Without warning, the door flew open and my grandfather burst into the hall, pulling on his coat. Dustin, his estate manager, struggled behind him with my grandfather’s briefcase and traveling bag. Ducking inside the linen closet, I crouched next to a hamper of dirty laundry and waited. When I was sure both men were downstairs, I slipped back into my room and went to the window.
A damp breeze blew in through the screen. From where I stood I could see Dustin juggling the two bags and holding an umbrella over my grandfather as he ran out the front door and into his Aston Martin. Dustin deposited the bags in the trunk, and I watched as the car lurched down the driveway, turned, and sped out of sight.
I tried to go back to sleep but ended up drifting in and out of my dream, haunted by the face of Miss LaBarge, my philosophy professor at Gottfried Academy. “You?” she’d said, as if she’d been frightened of me. What had she meant?
A knock on the door pulled me back into the day. Outside it was still drizzling, the sun a faint orb behind the clouds.
I pulled on a sweater and opened the door. “Yes?”
Dustin entered, bald and droopy as an earlobe, balancing an elaborate platter of eggs, pancakes, sausages, and fruit. His suit was tight around his paunch. When he saw me, he froze. “My,” he said, his forehead wrinkling as he studied me. “You truly do look older. Remarkable.”
A draft came in from the hall, and I wrapped my arms around myself. “What?”
“Oh, come now. Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten what day it is. I saw your light on and took the chance that you were awake. Breakfast in bed? I’ve brought you exactly seventeen items to commemorate the occasion.”
My birthday, of course. I leaned against my bedpost as Dustin arranged the platter on my nightstand. I hadn’t forgotten it, exactly; I had just replaced it. Now it was the day my parents had died. The day Dante had died. “I told you, I don’t want to celebrate.”
“Oh, yes, yes. It’s a somber occasion, I know,” Dustin said, folding a napkin. “But your parents would have wanted you to enjoy yourself. You’re seventeen. Quite the adult.”
“Thanks,” I said, giving him a meager smile, but all I could think of was Dante. He was Undead—a person who’d died before the age of twenty-one without a burial or cremation, and had thus reanimated. Until last year, he had been doomed to wander the earth in search of the person his soul had been reincarnated into, and take it back through a kiss.
Me.
Against all odds, we’d stumbled across each other—the first known soul mates in history. The only problem was that we’d fallen in love. The Undead only have twenty-one years after their first death to roam the earth before their bodies decay, and today marked Dante’s seventeenth year. Soon he’d be gone for good. Closing my eyes, I shook the thought out of my head and looked up at Dustin. “Who was on the phone?”
Dustin grew stiff. “Oh, the phone, yes.” Avoiding my gaze, he busied himself with the silverware. “Don’t worry yourself about that just yet. First, eat.”
The food looked syrupy and hot, but I had no appetite. It had been like this all summer. “Will you join me?”
Surprised, Dustin blushed. “I’d be honored. I’ll set up two places in the dining room.”
After he closed the door, I noticed an envelope lying on my night table where the breakfast tray had been. With the beginnings of a smile, I picked it up. The return address read:
Eleanor Bell
18 rue Châtel
55100 Verdun, France
Below it was a mailing code.
1-11-1-33-7-13-58-1-8-2
I emptied the contents onto my bed. The seal was already broken, but I was so used to my grandfather reading my mail that I didn’t care. My best friend from Gottfried, Eleanor, had been traveling around Europe with her mother all summer, and had been sending me postcards sealed in envelopes for privacy, each from a different town: Ascona, Switzerland; Grasmere, England; Utrecht, Netherlands; Immenstaad, Germany; Frosses, Ireland. Waxy landscapes decorated the mirror over my dresser, a pathetic but welcome stand-in for Eleanor. This one was a picture of a shimmering lake, its blue water speckled with green islands. I flipped it over.
Renée,
Bonjour from Verdun! As in Verdun, France, which is where I am for the next few days. My mother has been dragging me to all of these remote lakes that are apparently famous in Monitoring history. She’s also been really paranoid, like we’re not safe. She’s worried about pickpockets and thieves, but the places we’ve visited are practically off the map and pretty much empty, so I don’t see who could steal our things. It’s weird how obsessed she is. To be honest, I think she’s actually worried about me. She still refuses to acknowledge what I am. It’s like she thinks that by taking me to all of these Monitoring places she can somehow reverse what happened. Anyway, it’s hardly fun without you here. Hope you have an amazing birthday.
Love,
Eleanor D. Bell
I read the last lines again, knowing exactly how she felt. Eleanor had been a Monitor, like me, until last year, when she drowned and reanimated into an Undead. Now her Monitor parents could put her to rest at will. I knew that fear because I’d seen it in Dante’s eyes, a momentary lapse of trust when he realized that I was a Monitor, and that somewhere within me I had a primal urge to bury him.
Placing the envelope next to the postcard, I picked up a pencil, and, following the mailing code, I began counting. I wrote down the first word of Eleanor’s note, then the eleventh word after that, then the first word after that, then the thirty-third, and so on, until I was left with the following message:
Renée,