Dead Beautiful
Page 30“But there’s more...”
Eleanor shook her head. “What? He asked you to run away with him to Transylvania or wherever he’s actually from?”
I laughed. “No. When he brushed against me, his fingers were freezing, and when he put them to my lips, my breath went completely cold.” I looked at her nervously, hoping she wouldn’t think I was going insane, which I already knew was what Annie would think. And for good reason, too. It was unreal.
“What do you mean ‘cold’? Like you were inhaling cold air?”
I nodded.
“That is weird. I don’t know. Maybe you were just nervous being that close to him—I mean, anyone would be —and thought your breath went cold, when it was probably just a draft or something.”
The library was kind of cold. And Dante said he didn’t feel it. It must have been my mind playing tricks on me.
We heard Mrs. Lynch walking past our door, her yardstick clicking behind her. Even though we were allowed to talk after curfew, there were no locks on the doors, and it was better not to give Lynch an excuse to punish us. Eleanor squeezed my ankle and hopped off the bed. While she pulled her class notes out of her bag, I slipped under the covers with my math book. But when I opened the pages, the words and numbers blurred until all I saw was Dante. So I lay there, imagining him in front of me so that I could study the contours of his face, the texture of his smell, the fluctuations of his voice, until all I would remember for my math quiz was the way I felt when he whispered my name.
CHAPTER 6
The Forgotten History
LATIN WASN’T SO BAD WHEN YOU WERE LEARNING it from the most beautiful boy in school. The next Friday I met Dante in the foyer of Horace Hall for our first tutoring session. He was sitting on a radiator, which was on even though it was still September. It was Maine, after all. His hands were shoved in his pockets as he leaned against the thick blue drapes behind him, gallant in his solitude. My insides fluttered. After running a hand through my hair and adjusting my skirt, I approached him.
“Aren’t you hot?”
He looked confused and then saw me staring at the heater below him. “Oh. No, I didn’t even notice it.” He smiled and raised an eyebrow. “I guess I’m cold-blooded.”
He smiled. “As long as we’re quiet.”
Dante led me to the classroom in which I had Latin. Before entering, he cracked open the door and looked inside. The room smelled faintly of Mrs. Lumbar’s perfume. “Come on,” he said, and we slipped inside.
“It’s the declensions you’re having problems with,” Dante said, flipping through my notebook. “The amazing thing about declensions is that they give each word a personality. Depending on the other words it’s paired with, each noun or object takes on a different form and different sound.”
A lock of hair fell in front of his face, and he pushed it behind his ear and looked at me. “So a word that might sound ugly could actually be beautiful when coupled with the right pronoun. It’s sort of like when two people bring out the best qualities in each other.”
I blushed. He was talkative around me, even sweet at times. And even though I didn’t want to admit it, the only time I got close to forgetting about my parents’ deaths was when he was around.
“Sorry,” he said, noticing that he’d made me blush, and handed my notebook back. “I’m not very good with words.”
“That’s not true. I really liked your explanation. I think I understand a little more now.”
“You understand more about me, or about Latin?”
“Latin. Other than the music you like and the books you read, I hardly know anything about you. Your past.”
Dante leaned closer, looking at my blue pleated skirt, my black stockings, my turtleneck. “What do you want to know?”
“Where are you from?”
He hesitated. “I’m from the West. The Northwest. British Columbia, mostly. We moved around a lot.”
Dante nodded. “Me and my sister. My younger sister. That was a long time ago, though. She passed away in an accident. My parents, too.”
“What kind of accident?”
“Plane,” he said quickly.
“What was her name?”
He leaned back in his chair, giving me a level look. “Cecelia.”
I tried to think of something to say. “I’m sorry,” I said.
Dante studied me. “It’s in the past.”
“So then you came here?”
“No, first I was moved to a foster home. I hated it; I knew I had to get out. And then I found Gottfried.”
“Do you miss them? Your family, I mean.”
“I honestly can’t think of a single real memory of them. It happened so long ago that they’ve faded away. I miss missing them.”
He smiled, his face transforming into something soft.
“They were teachers.” I stopped and pictured them—my mother and my father together in our house. Even though I missed them every day, I hadn’t actually thought about the way they were, about the way we were as a family, for weeks.
“What else?” Dante said.
I told him about the kind of people they were, about the way we lived in California, the way I was before their deaths. Dante didn’t take his eyes off me when I explained how they’d died, how I found them, how I came to Gottfried. And then suddenly we were back in the present.
There was a long pause, then Dante leaned over and wrote a phrase in Latin on my notebook. Mortui in nobis vivunt.
“What does it mean?”
“The dead live within us.”
I waited for him to say more, but instead we sat in an awkward silence.
Finally he spoke. “Conversation isn’t easy for me. There aren’t many people I like talking to, so I don’t get much practice. But I like you. Listening to you, I mean. You see things differently than other people.”
I blushed. I’d never been good at taking compliments. “How are you so good at Latin?”