I swallowed.
“However, if there were something going on, say, as more than friends, I want you to feel comfortable coming to me if there are any...complications.”
Was Miss LaBarge telling me that if I wanted to talk about Dante with her, I could? “There aren’t any complications,” I said. “With our...friendship.”
Miss LaBarge gave me an earnest look. “Good,” she said. “Good. Just making sure.” She nibbled on a cookie. “So tell me what it is that you wanted to talk to me about.”
I wanted to remind her that she was the one who had brought me here, not the other way around, but instead I blurted out “The Gottfried Curse” before I realized the words were leaving my mouth.
Miss LaBarge coughed and set down her cup of tea, the china clattering against the saucer. “Sorry,” she said, wiping at her blouse with a handkerchief. “You caught me off guard.”
“So you know about it?”
“The deaths, yes.”
“The heart attacks, you mean.”
Miss LaBarge narrowed her eyes. “I presume you’re implying that they were somehow unnatural and that Eleanor is part of the pattern.”
I gazed at her in awe. “Yes.”
“Renée, I know it’s a comforting idea to think that when someone dies, it’s for a reason, or that someone is responsible, but sometimes these things just happen. After all, we are just humans. We can’t control life and death.”
It was supposed to make me feel better, but even the thought of Eleanor being dead made me feel queasy.
“However,” she said as I looked away, “we can control the way we react.”
I gave her a confused look.
“Descartes once said that instinct trumps all. Follow yours,” she said, and winked.
I set down my tea. She was right.
The next morning in the boys’ dorm, I lingered in the shower, letting the water pound against my back as I tried to figure out what I should do. Instinct, I repeated to myself. What did my instinct tell me to do? But I couldn’t think of anything that might help me find Eleanor or figure out what was behind the heart attacks. By the time I turned off the water, all of the girls had cleared out. Clutching my towel and shower caddy, I stepped into the hall.
The boys’ dormitory was eerily still. I glanced down the stairway. There was no one there. Without thinking, I ventured into the hallway. It was lined with doors, all wooden and perforated with slanted shingles, like in a psychiatric hospital. I walked past, running my fingers along them until I found myself standing in front of one door in particular. It looked the same as the rest: no one else would have been able to perceive its irregularity, yet for some reason I couldn’t walk past it.
66F.
I glanced around me. If the boys’ dorm was the same as the girls’, there wouldn’t be any locks. I knocked lightly, and when no one answered, I turned the knob.
The room was immaculate, the kind of clean you only find in an expensive hotel room. Or at least one side was. The bed was tucked and made, with no creases or lumps; the books in the shelf were arranged in alphabetical order, and when I opened the closet, it was full of suits. Antique suits, all hung, starched, and color coded in varying shades of gray, black, and brown. Gideon DuPont. I poked one, as if to make sure he wasn’t hiding inside, then jumped back when the hangers jangled on the bar. There were no photographs, no paintings or prints, no mirrors. The room had four windows, two overlooking the lake, two overlooking Horace Hall. Light streamed in, casting hazy beams across the wooden floor like invisible dividers, cutting the room in half. The other side of the room was the complete opposite of Gideon’s. I didn’t know who his roommate was, but I imagined that they didn’t get along. Dirty clothes were piled in wrinkled clumps; ties hung on the bedposts, crumpled papers surrounded the base of the trash bin. I approached Gideon’s desk.
I didn’t know what I was looking for when I opened the drawer, but I assumed I would know when I found it.
I went through everything: his books, his notebooks, even his Code of Discipline. If there was anything that implicated him in Eleanor’s disappearance, I couldn’t find it, because all of his class notes were written in long, sweeping Latin. After I went through all the drawers in his desk, shuffled through all of the books on his shelf, and crawled under his bed, which was strangely free of dust or bugs, I gave up. All the girls had probably left by now, which meant that the boys would be returning to the dorm soon.
I quickly tried to rearrange his things, hoping he wouldn’t realize anyone had tampered with them, when I accidentally knocked over the bottles of fancy colognes that sat on his dresser. Getting down on all fours, I started picking them up, smelling each as I went. They were strong and pungent, and I winced and held the bottles away from my face. Why did he have so much cologne anyway? I bent down to pick up the last of them when I saw something brown sticking out from Gideon’s pillowcase.
Forgetting about the cologne, I pulled it out, only to discover that it was a file folder. And not just any file folder. On the cover it said: Eleanor Bell.
I blinked, unable to believe what I was seeing, but when I opened my eyes it was still there. I opened the folder and flipped through. It was her personal file. I glanced back at the door. I could hear voices floating up from the open window. The boys were coming back. Without wasting any time, I reached into Gideon’s pillowcase to see if anything else was inside, and to my surprise, there were two more files, both brown, both with names printed on the front:
Benjamin Gallow
Cassandra Millet
I stuffed them into the bundle of my wet towel and replaced the pillow and the last of the cologne. Shutting the door behind me, I scurried downstairs, trying as best as I could to conceal the folders.
The boys were pouring into the foyer as I left. They stared at me and whistled while I pushed through them, my wet hair dripping onto my collared shirt. Yet just when I thought I had made it out without getting caught, I bumped directly into Gideon as we walked through the double doors. I froze, clutching my towel and the folders to my chest. Gideon glared at me and brushed off his shoulder where my hair had left a wet mark. The doors swung together, bumping me out and him in. Thankful for the act of fate, I ran back to my room to dry my hair before class.
When I got back, I slammed the door and sank to the ground. Unable to contain my curiosity, I dumped out the contents of each file and flipped through the pages, skimming for anything of interest. Each file was embossed with a giant Gottfried crest in blue and gold ink, and began the same way: