  “Thanks.”

  “Well, I suppose if you have nothing else that you want to tell me, we have nothing more to discuss today.”

  She waited a moment, but when I said nothing, she smiled. “Go then, and enjoy your youth.”

  Grateful for the reprieve, I stood up. Something about her demeanor was unsettling. Maybe it was her cats.

  “Oh and, Renée, tell me, when is your birthday?”

  I turned just as the headmistress put on a pair of reading glasses.

  “August twentieth. Why?”

  “A Leo,” she said, smiling. “How fitting.”

  Just before I turned, a file on her desk caught my eye. It was a manila folder partially covered in papers. It was labeled Dante Berlin. I thought back to the day I’d met Eleanor, when she’d told me she’d asked her brother Brandon to check my file in the headmistress’s office. Quickly, I glanced around the room, looking for a filing cabinet. I didn’t see one, though I knew it had to be there somewhere.

  “Is there something wrong, Renée?” the headmistress probed.

  “No,” I said quickly. “Nothing.” And I stepped into the hall.

  To my surprise, Dante was sitting outside on a bench, in a collared shirt, his blue tie loose around his neck. I wanted to stop and talk to him, but knew I couldn’t in front of the headmistress. We made eye contact as I passed, and Dante gave the beginnings of a smile when the headmistress poked her head out the door.

  “I’m ready for you,” she said in a firm voice.

  I walked by slowly, and as Dante stood up, our hands brushed against each other, his skin cold against mine. The door shut behind him, and I was left alone in the hallway. There was a folded piece of paper on the bench where Dante had been sitting. I flattened it out to find the following words written in Dante’s neat handwriting:

  Meet me in front of the library at 7 p.m.

  Folding the note into my pocket, I left for class.

  “I talked to Minnie,” Eleanor said as she closed the door. I was sitting at my desk, trying to read the footnotes of The Iliad in the dim light of my candle.

  I sat up straight. “And?”

  She hefted her bag onto the desk. “Disaster.”

  “What happened?”

  “I cornered her in Art. We were working on portraits. I made sure to sit next to her so we would be partners. While I was sketching, I asked her about what happened last spring with Cassandra. That was my first mistake. She got all weird and hunched over, and her face wouldn’t stay still.... It ruined my portrait.”

  “What did you say to her, exactly?”

  “I just asked her, ‘So what really happened last spring with Cassandra?’”

  “A little more tact, Eleanor!”

  “Well, I wanted to cut to the chase. She’s not exactly easy to talk to. And besides, I thought she wanted to talk about it.”

  “Not to us. She probably thought you were making fun of her.”

  “Well, I wasn’t, obviously. But now what do we do? There’s no way I can ask her again. She practically ran away when the bell rang. She didn’t even show me the portrait she drew.”

  I thought for a moment. “I saw Dante’s file when I was in the headmistress’s office. It was on her desk. She didn’t give me a detention, but she suspects that we’re a couple.”

  Exasperated, Eleanor collapsed onto her bed. “Can you please pry your mind away from Dante for just a minute and focus on the problem at hand?”

  Ignoring her, I continued. “Do you think everyone has a personal file?”

  “I know they do,” she said, staring at the ceiling. “My brother told me.”

  I looked behind me to make sure Lynch’s feet weren’t outside the door. “Even dead people?”

  Eleanor gazed at me with wonder. “Ingenious! They wouldn’t just throw them away.”

  Even though the validity of the séance was suspect, looking up Benjamin’s and Cassandra’s folders couldn’t hurt.

  “I didn’t see a filing cabinet, but it’s got to be there. We just need to get into the office.”

  Checking the clock, I put on my jacket and grabbed my bag.

  “Where are you going?”

  “The library,” I said, omitting the fact that I was meeting Dante there.

  When I got to Copleston Library, Dante was waiting for me by the entrance, leaning against a stone pillar. A book bag was slung over his shoulder.

  “Fancy meeting you here,” I said. He smiled and took my bag, and together we went inside. He led me upstairs to the third floor, which was relatively empty, and set our bags down on a wooden table by the window. I told him about the headmistress and how she had asked me about him.

  “The headmistress didn’t mention you at all,” he murmured, gazing at me pensively. “She asked me about how I was feeling and about how my classes were going, then let me go.”

  I thought fast. Should I tell him about the séance, about how Cassandra might actually be dead? What if I was wrong? Unlike Eleanor, I decided to go for the tactful route.

  “Do you still talk to Cassandra?”

  Dante paused and then bent over to open his bag. “Not much,” he said, his back to me.

  “But you’ve talked to her since she left?”

  He straightened. “Why do you ask?”

  “I thought you were friends with her.”

  “I was.”

  “So you still talk to her?”

  He hesitated. “No, not really.”

  “Not really, or no?” I asked, growing frustrated.

  “No,” he finally conceded. “I told you, things sort of fell apart last spring. None of us keep in touch anymore. Would it be a problem if I did? You seem disturbed by the idea.”

  “I’m not jealous,” I said defensively. “If that’s what you’re implying.”

