Dead Beautiful, Page 3

  My mind raced through all of my options. I could run away, stay with Annie and her parents. Or I could just leave and never come back, live in a train like the boxcar children so my grandfather couldn’t find me. I had to talk to Annie. Maybe she could help me convince her mom to adopt me.

  My grandfather must have sensed my dissent. “We depart tomorrow morning. I will physically place you in the car if necessary.”

  “Tomorrow? I can’t leave tomorrow. What about my friends?”

  Suddenly I didn’t care if there was some killer out there who wanted to chop me to pieces. I was staying, and I was going to find out what happened to my parents. “I’ll never go,” I said defiantly. “Not with you or your stupid butler.”

  Dustin coughed in the corner of the room, but I didn’t care.

  “We don’t have time for this,” my grandfather said. “The semester begins in a week. You should be grateful that Gottfried is letting you enroll this late. If it weren’t for my outstanding ties with the school, they probably wouldn’t have even considered you.”

  “I don’t understand,” I said, angry tears stinging my eyes. “Why would I be safer in a different school? Why don’t we just go to the police?”

  “The police were here; do you remember how helpful they were? Gottfried Academy is the safest place you could be right now. I’ve left a suitcase in the hallway outside your bedroom. Pack lightly. You won’t need much. The weather is different on the East Coast, and Gottfried enforces a strict dress code.” He eyed my shorts and tank top. “I daresay your current wardrobe will not do. We’ll find more appropriate attire when we land.”

  I thought I had misheard him. “The East Coast?”

  “Gottfried is on the western edge of Maine.”

  I almost fell out of my chair. I expected Gottfried to be an hour, maybe two, away from Costa Rosa, but moving to Maine was different. I had never been to the East Coast before. The phrase alone conjured up images of stern, expressionless people dressed completely in black; of dark and unfathomably long winters. I couldn’t even begin to imagine the degrees of unhappiness I would experience if I had to move there.

  “I can’t go!” I screamed. “I won’t—”

  But my grandfather cut me off. “Do you think your parents would want you to stay here, wallowing in self-pity as you’ve been doing for the past week?” He gave me a cold look and shook his head. “No, they would want you to move on with your life. Which is exactly what you’re going to do.”

  The conversation was over, and I stormed out of the room. I went upstairs and sat by the window, tears blurring my vision as I watched the heat rise off the pavement in the morning sun. It was unreal how much my life had changed in just one week. Both of my parents were dead, and I had no idea what was going to happen next. But I wasn’t scared. I was alive, and as I picked up the phone to dial Annie’s number, I closed my eyes and made a promise to my parents that I would never take that for granted again.

  CHAPTER 2

  Gottfried Academy

  WHEN I TOLD ANNIE ABOUT GOTTFRIED Academy, she sounded more hysterical than I did. “But you can’t move! Who will be my best friend? Who will be your best friend? You can move in with me; we’ll be real sisters then, like we always wanted when we were little. You can move into the office.” It was exactly what I wanted her to say, but hearing it from her made me realize how unrealistic it was. Annie already had two younger brothers and a sister that her parents had to worry about, which was why they didn’t have any extra bedrooms or time. If my parents were alive, they would want me to be brave and independent. Running away or going to Annie’s house wouldn’t solve my problems. Where would I go when the only place I wanted to be was back in time? So after Annie’s monologue, I found myself in the unexpected position of reasoning with her.

  “But where will your dad work?”

  “In the kitchen. Or the living room. We’ll find space.”

  I sighed. “I couldn’t do that,” I said. “And your mom is already so busy....”

  “But what about school? And all of your friends? And Wes?”

  I winced at the thought of leaving them all behind, but tried to convince myself that there was a reason why my parents had made my grandfather, instead of Annie’s mother, my legal guardian. “Maybe Maine won’t be that bad. If my parents went there it couldn’t be too horrible. Besides, we’ll talk every day, and I’ll come back on holidays and in the summer.” After a teary conversation, Annie and I made plans to meet one last time, that night at Baker’s Field.

