Dead Beautiful

“How can I get outside?” I asked, my knees brushing against each other as I shifted my weight and scoped out the room.

She gave me a strange look. “You climb down the chimney to the basement,” she said slowly. “Why?”

“It...it worked. It actually worked. I talked to my father. And I...well, I just have to go. I’ll explain it all later.”

“Do you know how to get back? Want me to go with you?”

“Don’t worry, I’ll figure it out. I’ll meet you back in the room. Okay?” I bit my lip.

“Sure,” she said, though I knew she was skeptical. “If you walk past the furnace, there’s a fire escape. It leads to the back of the dorm. The alarm won’t sound; it stopped working years ago.”

I smiled in gratitude. “Thanks.”

“Are you sure you don’t want me to go with you?”

I nodded and grabbed my things. “I’ll see you later.”

I shimmied down the chimney chute until I got to the basement. Squeezing my way through the fireplace, I lowered my feet to the ground. Steam hissed from the pipes lining the ceiling, filling the room with the soggy smell of laundry and mildew. I hid behind a large beam and surveyed the room to make sure Mrs. Lynch wasn’t lurking in the hall. To my left was the furnace room, to my right the laundry machines. In front of me was a long cement corridor. Everything seemed to be made of corrugated metal. There were rusty pipes everywhere, leaking a viscous liquid that left yellow stains on the floor. Otherwise the room was empty. I counted to three and ran down the hall, dodging the drips until I spotted an eroded metal staircase that led to a fire escape.

In the cold night air, my body tightened. Goose bumps prickled across my skin, and I remembered that I was barely wearing any clothes. Immediately, I felt self-conscious, even though I knew no one was there to see me. Stupid Renée. Now I might freeze to death before I even made it to the green, and if Eleanor ever conjured me up in a séance, all she would see was me tiptoeing around campus like an idiot in my shorts.

But what else could I do? If my father was out there, I had to find him. I walked across campus, past the lake and through the trees, until I was standing in eyesight of the great oak. Its gnarled trunk looked thicker without its normal shroud of leaves, and its bare branches extended over the lawn like a system of roots. It was the exact same tree as the one that had flashed through my mind during the séance.

And then in the distance, two figures materialized out of the darkness by the Ursa Major statue. I squinted. It looked like a man and woman. It had to be my parents. Without thinking, I ran toward them. They seemed to be heading in the direction of the girls’ dorm. Maybe they were coming to meet me. A gust of wind carried the sound of the voices across the path, and I wrapped my arms around myself in the cold.

“Mom?” I called out as I approached. “Dad?”

At the sound of my voice they froze, then spun around. I realized, to my horror, that they weren’t my parents at all. Instead, I was face-to-face with Gideon and Vivian. “I ... I’m sorry,” I said, and backed away. “I thought you were someone else.”

Vivian looked wildly around her, as if caught in the midst of a crime. When she was sure I was alone, she whispered something to Gideon, and they both looked at me. Why were they out here at night in their antique suits, and what were they talking about, and why did they always look so angry?

It’s okay, I told myself. They’re just students. What could they do to me?

Gideon said something to Vivian in Latin, and she nodded and approached me. The sky rumbled with thunder, and I began to back away from them, when I felt someone directly behind me. A hand clamped over my wrist and pulled me aside. I recognized his touch immediately.

“Dante.” My voice was barely audible in the night wind.

“Stay behind me,” he said, stepping in front of me, his voice low and authoritative.

“Friends,” he said, looking between Gideon and Vivian, “what are you doing out past curfew on a night like tonight?”

Vivian narrowed her eyes. “I could ask you the same.” It was the first time I had heard her speak English; it sounded clumsy and unpleasant.

Gideon came up behind her, his hand on the small of her back, and said something to Dante in Latin. Dante paused and then responded.

What had he said? Even though my eyes were trained on Gideon and Vivian, the only person I was aware of was Dante. He loomed in front of me, gripping my wrist as he spoke, my arm tingling as it grew cold, now a familiar sensation, and one that I was slowly growing fond of. It was uncomfortable, unexplainable, unsettling. The woodsy smell of his body tickled my nose, his shirt brushing against my back with every breath that he took. I shifted my weight until our legs were almost touching.

Suddenly he turned to me. “Let’s go,” he said, giving a sidelong glance to his old friends, who were walking away.

“What did you say to them?” I asked as we headed toward the girls’ dorm.

“Nothing. Just that you were here to meet me.”

But I wasn’t. “Why are you here?”

But Dante’s eyes were focused on something in the distance. “Someone’s coming.”

The front door to the girls’ dorm opened, and Mrs. Lynch stepped outside. She must have heard us talking, because she peered into the darkness.

We backed away to the safety of the trees, but a burst of lightning illuminated the campus. In a flash, Mrs. Lynch’s eyes met mine in a furious, gleaming glare.

“She saw me,” I whispered.

Thunder shook the ground below us, the sky cracked open, and it began to rain.

“Come on,” Dante said. I trembled as he took my hand, my fingers chilling as they curled around his.

We ran across the green, the rain pouring down on us as we splashed through mud and puddles until we reached Horace Hall. The double doors were locked, and as Dante bent over them, I squinted into the rain, waiting for Mrs. Lynch’s stocky figure to appear. “She’s probably on her way. What do we do?” I said, water dripping down my nose. But just as I finished speaking, the doors clicked and Dante pushed them open.

“After you,” he said, and we slipped inside, the doors locking behind us.

Horace Hall was different at night. Without students, it was so quiet I could hear the water dripping from my hair as Dante led me upstairs and into the darkened classroom where I normally had Latin.