Campus affairs seemed to go back to normal, or as normal as they could have been with a sixteen-year-old girl missing. Everyone was scared, and even though there was no proof, it was hard not to project Benjamin’s fate onto Eleanor. Mrs. Lynch seemed almost excited. She patrolled the halls and conducted random room searches with the kind of enthusiasm born from years of putting up with children who deserved to be disciplined, but rarely were. A scandal like this would merit a punishment she could only have dreamed of.
I sat through my classes, hardly paying attention as I tried to smother my imagination. Somewhere out there, Eleanor was in trouble. I felt useless, and Professor Lumbar’s lecture about ancient forms of declensions was hardly enthralling enough to take my mind off of it.
“What can Latin tell us about ourselves?” she asked, her giant body housed beneath a tent dress. She wrote a word on the board in large, slanted cursive: Vivus eram.
“There is a form of ancient Latin called Latinum Mortuorum, which can only be spoken in the past tense. It doesn’t have any other tenses. You couldn’t say, ‘I am alive’; only ‘I was alive.’ It was spoken by children, often orphans. For them, the present, the future—these realms of time didn’t exist. Instead they spent their lives looking backward. In essence, living in the past.”
I stared at the board, copying down the phrase. It was difficult to leave the past behind. First the death of my parents, and now Eleanor’s disappearance. Maybe it was my way of trying to relieve the guilt I felt about my parents, that finding Eleanor would somehow make them come back.
How could I not be haunted by the past when death was looming so close to me? I was alive.
That night I called Annie, and told her about Eleanor.
“Why don’t you go to the police?” she asked.
“They were here. Plus, what would I say? That someone is killing people by giving them heart attacks, and that Eleanor was probably the next victim?”
“It does sound pretty ridiculous.”
“I know. And I have no proof.”
“Have you told anyone?”
“Just Nathaniel and Dante.”
“You’re still talking to that guy?” she said.
“Dante? Of course I am,” I said defensively. “Why wouldn’t I be talking to him?”
“The last time we talked you thought he was some sort of mutant.”
“Oh, right …” Thinking back to our previous phone conversation, I was almost embarrassed at how angry I had gotten at Annie. “I’m sorry, An,” I said. “All these things were happening that I didn’t understand, and nothing seemed fair.”
“And now everything makes sense?” She sounded skeptical.
I laughed. “Definitely not. I think I just changed. I like Dante. I like him a lot.” I wanted to tell her everything about him; I wanted to describe the way he looked at me, the way his voice sounded when he spoke in class, each word like a tiny piece of a sprawling love letter written only for me. But I knew she wouldn’t understand.
After we hung up, I sat in my room and listened to the muffled sound of girls laughing through the walls. How could they laugh when one of their friends was missing? With nothing else to do, I decided to clean my room. The recesses beneath my bed were treacherous at best. Large stacks of papers and books crowded the floor, surrounded by dust bunnies. I began to sift through them, when I saw the book I’d bought from Lazarus Books. It was lying on its side beneath a pile of notebooks and folders. I wedged it out and wiped off its cover. Attica Falls. Its woven ivory binding was slowly unraveling along the edges. “The Gottfried Curse,” I thought. I had spent so much time worrying about how the curse related to my parents and Benjamin and Eleanor, that I had totally forgotten about the only part of the article that related to me. Literally. I stood up and paced the room until I found myself picking up the phone and dialing my grandfather’s number. Dustin answered.
“Winters residence,” he said stoutly.
“Hi, Dustin,” I said softly, feeling suddenly very much like a little girl. “Is my—”
Upon hearing my voice, Dustin interrupted me. “Miss Winters?” he exclaimed warmly. “I’ve been wondering when we were going to hear from you. Calling about your winter travel arrangements?”
“Um, no, I actually wanted to talk to my grandfather. Is he there?”
“I’m afraid he’s away,” Dustin said. I imagined his forehead wrinkling as he said it. “Until next week, I’m afraid. Is it an emergency? Maybe I can be of service.”
I hesitated. “No, it’s fine—it can wait. Thanks, though.”
“But we’ll see you for the holidays, yes?”
I nodded. “Yeah.”
“Excellent. I’ll be picking you up next Friday. And you can talk to Mr. Winters when you get home. He wouldn’t want me saying it, but he’s very much looking forward to seeing you again. As am I, of course. It will be such a joy to have a young person around the estate again. I fear we have all become statues.”
I laughed. “Okay,” I said slowly, not sure how to respond. “See you next Friday, then.”
I was about to blow out the candle and go to sleep, when I heard something hit my window. I got out of bed and looked outside, only to find Dante standing in the path below. I opened the window and leaned out.
“What are you doing here?” I asked.
“Come down,” he said.
I looked behind me again. “I can’t! I’ll get caught.”
“Mrs. Lynch is gone. I saw her leave for the headmistress’s office ten minutes ago.”
I threw on a pleated skirt and sweater, and checked my appearance in the mirror, clipping my hair to the side with a barrette.
Dante was waiting for me by the path in just a shirt and tie, no jacket. He was leaning on a lamppost, his hair swept back from his face, save for a few loose strands that blew in the wind. Without saying a word, he wrapped his hand around mine and led me through the green. The night was gray and foggy, the moon barely visible beneath the clouds.
“Where are we going?” I asked, trying to keep up with his long stride.
Slowing down, he looked at me and smiled. “Trust me.”
We stopped in front of the chapel, its massive stone buttresses leaning beneath the weight of the steeples. I let my hand slip from his as he walked ahead of me. Along the archway over the door, dozens of white flowers were blooming from gnarled vines. I gazed at them in awe. I had never seen them during the day.