  “Right,” he said.

  There was a long silence. Was he being intentionally vague, or did he actually not know? Judging by the way he treated his ex-friends here, it didn’t seem out of the ordinary for him to cut off Cassandra too.

  “So what do we do now?” I asked, assuming his invitation to the library had some sort of mysterious ulterior motive.

  Dante gave me a confused smile. “Study, of course. What else does a person do in a library?”

  I blushed. “Oh, I... I don’t know,” I said, fumbling my words in embarrassment. I pulled a book out of my bag and opened it in front of me.

  “It’s upside down,” Dante said with a smile, as he tilted back in his chair and tapped my book with his pencil.

  “Right,” I said, even more mortified as I flipped it around. And in the light of the oil lamps, we studied together until curfew.

  What did it feel like to be dating Dante Berlin? Every time he looked at me, it was like he was seeing me for the first time. Every time I got close to him, he inhaled deeply, as if he were trying to absorb as much of me as possible.... Everyone stared when we were together on campus, pointing when our hands grazed against each other’s in class
. “They’re looking at us,” I muttered to Dante as we walked through the library together, trying to block my face with my hair. “I don’t blame them,” he said, pushing the hair away from my face. I blushed. I was as much in awe of us as everyone else was. Every night Dante waited for me during study hall outside the dorm, and every night I met him. He always took me somewhere different—a walk around campus, the library, Horace Hall, the lake. And every night I sat by the window, thinking he wouldn’t come, but then there he was, his tall figure like a pale ray of light in the darkness. Every time I saw his face, it seemed even more beautiful and complex than the day before. Every time he touched me, I shuddered and felt all of my warmth, all of my sensation being pulled toward him. It no longer mattered that I didn’t understand the way I felt around him, or the way he felt around me. One touch from him and everything inside of me blossomed with emotion: excitement, nervousness, anxiety, desire. I had never been in love before. Was this what it felt like?

  But Dante wasn’t the only thing on my mind. By the second week of November, almost all of the leaves from the maples and oaks around us had dropped off and were now floating on the surface of the lake like a carpet. Eleanor and I were still trying to find a way to get into the headmistress’s office to get Benjamin’s and Cassandra’s files. The possibility of Cassandra being dead too only made me more suspicious about Benjamin’s “heart attack,” and those files were the only chance I had to figure out how he really died. The only problem was that the headmistress’s office was impossible to break into, and if I got caught, I would most definitely be expelled. Usually when I didn’t know how to solve a problem, I asked my parents, but they were dead. So instead I called Annie.

  “Remember what I told you about Cassandra and Benjamin?”

  “The two kids from last year?” she asked, her tone skeptical. “The one who died of a heart attack?”

  “Yeah. Well, supposedly a heart attack.”

  Annie didn’t respond.

  “There’s a possibility that Cassandra might be dead too.”

  There was a pause at the end of the line. Finally, Annie said, “How do you know?”

  “Well, I don’t know for sure, but we did this séance a couple of weeks ago, and I tried to contact my parents, and I ended up meeting Dante, but that’s an entirely different story. The point is that Eleanor tried to contact Benjamin, but actually ended up contacting Cassandra.”

  I waited for her excited response, but it never came. “So…?”

  “So that means if the séance was right, Cassandra might be dead too,” I said, exasperated. “And that the school is purposely covering up her death by telling everyone that she transferred. I mean, why would they do that?”

  “Maybe they’re not doing it. Renée, it’s a séance. I mean, everyone knows they don’t work. It didn’t even work for you.”

  “I guess, but I summoned someone that night. Or at least I heard someone. And so did Eleanor. It couldn’t hurt to check, right?”

  “Are you listening to yourself? Summoning? What happened to the sarcastic, skeptical Renée that I knew?”

  I stared at the receiver in frustration.

  “Is this about you missing your parents?”

  “What? No. Well, yes. But it’s not only about them. If Cassandra is dead, that probably means that there’s more to Benjamin’s death too. It couldn’t be a coincidence that they died so close together.”

  “Just like your parents.”

  I gripped the receiver harder, trying to restrain myself. “It’s not just about my parents. It’s about people dying. It’s about uncovering the truth.”

  “Renée, it’s okay that you miss your parents and are confused about their deaths. I mean, it’s hard—”

  “No, it’s not okay. Like I said, it’s not only about my parents. Why does everything have to be about my parents?”

  I could hear Annie’s breathing on the other end of the line. “Because they died. And it’s not fair, I know. I miss them too; we all—”

  “No,” I said, interrupting her. “You don’t know.” And I hung up the phone.

  What do you call a secret society that’s not a secret? In Rome they were called the Illuminati. In Greece they were called the Pythagoreans. And at Gottfried they were called the Board of Monitors.

  According to the Code of Discipline, their official duty was to “represent the voice of the student body to the faculty.” As Gottfried’s version of a student government, they were supposed to “keep the order and preserve peace among the student body.” But the most we’d ever seen of them had been at the Fall Awakening, when they were tapped. They didn’t monitor the halls or discuss school decisions with us. In fact, they never seemed to do much of anything at all.