  I spent my last day in California packing and wandering around the house trying to remember its every detail—the way it always smelled faintly of bread, the plush feeling of the carpet beneath my toes, the creaky fifth stair. Eventually I found my way to the office, where my father’s papers were still scattered across his desk. Not ready to look at them, I pushed the documents aside and turned on the computer. First, I searched “heart attack,” trying to figure out what could have possibly been the cause of my parents’ deaths. When more than a million results popped up, I refined my search to “heart attack” and “gauze in mouth.” That was more reasonable, but the results were all about wisdom teeth or complications with dental procedures. And after trying “heart attack, gauze,” and “coins, double heart attack, gauze in mouth,” which yielded nothing except the suggestion, “Did you mean cost of double heath bar, gooey in mouth?” I gave up. Frustrated, I typed in “Gottfried Academy.”

  There was only one listing for Gottfried on the Internet. I clicked on it and was brought to an incredibly simple Web site with a blue-and-gold border, which I assumed were the school colors.

  Gottfried Academy

  Vox Sapientiae Clamans Ex Inferno

  A Boarding School Dedicated to

  Studies of an Existential Nature

  Contact:

  207 Attica Crossing, Mailbox 4

  Attica Falls, Maine 04120

  Beneath the inscription was a crest of arms and a very realistic pencil illustration of what I assumed was the school’s campus. It was stone and gothic, with cathedral-like buildings surrounded by a giant wall that looked almost medieval. If there had been a pigpen and a watering trough in the picture, they wouldn’t have looked out of place. Above the buildings, ominous dark clouds filled the sky. Out of curiosity I checked the weather forecast for Attica Falls, Maine. Sighing, I scanned the weekly prediction. Sixty degrees and cloudy. Every single day.

  What was an existential boarding school anyway? Opening a new window, I looked up the word “existential,” which the Oxford English Dictionary defined as “of or pertaining to existence.” How helpful, I thought, and went back to the Gottfried Web site. I clicked on the crest of arms, and then on “Contact,” trying to go deeper into the site, but that was it. Frustrated, I closed the window. In addition to lacking pleasant weather, Gottfried also seemed to lack a proper Internet presence. Great, I thought to myself. There probably wouldn’t even be a wireless connection in the dorms.

  Turning off the computer, I went into the hall. I had avoided my parents’ room all week. Every so often I would tiptoe up to the door and graze my hand across the knob, trying to imagine them inside, sleeping. Now, with nothing left to do, I opened it.

  The room was perfectly preserved: the bed made, the dresser cluttered with books, the closet door ajar, a few pieces of my mother’s clothing still draped over the top. It was midafternoon and the branches of the trees brushed against the windows. That’s when I saw the answering machine, blinking on their night table. The mailbox was full. There were a few messages from Annie, the girls from school, the insurance company, and other people I didn’t know. I skipped ahead until I heard Wes’s voice: “Renée,” he said, “it’s Wes. I heard about, well, you know... I just wanted to see how you were doing, and to say that I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” I skipped ahead to the next. “It’s Wes again. You’re probably busy with family, but I wanted to say hi. So ...hi. Call me if you want to talk.” I sat down on
the bed, clutching a pillow to my chest. “Wes again; calling to check in. Thought you might need a friend. That’s all, I guess.” Rewinding the tape, I slipped under the covers, breathing in the smell of my parents on the sheets, and listened to Wes’s voice until I fell asleep.

  That night I snuck out. My bicycle was propped against the side of the house, where I’d left it two weeks ago. Quietly, I walked it to the end of the driveway. Somewhere in the distance, a dog barked. I jumped. “Hello?” I said, and then laughed at myself for being so easily frightened. After glancing back at my grandfather’s window, I rode down to Baker’s Field.

  The football stadium was wide and flat, with the eerie stillness of a place trapped in time. The floodlights were off, letting the night sky spill onto the grass. It was empty, save for a dim glow off to the left, punctuated by laughter and the tap click hiss of beer cans being opened. Hopping off my bike, I walked toward the voices.

