I nodded. “I don’t know why my dad wasn’t there, though.”
“Maybe you got the location wrong. Or maybe it wasn’t your dad that you saw.”
“It was definitely him. I mean, who else could it be?”
Eleanor shrugged. “I don’t know.”
I thought Eleanor would offer some absurd suggestions or ask me to recount every detail like she normally did, but instead she sat at her desk and looked out the window.
I wiped my cheeks with my hands and began to wring out my hair, when I noticed her standing in front of my bed. “What?”
“Now you’re supposed to ask me about my night.”
A wave of guilt passed over me. I had been talking about myself and my problems all week. All month, in fact, never once asking Eleanor about how she was. “Right. Sorry. I’m terrible. What happened?”
Eleanor sat cross-legged on my bed. “I summoned Benjamin Gallow.”
I was pulling a sweatshirt over my head when her words registered, and I froze. “And?” I asked, my voice muffled through the cotton.
“And there are complications.”
“What do you mean?” I asked, fumbling with the arm and head holes until I finally forced my shirt on.
“Well … I don’t think I did it right, exactly. First I was thinking of him, but then I was thinking of him and Cassandra, and then I was thinking of Cassandra even though she wasn’t dead, and then I sort of summoned both of them.”
“But that’s impossible. Cassandra isn’t dead; she transferred.”
“Not according to her.”
CHAPTER 8
The Gottfried Curse
MONDAY MORNING, MY ALARM CLOCK WOKE me from the best dream I’d had in months. The autumn sunlight streamed through the windows, and I stretched beneath the sheets, smiling to myself as Dante kissed my wrists, my arms, my shoulders, my neck. “I love you,” he said, running his fingers through my hair.
He leaned in, and all at once I opened my eyes.
Outside it was gray and drizzling, and the dream dissipated into the November mist. Across from me, Eleanor was still asleep, shifting beneath the blankets, her blond hair spilling over her pillow like corn silk. Everything that had happened now seemed like a dream. Eleanor and I had spent the entire weekend trying to piece together what had happened to Benjamin and Cassandra, but with no luck. Maybe today would be different, I thought as I got dressed and headed to class. But by second period we were just as confused.
“The last thing Benjamin remembered doing was kissing Cassandra. After that, everything was blurry,” Eleanor was explaining to Nathaniel. We were sitting in the back of class before the start of Philosophy. “So romantic,” she added.
Nathaniel groaned.
“Anyway,” I said, interrupting her, “since Eleanor had envisioned both of them at the beginning of the séance, she summoned Cassandra too.”
“Which means she’s dead!” Eleanor added loudly.
“Shhh!” I cautioned, glancing around to make sure no one heard. “Which might mean she’s dead,” I corrected. I still couldn’t figure out what had happened at the séance. I had definitely summoned someone—a man who I had assumed was my father. But then why hadn’t he been at the great oak like he’d shown me? Something about it didn’t seem right. “The séance didn’t exactly work for me, so we don’t actually know if it worked for you either.”
Eleanor ignored me. “But the craziest part is how she died,” she continued excitedly. “She was buried alive.”
Both Eleanor and I watched for Nathaniel’s reaction, but he didn’t seem as shocked by it as we were.
“Who did it?” he asked, biting his fingernails.
“She didn’t know. She had some sort of bag over her head when they did it,” Eleanor explained. “I wonder if it happened at school or somewhere else. The last thing she remembered was being brought to the headmistress’s office. After that it went black, until suddenly she was being carried somewhere outside. She was put into a wooden box that was then nailed shut. And then she heard the sound of dirt pounding on top of her until everything faded into nothing. But even if that was her last memory, it doesn’t mean that’s what did her in. I mean, Benjamin’s last memory was kissing Cassandra, and that had nothing to do with his death.”
“Did he say how he died?” Nathaniel asked.
“No. Every time I asked, he kept showing me the same scene of him kissing Cassandra. It was kind of romantic. That’s how I started thinking about her in the first place, and then suddenly I heard her voice in my ear.”
“But if she died, why would the school lie and say that she transferred?” I countered.
“Maybe they didn’t know,” Eleanor said. “Maybe she died after she transferred. Maybe she was summoned to the headmistress’s office just before she left, for transcripts or whatever. And then it happened.”
We both turned to Nathaniel. “What do you think?” we said, almost simultaneously.
Nathaniel pulled at his tie, trying to loosen it. “Why are you telling me all of this?”
“Because we’re not sure if we should believe it or not,” I said. “And you’re the smartest person we know.” Well, that wasn’t exactly true. Dante was the smartest person I knew. Nathaniel was really just nerdy.
“And because we know you won’t tell anyone,” Eleanor added in a low voice. “You won’t tell anyone, right?”
“I won’t tell anyone.”
Eleanor and I exchanged glances and smiled.
“Why don’t you just do another séance and try her again?” Nathaniel suggested.
Eleanor shook her head. “Proper séances only work on Halloween.”
“Either way, the séance sounds iffy,” Nathaniel said to Eleanor. “If it didn’t work the right way for Renée, you can’t trust what you heard either. But if I were you, I’d talk to Minnie Roberts.”
Our smiles quickly faded. What was he talking about? Minnie Roberts? The mousy girl who had dropped her bag in Horace Hall on the first day of classes? I turned to ask Eleanor, who put a hand to her forehead. “Oh my God. Why didn’t I think of that?!”
“Think of what?” I said.
Eleanor turned to me as if just remembering I was there. “Last spring Minnie exploded in the dining hall.”