Dead Beautiful (39 page)

By the time I made it to the front, they were already carrying Nathaniel to the nurses’ wing. Mrs. Lynch and a few of the administrators were attempting to keep students away from the hole. “Is he okay?” I kept asking over and over, but no one seemed to know the answer.

Up ahead, I spotted Annette LaBarge. She was standing with the headmistress and Professors Lumbar and Urquette in a secluded area of the lawn. I moved behind the trees until I was within earshot, and listened, with Dante just behind me.

“Did you authorize this?” Professor Lumbar said in a voice so low I thought I might have misheard her.

I looked at Dante. “What does she mean,
authorize
it?”

Dante shook his head and put a finger to his lips. Maybe she meant authorize the play being performed over the catacombs.

The headmistress looked agitated at the question, and hesitated before answering. “No. And this is not the appropriate place to discuss such matters.”

“Students are being attacked, Calysta,” Professor Lumbar said firmly. She stood like a stone fortress next to Miss LaBarge’s slender body, her hands braced over her enormous hips like a jail warden. “
Appropriate place
doesn’t apply anymore.”

“Edith is right,” Miss LaBarge said. “We should send the students home. It isn’t safe here. The incident last spring, and then Eleanor Bell, and now this.”

“Last spring has nothing to do with this,” the headmistress said, gazing at the hole in the ground. “I have it under control.”

“Last spring has everything to do with this,” Miss LaBarge said. “You can’t ignore the facts. Three students are dead. Nathaniel might never fully recover from this. And if we can’t find the person behind it, we shouldn’t allow students to stay at this school.”

When the headmistress finally replied, her voice was sharp and cold. “Enough. You’re out of line, Annette. This matter is closed.”

They dispersed as the headmistress strode off to Archebald Hall. “Fill that hole,” she said to the maintenance workers as she passed them. “It’s a safety hazard.”

I motioned to Dante and we snuck past Mrs. Lynch, making our way to the edge of the hole. The dirt crumbled as I knelt down. It was deep and gaping, and opened into some sort of chamber that must have been part of the tunnel system. The catacombs, I thought, staring at the roots of the great oak, which broke through the ceiling of the chamber, their tendrils hanging over the center of the cavern like a gnarled wooden chandelier.

At the bottom was a giant mound of dirt and sticks and grass where Kurt had fallen. “Someone must have buried Nathaniel alive,” I said to Dante. “Just like they did to Cassandra. And then Kurt fell through under the weight of the actors. But who would bury him? And right below the school play?”

“Someone who wanted him found,” Dante murmured, deep in thought. “Just like Eleanor. The person who killed Eleanor wanted her to be found too. A flood isn’t the easiest way to kill someone, or the most inconspicuous. The person who trapped Eleanor wanted her to become Undead....”

Behind me, Mrs. Lynch was ushering everyone back to the dormitories while the professors convened in a group by the oak to discuss what to do next. Hoisting myself up, I felt something hard in the soil. I pushed the dirt away until I found, buried beneath it, Nathaniel’s glasses. I wiped them off with the bottom of my shirt and joined the crowd. I slowed as we walked past the professors.

“I don’t know how this went under the radar,” Professor Lumbar said. “The Board of Monitors has been patrolling the grounds at night, and the headmistress wasn’t aware of it.”

Aware of what? That the board was patrolling?

“Who was on patrol tonight?” Miss LaBarge asked.

“Brandon Bell,” replied Professor Lumbar, her tone ominous, as if the fact that this had occurred while
he
was patrolling made it all the more distressing.

“Do you think a student is behind this?” Professor Urquette asked.

“I don’t know. At this the point, all we can do is conduct a thorough search, and hope the boy saw his attacker,” Professor Lumbar replied.

But I knew they wouldn’t find anything, because at Gottfried, as in a Greek tragedy, the violence always seemed to happen offstage.

CHAPTER 16
The Burial of Nathaniel Welch

I
COULDN’T SLEEP. AND SINCE ELEANOR COULDN’T
either, we kept each other company until the sun rose over the mountains. From the window of our dorm room we watched the professors run back and forth between the nurses’ wing and the boys’ dormitory, their flashlights bouncing around on the patches of yellow grass like fireflies. I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was reliving the past.

