Introduction
On the morning of her sixteen birthday, Renée Winters was still an ordinary girl. She spent her Summers at the beach, had the perfect best friend, and had just started dating the cutest guy at school. No one she'd ever known had dies. But all changes when she finds her parents dead in the Redwood forest, in what appears to be a strange double murder.
After the funeral Renee's wealthy grandfather sends her to Gottfried Academy, a remote and mysterious boarding school in Maine, where she finds herself studying subjects like Philosophy, Latin, and the Crude Sciences. It's there that she meets Dante Berlin, a handsome and elusive boy whom she feel inexplicably drawn. As they grow closer, unexplainable things begin to happen, but Renée can't keep from falling in love. It's only when she discovers a dark tragedy in Gottfried's past that she begins to wonder if the Academy is everything it seems.
Little does she know, Dante is the one hiding a dangerous secret, one that has him fearing for her life.
The story is both a compelling romance and thoughts provoking read, bringing shocking new meaning to life, death, love and the nature of the soul.

New story alert my people Adeshina12, Greatlinda, Anna2012, Samebony1, Prisomic, Lonesome501, Froze6, Tridroid.

PROLOGUE


i DIDN’T KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT DEATH UNTIL I began studying philosophy. That was how I learned the truth about Descartes, about the ancient Greek and Roman civilizations, about my past. My mother used to tell me that matter was neither created nor destroyed, only transferred. She was filled with old theories that she would make me recite back to her, as if she were trying to tell me something about the world but couldn’t find the right words. I never gave them much thought until she and my father were killed, but by then it was too late to ask what it had all meant. It wasn’t until I enrolled at Gottfried Academy that I began to make sense of who I was and what I was fated to become. But first, let me tell you about the peculiar circumstances surrounding the death of my parents. Because it was their deaths that set off the strange chain of events that led me to where I am now. And because if there’s one thing I’ve learned from my first year at Gottfried, it’s that sometimes you have to look back in order to understand the things that lie ahead.

We start fully on Tuesday by his Grace. Shalom ❣️❤️❤️❤️❤️

Ride on

"...sometimes you have to look back in order to understand the things that lie ahead."
Great line pregnant with meaning.
This promises to be a great read. Will definitely stay tuned.

Keep the flag flying Ak86

Present

*Peeps at the thread*
Ak86 you got a storyline i seem to like...if you no mention me for the next episode eh, i will shut down the thread..
*grins*

Greatlinda, nyarinya mai kyau, i fit sit near you?

skyblueking:
*Peeps at the thread*
Ak86 you got a storyline i seem to like...if you no mention me for the next episode eh, i will shut down the thread..
*grins*

Greatlinda, nyarinya mai kyau, i fit sit near you?

U re welcome

CHAPTER 1

The Encounter in the Woods


MY PARENTS DIED ON A HOT AUGUST evening. It was my sixteenth birthday, and my best friend, Annie, and I had snuck out to Santa Rosa for the day to celebrate. We took her car and spent the afternoon at Buzzard’s Point Beach, tanning, flipping through magazines, and walking along the jetty. Around five o’clock, just as the tide began to come in, we packed up our towels and headed home so we’d be back before our parents returned from work.


Annie was driving, her long sandy hair fluttering out the open window as we sped down Prairie Creek Drive. It was a scenic road that started at the coast and wound inland, meandering through the redwood forest. Annie didn’t want to drive through the national park; the route was narrow and dark and gave her the creeps, but for some reason I felt that it was the right road to take. After ten minutes of convincing her that it was the fastest way back to Costa Rosa, she complied.


“So when are you seeing Wes again?” Annie asked me, adjusting her sunglasses.


Wes was a senior, tall and smart with perfect teeth, the captain of the soccer team, and the only guy in our high school worth dating. Unfortunately, all the other girls felt the same way. They followed him around in groups, giggling and trying to get his attention. I would never be caught dead doing that, partially because I thought it was pathetic, but mainly because I didn’t have time. I had lacrosse practice, homework, and a part-time job. And although I was decently popular, I had never been the outgoing type. I liked to pick my friends, opting for quality over quantity, and since I spent most of my time outside working or reading instead of socializing, I always assumed that Wes didn’t even know my name. So when he asked me out, I was speechless. “Saturday, supposedly. But he said he would call me this week and it’s already Thursday.... Maybe he changed his mind.”


Annie rolled her eyes. “Don’t be ridiculous. Of course he’ll call.”


I hoped she was right. I worked at a farmers’ market on the weekends, manning a fruit stand. Wes had stopped by two weeks ago and asked me to help him pick out apples for his mom. He was completely lost when it came to fruit; there are so many different kinds of apples, he told me, running his hands nervously through his hair. Afterward, he asked me to the movies, and I was so surprised that I dropped the bag of apples, letting them roll about our feet. Ever since our date I hadn’t been able to think straight about anything except for the buttery kiss he had given me in the darkness of the theater, his lips melting into mine with the taste of popcorn and salt.I shook off the thought and shrugged. “I don’t even know if he likes me that much,” I said. I didn’t want to get my hopes up.


“Well, I think you guys are perfect for each other,” Annie said, leaning back in her seat.


I smiled. “Thanks, An,” I said, and turned up the radio.


We’d both had a crush on Wes for ages, but Annie would never let it come between us. She was the beautiful one, modest and graceful with a gentle personality that was easy to love. I, on the other hand, was impulsive and skinny, and wished that I could be more like a character in a novel, so I would finally stop blurting out the wrong things at the wrong time. My brown hair was wavy and had a life of its own, with sideswept bangs that had seemed like a good decision at the time, but never stayed in their proper place once I left the hairdresser. I preferred outdoors to indoors; running to walking. As a result, my knees were always covered with Band-Aids, and my cheeks were sun-kissed and sprinkled with freckles.


The road grew narrow, making sharp and unexpected twists and turns as we drove north into the redwood forest.


My wet hair dangled around my shoulders, and I ran my hands through it while it dried in the warm California breeze. Ancient trees lined the curb, and the sky began to turn an ominous shade of red. That summer, the weather had been strange and unpredictable, and after a day of blue skies, clouds were beginning to hover on the horizon.


Annie slowed down as we rounded a bend. The car smelled of sunscreen and aloe vera, and I was prodding my cheeks, inspecting my sunburn in the visor mirror, when I spotted the car. It was a rusty white Jeep with a roof rack, parked on the shoulder of the road, by a cluster of trees.


I sat up in my seat. “Pull over,” I said.


“What?”


“Pull over!” I repeated.


Annie pulled in next to the Jeep just as the remains of the California sun folded into the clouds. “Is that your dad’s car?” she asked, taking the keys out of the ignition.


“Yeah,” I said, confused, and opened the door.


“Why would it be here?” Annie asked, slamming the door.


I had no idea. He was supposed to be at work. He and my mother were both high school teachers in Costa Rosa, almost an hour away from here. Cupping my hands, I peered into the Jeep. It was empty, with objects strewn across the seats, as if my father had left in a hurry. The giant trunks of the redwoods stood a mere ten feet away, creating a boundary between the road and the forest beyond, which was quickly being swallowed by darkness. I reached into Annie’s car for my jacket and pulled it on.


“What are you doing?” Annie asked apprehensively.


“He’s got to be in there,” I said, and made for the edge of the forest.


“What?”


I stopped. “Maybe he went...hiking. They do that kind of stuff sometimes on weekends.” I tried to say it with conviction, but I didn’t believe it. “I’m just going to check it out.”


“Wait,” Annie cried after me. “Renée! It’s getting dark. Maybe we should just wait for him at home.”


Without responding, I walked back to Annie’s car and leaned through the passenger window. I fished around in the glove compartment until I found the flashlight that her parents kept for emergencies.


“Don’t worry; I’ll be back in few minutes. Stay here.” And without saying another word, I turned and ran into the woods.


The redwood forest was cool and damp. My wet bathing suit soaked through my clothes as I darted between the trees, my sneakers sinking softly into the earth while the ferns and underbrush whipped my shins.


“Dad?” I shouted into the darkness, but my voice was overpowered by the wind rustling through the branches. “Dad, are you here?”


The beam of my flashlight bounced wildly about the trees as I ran, illuminating pockets of the forest in brief and sudden flashes. The giant redwoods loomed darkly around me, the tops of their trunks extending far above the fog, which had just begun to settle on the ground.


It felt like I had been running for miles when I stopped to catch my breath. Out of the corner of my eye I saw a glint of light reflecting off the ground. I slowed to a walk and edged toward it. My hand trembled as I guided the flashlight in its direction. It was a coin. I prodded it with the tip of my sneaker and walked forward cautiously. A long thin sheet of white cloth was embedded in the dirt next to it, and I followed it into the darkness.


As I stepped deeper into the forest, the air seemed to drop in temperature. I shuddered, pulling my jacket around me tightly, and scanned the ground with my flashlight. It was scattered with coins and pieces of white cloth. Curious, I bent over to get a closer look, when somewhere in the distance, the leaves began to shift. Then movement; the soft thump of footsteps against earth.

I raised my eyes to the shadowy thicket that surrounded me. It was still except for the wind rustling the branches above. Relieved, I took a step forward, when my foot hit something soft and large.


The muscles in my stomach tightened as I lowered my flashlight to the ground. And then I saw it. A hand, as pale as porcelain, its delicate fingers curled into the soil. I followed it to a wrist, an arm, a neck, a face streaked with dirt and shrouded with strands of long chestnut hair.


I gasped and looked away. The pungent smell of rotting leaves wafted through the air. Reluctantly, I looked back at the body.


“Mom,” I whispered, barely audible.


She was lying on her back, her arms limp by her side. Her eyes were closed, and I might have thought she was sleeping if her skin hadn’t been so pale. Her thin athletic legs, which I had inherited, were now cold and stiff, though they still retained the same girlish shape that she was so proud of.


I leaned over and placed my fingers below her jaw. Her skin was freezing. I don’t know why, but I checked her pulse even though I knew she was already dead. Lifeless, she looked older than usual, as if she had aged ten years. Her cheeks were unusually sunken in, and her glasses were nowhere to be seen. Without them, the skin under her eyes looked raw and exposed, drooping down in circles like the rings of a tree.


My father was a few feet away, coins scattered around his body. The flashlight slipped from my fingers and landed softly in the dirt, rolling until its beam shone on my father’s legs. As I stared at his boots, slumped unnaturally to either side, I felt my breath leave me. I wanted to look away, to run back to the road and call for help, but I couldn’t bring myself to leave because I knew that these were the last moments I would ever have with my parents.


“Why?” I choked out. When I was growing up, my parents had always seemed to have an answer to even my hardest questions. But now, for the first time, they were silent. I wiped my eyes and touched my mother’s lips. They were parted just enough for me to see a thin shred of cloth peeking out. Gently, I pulled it from between her lips and held it in front of the light. It was tattered around the edges and had the soft consistency of gauze. I turned it over in my hand and looked down at my mother. There were no signs of violence, no bruises or scratches on her body, no blood. But the gauze, the coins—this was the work of a person. The mere thought of it made my heart race. I turned and stared into the darkness, wondering if I was alone.


The woods seemed to be caving in on me, the tops of the trees circling and bending together. Images of my parents dying clouded my mind, and I felt dizzy and disoriented. Holding the cloth in my fist, I rested my head on my mother’s chest and closed my eyes, listening to the creaking of the trees and hoping that when I opened them it would be morning and the woods would be empty and filled with sunlight, and everything would be clear. Around me the cool night air blew through the branches, and the shards of white cloth fluttered on the ground, like moths clinging blindly to a screen.


The day they buried my parents, I felt the first chilly breath from my past. I was lying on the floor of our living room, staring at the insects collecting on the edges of the windowpanes, when the doorbell rang. Annie’s mom, Margerie, who was staying with me through the funeral, answered the door.


“Mr. Winters, I’m so glad you came,” she said in a hushed voice. I listened. The quiet murmur of voices, the sound of shoes scraping against the mat, and then a deep cough.


Footsteps.


“Renée,” Margerie said gently.


I didn’t move. Two feet stopped in front of me. I stared at the large brown shoes, the tassels, the creases embedded just before the toe.


“Renée, your grandfather is here.”


I sat up. My hair was matted to the back of my head.


“Hello, Renée,” my grandfather bellowed in a deep voice. He extended a large leathery hand to help me up. He had a professorial essence, with white hair, inordinately long earlobes, and a fleshy, oversized face that seemed stretched with gravity. The sweet aroma of pipe tobacco emanated from his clothes.


Ignoring his hand, I lay back down. Brownie Winters, my mother’s father. It seemed odd that we shared the same last name, even though I hadn’t seen him since I was seven. He had gotten into a loud argument with my parents, and then he was gone, the screen door slamming behind him. I hadn’t heard from him since. Not even a card on birthdays.


“You missed the ceremony,” I said coldly, staring at the folds of his neck.


He sighed. He had my mother’s eyes, watery blue and somehow sad. “I didn’t find out what had happened until this morning. I hope you can forgive my absence.”


I said nothing. My mother used to tell me stories about the rigid rules he’d set while she was growing up in Massachusetts, about how he was only concerned with money and appearances and the family name, which was why he demanded that I have her name instead of my father’s. My mother’s childhood seemed so different from mine, growing up on a dreary estate in the woods. She’d always said it was lonely, that she had spent more time with her housekeeper than with her parents, which was probably why she and my father had moved to California. Our house was the kind where you could touch things, my mother used to say. It was modest but lived in, with stucco walls covered with photographs, and big glass windows that let in the morning light. The grass was never mowed on time, and the pool out back was littered with leaves and beetles that always got stuck in my hair; but on a hot summer day it all seemed perfect. I stared at my grandfather’s shoes. They looked uncomfortable.


“I’m going to be staying with you for a while,” he said, putting on his spectacles. “For a long while, I think. Your parents willed me as your legal guardian, which I’ll admit came as a surprise, given the outcome of our last encounter. A pleasant surprise, of course, though I never would have wished it to happen under such tragic circumstances. I’ve always regretted not being a part of your life.” He paused, and then spoke again, his voice gentler. “It sometimes helps to dwell on the good memories. They remind you that happiness does exist, though it may not seem that way now.” When I didn’t respond, he shifted his weight. “Well then, I suppose I’ll look forward to seeing you at dinner, which will be served promptly at seven thirty.”


I closed my eyes, willing myself not to cry. Even though he was my legal guardian, and almost the only family I had left, I didn’t care if he stayed with me or if I never saw him again, and I definitely wasn’t planning on eating dinner. I had lost my appetite completely since the night in the forest. I was alone, utterly alone, and I had no idea where my life would take me, or how I would live now that my parents were dead. People filed in and out of the house, but to me they passed in a haze, resembling shadowy figures more than actual humans.


My grandfather hovered above me, but I remained silent and waited until I heard him pat the pockets of his pants and retreat to the kitchen. Overhead, the ceiling fan churned the air until it grazed my neck in thick, hot breaths.


The next week went by in a blur. I spent most of my time wandering around the house, trying to keep cool and avoid my grandfather, who seemed to always want to talk about my future, even though I was still stuck in the past. He was a professor—a retired professor now—ever since my grandmother passed away when I was a baby. Now that he was here, I was practically confined to the house. Almost overnight my life became a regimented routine. “Rules help us live our lives when we lose the will to do it on our own,” he said. He’d brought his estate manager with him, a bald, saggy man named Dustin, who cooked, cleaned, and chauffeured my grandfather around. Meals were served three times a day: breakfast at seven, lunch at one, and dinner at seven thirty. Sleeping through breakfast was prohibited, and I had to finish everything on my plate before I could leave the table. Normally that wouldn’t have been a problem, but the food Dustin served wasn’t the easiest to stomach: foie gras, escargot, beluga caviar, black pudding (which wasn’t actually pudding), sweetbreads (which weren’t sweet or made of bread), and spiny lettuce that looked more like a reptile than a vegetable.


My grandfather corrected my table manners at dinner, eyeing my ripped jeans and tank tops with distaste. My posture was terrible, he said, and I held my fork like a barbarian.


Tonight was no different. I scowled at him, wanting to fight back, but I had quickly learned to pick my battles and I didn’t have time for an argument. I glanced at the clock. It was eight. I had to get out of the house. Everything—the plates, the silverware, the roll of paper towels hanging over the sink, the jar of coins sitting on the mantel—reminded me of my parents, of the way they died. But if I wanted to leave, I had to do it soon, because for the first time in my life I actually had a curfew. Ten o’clock.


“I’m going out tonight,” I mumbled.


Dustin stood in the corner of the room in an antiquated suit, his hands clasped behind his back as he gazed at the ceiling, pretending not to listen. I stared at him uncomfortably.


My grandfather put his fork down. “Please, try to enunciate.”


I repeated myself, this time louder and more annoyed.

“Better,” he said, and checked his watch. “It’s getting late, though. You should stay in tonight.”


Outside, the sun was setting over the houses that lined our street. “But it’s still light out,” I protested.


“I don’t feel comfortable with you going out at night by yourself. It’s not safe.”


“I won’t be alone. I’ll be with... Annie,” I said, improvising.


“I’d rather you not go,” he said firmly.


“Then I should probably go upstairs, where I can sit alone in my room for the rest of my life, because that would be the safest thing to do.” Picking up my plate, I stood.


Dustin moved to collect my setting, but my grandfather waved him away, and I felt slightly victorious as I turned my back to them and carried my dishes to the kitchen.


“Renée,” he called out to me, “may I ask you a question?”


I ignored him and turned on the faucet.


“How did you find your parents?”


It caught me off guard. The sponge slipped out of my hand and sank into the soapy water.


“I already told you.”


“Yes,” he said quietly, “you did. But I think there’s more.”


I didn’t respond.


“I know we haven’t talked about your parents; I wanted to let you mourn them in your own way, without my interference.”


The kitchen was cramped—a tiny room of appliances just off the dining room—and I could feel my grandfather’s eyes on me through the doorway.


“I haven’t been present in your life up until now, but I know how difficult it is to lose someone you love. Your mother, Lydia, was my daughter. Her death was no accident. We both know that. After all, you were the one who found them.” He paused. “Please, humor an old man.”


For the first time since he’d moved in, his words seemed reasonable. I turned and raised my eyes to his. “We were driving back from the beach when I told Annie to take Prairie Creek Drive instead of U.S. 101.”


“Why?”


