Dead Beautiful

“He said he left messages on your answering machine. He was worried. He just wanted to make sure you’re okay.”

“It feels like years since I saw him,” I said almost to myself, and smiled. For the first time since my parents died, I felt the inkling of something other than numbness. Thinking about Wes—about the stubble on his chin, his smooth, muscular arms, his curly brown hair, and the way he had run his hand down the back of my neck when he kissed me—it was almost as if nothing had happened and I could return to the life I’d had before. I hadn’t felt anything since that night in the woods; I hadn’t allowed myself to. Instead I’d spent the last week in a trance—my body wandering around the house as if it were alive, when inside my mind was with the dead.

All of a sudden I felt an incredible urge to feel something more: pain, happiness, it didn’t matter. In front of me the water was tenuously still, as if the night air were weighing down on it with immense pressure.

I didn’t have a bathing suit on, but it didn’t matter. The far side of the marina was always deserted at night. I tore off my clothes and jumped into the bay. My lungs constricted at the shock of the sudden cold, and the salt water stung my eyes.

When I surfaced, Annie was wading in, holding her hair above her head with one hand. I splashed her, and she let out a shriek. Diving underwater, I swam deeper. The boats around me bobbed idly in the water, their reflections stretching into the horizon. I looked to the shore. Annie was near the rocks, floating on her back and staring at the sky.

And then I saw something rise to the surface.

It was round and long, and had what looked like a train of tattered clothes hanging off of it, lolling in the ripples of the water. Its surface was a sickly white.

I screamed and swam back to shore, my arms thrashing wildly in the water.

“What happened?” Annie said frantically.

I pointed to the bay. “There’s someone floating out there.”

Annie stood up and looked. “The buoy?” she said finally.

“I thought”—I said between breaths—“I thought it was a person.”

Annie looked at me, worried. “It’s just a buoy covered in seaweed.”

Embarrassed, I blinked and forced myself to look at it. Leaning over, I let out a sigh of relief. She was right. “I’m sorry. I must be losing my mind.”

As if on cue, a light turned on and flashed into the water. “Who’s there?” someone called from a boat harbored in the bay.

“Oh my God,” I said, not wanting to be seen in my underwear. “Let’s get out of here.” And in the light of the moon we ran back to shore.

After Annie dropped me off, I snuck through the back door, hoping that my grandfather had gone to bed. I’d just barely made it through the kitchen when a figure loomed in the doorway.

I froze. “Crap,” I muttered.

“I see you’ve gone swimming,” my grandfather said sternly. Even at this hour he was still wearing an expensive tweed suit and dinner jacket.

“I was feeling a little stuffy.”

My sarcasm wasn’t lost on him. “Do you think this is funny?” he said loudly.

I jumped at the sudden sharpness in his voice.

“You could have gotten killed. Do you think my rules are arbitrary? That I enforce them just to punish you?”

“Killed. Like my parents? Maybe that wouldn’t be so bad if it meant I didn’t have to live like this anymore.”

He studied me. I clutched my sweatshirt against my chest and waited for him to say something. It was so quiet I could hear the water dripping from my hair onto the linoleum floor.

“I’m sorry you feel that way,” he said. “It wasn’t my intention. Go dry off and get some sleep. We’ll talk in the morning.”

The next morning I woke up late and tiptoed downstairs. For the first time since he’d moved in, my grandfather had let me sleep through breakfast. It should have felt like a victory, but was so out of character that it made me suspicious. My grandfather was in the living room, sitting in my father’s reading chair, a newspaper resting in his lap. Dustin was clearing a cup and saucer from the side table. I entered the room cautiously, trying not to draw too much attention to myself.

“Renée,” he said, almost warmly, “come in.” He motioned to the sofa across from him.

He was outfitted in trousers and a dinner jacket, with one of the French-cuffed shirts that Dustin starched and ironed every night. His thinning white hair, which was normally impeccably groomed, was tousled on the side, from leaning his head on his hand, I guessed. He took a sip of water, and I braced myself for punishment.

“Please sit,” he said.

Dustin pulled out a chair for me and produced a napkin and place setting.

“I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about your situation,” my grandfather continued.

I fidgeted with my shorts while he spoke, and studied his large, ruddy nose—a nose so massive that it seemed impossible for it to have ever existed on a younger person’s face.

“And I have decided to send you to school.”

I shook my head. “What? But I’m already in school.”

“This is a boarding school. And an elite one at that.”

I stood up in shock. My entire life was here: Annie, my friends, my teachers, the people I grew up with. They were all I had left. I was about to begin my sophomore year, and I had just made the varsity lacrosse team and gotten into AP History, which was normally closed off to sophomores. And of course there was Wes....

“But you can’t!” I cried, though I wasn’t so sure. How could he make me leave when my life was just beginning?

He clasped his hands over one knee. “It’s high time you got an actual education. A classical education. I’ve seen how schools these days operate, letting young people choose what they want and don’t want to study. It’s an ineffective method that has been disproven over and over again. Gottfried Academy has been around for centuries. I’m sure it will provide you with the same strong foundation that your mother had.”

I meant to interrupt him, but when he mentioned my mother, I went quiet. I didn’t know that she had gone to boarding school. She had told me stories about her childhood, about high school, and about how she met my dad, but she’d never told me that she went to boarding school, or that it was prestigious. My dad had to have gone there too, since they’d met in English class. Why would she omit those details?