  Yet I always saw them together, whispering as they passed each other in the dining hall, or walking in a group across campus at night because they were the only students allowed out after curfew. But if they weren’t performing their appointed duties, then what were they doing? Everyone knew that they held private meetings, but no one knew where or what for. Charlotte told us that Genevieve would disappear for hours at a time without an explanation. “Terrible things might happen if I tell you,” she said. We all assumed she was joking, but she never smiled when she said it.

  Grub Day was the only real day that the Board of Monitors had a defined responsibility, which was to escort everyone down on our first trip of the year to Attica Falls. It was also the only day of the semester that we could wear clothes out of dress code, which would have been more exciting if I hadn’t had to wear three layers to combat the subzero November temperature.

  Dante had called me the night before. “Meet me at 46 Attica Passing at five p.m.” He wouldn’t say why. I wanted to ask why so late, but didn’t, for fear of sounding too nosy. So I wrote down the address and went to sleep.

  The next morning I woke up to frost on the windowpanes. It was early and Eleanor was still sleeping when I pulled my suitcase out from beneath my bed and unfolded my old pair of jeans. I hadn’t looked at them in months, and when I put them on, their worn fabric flooded my mind with memories of California. But when Eleanor woke up, she pulled on nylons and a skirt, then piled her books into her backpack.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Going to the library,” she said with a sigh.

  “But it’s Grub Day!”

  “Oh,” she said. “I totally forgot about that.”

  “How could you forget?”

  “Other things on my mind, I guess.” She pulled her hair into a ponytail, fluffing it in front of the mirror nervously, and shoved all of her books in her bag, trying not to make eye contact with me. Finally she looked up. There were circles under her eyes. “Look, I’m basically failing Math and History. I’ve been going to see the professors for extra help, but I’m not getting better.”

  “Can’t you take a break? Just for one day?”

  She shook her head. “If I want to do anything after I leave this place, I have to get my grades up,” she said, slinging her bag over her shoulder. “Eat a pancake at the diner for me,” she said, trying to smile.

  “Okay. I guess I’ll see you at dinner? Or are you going to skip that too?” It was meant to be a joke, but it came out a little harsher than I intended.

  She shot me a guilty look. “I’ll try to make it.”

  Outside, the sky was gray and overcast. Everyone was lined up at the front gate. The Monitors were positioned around the periphery, herding us down the winding road that led to Attica Falls. I wedged myself in until I found Nathaniel. He was standing behind a few girls from my floor: Bonnie, Maggie, Rebecca, Greta, and the twins, April and Allison, who wore matching corduroy pants, sweatshirts, and pom-pom hats, a Gottfried scarf tucked under each of their coats.

  “You were great in Horticulture the other day,” Allison said to me as we walked. “I don’t know how you manage to identify the different kinds of soils. They all look the same to me.”

  “Oh, it’s
easy,” I said. “You just have to smell it. The soil with the most minerals smells kind of like metal.”

  “You guys are in Horticulture?” Bonnie asked. “I’ve always wanted to take that class, but it’s so hard to get into. I love flowers, though.”

  “Really? I didn’t even have to apply,” I said pensively. “We’ve only learned a little about flowers. So far it’s been more about soil biology. A lot of stuff about root systems.”

  “What do you do if you don’t learn about plants?” Rebecca asked.

  “We learn how to plant things, not about the plants themselves.” I tried to explain, but they didn’t seem to understand. “The other day we did learn about the soil that produces medicinal plants,” I offered.

  Save for the twins, all of the girls gave me confused looks. I guess it did sound kind of silly when I put it that way, but they didn’t know what it felt like to bury something where you knew only you could find it. They didn’t know what it felt like to know exactly which location had the best soil for a certain flower, which minerals rendered weeds edible, which rock deposits gave moss antibiotic properties. I shrugged and kept walking.

  Attica Falls was the only town within walking distance from Gottfried. It lay just beyond the campus and was comprised of one main street, Attica Passing, that branched off into side alleys lined with grungy stores, dilapidated houses, and barns. There was a general store, which sold groceries, hunting and camping equipment, and small gifts like balsam fir, locally made maple syrup, and fruit preserves. Across the street was a gas station that only dispensed diesel, and was used primarily for purchasing cigarettes, lottery tickets, and bags of ice. And then there was Beatrice’s, a diner.

  Once we got to Attica Passing, everyone dispersed, and Nathaniel and I loitered around the street, deciding where to go first. That’s when I spotted Eleanor’s brother, Brandon, walking into Beatrice’s. Without thinking, I pulled Nathaniel into the restaurant.

  Beatrice’s was a dingy old diner that served pancakes all day. They also served other things—eggs, corned-beef hash, meat loaf, and a variety of dishes made with canned tuna fish. Our waitress was in her early forties. She had bottle-dyed red hair sculpted around the top of her head in a way that defied all laws of physics and probably required half a bottle of hair spray. A plastic name tag that read Cindy was pinned to her left breast pocket.