“Because I thought it would be faster,” I said, not revealing the true reason, which was that I’d felt inexplicably pulled in that direction.


“What happened next?”


“I saw their car on the side of the road. We pulled over and I went into the woods. Annie waited for me.”


“And then what?”


Scenes of the redwood forest flashed through my mind. “I just kept running. I... I didn’t know where I was going;


I just knew I had to go deeper.”


“And then?”


“And then I saw the coins.”


The faucet was still running. I watched the water cascade over the dishes.


My grandfather’s voice broke the silence. “And then what happened?” he said gently.


I turned to him. “That’s it. I found them. They were dead. Do you want me to relive the entire night? You know what happened. You read the police report. I told them everything I know.”


I turned away and wiped my eyes over the sink.


“I’m sorry,” he said softly. “I know it’s difficult for you with your parents gone, and now with me here. It’s strange and unexpected that the fates should bring us together again after all this time. But think. Does it not seem odd to you that you happened to stumble across your father’s car on the side of the road, and that you were then able to locate the bodies of your parents, which were a mile north of their car? The redwood forest covers more than three hundred square miles, yet you were able to find them within half an hour.”


“Maybe it was a...a coincidence.” That was what the police had called it.


He raised a white, bushy eyebrow. “Was it?”


“What are you implying?”


“I’m not implying anything,” he assured me. “I’m just trying to understand.”


“I don’t know how I found them. I just did. I didn’t even think about it; I just started running.”


My grandfather looked like he was about to say something, but instead he leaned back in his chair and rested his chin on his fist. “You need new shoes. The ones you have on now are far too juvenile for a girl your age. We’ll get you a pair next week.”


Baffled, I looked down at my Converse sneakers. His remark shouldn’t have made me angry, but it did. Here he was with his questions and rules and ten o’clock curfew, making me get rid of my favorite sneakers, forcing me to relive the one moment in my life I wanted to forget, and generally ruining my already ruined life.


“I don’t want new shoes,” I screamed. “I want my parents back.” I ran upstairs, slammed the door to my room, and slid to the floor in an angry heap. Without thinking, I called Annie. She answered on the third ring.


“I have to get out of here,” I told her. “Can you pick me up?”


“I’ll be there in ten minutes.”


We drove to the marina. I’d barely seen Annie since the day we’d gone to the beach. When I hadn’t come out of the woods that night, she’d called the police, then went in to find me. After they discovered me with the bodies of my parents, and brought me home, she hadn’t asked about what I’d seen or how I’d felt. I was relieved that she didn’t know what to say, because I didn’t either. How could I explain to her that I had died that day in the forest too, that nothing had meaning anymore? The things I used to love—lacrosse, the beach, books, history, movies—they all seemed pointless now.


And then there were the people—the neighbors, the girls from the lacrosse team, the relatives, people from town —constantly stopping by the house, telling me about how they’d known my parents and how much they would miss them. For the first time in my life I was actually glad that my parents hadn’t let me have a cell phone, because it was one less thing to answer. The police came. They had questions. Did I know why my parents were in the forest that day? Had they behaved unusually in the days prior? Did they have any enemies?


“No,” I answered. “No.”


But the hardest part was making sense of it all. The cause of each of their deaths was a heart attack, which could have been reasonable had it not been for the circumstances. It was too much of a coincidence that they’d both suffered from a heart attack at the exact same time. Yet the medical report confirmed that everything else inside their bodies was intact and healthy, and that there were no signs of violence, struggle, or anything out of the ordinary, with one exception: autopsies revealed that soil and ribbons of white fabric were found in the mouth of each of my parents. Was there anything strange about the fabric? “No. Just ordinary gauze you might find in any hospital,” the police told me. But no one knew why it was there. The police deemed that the heart failure had been brought on by a “hiking accident,” but to me it was anything but resolved. “How could it be an accident?” I’d shouted at the police officers, the doctors, the nurses. “Do you actually expect me to believe that they both died of a heart attack at the same exact moment? That’s impossible. They were healthy. They were supposed to be at work. They had gauze in their mouths! How is that natural?” They gave me sympathetic looks and told me I was going through a rough time and that they understood. They were going to keep the case open. But I knew there wasn’t enough evidence to base a case on. Was it murder? I wasn’t sure. Why would anyone want to kill my parents? And why the forest, the coins, the cloth? If someone had killed my parents, it was intentional, and that meant they were still out there. But then there was the way my mother had looked unexplainably older than she had the day before. How could that be? Maybe they were hiking and had heart attacks. Maybe it was suicide. Maybe I was losing my mind.


When Annie and I got to the marina, we took off our shoes and walked down to the rocky beach, beside the dock on the far side of the bay. The pier and the boats, which were so colorful by day, were now shadowed in shades of blue.


“Thanks for picking me up,” I said, dipping my toes in the water.


“Any time.” She sat down on the rocks. “So I ran into Wes the other day.”


I looked up at her expectantly.


“He asked about you. He wanted to know how you were doing...with everything, you know. He said he’s been calling but you haven’t called him back.”


“He called me?” I was surprised. I hadn’t thought about him at all in the past week, and it never crossed my mind that he could have been thinking about me. Since the night in the woods, it seemed like the phone had been constantly ringing—friends, neighbors, the police, insurance companies. Eventually I just stopped answering, letting my grandfather deal with it.


“He said he left messages on your answering machine. He was worried. He just wanted to make sure you’re okay.”


“It feels like years since I saw him,” I said almost to myself, and smiled. For the first time since my parents died, I felt the inkling of something other than numbness. Thinking about Wes—about the stubble on his chin, his smooth, muscular arms, his curly brown hair, and the way he had run his hand down the back of my neck when he kissed me—it was almost as if nothing had happened and I could return to the life I’d had before. I hadn’t felt anything since that night in the woods; I hadn’t allowed myself to. Instead I’d spent the last week in a trance—my body wandering around the house as if it were alive, when inside my mind was with the dead.

All of a sudden I felt an incredible urge to feel something more: pain, happiness, it didn’t matter. In front of me the water was tenuously still, as if the night air were weighing down on it with immense pressure.


I didn’t have a bathing suit on, but it didn’t matter. The far side of the marina was always deserted at night. I tore off my clothes and jumped into the bay. My lungs constricted at the shock of the sudden cold, and the salt water stung my eyes.


When I surfaced, Annie was wading in, holding her hair above her head with one hand. I splashed her, and she let out a shriek. Diving underwater, I swam deeper. The boats around me bobbed idly in the water, their reflections stretching into the horizon. I looked to the shore. Annie was near the rocks, floating on her back and staring at the sky.


And then I saw something rise to the surface.


It was round and long, and had what looked like a train of tattered clothes hanging off of it, lolling in the ripples of the water. Its surface was a sickly white.


I screamed and swam back to shore, my arms thrashing wildly in the water.


“What happened?” Annie said frantically.


I pointed to the bay. “There’s someone floating out there.”


Annie stood up and looked. “The buoy?” she said finally.


“I thought”—I said between breaths—“I thought it was a person.”


Annie looked at me, worried. “It’s just a buoy covered in seaweed.”


Embarrassed, I blinked and forced myself to look at it. Leaning over, I let out a sigh of relief. She was right. “I’m sorry. I must be losing my mind.”


As if on cue, a light turned on and flashed into the water. “Who’s there?” someone called from a boat harbored in the bay.


“Oh my God,” I said, not wanting to be seen in my underwear. “Let’s get out of here.” And in the light of the moon we ran back to shore.


After Annie dropped me off, I snuck through the back door, hoping that my grandfather had gone to bed. I’d just barely made it through the kitchen when a figure loomed in the doorway.


I froze. “Crap,” I muttered.


“I see you’ve gone swimming,” my grandfather said sternly. Even at this hour he was still wearing an expensive tweed suit and dinner jacket.


“I was feeling a little stuffy.” My sarcasm wasn’t lost on him. “Do you think this is funny?” he said loudly.


I jumped at the sudden sharpness in his voice.


“You could have gotten killed. Do you think my rules are arbitrary? That I enforce them just to punish you?”


“Killed. Like my parents? Maybe that wouldn’t be so bad if it meant I didn’t have to live like this anymore.”


He studied me. I clutched my sweatshirt against my chest and waited for him to say something. It was so quiet I could hear the water dripping from my hair onto the linoleum floor.


“I’m sorry you feel that way,” he said. “It wasn’t my intention. Go dry off and get some sleep. We’ll talk in the morning.”


The next morning I woke up late and tiptoed downstairs. For the first time since he’d moved in, my grandfather had let me sleep through breakfast. It should have felt like a victory, but was so out of character that it made me suspicious. My grandfather was in the living room, sitting in my father’s reading chair, a newspaper resting in his lap. Dustin was clearing a cup and saucer from the side table. I entered the room cautiously, trying not to draw too much attention to myself.


“Renée,” he said, almost warmly, “come in.” He motioned to the sofa across from him.


He was outfitted in trousers and a dinner jacket, with one of the French-cuffed shirts that Dustin starched and ironed every night. His thinning white hair, which was normally impeccably groomed, was tousled on the side, from leaning his head on his hand, I guessed. He took a sip of water, and I braced myself for punishment.


“Please sit,” he said.


Dustin pulled out a chair for me and produced a napkin and place setting.


“I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about your situation,” my grandfather continued.


I fidgeted with my shorts while he spoke, and studied his large, ruddy nose—a nose so massive that it seemed impossible for it to have ever existed on a younger person’s face.


“And I have decided to send you to school.”


I shook my head. “What? But I’m already in school.”


“This is a boarding school. And an elite one at that.”


I stood up in shock. My entire life was here: Annie, my friends, my teachers, the people I grew up with. They were all I had left. I was about to begin my sophomore year, and I had just made the varsity lacrosse team and gotten into AP History, which was normally closed off to sophomores. And of course there was Wes....


“But you can’t!” I cried, though I wasn’t so sure. How could he make me leave when my life was just beginning?


He clasped his hands over one knee. “It’s high time you got an actual education. A classical education. I’ve seen how schools these days operate, letting young people choose what they want and don’t want to study. It’s an ineffective method that has been disproven over and over again. Gottfried Academy has been around for centuries. I’m sure it will provide you with the same strong foundation that your mother had.”


I meant to interrupt him, but when he mentioned my mother, I went quiet. I didn’t know that she had gone to boarding school. She had told me stories about her childhood, about high school, and about how she met my dad, but she’d never told me that she went to boarding school, or that it was prestigious. My dad had to have gone there too, since they’d met in English class. Why would she omit those details?


“I’m not going,” I said defiantly. “You can’t make me.”


He sighed and shook his head. “On the contrary, I can. Your parents entrusted me with your safety, as stipulated in their wills. As your primary guardian, it’s my responsibility to do what I think is best for your future.”


“But they hated you. Even when they were alive they wouldn’t let you see me. So how can you possibly think you know what’s best for me? You don’t know anything about me.”


“That may be the case,” he said quietly, “yet the fact still remains that I am your grandfather, and you are a minor. I know more about you than you know about yourself. Now, sit down. Please.”


I cringed and sank into my seat. “Whether you like it or not, I am your legal guardian, and you’re going to Gottfried. Now, I’m going to speak plainly and clearly. You are not safe here, Renée.”


“What do you mean?”


“Your parents died. I don’t know why or how or by whom, but it certainly was not by natural causes.”


“But the police said—”


“The police believe that they both had some sort of heart attack. Do you think that’s true?”


“No.”


“Neither do I.”


“So … so what, then. You think someone murdered them? That someone chased them into the woods and killed them?”


My grandfather shook his head, his jowls quivering. “I don’t know, Renée. I only know that it wasn’t an accident. Which is why we have to leave.”My mind raced through all of my options. I could run away, stay with Annie and her parents. Or I could just leave and never come back, live in a train like the boxcar children so my grandfather couldn’t find me. I had to talk to Annie. Maybe she could help me convince her mom to adopt me.


My grandfather must have sensed my dissent. “We depart tomorrow morning. I will physically place you in the car if necessary.”


“Tomorrow? I can’t leave tomorrow. What about my friends?”


Suddenly I didn’t care if there was some killer out there who wanted to chop me to pieces. I was staying, and I was going to find out what happened to my parents. “I’ll never go,” I said defiantly. “Not with you or your stupid butler.”


Dustin coughed in the corner of the room, but I didn’t care. “We don’t have time for this,” my grandfather said. “The semester begins in a week. You should be grateful that Gottfried is letting you enroll this late. If it weren’t for my outstanding ties with the school, they probably wouldn’t have even considered you.”


“I don’t understand,” I said, angry tears stinging my eyes. “Why would I be safer in a different school? Why don’t we just go to the police?”


“The police were here; do you remember how helpful they were? Gottfried Academy is the safest place you could be right now. I’ve left a suitcase in the hallway outside your bedroom. Pack lightly. You won’t need much. The weather is different on the East Coast, and Gottfried enforces a strict dress code.” He eyed my shorts and tank top. “I daresay your current wardrobe will not do. We’ll find more appropriate attire when we land.”

I thought I had misheard him. “The East Coast?”


“Gottfried is on the western edge of Maine.”


I almost fell out of my chair. I expected Gottfried to be an hour, maybe two, away from Costa Rosa, but moving to Maine was different. I had never been to the East Coast before. The phrase alone conjured up images of stern, expressionless people dressed completely in black; of dark and unfathomably long winters. I couldn’t even begin to imagine the degrees of unhappiness I would experience if I had to move there.


“I can’t go!” I screamed. “I won’t—”


But my grandfather cut me off. “Do you think your parents would want you to stay here, wallowing in self-pity as you’ve been doing for the past week?” He gave me a cold look and shook his head. “No, they would want you to move on with your life. Which is exactly what you’re going to do.”


The conversation was over, and I stormed out of the room. I went upstairs and sat by the window, tears blurring my vision as I watched the heat rise off the pavement in the morning sun. It was unreal how much my life had changed in just one week. Both of my parents were dead, and I had no idea what was going to happen next. But I wasn’t scared. I was alive, and as I picked up the phone to dial Annie’s number, I closed my eyes and made a promise to my parents that I would never take that for granted again.

CHAPTER 2

Gottfried Academy


WHEN I TOLD ANNIE ABOUT GOTTFRIED Academy, she sounded more hysterical than I did. “But you can’t move! Who will be my best friend? Who will be your best friend? You can move in with me; we’ll be real sisters then, like we always wanted when we were little. You can move into the office.” It was exactly what I wanted her to say, but hearing it from her made me realize how unrealistic it was. Annie already had two younger brothers and a sister that her parents had to worry about, which was why they didn’t have any extra bedrooms or time. If my parents were alive, they would want me to be brave and independent. Running away or going to Annie’s house wouldn’t solve my problems. Where would I go when the only place I wanted to be was back in time? So after Annie’s monologue, I found myself in the unexpected position of reasoning with her. “But where will your dad work?”


“In the kitchen. Or the living room. We’ll find space.”


I sighed. “I couldn’t do that,” I said. “And your mom is already so busy....”


“But what about school? And all of your friends? And Wes?”


I winced at the thought of leaving them all behind, but tried to convince myself that there was a reason why my parents had made my grandfather, instead of Annie’s mother, my legal guardian. “Maybe Maine won’t be that bad. If my parents went there it couldn’t be too horrible. Besides, we’ll talk every day, and I’ll come back on holidays and in the summer.” After a teary conversation, Annie and I made plans to meet one last time, that night at Baker’s Field.


I spent my last day in California packing and wandering around the house trying to remember its every detail—the way it always smelled faintly of bread, the plush feeling of the carpet beneath my toes, the creaky fifth stair. Eventually I found my way to the office, where my father’s papers were still scattered across his desk. Not ready to look at them, I pushed the documents aside and turned on the computer. First, I searched “heart attack,” trying to figure out what could have possibly been the cause of my parents’ deaths. When more than a million results popped up, I refined my search to “heart attack” and “gauze in mouth.” That was more reasonable, but the results were all about wisdom teeth or complications with dental procedures. And after trying “heart attack, gauze,” and “coins, double heart attack, gauze in mouth,” which yielded nothing except the suggestion, “Did you mean cost of double heath bar, gooey in mouth?” I gave up. Frustrated, I typed in “Gottfried Academy.”


There was only one listing for Gottfried on the Internet. I clicked on it and was brought to an incredibly simple Web site with a blue-and-gold border, which I assumed were the school colors.


Gottfried Academy


Vox Sapientiae Clamans Ex Inferno


A Boarding School Dedicated to
Studies of an Existential Nature


Contact:


207 Attica Crossing, Mailbox 4


Attica Falls, Maine 04120


Beneath the inscription was a crest of arms and a very realistic pencil illustration of what I assumed was the school’s campus. It was stone and gothic, with cathedral-like buildings surrounded by a giant wall that looked almost medieval. If there had been a pigpen and a watering trough in the picture, they wouldn’t have looked out of place. Above the buildings, ominous dark clouds filled the sky. Out of curiosity I checked the weather forecast for Attica Falls, Maine. Sighing, I scanned the weekly prediction. Sixty degrees and cloudy. Every single day.


What was an existential boarding school anyway? Opening a new window, I looked up the word “existential,” which the Oxford English Dictionary defined as “of or pertaining to existence.” How helpful, I thought, and went back to the Gottfried Web site. I clicked on the crest of arms, and then on “Contact,” trying to go deeper into the site, but that was it. Frustrated, I closed the window. In addition to lacking pleasant weather, Gottfried also seemed to lack a proper Internet presence. Great, I thought to myself. There probably wouldn’t even be a wireless connection in the dorms.


Turning off the computer, I went into the hall. I had avoided my parents’ room all week. Every so often I would tiptoe up to the door and graze my hand across the knob, trying to imagine them inside, sleeping. Now, with nothing left to do, I opened it.


The room was perfectly preserved: the bed made, the dresser cluttered with books, the closet door ajar, a few pieces of my mother’s clothing still draped over the top. It was midafternoon and the branches of the trees brushed against the windows. That’s when I saw the answering machine, blinking on their night table. The mailbox was full. There were a few messages from Annie, the girls from school, the insurance company, and other people I didn’t know. I skipped ahead until I heard Wes’s voice: “Renée,” he said, “it’s Wes. I heard about, well, you know... I just wanted to see how you were doing, and to say that I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” I skipped ahead to the next. “It’s Wes again. You’re probably busy with family, but I wanted to say hi. So ...hi. Call me if you want to talk.” I sat down on the bed, clutching a pillow to my chest. “Wes again; calling to check in. Thought you might need a friend. That’s all, I guess.” Rewinding the tape, I slipped under the covers, breathing in the smell of my parents on the sheets, and listened to Wes’s voice until I fell asleep.


That night I snuck out. My bicycle was propped against the side of the house, where I’d left it two weeks ago. Quietly, I walked it to the end of the driveway. Somewhere in the distance, a dog barked. I jumped. “Hello?” I said, and then laughed at myself for being so easily frightened. After glancing back at my grandfather’s window, I rode down to Baker’s Field.


The football stadium was wide and flat, with the eerie stillness of a place trapped in time. The floodlights were off, letting the night sky spill onto the grass. It was empty, save for a dim glow off to the left, punctuated by laughter and the tap click hiss of beer cans being opened. Hopping off my bike, I walked toward the voices.

Annie was the first person I saw. She was there with some other girls from our class, and ran over when she spotted me. “Renée!” she said, giving me a hug. “You’re here! I was starting to worry.”


I gazed at all of the people on the turf. The girls from the lacrosse team were sitting on the grass, and a group of my friends from History class were standing around three coolers filled with beer. Behind them I recognized the guys from the soccer team, along with a few upperclassmen, nursing drinks and holding cigarettes, the red ash of the butts flitting through the darkness. “What is all this?”


“It’s your good-bye party, of course. You didn’t think I’d let you leave without seeing everyone, did you?”


A good-bye party. It seemed so simple, so foreign. In the face of my parents’ deaths, it was strange to think that things like parties were still taking place. I smiled and threw my arms around Annie again, speaking into her hair. “I’m going to miss you so much.”


Behind her loomed a tall silhouette of someone I had barely allowed myself to think about. Wes. Annie gave me a coy look and turned to talk to some of our friends as he approached me.


“Surprise,” he said softly.


He looked like he had just stepped out of a surfing catalog, his frayed shorts and faded T-shirt blowing casually against his body in the breeze. Just the sight of him made me nervous. I swallowed and smoothed out my bangs, hoping I didn’t look like I hadn’t had a full night’s sleep in a week, even though that was the truth.


“You look great,” he said.


I blushed. “Thanks.”


“I was worried about you.”


“It was really”—I tried to find the right words—“busy. I didn’t mean to—”


“Don’t worry. You don’t have to explain.”


I let out a sigh of relief. Wes had an unbelievable way of making things easier.


“Take a walk with me?”


I nodded, and he slipped his hand in mine.


We wove through the crowd of people, saying hi to everyone as we passed. It was overwhelming to think that they had all come just to say good-bye to me. After walking across the field, we reached the bleachers and climbed up to the top row, the metal popping beneath our sneakers. Wes tried to talk about the summer, about soccer, about school, but I couldn’t think of anything to say back to him. So I told him about Gottfried instead.


“So it’s just a different school, right?” Wes said after an awkward silence. “We can still see each other.” “It’s in Maine.”


“Oh,” he said, and went quiet. “Well, you’ll be home for breaks. We’ll talk. And before we know it, it’ll be summer again.”


Voices floated up from below on the night breeze. Those people were part of a world I could never go back to again. I couldn’t talk to them about school and sports and classes anymore; that place was gone for me, buried with my parents. I wanted to tell Wes that I missed my parents so much my insides ached; that I felt so alone I couldn’t eat or sleep because I didn’t see the point in it anymore. I wanted to tell him about the way my parents had died and how scared I was that there was someone out there evil enough to have taken them away from me. I wanted him to say that I couldn’t leave, that he would save me from my grandfather and we could run away together.


Wes asked me if I was cold, and wrapped his sweatshirt around me. We sat in silence, listening to our friends laughing, wishing it wasn’t our last night together, both trying to convince ourselves that if we wanted it badly enough, we could will everything away. I was afraid to speak; afraid I would ruin the delicateness of the moment.


“I’ll miss you,” he said finally.


It wasn’t an answer to all of my questions, but it was enough. “I’ll miss you—” I started to say, but he placed a finger over my lips. His skin was warm, his upper lip beading with sweat. I gazed at him, curious, confused. He laced his fingers in mine, and before I could close my eyes, he leaned forward and kissed me. A cool, wet kiss that tasted of summer, of dew and freshly cut grass, of all the things that now seemed too simple to be real.


That was my last night in California.


We landed in Massachusetts, where Dustin was waiting for us. I squeezed into the backseat of my grandfather’s custom Aston Martin, and Dustin drove us through the New England countryside, snaking over hills and ravines, through vast areas with nothing but trees for miles.


“This is western Massachusetts,” my grandfather said. “The home of the Transcendental movement.”


Transcendental? It sounded vaguely familiar from English class. Emerson, maybe, or Thoreau? I couldn’t remember, and I didn’t want to know badly enough to ask him. Instead, I opened the window, letting the wind blow my bangs around my eyes.


We crossed a bridge into a wooded area, past rocky streams and the occasional log cabin. My legs stuck to the leather seats as I gazed out the window. The thickets of trees, which normally would have looked pretty, now only seemed dark and forbidding.

Finally, the car slowed, turning up a long gravel driveway lined with lampposts. At the end was a Victorian mansion surrounded by acres and acres of perfectly groomed lawns. We parked in front of a marble fountain. Off to the right, two men in green uniforms were crouched beneath a rosebush with spades and garden clippers.


Dustin opened the car door for me. “Miss Winters,” he said with a nod.


I stepped outside, gazing at the mansion in awe. wintershire house was engraved over the entrance. “What is this?”


“Thank you, Dustin,” my grandfather said, hefting himself out of the car. “We’re making a short stop.”


The gardeners turned and stood up as my grandfather walked by.


“Is this your...your...” I paused, trying to think of the right word. “House?”


My grandfather smiled. “My home, yes. Transcendental, isn’t it?” Although I still couldn’t recall what the word meant, this time it seemed like an appropriate adjective. I had only seen houses this big on television, which I assumed had been filmed somewhere in the French countryside or the English moors. Never had I believed that they existed in America, or even more incredibly, that my grandfather owned one.


The front door opened into a large hall with checkered floors and heavy light fixtures. Thick drapes framed the windows, letting hazy light fill the room. Two staircases broke off on either side of the hall and led up to the east and west wings, demarcated by a compass rose engraved in the wall between them. Beneath it was a tall grandfather clock, its brass pendulum swinging languidly. How appropriate, I thought.


“Dustin will give you the grand tour while I attend to a few matters that need to be resolved before we leave.” “We’re not staying?”


My grandfather suppressed a smile. “Just for one night,” he said, and handed me over to Dustin.


I followed him as we meandered through the mansion, stopping in every room, each with a name and a theme.


“May I present to you the Gingham Library,” Dustin said as we entered an octagonal room with mahogany floors and shelves and shelves of leather-bound books. I touched a rolling ladder, which slid down the wall, just like in the movies.


We left and moved on to the Red Room, which was a velvet-lined sitting room, ostensibly for ladies. Dustin pushed open the door for me but waited outside. It had puffy ottomans and tiny side tables that were only large enough to hold a cup and saucer.


It was followed by the Parchment Room, a study equipped with an old computer that looked like it hadn’t been used in a decade. In front of it was a typewriter, a box of ink ribbons, a stack of cluttered papers, and a series of expensive-looking pens. We continued on through a maze of rooms, each more magnificent than the one before. I tried to keep them straight, but their names mingled together in my mind as Dustin announced them:


“The Game Parlor.”


“The Hearst Drawing Room.”


“The Hall of Marble and Glass.”


“Verlaine Oil Gallery.”


“Doldrums Wine Cellar.”


“The August Smoking Parlor.”


And finally, “The Second Living Room.”


It was a normal sort of living room, only fancier, with an oriental carpet and two fireplaces on each end. Victorian settees and divans sat in clusters around the room, along with a grand piano, a wall of bookshelves, and a chandelier made of antlers. Deer heads and portraits of distinguished-looking men hung on the walls.


“Wait,” I said, just as Dustin was closing the French doors. “Where’s the First Living Room?


He gave me a blank look. “There isn’t one.”


My grandfather met us in the foyer just as we’d finished with the first floor and the cellar. “Thank you, Dustin. I’ll take it from here,” and he led me upstairs.


On the second floor, the halls were plastered in linen wallpaper and adorned with portraits. Every so often we would pass a sleeping chamber, as my grandfather called them, mostly for guests, though I could hardly imagine him entertaining.


At the end of the east wing, we entered a small spiral staircase that led up into the easternmost spire. At the top was a short, windowed hallway with only one door at the end. My grandfather opened it for me, and I walked inside.


It was a bedroom: the kind you only read about in fairy tales. It had tall curved windows and a conical ceiling. The walls were painted lilac and decorated with antique mirrors and paintings of pastoral landscapes. In the middle of the room was a giant canopy bed covered in silly little pillows that I had to resist the urge to jump into. I traced my finger along the monogrammed sheets. L. C. W. My mother’s initials.


“This was her bedroom,” my grandfather said, watching me explore the vestiges of her childhood. The yellowed papers on her desk, the tins of makeup and hairpins on the dresser. A box of stationery peeking out from beneath the bed. An antiquated bookcase stacked with creased novels and faded dust jackets. I could never imagine my mother inhabiting this room, let alone owning that many tiny pillows. She had always been pragmatic, inclined to hiking boots and machine-washable clothing, big comfortable couches, and decorations that wouldn’t break if you dropped them. I had never seen her wear jewelry other than her wedding ring, and she rarely wore makeup. She had always encouraged me to do the same.


“If you’d like, you can stay in this room for the night. I thought it might be...comforting. Of course, I can have your things moved to one of the guest chambers if it doesn’t suit you.”


I spun around. “No, I want to stay here,” I said quickly. My suitcase, which was virtually empty due to my lack of packing, was sitting in the corner of the room.


“Good. Good.” My grandfather led me to a set of French doors in the corner of the room. “And this,” he said, turning the knobs, “was her closet.” I stepped inside, the smell of potpourri tickling my nose, and pulled the string dangling from the bulb.


In the light, the closet was transformed from an old storage room into an enchanted boudoir filled with rows and rows of jewelry and shoes and clothes. Beautiful clothes, in styles I had never seen before. The mere sight of them filled me with an unexplainable childish excitement, and I ventured deeper, running my fingers along the racks, the hangers clinking together behind me. The fabrics melted beneath my fingertips—silk, crushed velvet, suede, taffeta, cashmere, fine cottons. I had to remind myself that I didn’t like clothes like this. They were expensive, extravagant, snobby. My parents used to tell me I didn’t need material things to define who I was, but now I couldn’t help but want to put them on.


“These were your mother’s when she was your age. I think she was about your size. Anyway, they’re yours now.


Everything in this closet adheres to Gottfried’s dress code, so take whatever you think you’ll need.”


I glanced at the clothes, trying to imagine my mother at my age wearing the sweaters, the skirts, the dresses, the Mary Janes, the cloaks. I couldn’t. I fingered the sleeve of a sweater. It was so soft.


“Well, I’ll leave you to it. Lunch will be served at half past one.”


I nodded and watched my grandfather’s reflection in the mirror as he bowed out of the room.


I spent the next hour examining my mother’s clothes. She had boxes full of barrettes and rings and headbands; drawers packed with silk pajamas, scarves, earmuffs, and lamb’s-wool mittens. I thought they might smell of her, but instead they just smelled like lavender, which made it easier to forget that they were hers, that she was gone. The only trace of her I could find was a single brown hair clinging to a cowl-neck sweater. I pulled it out and examined it in the light. The hair was longer than I had ever seen her wear it. I imagined her in one of the plaid jumpers in front of me, her long hair held back with a ribbon. “What am I going to do?” I asked her, my voice cracking. I thought of my father next to her, his hair short and parted on the side. He wore a shirt and tie, just like he did in the pictures of when they first got married. “Dad,” I said into the empty closet, “what do I do now?” A row of extra hangers clinked together above me, mocking the silence. Suddenly I felt incredibly angry. It was unfair. Why did my parents have to die? Why did I have to find them? Now all of my memories of them were polluted by the image of them dead in the forest.


With a single movement, I knocked the hangers off the rack. They clattered to the ground, and I kept going, throwing her box of jewelry to the floor, her collection of headbands and barrettes, her scarves and mittens and hats, then sank into a sobbing heap, clutching my mother’s clothes to my chest. What would my dad say if he were here? I thought back to when I hadn’t made the lacrosse team last year. “Crying only makes your problems last longer,” he had said. “Why don’t you go practice? That way you’ll make it next year.” Wiping my tears on the bottom of one of my mother’s dresses, I picked myself up and stood in front of the mirror. I wanted to see something of her in me, but all I saw was my plain, thick hair, the bangs that always got in my eyes, my freckled face, and my gray eyes, now swollen and red. Was I like her?


I searched through my mother’s drawers until I found a pair of scissors. Standing in front of the mirror, I took a lock of hair in my hand. I closed my eyes and cut it off. I continued until half of it was gone, and my hair fell just below my shoulders. Finally feeling free, I shook my head, the wisps fluttering to the ground and collecting on the floor like spaghetti. Satisfied, I took a dress off a hanger and tried it on, examining my reflection. To my relief, it fit perfectly.


After packing three suitcases full of skirts, dresses, oxford shirts, cardigans, cable-knit tights, and plush winter coats, I felt adequately prepared for whatever weather the New England winter had in store for me.


“You cut your hair,” my grandfather said, aghast, when I walked downstairs for lunch.


I nodded. “I wanted a change.”


“It looks very nice,” he said.


“Thanks,” I said, with a slight smile.


After a lunch of tea sandwiches and cucumber salad, Dustin invited me to play a game of croquet. Manning a croquet mallet, I followed him to the back lawn. After only fifteen minutes he was already beating me by six swings. Frowning, I stepped up for my turn. I didn’t like to lose. After a moment of deep concentration, I swung. It was a swift hit and I rested the croquet mallet over my shoulder while I watched the ball roll all the way to the other side of the lawn, in the complete opposite direction of the ring I should have been aiming for. Dustin chuckled, but I scowled and ran over to my ball. It was resting at the edge of the woods, where a thicket of birch trees shaded the grass. Dustin called out to me, but I ignored him and bent down. Just as my fingers grazed the ball, I jumped back.


A pulp of feathers and dried blood was resting in front of it, the bones jutting out at unnatural angles. Unable to control myself, I screamed.

Dustin ran over to me, surprisingly agile despite his age and the stuffy suit he was wearing. He summoned a garden worker as my grandfather approached and surveyed the scene. “Get rid of it, please,” he said to one of the gardeners, patting me on the back. “Just a dead bird. Nothing to be frightened of.”


“Right,” I said, standing up, embarrassed that I had caused such a fuss. This had happened to me before. Even as a child, I seemed to find my way to dead things.


“Let’s go inside.”


Dusk settled over the mansion. My grandfather and I dined at one end of an exceedingly long table, and he attempted to make small talk about the subjects I was interested in at school. I told him I wasn’t sure. I had always been good at history. Both of my parents had been high school history teachers; my father had specialized in ancient Greek civilizations, and my mother had taught on the Roman Empire. So when I did well in my history classes, they’d always encouraged me to read more on my own.


“But what are you interested in, regardless of what your parents wanted?” he pressed.


I hesitated. “I... I don’t know. I like books and reading. And I like Biology. Anatomy, dissection. It sounds kind of cool. But I’ve never really taken it, so who knows. I probably wouldn’t even like it.”


He gave me a troubled look. “Why do you say that?”


“Dad told me that science was a flawed field. Something about how it was just another form of prediction. It tries to explain the mysteries of life and death by using a very small vocabulary. That’s what he said, at least.”


My grandfather rubbed his chin. “I see. Well, perhaps you should give it a try, lest he was mistaken. At Gottfried.”


I nodded. Was my grandfather actually being supportive of something I wanted to do? Maybe he wasn’t so bad after all.


That night after my grandfather went to bed, I turned on the bedside light and explored my mother’s room. It was like a museum, everything perfectly preserved, as if the sixteen-year-old version of my mother had just left for a date with my father, and would return any minute, sneaking in through the back door so my grandfather wouldn’t catch her. I ran my hands just above her perfumes, her porcelain figurines, her pens and pencils, not wanting to touch them, to change anything about them. She had stacks of books, mostly paperback fantasy novels and children’s tales, a pile of old notebooks scrawled with numbers and equations from math class, I assumed, and a binder full of notes from what seemed to be a literature class. In the margins, she had doodled my father’s name over and over again. I traced my fingers around the letters. Robert Redgrave. I liked the idea that they had once been my age, passing notes and daydreaming about each other in class. With a yawn, I clutched the notebook to my chest and crawled into my mother’s bed. Surrounded by her things, I finally felt safe, and fell into the first full night’s sleep I’d had in weeks.


In the morning we set out. Dustin drove us through the grassy knolls of Vermont, the White Mountains of New Hampshire, and finally into western Maine. It was getting late in the afternoon, the sun beating a yellow orange on the horizon. In the distance an airplane left a trail of white steam heading toward the west, and I watched as it disappeared behind the mountains. We hadn’t seen civilization in hours.


Up ahead, the darkened mouth of a tunnel was carved into the earth. Dustin locked the car doors. The radio became scratchy until it turned completely static.


When we emerged through the other end, we were in the mountains. The alpine passage had been carved into the granite. Giant peaks jutted out of the ground, framing the horizon like jaws. As we climbed higher into the mountains, the temperature dropped. Snowmelt trickled down from the peaks, soaking the road, and Dustin slowed as we turned a bend.


And then out of nowhere, we passed a house. It was half dilapidated, made of a dark wood that was rotting at the base. I was sure it was abandoned until I spotted a figure moving inside, behind the curtains of a cracked kitchen window.


I pressed my face against the glass to get a better look as we drove by. It was followed by another house, only this one was smaller and better kept, resting tenuously on a bed of granite. Slowly, we began to pass more houses until we reached an intersection with a general store, a gas station, and a diner with a faded sign that read beatrice’s.


“What is this place?” I asked.


“Attica Falls,” said my grandfather.


A few cars were parked along the side of the road, and a man was pumping diesel into a rusty pickup truck at the gas station. A stray cat ran under a house porch. Otherwise, the town was empty. Dustin made a left at the intersection, then headed up a steep road that led us around the mountain. The town ended as suddenly as it began. I looked back to catch one last glimpse of it just as we hugged the bend. Attica Falls.


