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.”