Dead Beautiful (36 page)

I shrugged. “It’s pretty useful. You can figure out what the terrain is like below the snow, or if there’s stuff buried beneath it, or what the temperature of the ground is.”

“They switched me out,” Eleanor said. “Now I’m in something called Elementary Advanced Tongues. What does it even mean for a class to be elementary and advanced at the same time?”

“I was in that last year,” Nathaniel said, giving her a quizzical look, while I gave him a quizzical look. Was he Undead too? I ran through the criteria in my head, my mouth forming a tiny pink
O
as he spoke. His skin was cold, his senses were terrible, yet he was incredibly smart. “It’s Latin. Sort of.” He was fluent in Latin.

Eleanor rolled her eyes and collapsed back into her chair. “Great. When they said I didn’t have to take Elementary Latin, I thought they were giving me a break after what happened in the basement.”

I had been trying to figure out if Eleanor knew she was Undead. So far, the verdict was no.

Nathaniel and I went quiet at her mention of the flood, waiting to see if she would talk about it. I hadn’t talked to Nathaniel about it. I thought about telling Miss LaBarge, but assumed that the school knew, especially since they had switched Eleanor’s courses. I tried calling my grandfather, but he was away. So instead I tried to stay up as late as I could with Eleanor every night so she would have someone to talk to, hoping that when she did learn what she was, she would confide in me. Plus, it wasn’t exactly easy sleeping in a room with someone who I knew had the urge to kill me.

Eleanor looked between us. “What? You’d think a near-death experience would at least exempt me from the most boring class of all time.”

Slowly she smiled. I did too, as did Nathaniel, which quickly degenerated into laughter, and for the first time in a long while, even if just for a moment, I felt carefree again.

I didn’t see Dante again until last period. When I got to Crude Sciences, he was already sitting at our lab bench, looking statuesque as he leaned back in his chair, his tie and oxford artfully crinkled around the musculature of his neck. In front of him was a tray, upon which a neat row of medical tools was arranged: a scalpel, a pair of tweezers, a needle and hook, and a spindle of string.

Without a word, I sat down next to him, trying with all my will to keep my eyes on the board. Dante turned to me. “Renée, I meant to tell you, but every time I tried, something always interrupt—” Ironically, before he could finish, the bell rang and Professor Starking walked in carrying a large plastic tub. He set it on his desk.

“Life sciences,” he said. “Otherwise known as
Scientiae Vitae,
the counterpart to
Disciplina Mortuorum,
or Science of the Dead.” He hoisted the tub from his desk and walked down the aisles. Using tongs, he fished around inside until he emerged with a dead frog.

“I tried to stay away from you,” Dante said. “The beginning of the year. I kept my distance because I didn’t want to put you in danger.”

“We can’t study life sciences until we study death,” Professor Starking said while he walked. “I have given each of you a frog. This is your vessel.”

“But I couldn’t stay away. I still can’t stay away from you. I wanted to tell you, I planned on telling you, but I didn’t want to lose you.”

I blinked back angry tears as I stared at our frog. It gazed back at me with glassy eyes. It wasn’t fair. Maybe it wasn’t Dante’s fault that he was dead, but it was his fault for involving me when he knew what he was.

“Renée? Say something.”

“Who can tell me what some of the characteristics of decay are?” Professor Starking looked around the room.

“Cold skin,” I whispered to Dante, looking at him from the periphery as I steadied my voice. “Stiff limbs. No sensation. Disconnected from the rest of the world.”

“Living people can have those characteristics too,” Dante replied.

“The paper cut? The séance? You knew and you let me second-guess myself all semester.”

“I tried to tell you—”

“
You make me feel alive
?” I said, repeating what he had told me that night in Attica Falls. “I thought that was so romantic. I didn’t realize you were being literal.”

“Why does that have to make it mean less?”

“Have you killed anyone?” I asked quietly.

“No,” he said. “Of course not.”

“Will you kill anyone?”

“No.”

My lip quivered. “Will you die?”

Dante didn’t say anything for a long time. “Yes. But one day you will too. It isn’t so different.”