When I turned back around, we had come to a stop. Nestled into the forest were tall iron gates spiraling together like the branches of a tree. Hanging at the center was a brass plate engraved with gottfried academy. A crest of arms was inscribed below it, with the words vox sapientiae clamans ex inferno. A small man dressed in a guard’s uniform approached the driver’s side.


Dustin rolled down his window. “Mr. Brownell Winters,” he said solemnly.


Surprised, the guard stepped back and stood up straight. “Sir,” he said, giving our car a stiff nod and running to open the gates. As we drove past, he peered into the car curiously, but quickly looked away.


Inside the school grounds the terrain was much different than the rugged wilderness that surrounded it. The ground was flat and green, with sprawling quadrangles of grass and trees. The massive buildings that comprised the campus were made of dark brick that had been stained and faded by the elements until it had acquired a smoky hue.


Ivy climbed up the walls, giving me the feeling that the buildings had not been built at all, but had grown naturally out of the earth.


We pulled into a half-crescent driveway and parked at the foot of a staggeringly large stone building, with ARCHEBALD HALL engraved above the entrance. Dustin left the car running and took my suitcases out of the trunk.


“Oh, I can get that,” I said, but he refused. With a bow, he carried them into the hall, leaving only my backpack at my feet.


“This is where we part ways,” my grandfather said.


“You’re leaving?” Suddenly I felt very alone.


“Would you have me stay?” He studied me pensively. “Edith Lumbar. She’s a professor here and an old colleague of mine. Should you ever feel unsafe, go to her. She’s very capable.” I nodded, fidgeting with the bottom of my cardigan.


“And you have my phone number. Don’t be shy about calling.”


“Okay.”


“You remind me of your mother when she was your age. I should be happy if you turned out the same.”


In a gesture intended to comfort me, he gave me a stiff hug. And with only one place to go, I walked up the steps to Archebald Hall.


I found myself standing in a giant hallway with a high-vaulted ceiling and mahogany colored walls that reminded me of the interior of a church. I ambled down the hall until I reached an open doorway on my right. I peeked in.


“Come in,” said a friendly voice.


Startled, I stepped inside. A young woman wearing red lipstick and a secretary’s skirt suit was seated behind a desk, sorting through a stack of files. She was simultaneously plain and glamorous, like a 1950s movie star. I half expected her to look up from a typewriter and pull out a long cigarette. She smiled when she saw me approach.


“Hi,” I said. “I... I’m a new student.”


She nodded. “What is your name?”


“Renée Winters.”


She scanned the files with a long slender finger and handed me an envelope. I turned it over, not sure what to do. She seemed to know what I was thinking.


“Your schedule is inside.” She motioned toward the envelope. “Everything you’ll need is in your room, including your suitcases, which are being delivered as we speak. You’re in 12E, in the girls’ dormitory. Go straight out these doors and turn right. Follow the walkway past the green. When you get to the lake, you’ll see it on your left.”


I folded the envelope into my pocket. “Thanks.”


I walked down a cobblestone path through the campus, which was lined with oak and maple trees and small leafy shrubs. There were students everywhere. Girls in pleated skirts and oxfords, boys in collared shirts and ties loosened around the neck. I looked down at my cardigan and collared shirt, which I’d patched together from my mother’s closet, hoping my grandfather wouldn’t notice when I paired them with my cutoff shorts. It was the last time I could wear them, and to my relief he hadn’t said anything. But now I felt out of place. I picked up the pace, eager for the privacy of my own room.

As the path narrowed, I passed a large grassy area surrounded by trees, which I guessed was the green. Just past it was the lake, wide and still, expanding across the entire upper half of campus. The buildings reflected off the water, changing and distorting in its ripples. At the head of the lake stood a life-size statue of a bear on all fours, its face arched up toward the sky.


The girls’ dormitory was made of a soft gray stone. Even from the outside it looked clean, as if it were made entirely of bars of soap. Across the lake stood an almost identical building that was made of a slightly darker stone. It was shaded by a collection of oak trees and seemed gloomier. A few boys were walking toward it.


Inside the girls’ dormitory, the heat was on and everything had the calm coloring of warm milk. A wide stone staircase led upstairs, and I skimmed my fingers across the surface of the banister as I ascended.


My room was large and sunny with high ceilings and a fireplace. The walls were a welcoming yellow, and the sweet smell of yeast and baking bread filled the room, reminding me of home. On the far wall were two large windows overlooking the lake and the green. My suitcases rested beneath them. I bent down to begin unpacking when a cool gust of northern air blew in, followed by the sound of rustling paper.


On the desk was a large rectangular parcel wrapped in brown paper. RENÉE WINTERS, it said in bold letters. Resting on top of it was a manual with the Gottfried crest embossed on the cover. I opened it. Gottfried Academy Code of Discipline. It was 157 pages long. How could there possibly be that many rules? I set it aside and tore open the parcel.


Inside was a stack of books:



Latinvs, by Evangeline Rhine





Mythology and Rituals, by Gander McPherson





Lost Numbers, edited by J. L. Prouty & Linus Moss Soil, by Brenda Hardiman





Origins of Existence, by Paul F. Dabney





Metaphysical Meditations, by René Descartes





The Republic, by Plato




Beneath them was a series of other books by Nietzsche, Aristophanes, Aristotle, and other names that I couldn’t pronounce.


Confused, I pulled out the envelope from my pocket. Inside was a sheet of paper labeled: Second-Year Schedule: WINTERS.


Elementary Latin I


Ancient Civilization


Imaginary Arithmetic


Horticulture


Philosophy


The Arts


Crude Sciences


Horticulture? Imaginary Arithmetic? In California we studied normal things like English, Algebra, Biology, and languages that people actually spoke, like Spanish or French. What did Crude Sciences even mean?


I picked up Mythology and Rituals, which I assumed was my Ancient Civilizations textbook. Back in California, History had been my favorite subject. Out of my entire schedule, it was probably the only class I would really enjoy. But I guess I didn’t have a choice, which seemed to be a recurring theme in my life over the past few weeks.


The sound of footsteps broke my train of thought. They stopped in front of my door. Startled, I stood up and watched the knob turn and the door creak open.


A girl walked in, lugging two overstuffed duffel bags behind her. A mess of wavy blond hair was piled on top of her head, and her round cheeks were flushed from walking up the stairs. With a sigh, she let a bag drop from her shoulder. It fell to the ground with a thud.


“Who are you?” I asked, confused.


“Eleanor,” she said, fanning her face with her hand. “Eleanor Bell.”


She was carelessly pretty, with rosy skin and wisps of windblown hair framing her face in a way that made her look like she had just stepped off a private yacht in Nantucket.


“So why...what are you doing in my room?”


“What are you talking about?” she said, looking at me as if I were crazy. “I’m your roommate.”


“Oh.” I felt my face turn red. In my hurry to open the package, I hadn’t even noticed that there were two beds. I looked around the room more carefully and realized that it was true, there seemed to be two of everything: two desks, two chairs, two wardrobes, all divided by a fireplace. “They didn’t tell me I had a roommate.”


“They almost didn’t tell me either. My old roommate left Gottfried at the last minute, and I was set to have a huge single all to myself...until a few days ago.”


I shifted uncomfortably. “Sorry.”


She shrugged. “It’s okay. It’ll be fun. Besides, living by yourself can get lonely.” She looked at my legs and frowned. “You know you’re not in dress code.”


I glanced down at my shorts and then at her outfit. She was wearing an impossibly short wool skirt, a perfectly pressed white collared shirt, and black knee-highs. I imagined that her parents were the sort of people who owned horses and played tennis on the weekend after hosting large brunches on their waterfront estate. “And you are?”


Eleanor ignored my comment. “No denim or clothes with writing on them,” she recited. “Only skirts, collared shirts, and stockings. And if you want to wear pants, you have to wear a blazer.”


I rolled my eyes. What was the point in getting so dressed up for school? “Well, I think I look fine.”


Eleanor scoffed at me, sticking her button nose into the air. “You look fine for going to the beach. We’re at Gottfried Academy! One of the oldest and most competitive schools in the country. Do you know how many people would die to be in your position?”


I had never heard of Gottfried until my grandfather told me about it, and I definitely didn’t care how prestigious it was. I would have given anything to be back at my old school. “I guess it’s just hard moving away from my friends.” I unzipped one of the suitcases and then added, “I’m new here.”


“I know.” Eleanor hoisted one of her bags onto her bed. “That’s the first thing you need to understand about Gottfried—it’s small. Things have a way of being found out.” She untied her hair, letting thick blond locks fall around her shoulders. The smell of citrus and shampoo wafted through the room. “Which brings me to the second thing you need to know. The secrets that aren’t found out are buried well. And probably for a reason.”


I gave her a perfunctory nod, but thought she was being overly dramatic. I had been to high school; I knew how things worked, how people talked, how secrets were leaked.


Eleanor paused, and for a moment I thought she had finished and I could finally unpack in silence. But then she said, “For example, your name is Renée. You’re five foot four, you got straight A’s at Costa Rosa High, you’re a sophomore, like me, and you have an inclination for history and the social sciences. Your parents were teachers, but then they died and your grandfather sent you here. His name is”—she tried to remember—“Brownell Winters.”


Surprised, I looked up at her. “How did you—?”


“And now you’re here, probably thinking I’m some spoiled, self-centered trust-fund girl who’s obsessed with makeup and name brands and only got into Gottfried because my family has legacy here.”


“That is not true! That’s just... It’s not... I don’t think that about you.” The retort sounded cleverer in my head, but the worst part was that I probably would have thought all of those things if I’d had more time.


“It’s all right. Everyone thinks it. And maybe they’re not totally wrong. But I know that your family has legacy too. Which is why you got in. You didn’t even have to take that ridiculous admissions test. And even though you couldn’t have grown up rich—I mean, your parents were teachers—I know that you’re an only child. Which probably makes you more spoiled than me, because I have an older brother, and everyone knows that only children don’t know how to share.”


I gaped at her, torn between anger and confusion. How did she know all this? I wanted to ask if it was her family’s money that made her think she could talk to someone else that way, but all I managed to spit out was, “I know how to share.”


“I told you,” she said, reading my thoughts. “Things have a way of being found out here. My parents are divorced, so I don’t really see them. It happened a few years ago and was really messy. My mom got the house in Aspen, my dad got the house in Wyoming, and they’re still fighting over the rest.” She rolled her eyes. “Or their lawyers are. My parents can’t even stand being in the same state. So of course they couldn’t stop fighting about where we would live. Which is why my brother and I are here. That and the fact that practically our entire family has gone to Gottfried.” She smiled. “And now you know everything about me, in case you were wondering.” She looked into my open suitcase. “That’s a really cute skirt.”


I watched as she leaned over my personal belongings in all of her blond, rosy glory, completely unapologetic for who she was and where she came from.


“Thanks,” I said. “It was my mom’s.” “She had great taste. Do you mind if I take a peek?” And without waiting for an answer, she bent down and sifted through the rest of the clothes in my suitcase. “You know, I’ve always had this fantasy of growing up in a normal family. A small, cozy house. My parents cooking pancakes for breakfast and borrowing eggs from the neighbors. Riding the bus to school. Oh, and of course I’d have to have a summer job. It’s so romantic. I could work as a waitress and wear an apron and everything.”


I gave her a confused look. “It’s really not that romantic. The bus was crowded and there was always gum stuck to the seats. And I would have killed to not have a summer job. But then I would never have met the guy I was dating. He asked me out at the farmers’ market where I worked.”


She looked up at me in awe. “See! It is romantic! Tell me everything.”


I couldn’t help but laugh. I had never met anyone who fantasized about having a crappy summer job or living in a small house.


“Let’s start over,” I said, and held out a hand. “My name is Renée.”


Eleanor smiled. “It’s nice to meet you.” She held up a tan shirt with ruffles on the collar. “This is so vintage. Do you mind if I borrow it? It would look great with my new skirt.” I let out another laugh. “Sure. So how did you know all that stuff about me?”


“It wasn’t hard. My brother, Brandon, is on the Board of Monitors. He’s a senior, and practically the headmistress’s pet. When I found out I had a roommate, I asked him to look in your file and relay the details. He’s not supposed to, but he’d do anything for me.”


It didn’t sound that easy. Actually, it sounded like a lot of work for information that she could have just found out by asking me. I watched her go through the clothes in my suitcase, holding them up to her body.


“Eleanor, how come your old roommate didn’t come back this year?”


She gave me a mischievous smile, as if she had been waiting for me to ask. “Now that’s a question that’s not so easy to answer.”

update has landed @skyblueking and d rest of d gang. Please read and leave a tot as a token.

Thanks for the update

Ak86:
update has landed @skyblueking and d rest of d gang. Please read and leave a tot as a token.

Thanks for the mention bro...
More ink to ya pen!

Ak86:
New story alert my people Adeshina12, Greatlinda, Anna2012, Samebony1, Prisomic, Lonesome501, Froze6, Tridroid.

who am i not to respond to the call of nature...thankz in advance 4 sharing dis natural/supernatural story with us.

CHAPTER 3

The Awakening


HER NAME WAS CASSANDRA MILLET. THAT WAS all I was able to find out about Eleanor’s old roommate before we were interrupted by the chiming of church bells. Eleanor suddenly looked distraught. “Is it six o’clock already? We have to go!”


“Go where?”


“Fall Awakening, of course. Come on, we’re late.”


“Wait, but what’s Fall Awakening?”


Instead of answering, Eleanor grabbed a cardigan. I did the same, and she took me by the elbow and rushed me out the door.


We walked briskly through campus, past Verning Theater, a massive stone building with Greek columns lining the front; past Horace Hall, made of red brick, with tall darkened windows that gaped vacantly into the mountains. I could barely make out the engraving over its entrance: COGITO ERGO SUM. “That’s where our classes are,” Eleanor explained. Finally, we passed the Observatory, a stone tower in the middle of campus that doubled as an astronomy lookout and science laboratory. It was almost sunset when we reached the green. A low murmur of voices filled the air, and we walked toward them until we reached the clearing.


The trees grew thicker at the center of campus, enclosing the lawn in a semicircle of oaks and evergreens. Above them, the darkening sky was scratched open, bleeding bright streaks of red and orange. In the distance was the chapel, its bells still swaying.


“This,” Eleanor said, “is Fall Awakening.”


The students were divided into four sections, one for each year, she explained. Everyone was already seated on long wooden benches that lined the outskirts of the lawn in the shape of a U. The first row of each section was empty. Eleanor was already squeezing her way onto a bench in the sophomore section. I followed her, but when she saw me take a seat beside her, she shook her head.


“It’s supposed to be alphabetical,” she explained. “Which means you should be in the back with the rest of the W’s....”


We both turned to look at the back row. The only space left was on the far side, in between a scrawny blond boy with thick-rimmed glasses and a plump girl with frizzy brown hair who did not look very friendly.


“Oh … right. Okay.” I hesitated before standing up, studying the blond boy in the back, who seemed to be counting something that no one else could see. “Who is that?”


Eleanor ignored my question. “But since the guy who sits next to me isn’t here, I doubt anyone will notice if you stay,” she said just as I was about to leave. “You’re way better company. I’ve tried to make conversation, but he barely acknowledges me. Sometimes I think he doesn’t even notice that I’m sitting next to him. He’s like that with everyone. He even stopped hanging out with his friends, and now just does everything alone. He’s sort of like this social outcast, except that everyone is secretly obsessed with him.”


“Obsessed? What do you mean? I thought you said he didn’t talk to anyone.”


“He doesn’t. The thing is … he’s beautiful. He’s this rugged, devastatingly gorgeous guy who has inexplicably chosen a life of solitude. And he’s brilliant. Some Latin prodigy or something. Most people here can’t decide if they love him, hate him, or are scared of him. For most people it’s all three. Especially my brother. Brandon hates it when I talk about him, which is sort of weird because I don’t think they’ve spoken even once.” “Who is he?”


Eleanor lowered her voice, the name rolling off her tongue like a dark secret. “Dante Berlin.”


I laughed. “Dante? Like the Dante who wrote the Inferno? Did he pick that name just to help cultivate his ‘dark and mysterious’ persona?”


Eleanor shook her head in disapproval. “Just wait till you see him. You won’t be laughing then.”


I rolled my eyes. “I bet his real name is something boring like Eugene or Dwayne.”


I expected Eleanor to laugh or say something in return, but instead she gave me a concerned look. I ignored it.


“He sounds like a snob to me. I bet he’s one of those guys who know they’re good-looking. He probably hasn’t even read the Inferno. It’s easy to pretend you’re smart when you don’t talk to anyone.” Eleanor still didn’t respond. “Shh …” she muttered under her breath.


But before I could say “What?” I heard a cough behind me. Oh God, I thought to myself, and slowly turned around.


“Hi,” he said with a half grin that seemed to be mocking me.


And that’s how I met Dante Berlin.


So how do you describe someone who leaves you speechless?


He was beautiful. Not Monet beautiful or white sandy beach beautiful or even Grand Canyon beautiful. It was both more overwhelming and more delicate. Like gazing into the night sky and feeling incredibly small in comparison. Like holding a shell in your hand and wondering how nature was able to make something so complex yet so perfect: his eyes, dark and pensive; his messy brown hair tucked behind one ear; his arms, strong and lean beneath the cuffs of his collared shirt. I wanted to say something witty or charming, but all I could muster up was a timid “Hi.”


He studied me with what looked like a mix of disgust and curiosity.


“You must be Eugene,” I said.


“I am.” He smiled, then leaned in and added, “I hope I can trust you to keep my true identity a secret. A name like Eugene could do real damage to my mysterious persona.”


I blushed at the sound of my words coming from his lips. He didn’t seem anything like the person Eleanor had described.


“And you are—”


“Renée,” I interjected.


“I was going to say, ‘in my seat,’ but Renée will do.”


My face went red. “Oh, right. Sorry.”


“Renée like the philosopher René Descartes? How esoteric of you. No wonder you think you know everything. You probably picked that name just to cultivate your overly analytical persona.”


I glared at him. I knew he was just dishing back my own insults, but it still stung. “Well, it was nice meeting you,” I said curtly, and pushed past him before he could respond, waving a quick good-bye to Eleanor, who looked too stunned to move.