  Annie was the first person I saw. She was there with some other girls from our class, and ran over when she spotted me. “Renée!” she said, giving me a hug. “You’re here! I was starting to worry.”

  I gazed at all of the people on the turf. The girls from the lacrosse team were sitting on the grass, and a group of my friends from History class were standing around three coolers filled with beer. Behind them I recognized the guys from the soccer team, along with a few upperclassmen, nursing drinks and holding cigarettes, the red ash of the butts flitting through the darkness. “What is all this?”

  “It’s your good-bye party, of course. You didn’t think I’d let you leave without seeing everyone, did you?”

  A good-bye party. It seemed so simple, so foreign. In the face of my parents’ deaths, it was strange to think that things like parties were still taking place. I smiled and threw my arms around Annie again, speaking into her hair. “I’m going to miss you so much.”

  Behind her loomed a tall silhouette of someone I had barely allowed myself to think about. Wes. Annie gave me a coy look and turned to talk to some of our friends as he approached me.

  “Surprise,” he said softly.

  He looked like he had just stepped out of a surfing catalog, his frayed shorts and faded T-shirt blowing casually against his body in the breeze. Just the sight of him made me nervous. I swallowed and smoothed out my bangs, hoping I didn’t look like I hadn’t had a full night’s sleep in a week, even though that was the truth.

  “You look great,” he said.

  I blushed. “Thanks.”

  “I was worried about you.”

  “It was really”—I tried to find the right words—“busy. I didn’t mean to—”

  “Don’t worry. You don’t have to explain.”

  I let out a sigh of relief. Wes had an unbelievable way of making things easier.

  “Take a walk with me?”

  I nodded, and he slipped his hand in mine.

  We wove through the crowd of people, saying hi to everyone as we passed. It was overwhelming to think that they had all come just to say good-bye to me. After walking across the field, we reached the bleachers and climbed up to the top row, the metal popping beneath our sneakers. Wes tried to talk about the summer, about soccer, about school, but I couldn’t think of anything to say back to him. So I told him about Gottfried instead.

  “So it’s just a different school, right?” Wes said after an awkward silence. “We can still see each other.”

  “It’s in Maine.”

  “Oh,” he said, and went quiet. “Well, you’ll be home for breaks. We’ll talk. And before we know it, it’ll be summer again.”

  Voices floated up from below on the night breeze. Those people were part of a world I could never go back to again. I couldn’t talk to them about school and sports and classes anymore; that place was gone for me, buried with my parents. I wanted to tell Wes that I missed my parents so much my insides ached; that I felt so alone I couldn’t eat or sleep because I didn’t see the point in it anymore. I wanted to tell him about the way my parents had died and how scared I was that there was someone out there evil enough to have taken them away from me. I wanted him to say that I couldn’t leave, that he would save me from my grandfather and we could run away together.

  Wes asked me if I was cold, and wrapped his sweatshirt around me. We sat in silence, listening to our friends laughing, wishing it wasn’t our last night together, both trying to convince ourselves that if we wanted it badly enough, we could will everything away. I was afraid to speak; afraid I would ruin the delicateness of the moment.

  “I’ll miss you,” he said finally.

  It wasn’t an answer to all of my questions, but it was enough. “I’ll miss you—” I started to say, but he placed a finger over my lips. His skin was warm, his upper lip beading with sweat. I gazed at him, curious, confused. He laced his fingers in mine, and before I could close my eyes, he leaned forward and kissed me. A cool, wet kiss that tasted of summer, of dew and freshly cut grass, of all the things that now seemed too simple to be real.

  That was my last night in California.

  We landed in Massachusetts, where Dustin was waiting for us. I squeezed into the backseat of my grandfather’s custom Aston Martin, and Dustin drove us through the New England countryside, snaking over hills and ravines, through vast areas with nothing but trees for miles.

  “This is western Massachusetts,” my grandfather said. “The home of the Transcendental movement.”

  Transcendental? It sounded vaguely familiar from English class. Emerson, maybe, or Thoreau? I couldn’t remember, and I didn’t want to know badly enough to ask him. Instead, I opened the window, letting the wind blow my bangs around my eyes.

