Dead Beautiful

I pretended to watch the play, but I was only paying attention to Dante sitting beside me, his shirt grazing my arm. Through the darkened silhouettes of the treetops I could just make out the campus buildings, each engraved and named after a philosopher or headmistress or master: a looming reminder that we were surrounded by the dead.

Dante moved closer until our arms were touching. In the eerie torchlight of the far distance, the chorus recited words about murder and betrayal, enveloping us with voices from the ancient world.

“‘Woman,’” Dante whispered in time with the chorus onstage. “‘Be sure your heart is brave; you can take much.’”

My head resting in my palm, I looked up at him, perplexed. “Do you have every book memorized?”

“I’ve been alive for a while,” he said. “It’s not as difficult as you think.”

Taking my hands in his, he pulled me into his lap and wrapped his arms around me. “Two lovers, doomed to death,” he said, explaining the play as he nibbled on my ear. “Killed out of jealousy.”

“Doomed,” I murmured, gazing out into the night.

“‘There is a breath about it like an open grave,’” Dante recited in time with the actor playing Agamemnon’s lover, Cassandra, on the stage.

I couldn’t believe that this was, in many ways, my story too. I closed my eyes, listening to the words, wishing we were somewhere else, anywhere else, as if that would help the fact that Dante was going to die and there was nothing I could do to stop it.

Dante faced me, his eyes sad and watery as they gazed into mine. “‘I am going in, and mourning as I go my death and Agamemnon’s. Let my life be done.’”

“‘Let my life be done,’” I repeated, pressing my forehead to his, our fingers and legs intertwined as if we were two people sharing one body. And together we listened to students recite the lines that Aeschylus had written thousands of years ago, about obsession and desire, about vengeance and curses and lovers, doomed to die side by side.

But our reverie was interrupted by an unnaturally long silence. We turned to the stage, where the boy playing Orestes was standing onstage, blinking blindly into the audience as if he were confused.

All was quiet as everyone watched him. He repeated his line and leaned back, signaling Professor Urquette urgently.

The crowd began to murmur. “Did he forget his lines?” someone said.

I stared at the stage. “This is where Nathaniel is supposed to come in,” I said to Dante. “I helped him practice his lines. Where is he?”

Then, from behind the torches, someone pushed a skinny boy out onto the lawn.

“That’s not Nathaniel,” I said, staring at the pasty redhead.

And it wasn’t; it was his understudy, a lanky third year named Kurt Mayburg. He wasn’t in costume, and looked wholly unprepared. Orestes repeated his line, and Kurt was just about to give Electra’s response when the ground beneath him collapsed. All at once he fell, grasping at the air until he disappeared into the earth.

The audience went silent for a moment, unsure of whether or not it was part of the performance. I arched my neck, trying to see what was happening between all of the heads in front of us. Someone in the front row screamed. The crowd erupted in chaos.

Dante and I stood, trying to see what had happened. Headmistress Von Laark, Professor Bliss, Professor Lumbar, and Miss LaBarge were pushing through the throngs of people to the front. They knelt around the hole in front of the great oak, the headmistress shouting inaudible commands at Professor Bliss, who lowered himself into the hole.

Around us, people were running down the aisles; some were screaming, while others were gathering at the front, trying to see what had happened.

Suddenly a hand shot out from the top of the hole, grasping at the edge of the dirt. Professor Lumbar and Professor Chortle grabbed it and pulled, dragging Professor Bliss out of the hole and onto the soggy grass. He was holding a body.

I clutched my collar. It was Nathaniel; I knew it was, even though he was so covered in dirt, I couldn’t see his face. Pushing through people, I forced my way to the front. Dante followed a step behind. Amid the chaos of the crowd I couldn’t see anything except for Kurt climbing out of the hole, coughing and shaking dirt from his hair. Everyone else was standing over Nathaniel. Two nurses from the audience had run to his side and were checking his pulse, feeling his chest for a heartbeat, opening and closing his eyelids, shining a tiny flashlight into his pupils. Nathaniel remained unresponsive.

By the time I made it to the front, they were already carrying Nathaniel to the nurses’ wing. Mrs. Lynch and a few of the administrators were attempting to keep students away from the hole. “Is he okay?” I kept asking over and over, but no one seemed to know the answer.

Up ahead, I spotted Annette LaBarge. She was standing with the headmistress and Professors Lumbar and Urquette in a secluded area of the lawn. I moved behind the trees until I was within earshot, and listened, with Dante just behind me.

“Did you authorize this?” Professor Lumbar said in a voice so low I thought I might have misheard her.

I looked at Dante. “What does she mean, authorize it?”

Dante shook his head and put a finger to his lips. Maybe she meant authorize the play being performed over the catacombs.

The headmistress looked agitated at the question, and hesitated before answering. “No. And this is not the appropriate place to discuss such matters.”

“Students are being attacked, Calysta,” Professor Lumbar said firmly. She stood like a stone fortress next to Miss LaBarge’s slender body, her hands braced over her enormous hips like a jail warden. “Appropriate place doesn’t apply anymore.”

“Edith is right,” Miss LaBarge said. “We should send the students home. It isn’t safe here. The incident last spring, and then Eleanor Bell, and now this.”

“Last spring has nothing to do with this,” the headmistress said, gazing at the hole in the ground. “I have it under control.”

“Last spring has everything to do with this,” Miss LaBarge said. “You can’t ignore the facts. Three students are dead. Nathaniel might never fully recover from this. And if we can’t find the person behind it, we shouldn’t allow students to stay at this school.”

When the headmistress finally replied, her voice was sharp and cold. “Enough. You’re out of line, Annette. This matter is closed.”