When morning broke, I went directly to the nurses’ wing. It was on the fifth floor of Archebald Hall. I knocked. Suddenly it cracked opened, and I stumbled forward, catching myself in the door frame.

A nurse stuck her head out. “Yes? May I help you?”

She was short and stubby, with thick fingers, a tight bun encased in a hairnet, and a name tag that read
Irmgard.
Dark bags hung under her eyes. She looked like a person who had spent the majority of her life being miserable.

“I’m here to see Nathaniel Welch.”

“I’m sorry, but no visitors are allowed in right now.” She began to close the door.

“But I’m his friend.”

“Mr. Welch is still unstable,” she said, her voice stern. “Unless you also have a health problem, I’m afraid it will have to wait until tomorrow.”

I put my hand on the door to keep her from closing it.

“Please,” I said.

She disappeared inside, and for a moment I thought she might be letting me in. Instead, the door opened and I was met by Headmistress Von Laark. “Renée,” she said, her blue eyes studying me. “Are you ill?”

“No,” I said, trying to be discreet as I craned my neck to see what was going on behind her. Brandon Bell, was sitting in the hallway, flipping through some sort of notebook.

“Then you shouldn’t be here. I believe you have Physical Education now, no?”

Defeated, I nodded and stepped back as the door closed in my face.

I jogged across campus, stopping by the dining hall on the way. But when I got there I had no appetite. Instead of eating, I took a saltshaker from one of the tables and shoved it into my pocket.

When I reached the green, the rest of the class was gathered by the lake in front of the Ursa Major statue. The night fog was lifting, and the morning was hazy and cool. An owl hooted in the distance. Everyone was talking about Nathaniel. “It must have been a student,” Rebecca said. “Someone who knew him. It’s too much of a coincidence that he was buried right below where the play was being performed.”

“But why Nathaniel?” asked Greta.

And why Eleanor, I asked myself. What did they have in common? Me, I realized.

Thankfully, before I could dwell on my conclusion, our gym teacher, Miriam Hollis, strode through the trees. She was androgynous and energetic, with a boyish voice that cracked when she was excited. She wore gym shorts all the time, even at night when it was freezing.

“I didn’t realize it was already nap time,” she said, checking her watch. “All right. Everybody up. And try to look alive.”

Our Physical Education classes were less about sports and more about survival. Each class focused around a life-threatening environmental situation that required athletic skills. How to shoot a bird with a slingshot. How to run for an extremely long time if we were being chased. How to build a makeshift shelter if we were trapped outside in a storm, which I personally thought was the most unpleasant lesson so far.

“Swimming! Every year thousands of people die from falling into cold water. Why is this? Because they never learned to master their minds and control their bodies! Therefore, today’s objective is to master the art of temperature acclimation and buoyancy.”

I raised my hand, interrupting her. “Ms. Hollis, I don’t feel well. May I go to the nurses’ wing?”

“Certainly not,” she said.

I sighed. It was worth a try.

“Only dead bodies float naturally, and that’s because they’re incapable of sinking. Hence the term, dead man’s float. In order to control your buoyancy and your temperature, you have to train your bodies to be comfortable both above
and
below the water. Our first exercise, therefore, will be to float for thirty seconds without moving any of your limbs.”

We lined up along the creaky dock on the near bank of the lake, where the shore dropped off into deep water. It was dark and unnaturally still. While everyone else stripped down to their bathing suits, I slipped to the end of the line and fished through my pocket until I found the saltshaker. I was determined to see Nathaniel. He must have seen the person who buried him alive; he had to know.

Ms. Hollis marched down the line, barking commands. “Pull your shorts up,” she said to Brett. He tugged at them, but she rolled her eyes. “Higher. No one wants to see your genitals.” Brett’s face went red. A few of the girls giggled. “Rebecca does,” Bonnie whispered.

I unscrewed the top of the saltshaker, and when I was sure no one was watching, I poured a mouthful of salt onto my tongue and swallowed.

At first, no one noticed. Emily Wurst was clutching a towel that barely covered her large figure. With one swift movement, Ms. Hollis yanked it off and threw it aside. Some of the boys started to snicker, but stopped when Ms. Hollis spun around and glared at them. I began to sweat. A chill ran under my skin, and I started to shiver uncontrollably. My breaths grew deeper, until I was heaving over the ground.

“Stand up straight,” Ms. Hollis said to Neil Simons, who was slouching and scratching at his nose. “And for God’s sake, stop picking your nose.”

Everyone laughed. The sound of it seemed so loud it was deafening. I covered my ears with my hands.

“Stand up straight,” Ms. Hollis repeated to Minnie Roberts, whose gnarled braid seemed to be growing longer. My eyes watered, and I blinked, watching the world slow down.

“Stand up straight,” she said to me, her words echoing in my ears as my knees buckled. My legs felt too weak to support me, and as if in slow motion, I tottered and then collapsed with a splash into the water.

The shock of the cold twisted my lungs, squeezing the air out of them. With a gasp, I surfaced and then sunk back under, unable to keep myself above water. Unlike the world above, the atmosphere beneath the surface was eerie and muted. Things moved slowly, without sound—the weeds swaying with the waves, the fish meandering between rocks and plants. I tried to will my limbs to move, but they were growing so cold that I could barely feel them.

And then something hit the surface above me. At first all I could see was a blur of white plunging through the water. As the water calmed, a shape began to take form, and before I realized it, Dante was beside me. The sunlight filtered through the surface of the water, and he grabbed my arm. Almost as if he were floating, he pulled me up toward the light.

With another gasp, we surfaced, and I coughed up mouthfuls of water. I wrapped my arms around his neck as he lifted me onto the dock. Everyone gathered around us, but Ms. Hollis herded them away. Dante took a towel from the group and wrapped it around my shoulders. I let my gaze drift up to his, wandering from his pants matted against his thighs to his shirt and tie, transparent with water. His skin glistened in the sun, and I watched his chest rise and fall, the water from his hair dripping down his neck. Where had he come from? He wasn’t in my gym class.

A crowd of people hovered over me, their faces blurring into one.

“Renée,” a voice said. “Just hold on.”

I nodded and let my eyes flutter closed. I felt two arms scoop me up, and all of sudden I was being carried across the lawn, through the trees and down the path toward Archebald Hall.

“Renée, are you okay?” Dante asked me when we were out of earshot.

I nodded weakly.

“Can you see me? How many fingers am I holding up?”

I blinked. My hair was matted to my face with water and sweat. All I could see was a blur of colors. Maybe this is what Dante felt like. “I ate salt,” I said, my voice weak. “I had to see Nathaniel. It was the only way I could get in.”

He wiped the water collecting on my eyebrows. “Shh,” he said soothingly. “Don’t talk now. Rest.”

“Where did you come from?” I said weakly.

“I was walking to the front gate when I saw you from the path,” he said. “Then I saw you fall in, so I ran.”

I closed my eyes, until all I could see was the outline of Dante’s face, white and radiant, like the sun. “Thank you.”

Nurse Irmgard frowned when she saw me again, and from the way Dante was talking to her, I could tell she was skeptical of my “illness.” But after she pressed the back of her hand to my forehead and felt my pulse, her frown quickly changed to a look of concern.

“What happened to her?” she asked, addressing Dante, who was still holding me in his arms.

Dante glanced at me. “She ate salt,” he said.

She gave him a confused look that bordered on frustration. “Why would she do something like that?”

Dante shook his head. “The cafeteria food is pretty bland.”

Nurse Irmgard didn’t appreciate his humor. She called in another nurse, whom she addressed as Wendy. “Prepare Room Three, and start setting up an IV. Her pulse is at ninety beats per second and she’s low on electrolytes.”

“She’ll be okay, won’t she?” Dante asked.

Wendy scurried away, and Nurse Irmgard ignored him and marched down the hall and into an exam room. “Set her down here.” Dante placed me gently on the exam table. He lingered as she listened to my heart with her stethoscope, and then took my blood pressure. When she realized he was still there, she shooed him away.

Dante tried to protest. “I’d like to stay, if that’s all right.”

“Absolutely not.” Just before she pushed Dante out of the room, the headmistress entered. The nurse busied herself over a movable table as the headmistress approached us.

“Mr. Berlin,” she said, and then noticed me on the bed. “And Miss Winters. Back so soon.”