“Everything is different,” I said loudly. In the background, Professor Starking had stopped lecturing and was telling us to quiet down, but I didn’t care. “You’re... you’re …” I looked at the frog. “I don’t even know what you are.”

The class erupted in murmurs. Professor Starking anxiously tried to calm everyone down and get the class under control.

“I’m still the same person I was before—”

“You’re not a person!” I said, my eyes watering as they searched his for an answer that would help me understand what he was. Suddenly the room seemed incredibly silent. The entire class was looking at us.

“I don’t know what’s going on,” Professor Starking said nervously from the front of the class, “but you can figure out your differences in work detail.”

We walked in silence to the headmistress’s office, me three paces ahead. The secretary asked us to wait outside while she fetched Headmistress Von Laark, so I sat on the far side of the bench, arms crossed.

The office door opened. “Come in,” Headmistress Von Laark’s voice said soothingly. “Both of you.”

When we were seated in front of her, she asked us what happened. After a moment, we both spoke at the same time.

“He provoked me.... I was answering a question and he interrupted me,” I said.

“I provoked her,” Dante said. “It was my fault.”

Surprised at his selflessness, I suddenly felt embarrassed for blaming him. But it was his fault, I reassured myself. He
did
provoke me. If he hadn’t been dead, and if he hadn’t kept it from me, we never would have been in this situation. I crossed my arms, trying to convince myself that I was right, but quickly felt overwhelmed with guilt.

“I see,” the headmistress said. “Still, since you disrupted class together, you will
both
have to serve a work detail. Five o’clock tonight. The fifth floor of Horace Hall. Room eight, north wing.”

I left without saying a word to Dante because I didn’t know what to say. Not wanting to walk in the same direction as him, I went to Horace Hall. I couldn’t confide in Eleanor because she already had enough problems of her own, and Nathaniel just wouldn’t understand. The bell rang as I entered the building, and I waited for all the students to empty out before I climbed up the stairs to see Miss LaBarge.

The floorboards creaked as I walked down the narrow hallway that led to her office. It was tucked into the corner, a thin strip of light peeking out from beneath the door. I knocked.

Miss LaBarge’s voice floated through the wood. “Come in.”

She was sitting in an armchair under a yellow cone of light, reading. When she saw me, she smiled and stood up. “Renée,” she said, taking off her reading glasses. “What a pleasant surprise.”

I wiped my shoes on the doormat and stepped inside. Her office had a warm glow to it, and smelled like cinnamon and burning wood.

“Have a seat.”

I took off my scarf and sat in the love seat across from her. A thick hardcover book sat on the ottoman between us, a ribbon resting in its crease.

“What are you reading?”

Miss LaBarge picked it up. “Oh, just some silly stuff.
Beyond Good and Evil,
by a philosopher named Friedrich Nietzsche. It’s about how to decide what’s right and what’s wrong.”

“That doesn’t sound silly at all.”

She frowned. “Yes, I suppose you’re right.”

“How
do
you tell the difference?”

She closed the book and put it on the side table. “Sometimes you can’t.”

“So...say you’re dating a boy, and he tells you that he’s something, but it turns out that he’s actually something else. Is that wrong?”

“Would this supposed boy have a good reason for keeping it a secret?”

I thought about it. Dante probably hadn’t told me because he thought it would scare me. And he was right. “I guess so. But it’s still lying, isn’t it?”

“It is, but if the lie is meant to protect the other person from harm or pain, is it really that bad?”

“But I didn’t want to be protected; I wanted to know the truth,” I blurted out.

She shrugged. “Sometimes there isn’t just one truth. Just because you discovered more about him doesn’t mean the person that he was before was a lie. You just had a less complete picture of him.”

I wanted to believe that what Dante and I had had before was real; that the things he’d said and done were still genuine even though he was Undead. But even if I could, that reality was slipping through my fingers. Dante had an expiration date, and there was no way I could help him.

“But what if I know we can never be together?”

“Hmm. That’s tricky. I think this calls for some tea. Hold on to that thought.” She got up and disappeared into the anteroom. I heard water running and then the sound of steam hissing out of a kettle, the clatter of dishes, the delicate clinking of a spoon against porcelain. She returned holding two cups and a teapot. “Chamomile?”