I turned and walked to the last row, using all of my self-control to resist looking back.


“Sorry,” I said as I squeezed through the row at the end of the alphabet, stepping over feet and pushing past knees. I stopped in front of the blond boy I’d seen from up front. He looked up at me through his glasses, then quickly averted his eyes, as if he had done something wrong.


“Is this W?” I asked.


It took a few seconds for him to realize I was speaking to him. Finally he nodded. “Welch, like the juice,” he said, referring to himself, “and Wurst,” he said, lowering his voice to a whisper as he pointed to the girl to his left, “like the sausage.”


I let out a surprised laugh. “I’m Renée. Winters, like the season,” I said, and sat down next to him.


He was a shrimp of a person, and blond all the way down to his eyelashes. He had inordinately skinny arms and looked like he’d spent the majority of his life in his parents’ basement playing video games. Yet still, there was something strangely interesting about him. I tried to place it. Was it the fact that he hadn’t blinked since we’d started talking, or the way he leaned a little too close when he spoke? No, it was something more.


“I’m Nathaniel. I mean, that’s my first name.” He adjusted his glasses. His shaggy hair looked like it hadn’t been washed or brushed in days, and his skin was as pasty as waxed paper, save for a collection of blemishes on his chin and forehead.


I smiled. “Got it.”


“You’re new here, right?”


I nodded.


“Me too. Well, I was last year. I’m not new anymore.”


A hush fell over the crowd. From the back, a line of people filed onto the lawn.


“Those are the professors,” Nathaniel said.


They walked stiffly and all wore the same blue-and-gold scarf around their necks. The frayed ends dangled loosely above their waists as they took their seats in the front row.


At the center of the lawn was an ancient oak tree. Its gnarled trunk was so thick that it looked as if three trees had twisted themselves into one. Draped over its branches were two flags. They were deep blue, and bore a constellation of a bear and the Gottfried crest of arms in yellow stitching. A small podium stood between them.


And then out of the darkness emerged the tallest woman I had ever seen, striding through the trees like the wisp of a ghost.


“That’s the headmistress, Calysta Von Laark,” said Nathaniel.


She stood at least six feet tall, with wavy white hair that was pinned loosely to the back of her head. She had blue eyes, large hands, and a slender figure that was slightly masculine in its proportions.


She walked to the podium and waited. The wind slowed, and everything was still.


“Students, faculty, welcome to another illustrious year at Gottfried Academy.” Her voice was low and velvety as it echoed off the buildings surrounding the lawn.


“I hope that you all had an enlightening holiday and were able to use the time away from your studies to wade in the warm waters of everything that summer has to offer. To our new students, welcome. There is a complete list of school policies and procedures in the Gottfried Code of Discipline, which you received with your books and schedules. If you have any questions, I trust that our returning students will be able to aid you, as well as the dormitory parents, Mrs. Lynch and Professor Bliss.”


A man and woman from the front row stood up and waved.


“Here at the Academy, we believe that limitations challenge the mind. Gottfried has a series of regulations that we hope all of our students will abide by during their stay here. While this is slightly out of procedure, I would like to use this time to reiterate a few that are especially critical after the events that occurred last spring.” A murmur floated over the benches. What happened last spring? I wondered, leaning over to ask Nathaniel.


“Someone died,” he whispered. “A first year named Benjamin Gallow.”


“What?” I asked. “How?”


But we were interrupted by the headmistress’s booming voice, as she recounted the rules.


“First: boys are never permitted to be in the girls’ dormitory, and vice versa. Second: leaving the school grounds is strictly prohibited and punishable by expulsion. And third” —the headmistress paused to brush a cluster of white hair away from her eyes—“under no exception is anyone allowed to enter into a romantic relationship of any nature at this academy.”


What? I glanced around me, incredulous that they would even think of banning dating. But no one else seemed fazed. The sun was setting behind the library. Almost simultaneously the lights in every building on campus went out, leaving us to the purpling twilight.


“And, of course, let me emphasize that there shall be no use of artificial light after sunset, with the exception of candles. In this world, darkness is always looming on the horizon. At Gottfried, instead of avoiding the dark, we meet it head on. As headmistress, I urge you to do the same with your studies and with every obstacle you face in the future. Do not accept the confines of the world as you perceive it. Instead, look for what you cannot see. There are universes among us, within us. Our only way out of darkness is to learn how to see without light.”


The crowd was silent. Crickets chirped lazily from the grass around us.


“And now, in the time-honored tradition of the great thinkers who came before us, let us cast away everything we know and attempt to see the world as it really is.”


The headmistress closed her eyes and bowed her head. Everyone followed, and I did the same. Then she began to speak in a language that was far different from anything I’d heard before. It started as a low murmur, and gradually grew into a chant. I opened an eye and tried to catch a glimpse of Dante, but all I could see was the back of his neck. It was a beautiful neck, smooth and lean beneath the collar of his shirt.


But my thoughts were interrupted by a voice tickling my ear. “Bring us death,” said Nathaniel, barely audible.


I gasped. “What?”


“That’s what she’s saying: ‘Bring us death so we can study it. To capture the mind of a child is to gain immortality.’” His voice cracked, and he swallowed self-consciously. “‘So that when we die, our minds live forever.’

I stared at the headmistress. It seemed a little morbid for a high school motto. In my old school, the principal didn’t even give a welcome speech, let alone hold some bizarre nighttime ritual.


“It’s Latin,” Nathaniel said, pretending to keep his eyes closed like everyone else. “She’s saying that even though our bodies will die, our achievements will live on forever.”


“Shhh,” hissed a voice from the section across from us. A prim and preppy girl glared at us, then shut her eyes.


“That’s Genevieve Tart,” he said quietly. “She’s a junior. And she hates me.”


“Why would she hate you?” I asked.


“My presence annoys her.”


“Did she tell you that?”


“No, I can just tell. She barely speaks to me. And she thinks my name is Neil.” “That’s ridiculous. How can you know she hates you if she doesn’t speak to you?” I asked in a strained whisper.


“Shhh!” Genevieve said again, this time to me.


Nathaniel stared at his feet. “See?”


Before I could respond, a boy from the farthest section of the benches stood up. He was tall and athletic, with a face strikingly like Eleanor’s. Her older brother, I realized.


He walked through the rows of his section with a military strut until he stopped behind a girl and tapped her on the shoulder. She was slender and rosy, with almond eyes and straight black hair.


Once tapped, she walked down the rows and tapped a short, bony boy, who made his way to the third-year benches and tapped a girl with freckles and red hair. She tapped a serious-looking boy who made his way to the back, directly toward me. He stopped at our row, and I closed my eyes and waited. But the tap never came. Instead, he touched the girl across from us. Genevieve Tart rose and gracefully made her way down the aisle.


The six students lined up in front of the podium, their heads bowed and eyes closed.


“The tapping of the new Board of Monitors,” Nathaniel explained. “Model students.” His voice betrayed a hint of bitterness. “They make sure everyone keeps the rules.”


“How are they chosen?”


“They’re picked by the faculty. It’s really difficult to get. There’s this test you have to pass, but no one knows what it is, and the Monitors won’t say. That’s probably why they were chosen. They’re suck-ups.”


Headmistress Von Laark stopped chanting and left the podium. She approached the first boy from behind and tapped him on the shoulder. “Brandon Bell,” she announced in a commanding voice.


She moved quickly down the line. “Ingrid Fromme.


“Schuyler Soverel.


“Laney Tannenbaum.


“Maxwell Platkin.


“Genevieve Tart.”


Only juniors and seniors could be tapped, Nathaniel explained. Brandon, Ingrid, and Schuyler were fourth years, and were on the board last year. The third years were Laney, Maxwell, and Genevieve. The headmistress pursed her lips, dark red and elegant. “Board of Monitors. Tonight I bind you to Gottfried Academy. From this moment on, the student body is your body. The student voice is your voice… .”


The moon rose large behind the trees. Headmistress Von Laark lifted her head and gazed around the lawn “And now,” she bellowed, “let us wake.”


One by one the Board of Monitors opened their eyes and raised their heads. All of the students followed suit. The night sky was clear. The reflection of the moon rippled in the lake, and a cool breeze fluttered above, rustling the leaves.


The headmistress removed a small knife from the podium and cut a deep slit into the bark of the tree. Thick red sap oozed out. She dipped her fingers into it and tapped each Monitor on the forehead, smearing a crimson streak just above their eyes.


Then she spoke in Latin, her voice booming across the green.


Nathaniel translated. “‘Blood from the oak tree, blood from our founders, resting in the roots beneath. May our minds be deciduous, constantly being reborn.’”


The headmistress stopped speaking and turned to the new Board of Monitors. They looked frightening, almost biblical, with the sap dripping down their foreheads. I had never heard of a tree that bled red sap.


“Gottfried Academy, I present to you the Board of Monitors. In celebration, I would like to invite you all to join us in the Megaron for the first-of-the-year feast.”


And with that, the headmistress walked past the board, and one by one they filed off the green and back toward the dorms. The professors followed. No one clapped. No one spoke. The wind blew overhead, making the campus feel vacant.


Once they were gone, everyone stood up. I glanced back at the front row, but Dante wasn’t there. Only Eleanor, talking to a group of girls. The rest of the students had already begun to head to the Megaron, which apparently meant great hall in Greek, for the feast. Everyone except for Nathaniel, who was hanging around the benches, as if he were waiting for something.


“Are you going to the feast?” I said finally.


Looking slightly surprised, he straightened his posture.


“Yeah.” He fidgeted with the buttons on his shirt. Suddenly he slapped a mosquito off his arm.


“Do you want to sit with me?” I asked. He was a bit weird, but seemed nice and sort of funny, and since he hadn’t left with friends, I was pretty sure he didn’t have anyone to sit with.


He perked up and pushed his glasses closer to his face. “Really? I mean, yeah, sure.”


We met up with Eleanor and her friends at a table in the Megaron. Eleanor’s friends were just like her: pretty, rich, and carefree. I wasn’t sure who was more surprised—the girls upon seeing Nathaniel trailing behind me, or Nathaniel upon realizing that he was sitting with some of the most popular girls in our year. Even though I tried to pay attention while everyone was catching up, I couldn’t help glancing around the dining hall, hoping to spot Dante beneath one of the iron chandeliers. But all I saw were the faces of strangers.


Then suddenly I heard his name. I turned back to the table, where all the girls and Nathaniel were staring at me, waiting for me to answer.


“Right, Renée?” Eleanor probed.


“What? Sorry. I was just looking at the, um, the Board of Monitors table.”


“I was just telling them that you got Dante Berlin to talk. I think he even laughed.”


I blushed. “Yeah, I mean, it wasn’t a serious conversation or anything. He was actually sort of rude.”


“Everything is serious with Dante. He never smiles or laughs,” said Greta, an athletic redhead.


“He didn’t seem that bad,” I said, taking a bite of pasta. “He did have a sense of humor...kind of.”


“He was different around you,” Eleanor said. “Actually, I don’t think I’ve ever seen him talk to anyone for as long as he did with you. Since last spring, that is.”


“What do you mean ‘last spring’? What happened?”


Rebecca, a lithe girl with short black hair, interjected. “No one really knows,” she said, leaning on her elbows. “Just that Benjamin Gallow died. He disappeared, and then a few days later they found him in the woods. Dead.”


Eleanor interrupted her. “You’re telling it completely wrong.” She waited until she had my full attention, and began. “So it was the middle of spring term, when one day Benjamin just didn’t show up for classes. Benjamin was the kind of guy who had no idea how hot he really was. He was a straight-A student, the best épée fencer on campus, and was friendly to everyone, even the cook staff. Basically everyone liked Benjamin, and Benjamin liked everyone. So when he didn’t show up for class, we all thought he was sick. Only he wasn’t in the dorm that night.


“The school searched everywhere. They questioned his friends, his roommate, his girlfriend, practically everyone who knew him, but nobody had any idea where he was. And then they finally found him.”


Eleanor gazed around the table dramatically, her eyes glistening with excitement.


“He was in the forest. It was a Monday; I remember because I was wearing my pink-and-blue headband, the one I always wear on Mondays. We were outside in Earth Science when we saw them carrying Benjamin’s body through the gates. Dead, of course. I remember they’d thrown his coat over him so none of us could see his face. All we could see was one of his arms swinging below him while Professor Bliss and Professor Starking carried him to the nurses’ wing. It was so pale it was almost blue.”


The table went uncomfortably silent, the din of silverware clinking against plates blurring into white noise around us as we all imagined Benjamin’s arm dragging lifelessly across the green.


“But the strangest part was that nobody could understand what caused his death,” Eleanor continued. “He wasn’t harmed in any way. No scratches or bruises or anything, so it was obvious that no one had attacked him or murdered him. And he didn’t have anything with him, so it wasn’t like he was trying to run away. When the nurses examined him, they said he died of a heart attack, and that there was no other possible cause of death.”

I froze. “Wait,” I said, my heart beginning to race. “He died of a heart attack?”


“Yeah. It did seem kind of bizarre at first. A fifteen-year-old dying of something like that. But that’s what happened.”


Images of my parents flooded my mind. The car, the woods, their lifeless bodies. “Did they find anything else? Like anything out of the ordinary? On his body, maybe?”


She gave me a confused look. “I don’t think so....”


“They didn’t find anything out of the ordinary but a dead kid,” Rebecca added sarcastically, biting into a cherry tomato.


Eleanor rolled her eyes.


“So what does Dante have to do with it?” I interjected.


Eleanor gazed at me as if it were obvious. “Dante was the one who found him.” I stopped chewing.


“No one could understand how Dante discovered him. It was in such a remote location in the forest that the chances seemed nearly impossible.”


I could feel myself begin to sweat.


“Afterward, there were rumors that Dante had killed Benjamin. That’s how he knew where he was.”


“But why would Dante do that?” I said, trying to steady my voice.


“Well,” Eleanor said, taking a sip of water, “Benjamin was dating my old roommate, Cassandra Millet.”


“Wait,” I said. “I thought we weren’t allowed to date.” I paused. “Why aren’t we allowed to date?”


Eleanor gave me a perplexed look. “Well of course we’re not allowed to date. The school thinks it distracts from our academics. I guess that’s the way they did it back then—brother and sister schools. Same with the dress code. No short skirts or bare shoulders. But that doesn’t mean no one dates. You just have to be discreet about it. Anyway, Cassandra was adorable: creamy skin, these huge green eyes, flowing golden hair—a little Aphrodite walking around campus. Everyone loved her. Even Dante. They were best friends—both part of the same group. The Latin Club. People think Dante was in love with Cassandra and killed Benjamin to get to her.”


“That seems a little extreme....” I said.


Eleanor shrugged. “It’s just a rumor.”


“So are they together now or something?”


“Cassandra dropped out,” Rebecca said, shaking her head.


“Or transferred,” Eleanor added. “Either way, she left the school.”


“Maybe Cassandra killed Benjamin Gallow,” a girl named Bonnie offered. Eleanor shook the idea off. “Then they would have let the police deal with it. And I already said that the cause of death was a heart attack. How could a person have caused that?”


For the first time in a while, Nathaniel spoke up. “Maybe she tried to kiss him,” he said in a small voice. “That would be enough to give me a heart attack.”


Everyone at the table exchanged amused glances, and eventually the conversation drifted, leaving Benjamin and Cassandra’s mystery unsolved.


After dinner we retreated to our dorm, where the girls dispersed to their rooms. Eleanor lit a candle and changed into a pair of pink pajamas. I wanted to read, and already forgetting the rules, went to turn on the overhead light. But there was no switch. There really was no light after nine p.m.


“I still don’t see the point in all of these rules.”


Eleanor shrugged. “The professors would probably say that it had something to do with our safety.”


“But how do you do your homework without lights? How do you do anything?”


“Candles. Your eyes will adjust. Just do your work earlier. Besides, why would you want to do homework at night when you could be doing so many more interesting things?”


It was a nice idea, but I had a feeling that the headmistress would see to it that we wouldn’t be doing anything more interesting than homework. No wonder my grandfather liked this place so much. His ten o’clock curfew seemed reasonable in comparison.


“Here,” Eleanor said. “Use this.” She opened her underwear drawer and searched through it until she found a half-burned candle. “You know, I always thought Nathaniel was sort of queer, like he gave me the creeps or something. But tonight he was really nice. And normal, in an abnormal way.”


I nodded, but the boy I was thinking about wasn’t Nathaniel.


“So Dante was...friends...with Cassandra?” I asked, trying to sound nonchalant as I ran a brush through my hair.


Eleanor looked up from her journal, her eyes wide with excitement, as if she had been hoping I’d ask. “They were both in the Latin Club. Well, that’s what we called it because they were all in advanced Latin. Anyway, it was Cassandra, two juniors named Gideon DuPont and Vivian Aletto, a sophomore named Yago Castilliar, and then Dante. They’re all really smart, and kind of elitist. They know everything about the classics, they’re fluent in Latin, and they were always in the library together, whispering in it so no one could understand them.”


Eleanor stood up to open the window, and then sat next to me on my bed. “Here, let me do that,” she said, and began braiding my hair.


“After Benjamin died and Cassandra dropped out, the group fell apart. Well, not the entire group; just Dante. He had a huge argument with Gideon, Vivian, and Yago on the green after curfew. I could hear the shouting from my room.”


I hugged my knees. “What were they saying?”


Eleanor let out a laugh. “Who knows? It was all in Latin. The professors didn’t get there till it was over. After that Dante basically removed himself from the school. He stopped talking to everyone and moved off campus. I think he’s the only student at Gottfried who’s allowed to live in Attica Falls.” “Maybe he knows something,” I said, glancing out the window to the trees beyond the school wall.


“Something about what?” Eleanor asked, tugging at my braid. “And hold still.”


“Benjamin’s death. It’s not normal, the way he died. And Dante found him.” I turned to face Eleanor. “Maybe Dante found something on Benjamin’s body and didn’t tell the school about it. Maybe that’s what the fight was about.”


Eleanor’s forehead wrinkled in confusion. “Find what on his body? What are you talking about?”


“Like maybe a coin or something. Or cloth.”


Eleanor gave me a strange look. “I mean, he was wearing clothes. And he probably had change in his pocket. Why does that matter? Benjamin died of natural causes. And who cares what they were fighting about? Their friend died, and Cassandra transferred. They were probably just upset.”