  We crossed a bridge into a wooded area, past rocky streams and the occasional log cabin. My legs stuck to the leather seats as I gazed out the window. The thickets of trees, which normally would have looked pretty, now only seemed dark and forbidding.

  Finally, the car slowed, turning up a long gravel driveway lined with lampposts. At the end was a Victorian mansion surrounded by acres and acres of perfectly groomed lawns. We parked in front of a marble fountain. Off to the right, two men in green uniforms were crouched beneath a rosebush with spades and garden clippers.

  Dustin opened the car door for me. “Miss Winters,” he said with a nod.

  I stepped outside, gazing at the mansion in awe. wintershire house was engraved over the entrance. “What is this?”

  “Thank you, Dustin,” my grandfather said, hefting himself out of the car. “We’re making a short stop.”

  The gardeners turned and stood up as my grandfather walked by.

  “Is this your...your...” I paused, trying to think of the right word. “House?”

  My grandfather smiled. “My home, yes. Transcendental, isn’t it?”

  Although I still couldn’t recall what the word meant, this time it seemed like an appropriate adjective. I had only seen houses this big on television, which I assumed had been filmed somewhere in the French countryside or the English moors. Never had I believed that they existed in America, or even more incredibly, that my grandfather owned one.

  The front door opened into a large hall with checkered floors and heavy light fixtures. Thick drapes framed the windows, letting hazy light fill the room. Two staircases broke off on either side of the hall and led up to the east and west wings, demarcated by a compass rose engraved in the wall between them. Beneath it was a tall grandfather clock, its brass pendulum swinging languidly. How appropriate, I thought.

  “Dustin will give you the grand tour while I attend to a few matters that need to be resolved before we leave.”

  “We’re not staying?”

  My grandfather suppressed a smile. “Just for one night,” he said, and handed me over to Dustin.

  I followed him as we meandered through the mansion, stopping in every room, each with a name and a theme.

  “May I present to you the Gingham Library,” Dustin said as we entered an octagonal room with mahogany floors and
shelves and shelves of leather-bound books. I touched a rolling ladder, which slid down the wall, just like in the movies.

  We left and moved on to the Red Room, which was a velvet-lined sitting room, ostensibly for ladies. Dustin pushed open the door for me but waited outside. It had puffy ottomans and tiny side tables that were only large enough to hold a cup and saucer.

  It was followed by the Parchment Room, a study equipped with an old computer that looked like it hadn’t been used in a decade. In front of it was a typewriter, a box of ink ribbons, a stack of cluttered papers, and a series of expensive-looking pens. We continued on through a maze of rooms, each more magnificent than the one before. I tried to keep them straight, but their names mingled together in my mind as Dustin announced them:

  “The Game Parlor.”

  “The Hearst Drawing Room.”

  “The Hall of Marble and Glass.”

  “Verlaine Oil Gallery.”

  “Doldrums Wine Cellar.”

  “The August Smoking Parlor.”

  And finally, “The Second Living Room.”

  It was a normal sort of living room, only fancier, with an oriental carpet and two fireplaces on each end. Victorian settees and divans sat in clusters around the room, along with a grand piano, a wall of bookshelves, and a chandelier made of antlers. Deer heads and portraits of distinguished-looking men hung on the walls.

  “Wait,” I said, just as Dustin was closing the French doors. “Where’s the First Living Room?

  He gave me a blank look. “There isn’t one.”

  My grandfather met us in the foyer just as we’d finished with the first floor and the cellar. “Thank you, Dustin. I’ll take it from here,” and he led me upstairs.

  On the second floor, the halls were plastered in linen wallpaper and adorned with portraits. Every so often we would pass a sleeping chamber, as my grandfather called them, mostly for guests, though I could hardly imagine him entertaining.

  At the end of the east wing, we entered a small spiral staircase that led up into the easternmost spire. At the top was a short, windowed hallway with only one door at the end. My grandfather opened it for me, and I walked inside.