tiny house kitchen, where cups of coffee were distributed and Pix could explain the eating situation to Stevie’s parents. Breakfasts were provided in-house and all other meals were in the dining hall. Students could come in and make food whenever they wanted, and there was an online grocery-ordering system. As they came back into the common room, Stevie’s mother decided to address the obvious.
“Are those teeth?” she asked.
“Yes,” Pix said.
No other answer was immediately forthcoming, so Stevie jumped in.
“Dr. Pixwell is a specialist in bioarchaeology,” she said. “She works on archaeological digs in Egypt.”
“That’s right,” Pix said. “You read my faculty bio?”
“No,” Stevie said. “The teeth, your shirt, you’ve got an Eye of Horus tattooed on your wrist, the chamomile tea in the kitchen has packaging written in Arabic, and you have a tan line on your forehead from a head covering. Just a guess.”
“That’s extremely impressive,” Pix said, nodding. Everyone was quiet for a moment. A fly buzzed around Stevie’s head.
“Stevie thinks she’s Sherlock Holmes,” her father said. He liked to make these kinds of remarks that sounded like jokes, and may have been well-intentioned on some level, but always had a hint of shade.
“Who doesn’t want to be Sherlock Holmes?” Pix said, meeting his eye and smiling. “I read more Agatha Christie when I was younger, because she wrote about archaeology a lot. But everyone loves Sherlock. Let me show you around. . . .”
In that moment, with that one remark, Pix won Stevie’s everlasting loyalty.
The six student rooms of Minerva House were all located on a single hallway to the left side of the common room: three rooms downstairs, three up. There was a group bathroom on the first floor with tiles that had to be original, because no one would make anything that color anymore. If that shade required a name, Stevie would have to go with “queasy salmon.”
At the end of the hall was the turret with a large door.
“This is a bit special,” Pix said, opening it. “Minerva was used for the Ellinghams’ guests before the school was open, so it has some features you don’t find in the other dorms. . . .”
She opened the door and revealed a magnificent round room, a bathroom, with a high ceiling. The floor was tiled in a pearly silver-gray. A large claw-foot tub took center stage. There were long stained-glass windows depicting stylized flowers and vines that bathed the room in rainbows.
“This room is popular during exams,” Pix said. “People like to study in the tub, especially when it’s cold. It doesn’t get a lot of use otherwise because there is a bit of a spider issue. Now let’s show you your room.”
Stevie decided to ignore what she just heard about spiders and moved on to her room, Minerva Two. Minerva Two smelled like it had been slowly baking for a few months, thick with the scents of closed space, new paint, and furniture polish. One of the two sash windows facing the front had been opened to try to air it, but the breeze was being lazy. Two flies had come in and were dancing around near the high ceiling. The walls were a soft cream color; a black fireplace stood out in stark contrast.
As they moved Stevie’s things in, there was talk about where the bed should go, and could people get in that window, and what time was curfew? Pix handled these questions easily (the windows could be opened from the top and all had good locks, and curfew was ten on weeknights and eleven on weekends, all monitored electronically through student IDs and by Pix in person).
Her mother was about to unpack Stevie’s bags herself when Pix intervened and dragged them off on a personal tour of the campus, leaving Stevie with a moment of stillness. The birds chirped outside and the breeze carried a few faraway voices. Minerva Two made a gentle creak as Stevie walked across its floor. She ran her hand along the walls, feeling their strange texture—they were thick with years of paint, one coat on top of another, covering up the previous inhabitant’s marks. Stevie had recently seen a true-crime documentary on how layers of paint could be peeled back, revealing writing that had been hidden for decades. Since then, she had desperately wanted to steam and peel a wall, just to see if anything was there.
These walls probably had stories.
April 13, 1936, 6:45 p.m.
THE FOG HAD COME ON QUICKLY THAT DAY—THE MORNING HAD BLOSSOMED bright and