I sighed. “I guess.” Even though everything she said made sense, I didn’t believe it.


“But if Dante’s is hiding something, maybe you can get it out of him,” she said, wrapping an elastic around the bottom of my braid. “I think he likes you.”


“He said three words to me, then told me I was in his seat. That hardly counts as liking.”


“Okay, but you have to admit that he’s gorgeous. Aren’t you at least curious?”


I was, but not just because he was unreasonably good-looking. There was something about the way he’d looked at me that made me feel more alive than I’d felt since before my parents had died. Even though our interaction was brief, I couldn’t get it out of my head. Why did he talk to me but not to anyone else? It seemed too coincidental that he had found Benjamin dead in the forest from a heart attack, just like I had found my parents. Yes, there was no proof he knew anything. He could have left his friends for any number of reasons. But what if there was more to it?


I was about to respond when someone knocked on the other side of the wall above Eleanor’s bed. A mischievous smile spread across her face. She climbed onto her bed and knocked back three times, waited, and then knocked once more.


Tiptoeing next to the door, she pressed her ear against it to make sure no one was outside. “I’m going next door. Do you want to come?”


“What’s next door?”


“Just the girls,” she said, putting on her slippers. “Genevieve’s going to be there, and I want to hear all the dirt on the Board of Monitors.”


“Is there dirt? I thought they were model students or something.”


“Oh come on, everyone has some terrible secret buried away.” Raising an eyebrow, she teased, “Not just Dante.”


“Isn’t your brother on the Board of Monitors? Why don’t you just ask him?”


She shook her head. “That’s the only thing he won’t tell me about. Obviously he doesn’t understand reverse psychology. Keeping it a secret only makes me want to know more.”


The invitation was tempting, but I was still trying to process all the things she’d told me about Benjamin Gallow. “Maybe some other night. I’m exhausted.”


Eleanor shrugged. “Suit yourself.”


She pulled on a sweater and slipped into the hall, where Rebecca and Bonnie were huddled outside. “Sweet dreams, Renée,” she said, and closed the door.


Unsure of what to do with myself, I picked up our dorm phone and dialed Annie’s number. Her mom answered.


“Hel... Hello?” my voice cracked. Even though I had only been gone for two days, it felt like ages. I had taken for granted what it was like to talk to someone familiar, and all at once my emotions about losing my parents and being ripped away from my friends and my life in California came bubbling to the surface.


“Renée, is that you?” Margerie’s voice echoed from a world that I had almost forgotten.


I swallowed. “Yes,” I said in a small voice. “Is Annie there?”


“Oh honey, she’s out right now. Can I have her call you back?”


“Sure,” I said, trying to hide my disappointment.


“Is everything all right?” she asked, after I had given her my dorm phone number. “Yeah, it’s great,” I forced out. “Everything here is great.”


There was a long silence on the other end, as if Margerie were weighing whether or not she believed me. “Okay. Well, call us if you need anything. And I’ll make sure to tell Annie you called.”


“Thanks,” I said, and hung up.


I thought of all the places Annie could have been—the marina, the coffee shop, Lauren’s house—all the places I used to go to, but would never see again. To take my mind off it, I rolled over and picked up the Gottfried Code of Discipline and opened to the table of contents. It had dozens of sections: Dress Code, Curfew, School Boundaries, Leisure Activities, Room and Board, and Attica Falls, among others. I flipped to the chapter on the history of Gottfried and began to read.



Gottfried Academy was originally founded as a children’s hospital. The patients were housed in two buildings, one for boys and one for girls. Between the buildings was the only known salt lake on the East Coast. The founder and head doctor, Bertrand Gottfried, used the antibiotic qualities of the salt water to ward off disease, and the lake became a bathing area for patients. The infirmary grounds were built around it, including a wall that concealed the grounds behind fifteen feet of stone, to protect the patients from the natural hazards of the White Mountains....




Although I was tired, something compelled me to continue reading. And that was how I ended my first day at Gottfried—thinking about rules and restrictions, about death and Benjamin Gallow and my parents, until I fell into a dreamless sleep.

CHAPTER 4

The First Law of Attraction


THE FIRST WEEK OF SCHOOL ONLY ADDED TO THE strange events that had been occurring over the past few weeks. It started in Latin.


Horace Hall, where almost all of our classes were held, was the size of a small Victorian castle, with stone towers and large wooden doors hammered with iron. They were so heavy I could barely open them. Ivy climbed up the face of the building, meandering around the windows that looked out onto the green.


The doors opened into a foyer with red carpeting, stained wooden walls, and high ceilings supported by oak beams. The windows were framed with heavy blue drapes, their folds gathering on the floor. Behind them, heaters hissed. In the middle of the foyer was a wide staircase with polished banisters that led to the outer wings of the building. Our Latin class was somewhere inside. It was first period, and Eleanor was running late and had stopped by the dining hall to pick up breakfast before class, so I was left to find it by myself. A few minutes before the bell rang, I was still standing in the foyer, staring down at my schedule as students rushed past me.


Elementary Latin   M W F 8:00 am
EW, II, VII, Horace Hall


I was pretty sure that meant east wing, second floor, seventh room. Or maybe it meant east wing, second room, seventh floor. Or maybe EW were the initials of my professor. I tried to ask for help, but everyone pushed past me in a rush to get to class, a swirling haze of pressed shirts, cuff links, ties, and penny loafers. This place couldn’t be that hard to navigate; I just had to think. I had a gut feeling that it was on the seventh floor, so in a somewhat arbitrary decision, I made my way up the stairs to the east wing. I found the room just as the bell rang. Breathless, I pushed open the door and flung myself inside, a flustered, sweaty mess. The entire class turned in my direction, and I knew I’d made a mistake. It was a small group; everyone was sitting around a single wooden table, hunched over their books when I interrupted. They all looked older and somewhat unwelcoming, particularly a brooding boy with short auburn hair that was neatly combed and parted down the side. He was wearing a black suit, far fancier than anyone else in the class, and tortoiseshell glasses. Next to him was a girl who could have been his sister. I couldn’t decide who was more handsome. She was also wearing a man’s suit, though hers was tailored to her slender frame. Her short black hair was parted and slicked back, as if she were a wealthy financier from the 1920s.


The professor was a robust young man with sandy hair that reminded me of a golden retriever. He was lecturing in a language I didn’t understand. It was probably Latin, though I was sure this wasn’t the class I was supposed to be in. The professor stopped speaking and gave me a questioning look. I could feel my face turn red.


“Is this Elementary Latin?” I asked stupidly.


The person in the seat closest to me turned around, and to my surprise, it was Dante. He raised an eyebrow, a beautiful eyebrow, and stared at me with amusement. Seeing him again, I felt embarrassed and excited all at once. He was leaning over the back of his seat, his collared shirt pulled tightly around his broad shoulders. His wavy brown hair was pulled back with an elastic band, a few stray locks dangling just below his chin. I imagined myself running my fingers through it. We made eye contact, and I felt myself blushing.


“No,” the professor said, taking off his glasses. Behind him, the board was covered in notes written in Latin. The only words I recognized were Descartes and Romulus et Remus. A simple six-sided figure was drawn over and over again in different iterations and dimensions. Confused, I looked at it again. It couldn’t be anything other than the image that had been haunting me for the last two weeks: a coffin.


“I … I’m sorry,” I murmured, and began to back out the door, when Dante stood up and walked toward me, his eyes never leaving mine. I fumbled with my things, and he reached behind me, his hand grazing my skirt as he opened the door. And giving me a barely discernible smile, he breathed, “Second floor. Seventh room on the left.”


I was late for Latin. When I walked into the classroom, it was the same thing all over again, all heads in my direction, and silence—a dead, pitying silence. Eleanor’s eyes were wide and terrified for me. “What happened?” she mouthed, curling a ringlet of hair around her finger nervously. But I didn’t dare respond. The professor stopped lecturing.


“I... I’m sorry I’m late. I got lost.”


“I don’t want you to speak; I want you to sit,” she said, as if I should have known.


Trying to keep a low profile, I hugged my bag and made my way to the back of the room.


Our Latin professor was a fortress of a woman, wearing a wide, shapeless dress and a thick pair of glasses. Professor Edith Lumbar was written on the board in wobbly cursive.


Edith Lumbar. She was the woman my grandfather had told me to contact if I ever needed help. I closed my eyes and sighed, wishing I hadn’t already gotten on her bad side.


“To continue where we left off, while you are in my classroom, there will be a number of rules. First, there shall be no slouching.”


The sound of shuffling filled the room as people sat up straight.


“Practitioners of Latin must pay close attention to precision in all facets of life if they wish to master the subtle science of the language.”


She began pacing about the room. “Second, you are not to speak unless you are called upon.


“And third, and this is by far the most important of all the rules, you are never, under any circumstance, to speak the language of Latin.”


How could we learn a language that we were never allowed to speak? And what was the point of learning it in the first place? “Why?” I blurted out before I could stop myself.


Professor Lumbar turned around and looked at me with surprise. “Were you not listening when I mentioned rule number two?” she asked, though it clearly wasn’t a question. “What is your name?”


“Renée Winters,” I said.


She gazed at me for a moment and then repeated, “Renée. To be born again. An old name, derivative of the Latinate and French verb naître, to be born, and shared by the great thinker René Descartes. While you clearly possess his proclivity for argumentation, it’s evident from your rash behavior that you lack his patience and wisdom to follow a logical progression through to its end.”


I barely had time to process her diatribe before she continued.


“So, Renée, what is it that don’t you understand?” Her tone was polite yet rife with sarcasm. The room was so silent I could hear my stomach growling.


I swallowed. “I was just … I was wondering why we can’t speak a language that we’re trying to learn.”


“That’s an interesting question. Does anyone want to answer her?”


A boy in the front row raised his hand.


“Yes,” Professor Lumbar said. “What is your name?”


“Prem,” he said.


“Prem, what do you think?”


“Is it because Latin is a dead language?”


“Latin has been considered ‘dead’ for centuries. Yet it is quite alive. Historically, Latin has been a language of the elite. Only select people were able to read it, write it, and most important, speak it. In this class we will study the legends surrounding the people Latin chose to speak through. Since this is an elementary class, it is obvious that no one in this room has been blessed with a Latinate tongue. To attempt to speak it out loud would thus be an act of hubris.


“However, if you choose to exercise your minds, I can teach you how to communicate the unspeakable. How do you describe the briefest sensation? A smell you haven’t experienced since you were a child? The ecstasy of seeing an animal being born? The immeasurable grief we feel when faced with death? We can’t even begin to communicate these complex emotions to each other. But Latin can illuminate sensations you never realized you had.”


All eyes were glued to the professor. Suddenly, Latin became interesting. Even as a child I had felt isolated in my thoughts. I was sure that nobody knew the real me, the full me, even my parents. And now that they were dead, I was completely alone. How could I explain all the things I was feeling to another person? Maybe Latin was the answer.


Professor Lumbar picked up a piece of chalk and began to scrawl something on the board. Latinum: lingua mortuorum. I copied it in my notebook.


“Now, open your books to page twelve,” she said, and proceeded to make us copy out verb conjugations until the period was over. Once out of class, I flipped through my dictionary to try and decipher what she had written. After writing out the translation, I looked around suspiciously.


Latin: The Language of the Dead.


The rest of the day went by in a blur. We were herded from one classroom to the next like cattle, lugging our books up and down the rickety old stairs of Horace Hall with just a short break for lunch. It had been so long since I had been at a new school that I had forgotten how difficult it was to be the new girl. I had no friends, and everyone at Gottfried acted like they’d stepped out of a polo match in the British countryside with the Prince of Wales. And considering that Gottfried actually had a polo team, and one of the upperclassmen was distantly related to the Duchess of Kent, some of them probably had. Eleanor was clearly one of the most popular girls in our grade, and fluttered from group to group chatting about her summer. Because she was only in two of my classes and there was barely time to talk in between, we agreed to catch up at dinner.


Left to my thoughts, I wondered what my friends at home were doing. Annie would be in biology, sitting in the back row, passing notes to Lauren while Mr. Murnane lectured about the body. And where would Wes be? In U.S. History, or maybe English Lit. Daydreaming about Wes used to be something I looked forward to, but now it just made me sad. Was he still thinking about me, or had he already moved on? The thought of him with another girl was too unpleasant for me to bear, and I pushed it out of my head, resolving to focus on my classes. It was the only way I’d be able to get through the first day of school without losing my mind.


I was just about to head to Philosophy when I heard something drop. Behind me, a frail girl with stringy brown hair was kneeling on the ground, frantically trying to pick up the papers and pencils and books that had fallen from her bag.


Feeling her embarrassment, I set my bag down and approached her. She looked rumpled, with puffy eyes and a glazed-over gaze, as if she had just woken up.


“Do you want some help?”


She turned to me with gratitude and nodded. Her brown hair stood up in the back with static, and she had a run in her nylons that started at the heel and traveled all the way up to the hem of her skirt.


“I’m Renée,” I said.

“Minnie,” she said timidly.


Before I could respond, I felt a tap on my shoulder.


A woman with a yardstick was standing behind me. She was short and squat, with thick calves and an oversized blazer with a peacock brooch on the left lapel. Her hair was a dull brown and was cut close to her head in a no-nonsense style.


Minnie’s face contorted with fear and she stuffed the rest of her belongings into her bag and scurried away to the corner of the foyer, leaving a few stray pencils on the ground.


“Stand up,” the woman said to me.


Upright, I towered over her, my eyes meeting the top of her head.


“What is your name?”


“Renée,” I said, resentful of being ordered around and asked my name when all I’d been doing was helping a girl pick up her things. Professor Lumbar I could understand, since I had been late, but this was unnecessary. “What’s yours?”


She stared at me, horrified at my impertinence. “The audacity—” she said, almost to herself. “My name is Mrs. Lynch. But don’t busy yourself trying to remember it; in time it will ring familiar. An insubordinate child like you, I suspect, will be seeing a lot more of me in the future.”


She took me by the elbow and led me to the foot of the stairs.


“What are you doing?”


“General procedure.”


“But I haven’t done anything wrong!”


“Kneel,” she barked.


Startled by the abnormality of her command, I dropped to the ground in front of the staircase, trying to convince myself that teachers no longer beat students with rulers. Did they? Around us, a crowd students had begun to gather. A group of girls pointed at me and whispered. I tried to ignore them, though I could feel my face growing red. The grainy wood floor was rough against my bare knees, and I shifted my weight uncomfortably.


Mrs. Lynch circled me, her brown clogs clicking against the floor like a timer. “No stockings,” she murmured, dragging the end of the ruler across the back of my legs.


“Untucked shirt,” she continued. She dropped the yardstick, its butt hitting the ground with a thud. A hush ran through the crowd of students. I winced, waiting for her to hit me, but instead she bent down and held the stick against my thigh. She looked at my skirt and frowned. “Two and one-quarter inches above the knee. The dress code stipulates that skirts can be no more than two inches above the knee.”


“But it’s only a quarter inch!”


“Nevertheless, you are out of dress code,” Mrs. Lynch sneered, showing a row of tiny yellowed teeth.


I glared at her and stood up, pulling at my skirt. How was this possibly punishable?


“You will go back to your room and change.”


“But I have to go to philosophy—”


She ignored me. “And on the way you’ll pay a visit to the headmistress’s office.”


“I have class now!”


“You’ll have to miss it,” she said, and began to walk away.


“But it’s the first day!”


She turned to me. “Young lady, you’re lucky it’s the first day. Otherwise your punishment would have been far more severe.”


I hoisted myself up and was wiping off my knees when I heard a woman’s voice behind me. “Excuse me,” she said to Mrs. Lynch. Startled, she turned around.


The woman was thin and plain, with straight brown hair and a linen skirt. She was about the age of my mother, and had creases around her eyes from smiling. “This is one of my students. I’ll deal with her.”


I had never seen her in my life.


Mrs. Lynch gave her a suspicious look. So did I.


“I only mean to escort her,” the woman said, studying me as if she had seen me before. “She’s new.”


Mrs. Lynch grunted in reply and went back to her office, her yardstick tapping as she walked. When she was gone, the woman turned to me. “Come.”


The crowd in the foyer of Horace Hall parted, and I held my head high as I walked, avoiding eye contact with anyone, to hide my mortification. Once we were outside, she stopped and glanced around us. “Go back to the dorm and change.” “What about the headmistress?”


“Do you really want to see her?”


I shook my head.


“That’s what I thought.”


I didn’t know who she was or why she was helping me. “Why—” I started to say, but she interrupted me.


“Don’t get caught out of dress code again.”


With a nod, I ran back to the dormitory. I went through all of my mother’s clothes until I finally found a more modest pleated skirt. I put it on, along with a pair of stockings. Then I tucked in my shirt, slipped on my cardigan, and stood in front of the mirror. I could barely recognize myself. If Annie saw me now she would have walked right by me. Yet for some reason the woman who had just saved me from the headmistress’s office had looked at me as if she’d seen me before. Who was she? Sighing, I ran a hand through my hair and pinned it back with my mother’s barrette.


By the end of the day I had met up with Nathaniel, and together we walked over to our last class, Crude Sciences. It was in the Observatory, a tall spindle of a building in the center of campus. On the way, I told him about how I’d walked into the wrong class before Latin, and about Minnie and Mrs. Lynch and the mystery woman who had intervened.


“Yeah,” Nathaniel said. His poorly knotted tie was too long, and swung against his chest as he struggled to hold his books and keep up with me. “Lynch loves watching people squirm. She’s always on me for having too much facial hair.” He fingered the three or four lone whiskers that had sprouted from his chin. “I don’t even own a razor!” His voice cracked, and he blushed. “And next time don’t worry about Minnie. She’s always tripping over things and dropping stuff, which doesn’t really help the fact that everyone here thinks she’s crazy.”


“Why do they think that?” I asked, gripping my book bag.


“She had this outburst last year in the dining hall. I don’t really know what it was about. I wasn’t there.”


I shrugged. “Speaking of crazy, what was that class that I walked in on? There were all these morbid drawings on the board, and the teacher was speaking Latin, I think. And everyone looked miserable. Though I guess I would too if I had to stare at drawings like that all day.”


Nathaniel wiped the sweat beading on his forehead with the end of his tie. “I don’t know. It’s not that weird. It was probably one of the Advanced Latin classes.”


“Okay. But what about the drawings on the board? And Dante was in it. He’s in our year. Shouldn’t he be in my Latin class?” Nathaniel pushed up his glasses. “No. I’m in an Advanced Latin class too,” he said proudly. “They group us based on ability instead of year, since there aren’t that many of us. And as for the drawings, maybe they were just using them to learn vocabulary words.”


I gave him a skeptical look. “A chapter on coffins? I highly doubt that.”


The inside of the Observatory was much larger than its small frame suggested. The walls were white, and a single spiral staircase led up to the glass dome of the roof. When we made it to the top, we were in a laboratory with long concentric counters lined with beakers, scales, and metal instruments. Bottles of brightly colored liquids and vials of powder lined the walls. In the center of the room, a giant telescope faced up into the sky.


Nathaniel and I sat at an empty bench in the back row. The professor was standing in the middle of the classroom, a position that emphasized his potbelly and disproportionately skinny legs. He wore spectacles and had the spacey look of a mad scientist who believed in conspiracy theories and aliens. Pens stuck out of his shirt pocket, and frizzy tufts of hair sprouted in a ring around the crown of his head. He glanced at his watch and flipped the lights on and off to signal the start of class.


I was about to ask Nathaniel more about his Latin class when I felt someone’s eyes on me. I looked up and saw Dante. He was sitting on the far side of the classroom, the afternoon light bending around his silhouette. His dark hair was strewn carelessly about his face, making his skin look ashen and smooth in contrast.


Our eyes met, and I tried to smile, but Dante didn’t waver. Instead he gave me a curious, almost troubled look. What was he thinking about? The professor flipped the lights on and off one last time, making Dante’s face disappear and then reappear like the flash of a ghost. When the lights came back on, he was still staring at me. A prickly feeling of anxiety crept up my spine. I shuddered and looked away.


“Professor Starking is my name, though this is but a formality. The details of our identities are quite insignificant in the complex system of forces that comprise our universe.”


He patted the shaft of the telescope and glanced up through the glass ceiling. Clouds floated carelessly across the sky. A small flock of birds flew beneath them.


“But before we look into the outer realms of the cosmos, we must revisit this world. Thus we study the crude sciences. Biology, physics, chemistry—we will master these before we move on to the stars and planets.”

Professor Starking tilted his head down and studied the class over the top of his glasses. “In our time together I will attempt to reshape your Galilean brains. You may experience discomfort. Expanding the mind can often be painful.”


I glanced back at Dante, unable to help myself. Everything about him seemed irresistible—the waves of his hair, the stubble on his chin. I could look at him all day and still not have all of the contours of his face committed to memory.


“We’ve learned from history that we are more efficient when we work together,” Professor Starking said. “Plato had Socrates, Galileo had Archimedes, Doctor Frankenstein had Igor.” He let out a chuckle, which degenerated into a fit of coughing.


“So,” he continued, clearing his throat, “everyone has been assigned a lab partner, who you’ll be working with for the entire semester.”


He began to read off names. Please, I thought, read my name with Dante’s. Please.


“Nathaniel Welch and Morgan Leicester.” Nathaniel shrugged and stood up.


“Greta Platt and Christian Treese. Paul McLadan and Maggie Hughes.


“Renée Winters and Dante Berlin.”


Surprised, my body went rigid. In California, I always seemed to be partners with Oily Jeremy, the boy with terrible body odor, or with Samantha Watson, who was only interested in talking about her nail polish. A chair scraped against the floor, and Dante walked across the room and took the empty seat next to me, his shoulder blades shifting underneath his shirt like tectonic plates as he leaned on the table.


After studying me for a few moments, he turned and faced the professor without even acknowledging me. Shocked by his rudeness and unsure of what to do, I turned my attention to the board and pretended to ignore him. We sat in silence until the professor finished calling off the names.


“The Laws of Attraction.” He approached the board.


His voice was drowned out by the noise of rustling paper.


“The First Law of Attraction states that attraction and repulsion are two sides of the same force.”


And as Professor Starking talked about physics and magnetism, I turned to Dante.


“Why do you keep staring at me?” I muttered under my breath.


He glanced around to make sure no one was listening and then leaned toward me. His voice was hushed. “You have pen on your face. Here,” he said, touching the space by his nose. “Oh.” I felt my face go red as I wiped my cheek with my hand.


“That and you remind me of someone I know. Or once knew. But I can’t place who it is.”


“I thought you didn’t have any friends,” I challenged.


Dante smiled. “I don’t. Only enemies. Which doesn’t bode well for you, considering the fact that you must resemble one of them.”


I raised an eyebrow. “You know, you’re really good at compliments. Actually, it’s surprising that a person with charm like yours has any enemies.” The words came out before I could stop them. At this rate I would never be able to ask him about Benjamin Gallow, and it didn’t help that every time he looked at me I wanted to melt.


“So you think I’m charming?” Dante countered, mocking me. “Is that why you keep staring at me?”


“Alarming, not charming. And no, I’m just curious.”


“Curious?” Dante gave me a bemused look and leaned back, draping his arm over his chair. “About what?”


“Why don’t you talk to anyone?”


“I thought that’s what we were doing.”


“To anyone else.”


“Talking isn’t the only way to communicate. I speak when I have something to say.”


“Then you must be pretty boring, judging from what everyone says about you.”


Dante let out a laugh. “And what are they saying?”


“That you won’t talk to anyone at school because you think you’re superior.”


“And what if I am?” I narrowed my eyes. “You’re not. You just think you are.”


Dante smiled and leaned toward me. “So now you can read my thoughts?”


I swallowed. “No. I can just tell.”


“Really? What am I thinking now?” he said, lowering his eyes to mine.


It was difficult to act normal with him staring at me so closely, so intensely. My voice wavered. “You’re...you’re wondering where I’m from.”


Dante’s face softened. “That’s exactly what I was thinking,” he said, studying me. I wasn’t sure if he was joking.


“Somewhere green, I’d guess,” he continued. “With a lot of sun.”


“How do you figure that?”


Without touching me, he traced his fingers through the air along the top of my cheeks. “Freckles.”


I blushed. “California. And you...you’re from—?”


“Here and there,” he said, brushing off my question. “Nowhere, really.”


I gave him a suspicious look. What did that even mean? Though, admittedly, I couldn’t imagine him being from anywhere. He was too handsome, too mysterious to come from a place.


Before I could ask him another question, Dante continued. “So why did you come here? You don’t seem like the average Gottfried student.”


“Why?” I said, taking offense. “Because I don’t have a trust fund and a summer home?”


“Because you say what you think.”


“Oh,” I said, averting my eyes. “And people at Gottfried don’t?”


“Not like you did to me at the Awakening. Or to Mrs. Lynch this morning.” I sighed. He saw that. “I’m not used to so many rules. My old school was more...laid back.”


“So your parents sent you here?”


I shook my head. “My grandfather. ..” my voice trailed off.


I felt Dante’s eyes on me, examining my face.


“Do you have parents?” I asked, before realizing how stupid a question it was. Everyone had parents.


Dante hesitated. “No, not really.”


“What do you mean not really?”


“Nothing,” he said. “It’s...just, never mind.”


I rested my chin in my hand, considering his aloofness. “What’s the big secret?”


“No secret,” he said with a smile. “Just nothing to tell.”


I gave him a coy frown. “Or nothing you want to tell.”


Around us, everyone was flipping through the pages in their textbooks as Professor Starking recited something about forces. I shuffled through the pages haphazardly, more aware of Dante’s presence next to me than the vectors in the book.


He gave me the beginnings of a smile. “Look, I think we got off on the wrong foot. Can we start over?” He held his hand out beneath the desk. “I’m Dante,” he said.


I studied the creases in his palms, the veins running up the contours of his arms, before responding. “Renée,” I said quietly, slipping my hand into his.


His skin was cold to the touch, and I felt a tingling sensation in my fingers, as if they had just begun to go numb. Our eyes met, and my face became warm and flushed, my insides fluttering like a cage of small birds. It was alarming; nothing like this had ever happened before, and I didn’t understand why I felt so strange. It wasn’t just nerves or butterflies. I’d felt those with Wes; but this was different —frightening, almost supernatural. I opened my mouth to say something, but nothing came out.


He pulled his hand back quickly, and the sensation in my fingers slowly returned to normal, the warmth seeping through my skin like ink. I blinked once, and everything except for Dante seemed muted and distant. I stared at him—horrified, confused, excited—at his lips, parted and drawing breath into his body as he tried to understand what had just happened, and I knew that nothing would ever be the same.

CHAPTER 5

Horticulture


DANTE WAS COMPLETELY WRONG FOR ME. Unsociable. Severe. Intellectually condescending. Or at least that’s what I told Annie. It was Thursday, and I was nearing the end of my first week of classes. I called her after lights-out. The gnarled cord of the phone was stretched across the room as I huddled beneath the covers and whispered into the receiver, trying to find some semblance of privacy.


“He’s the exact opposite of Wes. And Wes is perfect, isn’t he? So what does that say about Dante?” I asked her. All week I’d been trying to convince myself that I wasn’t interested in Dante. I just wanted to get close enough so I could ask him about Benjamin. But the likelihood of that was slipping further and further away. After our hands touched in Crude Sciences, he’d stared at his and then at mine with a look of confusion mixed with disbelief. Lowering his hand beneath the desk, he opened and closed his fist, watching his knuckles turn white.


Turning to me, he asked, barely audible, “Did you...?”


But as he studied my face, his voice trailed off. Had he felt what I felt? I didn’t have a chance to ask him, because without saying anything else, he stood up. The class turned to us as his chair scratched the floor. Professor Starking stopped lecturing.


“I have to go,” Dante said, gathering his things and giving me one last glance, the door slamming behind him.


I had tried to talk to him the next time we had Crude Sciences, but he was too busy flipping through a Latin book under the desk and writing in a leather-bound journal to grace me with more than a one-word answer. As a matter of fact, he hadn’t even looked at me, which made me even angrier.


“Could you pass me the—?” I’d asked during a lab about the physics of a butterfly, but instead of paying attention to the lab, Dante was reading. Before I could finish my sentence, he passed me the magnifying glass. As he did, our hands brushed against each other. He pulled his hand back.


“Don’t touch me,” he said quickly, before averting his eyes.


His words stung as I stared at him, not knowing what to say. “What?”


“I’m sorry,” he said, without looking at me. “I … I shouldn’t have said that.” He turned back to the book in his lap and flipped a page, tracing the lines with his finger until he found the sentence he was looking for. “It’s a milkweed butterfly, by the way.”


“How … how did you know that? You didn’t even look. .. .”


But he didn’t respond. And after confirming that it was, in fact, a milkweed butterfly, I turned to him, frustrated. Holding the magnifying glass over my eye, I peeked over his shoulder, trying to see what he was reading. It was all in Latin.


“Is that for Latin class?” I asked, staring at his Roman profile, which was even more impressive when magnified.


Dante looked up, startled. “No,” he said, shutting the book. “Gray,” he remarked, staring at my eye through the glass. “Like the sky. Pretty.”


So maybe he was strikingly handsome, and maybe his voice was deep and buttery. And maybe he did say brilliant things and always knew the right answer even though he had spent practically the entire class reading a mysterious book in Latin. I wouldn’t let that distract me from the fact that he had was exactly the person that Eleanor had described: evasive, arrogant, and inexplicably distracted. But if all of that were true, I asked Annie, why couldn’t I stop thinking about him?


“The weirdest part was when we shook hands. He touched my fingers and my hand got all prickly, like it was falling asleep. That’s when he got up and left. He’s pretty much ignored me since.”


Annie laughed. “Oh, Renée. You’re always so dramatic when it comes to guys.”


“No, I’m being serious. I’ve never felt anything like it. It was like my skin was going numb.”


I heard Margerie say something in the background. Annie covered the receiver, muffling her response. “Hold on, Mom, it’s Renée,” I made out before she returned to our conversation. “I don’t get it. You lost circulation or something? Are you sure you weren’t just nervous? Or maybe you were leaning on your funny bone.”


I frowned. “No,” I said. “I know it sounds crazy, but I felt it. It was real.”


There was a long pause on the other side. “Don’t worry,” she said. “I believe you.” But she wasn’t very convincing. “So remind me again: if this guy is such a jerk, why are you so obsessed with him?”


“Because I think he knows something. And I’m not obsessed,” I added, and told her about Benjamin Gallow and the incident last spring. When I mentioned the heart attack, Annie’s end of the line went silent.


“Coincidental, right?” I said softly.


Annie hesitated. “It’s different, Renée. Your parents... they were at an age when...”


“When what?”


“Nothing, it’s just … I’m sure the doctors and police officers know more about that stuff than we do. No one suspects anything but you, right?”


I didn’t respond.


“I bet that kind of thing happens more than we think.”I curled the cord around my fingers beneath the sheets. “Yeah, maybe...”


We talked for a few more minutes about California and my old school. Annie told me all of the gossip about what the new teachers were like, who was dating whom, which freshmen had made the lacrosse team. It should have been exciting, but for some reason I couldn’t get into it. When she finally hung up, I threw my blankets off and stared at the ceiling. The receiver was resting on my chest, the dial tone dissipating into the darkness of the dorm room. What was wrong with me? Annie had been my best friend since we were kids; she was the only person left who knew everything about me. So why I did feel relieved when she said she had to go?


“I think it’s perfectly normal.”


Startled, I sat up. Eleanor was still sitting in bed, in silk pajamas, holding a pink highlighter and a book called Symposium, by Plato. A half-burned candle flickered on the nightstand.


“What is?”


“Dante.”


“You could hear me?”


“Of course I could. You were beneath a blanket. And you’re not good at whispering. Anyway, I think what happened between you and Dante is romantic.”


“Oh no, well, I don’t think it’s like that. I mean, I like someone else. Well, I did before I came here.” Though I knew that reality was quickly fading away. Annie told me that Wes had been asking about me, but I hadn’t heard anything from him since arriving at Gottfried. “I’m not going to get involved with Dante. He isn’t right for me.”


Eleanor raised a perfectly shaped eyebrow. “That’s strange, considering you spent almost the entire conversation talking about him.” “It’s also strange that you spent the entire time listening to my conversation when you were supposed to be reading,” I challenged, giving her the beginnings of a smile.


“That’s not strange, it’s normal. What else was I supposed to do? Besides, if I hadn’t listened, you wouldn’t have anyone to talk about Dante with. So really, I’m doing you a favor. And if you want my opinion, I think it’s obvious that he’s into you. That hand thing. That means something.”


I let out a sarcastic laugh. “Yeah, probably that I’m allergic to his cologne.”


“Don’t be ridiculous. I don’t think it’s that out of the ordinary.”


I gave her a skeptical look. “Really? Has that ever happened to you?”


“Oh, no. Of course not. I’ve never heard of anything like it. But I think if something creepy like that could ever happen, it would be with Dante Berlin. Or maybe Gideon DuPont, though then you’d have to face the wrath of Vivian.”


“They’re Dante’s friends, right?”


“They’re Dante’s old friends. The Latin scholars. Gideon’s a senior. He always wears black suits and these old-man glasses, like he just stepped out of the Great Depression or something.”


Immediately, I knew who he was. He was one of the people in the class I’d walked in on. Vivian must have been the girl beside him.


“And Vivian Aletto is his best ‘friend.’ Though everyone’s pretty sure there’s something going on between them. They’re always together and they’re always arguing like they’re brother and sister. But once I saw Gideon stroking the inside of her wrist. And Vivian sometimes wears his glasses. It’s really bizarre.”


“And they were friends with Dante and Cassandra Millet?”


Eleanor nodded. “And Yago Castilliar. You’ve probably seen him around; he wears a lot of pastels. Seersucker pants that just barely make dress code; loafers with no socks. Always needs a haircut, but never seems to get in trouble for it. I think it’s because he flirts with Mrs. Lynch.”


I had seen him around. He was easy to spot, considering he was the only guy who was brave enough to wear a pink oxford.


“Anyway, they were like a family. The oldest and most intimidating of the five were Gideon and Vivian, who were like the parents. Yago was the delinquent child, and Dante was the older brother, even though he’s actually younger than Yago. And Cassandra was the baby, the darling.”


“Don’t they have real families?”


“Sort of. At least Yago does. His father is some Spanish baron, so he’s always back and forth between Spain and New York. I think Gideon is from around here. New Hampshire maybe. And Vivian, who knows? I wouldn’t be surprised if she killed her family and ate them.


“Cassandra lost her entire family in a skiing accident before she came to Gottfried, and inherited their fortune. I think technically her great-aunt is her legal guardian, but she always used to tag along with Yago’s family on the holidays. Or with her boyfriend, Benjamin. Until he, well ...you know. The heart attack.” Eleanor closed her book and ran a finger back and forth through the flame of the candle, waiting for me to ask the question that we both knew came next.


“What about Dante?”


She sat up straight and narrowed her eyes dramatically. “He’s the strangest one. Apparently he’s an orphan. Or so he says. He never leaves Attica Falls on holidays; even over Christmas.”

Attica Falls. The gas station, the general store, the diner. It was like an abandoned town. A stray cat and a rusty pickup truck were the only signs of life. “Where does he live?” I asked.


“In an old boarding house. I’ve only seen the outside, but it looks depressing.”


“No wonder they were all so close,” I murmured. “They didn’t have anyone else.” It was a situation I could relate to.


“I know. Can you imagine not having a family?”


“Yeah,” I said quietly. “I can.”


Eleanor went silent, and I immediately felt the uneasiness that always followed when I brought up the death of my parents.


“Wait, how do you know all of this? Your brother?”


Eleanor shook her head. “Don’t you remember? Cassie was my old roommate.”


Friday morning we woke up earlier than usual for our first Horticulture class. All of the other classes started at eight, but for some reason Horticulture was at six. Something to do with plants and the sun, I assumed. Eleanor was in the class too, and I glanced at my schedule while I waited for her to get ready.


Horticulture   F 6:00 a.m.   The Chapel


“Hey. Our class is in the chapel?”


“I guess so,” Eleanor said, pulling on a wool skirt while simultaneously trying to pin back her hair. “Ironic, considering how ungodly it is to get up this early in the morning.” She took one last look in the mirror and then grabbed her bag. “Okay, let’s go.”


