Dead Beautiful

Suddenly Eleanor ran to her underwear drawer, as if remembering something important. She rifled through it, throwing its contents on the floor, and then sighed. “No. We shouldn’t report it,” she said, her back to me. “If Lynch wasn’t the one who took it, I definitely don’t want her trying to get it back, because then she’d read it.”

“What are you talking about? What’s missing?”

She turned to me. “My diary.”

CHAPTER 7

Twisted Whispers

aCCORDING TO PROFESSOR BLISS, SOME CULTURES think that Fridays are unlucky, especially when they fall on Halloween, but what happened that Friday had nothing to do with luck. I’ve never been a superstitious person. I’m not scared of graveyards or curses. In fact, ever since my parents died, it seemed like I was drawn to death. Every word my professors uttered seemed morbid and ominous, and everywhere I looked things were dying: moths dangling in spiderwebs under the radiator, bees curled up on the windowsill, and the oak trees, now thin and naked, their leaves crunching under my shoes like beetles. But I wasn’t afraid. I didn’t believe in life after death, and I definitely didn’t believe in ghosts. That Friday was windy and overcast. The clouds hung heavy in the sky, their bellies black and swollen with rain. Gottfried didn’t do anything to celebrate Halloween. In fact, I think the school intentionally ignored it, which I found strange, though acceptable. The day had been eerie enough already. I had spent most of it indoors, waiting out the storm. Eleanor told her brother Brandon about the stolen diary, but there wasn’t much he could do except keep an eye out. The one thing he did know was that Mrs. Lynch hadn’t taken it. If she had, word would have gotten to him, since he was on the Board of Monitors.

“What did you write in it that’s so bad?” I asked Eleanor. “Everything,” she said. When I pressed her for specifics, she evaded my questions. “I just hope that whoever has it keeps it to themselves. If the stuff I wrote in there got around, I would kill myself.”

I still didn’t know who had passed me the note in History class, but something about the way Eleanor refused to talk about it made me sure she knew what the rhyme meant. All I knew was that 21F was Genevieve Tart’s room, though why we would go there was a mystery to me. Up until that point, I thought I was more or less a patient person, but Eleanor was testing my limits. “Does it have something to do with Halloween?” I asked, but she wouldn’t answer. “Come on, it’s Friday night, we’re supposed to do whatever it is the note meant any minute now. Why can’t you just tell me? I mean, what’s the big secret?”

“Why can’t you just wait and see?” Eleanor said, sitting on her bed in her school clothes with a book in her lap. A single candle illuminated the room. “Besides, if I tell you, I know you won’t come. And if you don’t come, we won’t have enough people. Plus, I think you’ll like it.”

“That doesn’t make any sense. If you think I’ll like it, then why wouldn’t I come?”

“Because you’ll think it’s stupid. And you never like things at first.”’

“What do you mean?” I said, taking offense. “Of course I do.”

Eleanor rolled her eyes. “You didn’t like me. And you didn’t like Dante. And you didn’t like Gottfried.”

I sighed, but before I could respond, there was a tap on the wall over Eleanor’s bed. It was 10:45 p.m. We both froze and listened. There was another tap, then two more.

Eleanor’s face perked up. “It’s time.”

She opened her dresser and pulled out two candles. “Are you ready to go?”

Room 21F was on the fifth floor. We were on the third.

I gave her a skeptical look.

“Fine,” she said. “I’ll give you one hint, but you have to promise you’ll come.”

I nodded.

“Suffice it to say, it has to do with Genevieve Tart and some of the other girls. They have these secret gatherings that no one gets invited to except for the girls that Genevieve thinks have potential. Whatever that means.”

“What do they do?”

“Each gathering is different. And sometimes people aren’t invited back. So don’t say anything ridiculous before you give it a chance.”

Defensive, I put a hand on my hip. “Why would I say something ridiculous? Do I say ridiculous things? And what if I don’t want to be invited back?”

Eleanor shook her head and pulled her hair back into a loose ponytail. “See, this is exactly what I’m talking about.”

“Fine. I won’t say anything impolite or rude. In fact, I’ll try not to speak at all. Now, how do we get past Lynch?”

Eleanor smiled. “You’ll see,” she said, and unbuttoned her skirt.

I looked at her blankly. “What are you doing?”

“I don’t want to get my clothes dirty,” she said, peeling her stockings off. “You should probably take yours off too if you don’t want to ruin them. It’s dusty in there.”

I raised an eyebrow. “In where?”

I thought the fireplace in our room was merely decorative, but as it turned out, it wasn’t. Eleanor threw the candles into a bag that she hung around her wrist. On the side of the mantel was an iron knob. Eleanor pushed it to the left, and the flue creaked open. A mixture of cold air and dirt gusted into the room. I waved it away with my hand, then peered up into the shaft. A sprinkling of soot fell on my face.

“Have you done this before?”

“All the time.”

I was skeptical. She hadn’t done it all this year.

“It’s the only way,” she added, as if reading my thoughts.

Then, wearing just a tank top and a pair of pink underwear, she stepped into the fireplace and hoisted herself up. I watched as her torso, then her legs, and finally her feet disappeared into the chimney.

I stripped down and changed into my pajamas—a pair of shorts and an old T-shirt—then followed her. The chute was sooty and so narrow I barely fit inside. Metal rungs were nailed to one side, creating a makeshift ladder.

“Don’t fall,” Eleanor teased, her voice echoing against the brick walls.

I looked down. The shaft of the chimney ran all the way from the basement to the roof, connecting our room to the rooms above and below it. I let out a nervous laugh and tightened my grip on the rungs. Wisps of broken spiderwebs floated around the edges of the passage, getting caught in my hair. My knees scraped against the brick as I inched up.