I leave my sketches to my parents.

I leave my clothes to my cousin Jenny.

I leave my ballet slippers to the Bethleson Children’s Hospital.

I leave my books to the Gottfried Copleston Library.

Final wishes

If you’re reading this, I will probably already be buried in the Dead Forest. Please find me.

Thank you for a beautiful life.

I blushed as I read it, feeling like I was violating her most private moments. “It’s perfect,” I said.

“Thanks,” she said, folding it into the drawer. “I also left a note explaining what I had seen that night, along with a sketch of the scene, which I drew afterward. Those were confiscated by the school.

“Anyway, when I went to the headmistress’s office, I thought I was going to die. But instead, she just told me that I was wrong. She hadn’t even been at Gottfried that night, and had witnesses to prove that she was actually in Europe. And then she gave me a week of detention for sneaking off campus after hours. Everyone said the same thing. That I made it up, that I was crazy. My parents sent me to a psychiatric ward for the summer.” Minnie gazed at her sketches. “The thing is, I spend most of my time watching things. I know what I saw. I’m not lying.”

She stared at me, her eyes watery and searching. I could tell that by now she wished she was wrong because the reality was even more disturbing to accept. “I believe you,” I said.

A symposium dinner was held at the end of the fall semester to celebrate the beginning of winter. In the tradition of Plato, it was a themed dinner designed to encourage discussion on various philosophical subjects. But the only thing people were interested in talking about was Eleanor.

The dining hall was filled with long rectangular tables, each covered in royal blue tablecloths that collected in folds on the ground. The feast was elaborate and distinctively New England, with buttered corn, poached gourds and candied yams, venison, quail, wild turkey, and Cornish hen, all roasted to a golden brown, along with blueberry cobbler, sugared fruits, and an elaborate array of desserts made from maple syrup. The professors were sitting at tables that lined the edges of the hall, forming a U around us. In the middle were the student tables, one for each grade, girls on one half, boys on the other. I was sandwiched between Emily Wurst and Amelia Song, a quiet girl who played the harp in the orchestra and kept to herself. Minnie Roberts was actually one of the few people I wanted to talk to, but it was impossible to ask her more about Cassandra in the dining hall, so I spent most of the dinner watching her push the food around on her plate. I tried to pretend I couldn’t see people staring at me, whispering my name and then Eleanor’s. Every so often I glanced around the room, hoping to see Dante, who told me he’d be there, but was only met with Nathaniel, who looked just as bored as I did on the other side of the table.

I pushed my fork off the table with my elbow. Trying not to draw attention to myself, I crouched down to pick it up and crawled under the table, letting the tablecloth fall behind me like a curtain.

Beneath it, the din of the dining hall was muted, and everything was dark and calm. I sat there for a few minutes, staring at the line of feet on either side of me, and then began to crawl to the door.

When I finally made it outside, I let out a sigh. The only thing I was sure of was that both Cassandra and Benjamin were dead, and that the school knew about Cassandra. That much I knew from the files. But was Minnie right? No, I thought. Impossible. Rubbing my temples, I turned to make my way back to the dormitory, when I saw one of the maintenance workers run up the path and into the dining hall.

Moments later, the door to the dining hall burst open and Headmistress Von Laark strode outside, her ivory cloak billowing behind her. I ducked behind a bush. Professor Bliss and Professor Starking pushed out of the dining hall on the heels of the headmistress, all staring out toward the dormitories.

In the distance I could barely make out a person carrying something down the pathway. I watched him through the leaves as he approached, until he was close enough for me to see his face.

Dante emerged from the night fog, cradling a body in his arms. I clasped my hand over my mouth to muffle the gasp that involuntarily escaped. It was Eleanor.

Her blond hair dangled just above the ground, blowing in the winter wind. She was unconscious and wrapped in a thick wool blanket, her body convulsing in sudden, violent jerks. I could see the quiet rise and fall of Dante’s breathing as he handed her to Professor Bliss and Professor Starking, who carried her to the nurses’ wing, her limp silhouette swaying back and forth like a hammock.

Dante glanced through the bushes in my direction, as if he knew I was there, and then turned his attention to Headmistress Von Laark, who was questioning him. He looked exhausted. Just behind him, a pair of maintenance workers approached.

“This young man has been lurking around here all week, trying to find the girl,” the older man said, wiping sweat from his forehead. “We had been trying to get into the basement for days, but the pipes kept freezing,” he continued, “so we couldn’t drain it. And then all of a sudden this young man emerged from the front of the girls’ dormitory, carrying the girl in his arms.”

The headmistress looked from the man to Dante. “Is this true?”

“I was walking past the dormitory when I saw her stumble out the front door. She could barely walk. I caught her just before she fell,” Dante said calmly.

“It’s been a week and a half, and we still haven’t been able to drain that place,” the maintenance worker said with exasperation. “The water is still almost up to the ceiling. Who knows how she managed to find a crevice to breathe in. How she even survived is beyond me.”

The headmistress narrowed her eyes, which were darkened with eyeliner. “Curious,” she said, her lips red and pursed. She turned to Dante. “Why were you outside the girls’ dormitory?”

“I told you. I was just walking past on my way to the dining hall,” he said. “Right place, right time.”

The headmistress didn’t look like she believed him, but gave up questioning for the moment. “See me in my office tomorrow morning,” she said, dismissing him.

“And do we know how Eleanor Bell ended up in the basement?” she asked the maintenance workers.

They both shook their heads. “We just work the plumbing,” the older one said. “The flood was caused by a series of broken pipes on the first floor. They were clean breaks, though, not made from freezing or bursting. Broken on purpose, if you ask me.”