I nodded.

“
Never
only exists in your head. Anything is possible.”

“But what if he’s too...too different?”

“Do you still have feelings for him? Even after knowing who he is?”

I shook my head. “I don’t know.” And then I thought about it. “Well, maybe... Yes.”

“Then you’ve answered your question. In love, everyone does things that hurt the other person, so really there is no ‘right’ and ‘wrong.’ You just have to decide what you’re willing to forgive.”

“But what if I know it’s not going to last?”

“Then savor every moment.”

The pitter-patter of footsteps reverberated from the floor above us. I cradled the cup of tea in my lap. “Have you ever been in love?”

She smiled. “Oh, I’d like to believe that I’m always in love with something. After all, what else is there?”

Professor Urquette was assigned to oversee our work detail. She was our Art and Humanities teacher. Her body was shaped like an eggplant, which she emphasized by always wearing multiple shades of purple and green. Even though she’d never married, she had the
je ne sais quoi
of a jaded divorcée. She hid the baggy skin on her throat beneath crocheted shawls and velvety scarves, and held her pen in the side of her mouth like a long cigarette. Her graying hair was kinky and defied all laws of gravity by puffing upward, making her seem three inches taller than she was. Every few months she dyed it back to its original color—red—and when the gray grew in beneath it, her head looked like it was on fire.

I arrived at her office a few minutes before five o’clock. Dante was already there, sitting at the desk by the door. Embarrassed about how I’d behaved earlier, I hesitated before going to the opposite end of the classroom and sitting by the window. Outside it was a beautiful clear day, and I could see Eleanor walking down the path with some girls from our floor. A cool breeze blew in, and I felt the tickling inkling of a sneeze. I tried to hold it in, but it came out suddenly, loud and unflattering. My face grew red and I began to rummage through my backpack for a tissue.

“Bless you,” Dante said quietly from across the room.

I looked up at him with surprise. “Thanks.”

We sat in silence until the door opened. Professor Urquette bounded into the room, wheezing from walking up the stairs. After dropping her bags on the desk, she collapsed into her chair and let herself catch her breath. Delicately, she patted her hair, making sure it was still in place.

“I understand you were both disrupting a school lecture?”

Neither of us said anything.

“Okay,” she said, hoisting herself up. “Normally I wouldn’t do this, but the school play is nearly upon us and we need wood to start building the set.”

We stared at her blankly.

“Well, gather your things. We’re going into the woods.”

The forest was on the other side of the wall, the strictly prohibited side. But apparently, even the most stringent rules had exceptions. When we got to the school entrance, Professor Urquette nodded at the guard, who opened the gates.

She brought us to the outskirts of the woods, holding her skirt up as she stepped through the snow in galoshes. Behind the trees, the White Mountains jutted up from the horizon. After walking a few feet, we stopped. Professor Urquette hung her bag on the crook of a tree and bent over. Grunting, she picked up a stick and hoisted herself back up.

“You’re looking for sticks, the thicker the better,” she said, snapping the twig in half and handing each of us a burlap bag. “Meet me back here in two hours. And don’t be late, or you’ll be in the woods after dark. I’ll be waiting by the entrance. If you need help, just holler.” With that, she waddled back to the guard’s hut by the gate.

I turned to Dante, wondering if he was angry, if he would forgive me. I tried to think of a way to apologize, but before I could say anything, he looked away and ventured into the woods, leaving me alone. Stung by his coldness, I waited until he was a few paces ahead, then headed through the trees in the opposite direction.

The ground was covered in snow, which I sunk in up to my shins. The oaks were naked, their branches sticking into the sky like fingers. Oddly shaped mushrooms clung to the trunks, creating yellow staircases that spiraled up the bark. Taking giant strides, I walked into the confusing maze that made up the forest.

“You’re going the wrong way,” Dante called out to me.

“We’re picking up sticks. There is no wrong way.”

Shaking his head, he changed his course to my direction. Suddenly, an odd whiteness peeked through the trees. I walked toward it. As I approached, the number of trees diminished until there were barely any. It wasn’t until I was standing directly in front of it that I realized that it wasn’t a clearing. It was the Dead Forest.