It was a clear autumn day. The oak trees towered over us as we walked down the cobblestone path. The chapel was in the westernmost corner of campus. It was dreary looking, with gothic steeples that harkened back to the Dark Ages. All of the arches seemed to be slouching over, as if they had gotten tired of standing upright after three centuries. Statues of saints were carved into the façade, framing the door with blank, eyeless faces. Water stains ran down the stone figures, and a bird’s nest was wedged between two of the apostles.


“It’s been out of use for ages,” Eleanor said. “I think like a hundred years ago Gottfried was a religious school, but then the chapel was abandoned. It’s supposedly under renovations from some fire a while back, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone working on it.”


We approached the tall riveted doors and attempted to open them, but they were locked. Eleanor and I looked at each other, confused. I jiggled the handles a few times and pounded on the door in frustration, but it was no use.


“I guess it’s canceled,” Eleanor said happily. “We should probably go back to the dorm.”


I was about to agree with her when we heard voices coming from behind the building. The entire class was standing in what looked like an overgrown graveyard. It was a small class: me, Eleanor, a pair of twins named April and Allison, who lived on our floor, a few guys I had never seen before, and a cute boy who looked uncannily similar to Wes. Eleanor and I joined them.


Professor Betty Mumm was a tiny birdlike woman. She had a weathered, wrinkled face from too many days in the sun, and short brown hair cut like a boy’s. She stood in the grass in front of us, wearing tall rubber boots, gardening gloves, and a sun hat.


“Welcome to Horticulture,” she said, and pulled out a bag of flower bulbs from a burlap sack on the ground. “Today we’re going to be learning the basics of soil.” She passed out the bulbs, a set of trowels, boxes of matches, and gardening gloves. She was surprisingly nimble considering she looked older than my grandfather.


“The first thing you need to know about horticulture is that without the appropriate bed for the appropriate plant, you will never succeed in growing anything. There are dozens of varieties of soil, each with its own unique characteristics. Fortunately for us, all of them can be found in this very garden, due to the fact that the ground in this particular area of campus has been dug up and replaced over the course of the last two centuries.”


As Professor Mumm discussed the five most common kinds of soil, I glanced around the graveyard. The grass was speckled with wildflowers that grew up to the middle of my shins. They were moist with dew. Nestled beneath the weeds were barely visible fragments of chipped gravestones, centuries old. When I’d first seen Horticulture on my schedule, I hadn’t known what to expect, and I would be lying if I said I’d been excited about the class. I’d assumed we’d be learning about plant biology, not digging around in an abandoned graveyard.


“Isn’t this a little morbid?” I said to Eleanor, keeping my eyes on the professor, who was demonstrating how to hold a trowel correctly.


“What makes you say that?” a deep voice replied.


Startled, I turned around. Eleanor had moved closer to the chapel, and was now whispering to one of the twins. Standing in her place was the cute Wes impersonator.


“I’m Brett,” he said with a grin.


Suddenly I felt very shy. “Renée.”


Brett was tall and athletic, and looked like he had just come from playing rugby. His features seemed exaggerated, giving him a dashing and overly masculine look, which I had only attributed to characters in fairy tales.


“So who did you mean to talk to before I so rudely interrupted?”


“My friend Annie. I mean Eleanor. My roommate Eleanor.”


“Annie, Eleanor, which is it?”


“Eleanor. Eleanor Bell.” I pointed to where she was standing. “Sorry, my friend Annie is from California. I mean ...that’s where I’m from too. I just moved here. I’m still trying to keep everything straight.”


“A California girl. Aren’t you supposed to be blond?” He flipped a lock of my brown hair with his fingers.


I could feel myself starting to blush, and tucked my hair behind my ear. Brett seemed like the kind of guy who could get any girl; who plays Frisbee with his shirt off and his pants cuffed at the ankle, whose sweat actually smells good; the kind of guy who I never imagined would talk to me. Just like Wes. Yet here he was, standing next to me, doing what I could only identify as flirting.


“Where are you from?” I asked.


“Maine.”


“Aren’t you supposed to be a bearded farmer?”


Brett laughed. “So that’s what you thought it’d be like here? It must have been a huge disappointment.”


“Devastating,” I replied, and we both fixed our attention on Professor Mumm, who was motioning for us to follow her into the “garden.”


“Each of you has a different kind of flower bulb—woodland, climbing, perennial, annual, or arboreal. Now, what I want you to do is find the most suitable soil for planting your particular bulb, and shovel it into one of these bags,” she said, holding up a handful of cloth satchels. One of the twins raised her hand. “But we don’t know what kind of bulb we have. How are we supposed to know what kind of soil is best if we don’t know what our bulb is?”


Professor Mumm gave her a wise smile. “Intuition. That is the first rule of horticulture. Intuition. Follow your gut!” she said, clicking her heels together. “And remember what we recited. H-E-R-B-S: Handle, Eat, Rub, Burn, Smell. Now, don your gloves and man your trowels!”


Brett and I parted ways as everyone in the class started wandering aimlessly around the graveyard. Eleanor found her way to me and pinched my arm from behind. “Hey,” she said, the twins beside her.


I jumped. “A graveyard is not the place to creep up on people!”


Eleanor laughed. “It’s broad daylight! Besides, I wasn’t the only one who crept up on you.” She glanced at Brett.


April butted in. “He does that with all the girls,” she said. Her sister Allison nodded in confirmation.


“That doesn’t mean we can’t look,” Eleanor replied.


We all watched him bend over to pick up his trowel. As he stood up, he turned to us and smiled. Embarrassed, I looked away. Eleanor, on the other hand, responded by giving him a coy wave.


“I think I’m going to go ‘test the soil’ closer to Brett,” she said. “I never get tired of his dimples.”


I laughed as Eleanor skipped away, trying to inconspicuously follow Brett to the left side of the “garden.” Around me, dozens of gravestones peeked out of the grass, their faces so faded that I couldn’t read the inscriptions. My parents were like these people now, reduced to epitaphs, tombstones, coffins. Shaking the thought from my head, I picked up my bulb and turned it around in my palm. It was brown and bulbous like a ginger root. I held it up to my nose, but it just smelled like dry dirt. Intuition, I thought, and began to walk.


I didn’t know where I was going, but I stepped forward, changing directions every few minutes as if I were being pulled by an invisible force. Every so often I bent over to sift through the soil. H-E-R-B-S, I repeated to myself. H for Handle as I felt its weight in my hand. E for Eat as I raised the soil to my mouth and tasted it. R for Rub as I pressed the soil into my palm, comparing its color and texture to that of my bulb. B for Burn, though none of the soil was oily enough to ignite when I struck a match to it. And S for Smell—confusing smells of apple and grass and walnut, but none of them seemed right. Every batch of soil was either too dry or too gritty; smelled too much like pastrami or tasted too bitter.


Eventually I found myself a good distance away from the rest of the class, in a patchy area by a collection of trees. I bent over to pick up a handful of soil, which was cool and so moist it almost felt oily. I smelled it. Nothing. What had the professor said while I was talking to Brett? If the soil was grainy and smelled of smoked meat, it was best for woodland bulbs. If the soil was dry and tasted of salt, it was high in minerals and best for annuals. Or was that perennials? I couldn’t remember.


Reluctantly, I pressed a finger into the soil and raised it to my mouth. At first it just tasted gritty. And then slowly, it took on the faintest aftertaste of molasses. I examined my bulb, which was stringy and dry, and had the same brownish-red hue. For some reason, it felt right. Bending down, I shoveled a handful into my sack.


No one else seemed to have finished. Some were meandering through the weeds; others were crouched low to the ground, feeling around in the soil, dirt smeared on their cheeks. Professor Mumm was walking around examining our progress while offering tips about trowel technique. But instead of going back to the group, I walked on, inching closer to the forest. I didn’t know why I was doing it, only that it felt as if I had just remembered something very important that I had forgotten to do, and that something was in the trees.


I pushed through the grass, which was wild and as tall as my knees. A lazy bee hovered over a bunch of wildflowers. Behind me, I heard Eleanor calling my name. “Renée! Where are you going? Did you figure out what bulb you have?” I glanced over my shoulder to see her running to catch up with me.


“No,” I said. “Just looking around.”


The morning sun was hot and beat down on the back of my neck. Ducking under the shade of a tree, I stopped. Was there something in the grass? Something brown that looked like a stick, but wasn’t. Wiping the sweat from my forehead, I bent down. I heard Eleanor approach as I pushed the wildflowers aside with my trowel. And there it was, the thing that I now knew had been pulling me toward it. Behind me, Eleanor screamed.


It was a fawn, dead and curled up in the grass. Its limbs were contorted in unnatural angles. Flies buzzed around its head, its fur still a soft, spotted brown.


In seconds, the entire class had gathered around us, all staring at me and the fawn. Professor Mumm zigzagged through the group. When she reached me, she took off her hat and looked at the fawn and then at me.

“I... I just found it,” I said. “I was looking for soil....” Even though that wasn’t the truth.


Professor Mumm’s face softened, and she took me by the shoulders. “Come away, dear,” she said. “No use in looking at it. There’s nothing we can do now.”


She led us back to the chapel, where she collected our bulbs and bags of soil, murmuring comments as she sifted through each sack—none of which were the right match.


When it was my turn, she took my bag and shook it around. “An unorthodox pairing,” she said, almost to herself. “Crocuses normally thrive on dry soil, cool and salty ...though this might work. Yes...interesting. Very interesting. The mixture of the red clay and oil...that would definitely work.”


Professor Mumm’s eyes swept over me, curious. “Class dismissed.”


As everyone dispersed, Eleanor ran up next to me. “What just happened?”


“I was just walking around when I found it,” I said, knowing that even at Gottfried it wasn’t normal to be pulled by an invisible force to a dead animal.


“Weird. It looked like you knew where you were going.”


“Well, I didn’t,” I said quickly.


“How did you figure that out about your soil, by the way? That was pretty smart.”


“I don’t know. The soil that I picked just seemed to complement the bulb. They had the same coloring, and the bulb was dry and the soil was kind of greasy.” I shrugged. “It seemed right.”


“Intuition!” Eleanor said, mocking Professor Mumm’s voice. “Your gut!”


I laughed. “She seemed pretty freaked out.”


“She teaches gardening. She needs a little excitement in her life.”


Just as we were about to head over to Philosophy, Brett ran over to us. “You’re a natural,” he said to me.“Hi, Brett,” Eleanor said with a smile, and leaned toward him to wipe the dirt from his face with her thumb.


“Now you really do look like a farmer,” I said.


He laughed. “Is it that bad?”


Eleanor smiled. “A cute farmer.” I rolled my eyes as Brett grinned. His resemblance to Wes wasn’t just physical. He had the same easygoing walk, and spoke with the same flirty yet vacant banter; he even had the same teeth. That should have made me like him more, but instead it made him seem ordinary and unexciting.


“So, girls, what next?”


“Philosophy,” I said, even though Horticulture started so early in the day that we had a short break before breakfast. But just as I spoke, Eleanor said, “Oh, nothing.”


“Nothing?” Brett said. “Maybe we should make that a something. Breakfast?” Unable to contain myself, I laughed, and then tried to cover it up with a cough when Eleanor gave me a threatening look. How many girls had he used that line on? Eleanor smiled. “That would be great. Renée was just saying how hungry she was,” she said, elbowing me in the ribs.


“Um, yeah. Famished.”


As we entered the Megaron, Brett talked about his classes and his family and his friends from home. At times I actually forgot that we were talking to Brett, and spoke to him as if he were Wes. So I wasn’t surprised to discover that their lives were almost identical. He was the oldest of three and played on the rugby and soccer teams before coming to Gottfried, where he was disappointed that neither sport existed. Now he was the captain of the track-and-field team. He had a yellow Labrador, which he liked to play Frisbee with in the summer; his favorite color was blue; he liked any music except for country; and his favorite author was Hemingway (typical), or so he claimed, though I doubted he had read anything by him other than whatever was assigned at school. By the time breakfast was done and we were walking through the double iron doors of Horace Hall, Eleanor’s eyes were glazed over with admiration.


“He’s so dreamy,” she said while we climbed the stairs to the third floor. “So manly. So American. So...tan.”


“So rehearsed,” I said, opening the door to Philosophy.


The classroom had high-beamed ceilings and two windows that overlooked the green. A few people were already sitting down, talking or shuffling through their papers. We took seats in the front, and I couldn’t help but scan the room for Dante. He wasn’t there.


Nathaniel scurried in behind me, his skinny frame hunched under the weight of his backpack, making him look like a turtle. He sat down in the desk next to mine just before the bell rang.


“Hi, Renée,” he said, winded and sweating. He pushed his hair out of his face and adjusted his glasses. “Did you finish your essay? I stayed up almost all night doing it. I had to rewrite it four times before I got it right.”


A wave of queasiness passed over me. “Essay?” I looked to Eleanor, hoping it was news for her too, but she pulled hers out of her notebook.


“Yeah, about a myth that we want to believe in. You didn’t do yours?”


“No, I had to miss class because Mrs. Lynch sent me home to change. Remember?”


“Oh, right …” Eleanor gave me an apologetic look. “Sorry. I thought you knew. You looked so busy during study hall that I figured you were working on it.” I sighed and tried to figure out what to do. “No, it’s my fault. I should have asked.”


“I have a couple of my drafts,” Nathaniel said. “They’re not that good, but you can use one if you want.” He handed me a few crumpled sheets of paper.


It was a sweet gesture, but I wasn’t keen on cheating. Plus, even though everyone knew Nathaniel was a math prodigy, I wasn’t so sure that his brilliance transferred to writing. “Oh no, that’s okay. I’ll just explain what happened to the professor.”


But Nathaniel wouldn’t let me refuse. “I really don’t mind,” he said earnestly, holding the essays in front of me. We both stared at them. With nothing else to do, I took them and began to read.


His handwriting was messy and there were smudges of eraser marks all over the pages. The first one was titled, “I Want to Believe in Myself.” I flipped to the next draft. “I Want to Believe that Calculators Can Replace the Human Brain.” And “I Want to Believe in Imaginary Numbers.” The last one was the most promising, though it looked more like a math proof than an essay, and it didn’t really fit the assignment.


I bit my lip. “These are really...good,” I said, handing them back to him, “but I’d feel bad passing in your work. I’ll just talk to the professor after class. Hopefully he’ll understand.”


Nathaniel shrugged and stuffed them back into his notebook. “It’s a she.”


As if to complete his sentence, a woman entered the room, carrying an armful of papers. She set them on the desk and walked to the front of the class, holding a book. I gazed at her in awe. It was the same woman who had saved me from going to the headmistress’s office.


Annette LaBarge wasn’t beautiful. In fact, she was quite plain. Her clothes were functional and basic, comprised mostly of earth tones: today a linen skirt that exposed her slender ankles and cork clogs. I pictured her in one of those women’s catalogs, posing on a rocky beach while holding a long twig or a piece of driftwood.


“Fairy tales.” Her voice carried like a wind chime. “What if they were true?”


She glanced around the room, her eyes wide with excitement. She was a small woman, thin and fragile looking, though her presence seemed to fill the room with energy. “What if the world once had giants and witches; animals that talked and monsters that threatened all that was good? These stories are the foundation of our society, and what most of Western philosophy is based on.


“I want you to think of the books we read this year not only as philosophical stories, but as realities.” She opened her book and flipped to the first page. “So let’s go there, to that faraway land where ‘Happily Ever After’ still exists, and see where it takes us.”


She began to read. “Once upon a time...”


And listening to the delicate sound of Miss LaBarge’s voice, I was lulled into a daydream; a simpler place where people were either good or evil, and love lasted forever, where problems could be solved just by believing, where fairies and fauns helped you find your way when you were lost.


After class, I waited until everyone filtered out, then approached the front of the room. Miss LaBarge was standing behind her desk, organizing some papers. I cleared my throat, and she looked up. “Oh hi, Renée.” I was surprised that she remembered my name. It made me feel even more terrible about not doing my homework. “Professor, I—” “You missed class earlier this week and didn’t know there was an essay due. I know.”


I looked at my feet. “I’m sorry.”


“Just do it for next week,” she said gently. “Write about something you don’t believe in, but wish you did. And next time, just ask.”


I nodded and hugged my books to my chest. I thought about my parents. About Benjamin Gallow. About the graveyard behind the chapel. What did I want to believe in? Life after death.


When I got to Crude Sciences at the end of the day, Dante was waiting for me at our table. This time, with no Latin book, no journal.


“Hello,” he said, pulling my chair out for me.


Surprised, I sat down next to him, trying not to stare at his perfectly formed arms. “Hi,” I said, with an attempt at nonchalance.


“How are you?” I could feel his eyes on me.


“Fine,” I said carefully, as Professor Starking handed out our lab assignments.


Dante frowned. “Not very talkative today, I see.”


I thrust a thermometer into the muddy water of the fish tank in front of us, which was supposed to represent an enclosed ecosystem. “So now you want to talk? Now that you’ve finished your Latin homework?”


After a prolonged period of silence, he spoke. “It was research.”


“Research on what?”


“It doesn’t matter anymore.”


I threw him a suspicious look. “Why’s that?”


“Because I realized I wasn’t paying attention to the right thing.”


“Which is?” I asked, looking back at the board as I smoothed out the hem of my skirt.


“You.”


My lips trembled as the word left his mouth. “I’m not a specimen.”


“I just want to know you.”


I turned to him, wanting to ask him a million questions. I settled for one. “But I can’t know anything about you?”


Dante leaned back in his chair. “My favorite author is Dante, obviously,” he said, his tone mocking me. “Though I’m also partial to the Russians. I’m very fond of music. All kinds, really, though I especially enjoy Mussorgsky and Stravinsky or anything involving a violin. They’re a bit dark, no? I used to like opera, but I’ve mostly grown out of it. I have a low tolerance for hot climates. I’ve never enjoyed dessert, though I once loved cherries. My favorite color is red. I often take long walks in the woods to clear my head. As a result, I have a unique knowledge of the flora and fauna of North America. And,” he said, his eyes burning through me as I pretended to focus on our lab, “I remember everything everyone has ever told me. I consider it a special talent.”


Overwhelmed by the sudden influx of information, I sat there gaping, unsure of how to respond.


Dante frowned. “Did I leave something out?”


I thought about Benjamin, about my parents. This was my opportunity. “What about your friends?” I asked gently.


“I thought it was already decided that I didn’t have any.”


“And I thought it was already decided that there was more to you than you let on.”


Dante gave me a pensive look. “Maybe I did have friends once.”