Eleanor paused. “Are you sure it was my mom in the photo? Every time I mentioned Miss LaBarge at home, she always forgot her name or messed it up, calling her DuFarge or something. I’m certain she’d never met her before in her life.”
I frowned. “Well, I’m certain it was her in the photo. Unless your mom has a sister?”
“No. She’s an only child.”
I coiled the telephone cord around my finger, remembering the way Eleanor’s mom had looked sitting alone on the deck of the boat. Why would she have lied about knowing Miss LaBarge?
“Have you heard from Dante?” I asked, breaking the long pause.
“No.” She cleared her throat. “He hasn’t sent me anything since your birthday. I’m sorry.” I knew she meant it, but she sounded devoid of empathy.
I loosened my grip on the receiver. “At the funeral, Brett told me there was a rumor Dante was in Canada. Do you think it’s true?”
Eleanor didn’t respond for a long while. “I don’t know where he is,” she said stiffly. Her tone reminded me that she was Undead, and that funerals weren’t the best subject matter; nor was Brett, her ex-boyfriend.
I immediately regretted saying anything. “Eleanor, I’m sorry—”
“It’s fine,” she said quickly, as if she didn’t even want me to say what I was about to say. “The weird thing is that I don’t really care. I know I should, but I can’t feel anything. Not for Miss LaBarge’s death, or for my breakup with Brett. Nothing. It’s not right. I know it’s not right, but I can’t help it.”
“It’s not your fault,” I said softly.
“It’s not about fault anymore. It’s about dealing with it every day. Knowing that every day that passes, I’m a little less human.”
I pressed the receiver to my cheek, trying to find the words that would explain how badly I wanted to help her, how badly I wished I could be with her right now. But all I could come up with was, “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
“It’s okay,” she said, her voice cracking. “I shouldn’t have even brought it up. It’s just a passing thing, I bet.” But the words dissipated between us. “Tell me about you. I’m tired of me.”
So I told her about my dream, about the newspaper articles in Miss LaBarge’s cottage, the letter my mother had written to her, and how my grandfather thought Miss LaBarge and my parents had only been searching for the Undead when they were killed.
Eleanor paused. “Maybe he’s right. I mean, that’s what Monitors do, isn’t it? Search for the Undead and bury them?”
“I don’t think it’s that simple,” I said. “We don’t just bury the Undead immediately, right?”
“You tell me,” Eleanor said. “You’re the Monitor now, not me.”
“It’s not like that,” I said. “I’m the same; nothing has changed.”
“Then how come you’re at St. Clément and I’m at Gottfried?”
Shocked, I stared at the receiver. “Oh, I see. So it’s my fault that I’m here and you’re there? Do you actually think that I want to be here? That I want to learn how to bury people?” I was about to hang up the phone, when Eleanor cut in.
“Wait—Renée, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that. I know it’s not your fault. It just isn’t fair. I don’t belong here with everyone else. I’m not like them.”
“If it makes you feel any better, apparently all the other Monitors think I’m immortal,” I said, carrying the phone to the bed.
“They’ve been saying that here, too.” She lowered her voice to a whisper. “Have you told anyone else what really happened?”
I’d told Eleanor everything in a letter over the summer. She was the only one who knew that Dante and I had exchanged souls.
“No. I can’t. My grandfather suspects something, but he doesn’t actually know anything.”
“So, do you think immortality is really possible?”
“I don’t think so,” I said, staring at the beams lining the ceiling. “I mean, how could it be?”
Eleanor paused. “Yeah, you’re probably right. But, you know, the whole Undead thing—I always thought that was a myth until I came to Gottfried and it happened to me. So maybe there are other things out there that we don’t know about.”
I recognized something in Eleanor’s voice. It was the same kind of blind hope I had when I thought about Dante. Was Eleanor right? Could there be some other course for her future, and mine? “Maybe there are. Anything’s possible, right?”
The line went quiet.
“Are you still there?”
“Yeah…sort of.”
“Are you okay?”
Her voice cracked. “I don’t know.”
“I don’t know if I am, either.”
“Can we not hang up yet?” she whispered. “It gets so lonely here at night.”
“Here too,” I said, and, pulling the blanket up, I talked to her under the sheets, listening to the sound of her breathing on the other end of the line until I fell asleep.
The gymnasium was dingy and old, the floors a faded orange. I was wearing my dress-code clothes—black stockings, a pleated skirt, and a pressed oxford shirt—for the first time since Gottfried. Two boys ahead of me held the door as I entered, my shoes squeaking against the rubber floor. Sitting on two folding chairs in the middle of the gym were a man and a woman, both in suits. They directed us to the locker rooms to wait.
The long wooden benches of the locker room were already crowded with girls when I walked in. Some were chatting, others checking their hair in mirrors above the line of sinks off to the right. In the corner were a group of girls I recognized from Gottfried. I pushed through the crowd toward them, but when they saw me coming, they dispersed, avoiding my eyes. I froze, realizing they had been talking about me. Finally, Greta, an athletic girl who had lived on my floor last year, gave me a halfhearted wave. Turning away from them, I clutched my things to my chest, and was about to go to the toilets, when above the din I heard someone say, “I’m sorry, Clementine.”
I turned around, curious to see who lived in the room across from mine.
Clementine LaGuerre was petite, with dark brown skin so smooth it looked buttery. Her short hair was oiled and elegantly parted on one side like a flapper’s. A group of girls surrounded her as she pinned it in place with a single barrette. She met my gaze in the mirror, her eyes a startling green.
“Who are you?” she said, speaking to my reflection. Her voice was soft and lyrical, a mix between a French and Caribbean accent. The girls beside her stopped talking and stared at me.
“Renée.”
“Renée Winters?”
I nodded, surprised she knew my name.
“So you’re the one who can cheat death,” she said quietly, her face impossible to read.
“And you’re Clementine. You live across the hall from me.”
“I know where I live,” she said, her voice calm but firm. Behind her, two girls in matching cardigans laughed. “So did you or did you not survive the kiss of the Undead?”
Somewhere in the room a locker door clanged shut. The girls scrutinized me, waiting for me to answer. But I was sick of being stared at by strangers, of being asked the same question over and over again. They hadn’t been there that night; they didn’t know what had happened. What gave them the right to pry into the most private moments of my past? By their looks I could tell that it didn’t matter what I said; they already believed I was immortal. So why not let them?
Clementine put a hand on her hip. “Well, is it true or is it not?”
I shrugged, trying to look nonchalant. “I’m alive, aren’t I?”
The room erupted in whispers, but Clementine said nothing, her eyes glued to my reflection.
“Prove it.”
I hesitated, my face in the mirror staring back at me, bewildered. Was she serious?
Clementine crossed her arms. “Go on.”
At the back of the room was a stairway with a sign that said it led to the swimming pool. I walked toward it. The Undead couldn’t go underground—it would put them to rest, like a burial.
I paused dramatically at the top step, and felt everyone hold their breath as I descended.
Behind me, the girls murmured, “But how? What happened?” Until they were interrupted by the locker room door swinging open.
A graceful woman entered, her cheeks hollowed out with age, her neck thin and curved like a swan’s. She was wearing a wool skirt suit, her hair coiled into a bun.
“Girls?” she said with a thick French accent. “It is time.”
We filed out into the gymnasium, where she handed us each a pencil and a map of the school grounds. The boys were nowhere to be seen, and I assumed they were to perform the test separately.
“Bonjour,” the woman said, flexing her neck as she spoke. Standing beside her was a childlike man with a pudgy face that seemed to engulf his eyes. “I am Madame Goût, and this is Monsieur Pollet,” she continued, pronouncing the name Po-lay.
“Pollet,” the man corrected, accentuating the t. He sounded American.
She ignored him. “We will serve as your placement exam proctors. This exam will determine your class rank by testing your talent, speed, and strategy.”
She turned to Mr. Pollet, who continued. “We have hidden nine dead animals around the St. Clément campus. Your task is to mark the exact location of each animal on the map we have provided for you. We expect the list to be numbered in order, and we will collect it at the end of the exam.”
“What kind of order?” a freckled girl asked.
The woman frowned. “Why, any order you wish.”
I glanced around at the other girls, relieved to discover that I wasn’t the only one confused by these instructions.