Life Eternal Part 17

Slowly, the smile faded from my face. Dante, my lips mouthed as I watched the outline of his body, trying to make out his arms, his chest, his face.

"Renee," Noah said, leaning toward me.

Dante must have seen him standing beside me, because he froze.

The wedge of cheese slipped from my hands. No, I thought. Don't go.

As I made for the door, the figs slipped from my hands, but I didn't even stop to pick them up. "I'm sorry," I said to Noah as he bent over the fruit on the floor. "I'll be right back." And with that, I ran outside.

"Wait!" I yelled, but when I reached the sidewalk, Dante was nowhere to be seen. Desperate, I ran into the middle of the street, looking wildly in either direction. He was gone.

Through the storefront window, I could see Noah staring at me, confused. Stuffing my hands in my pockets, I walked back, when something caught my eye on the telephone pole next to where I had just seen Dante. A flyer was stapled to the post, its sides flapping in the wind. I flattened it out, my mouth dropping as I read the words scrawled in Latin over the advertis.e.m.e.nt in thick marker. I translated: WAIT FOR ME.

"Are you okay?" Noah said as I stepped inside. "You look like you just saw a ghost."

"I think I did," I said softly, my mind racing. Had Dante left that note for me to find? How many people wrote notes in Latin around the city?

"Why did you run out there? What did you see?"

I paused, trying to feel for Dante's presence, but there was nothing; not even the slightest hint of him anywhere. Maybe it was just graffiti. Maybe I was losing my mind. Maybe he had never even been there in the first place. "Someone I haven't seen in a long time."

Wait for me, the wind seemed to say as we stepped outside. Even if Dante hadn't written it, I would wait.

We walked to a stone courtyard nearby and sat on the ground, surrounded by skinny trees, barren, save for a few lingering yellow leaves. Behind us stood a fountain with a statue of a boy playing the flute, filling the night with the quiet sound of trickling water. What did a flute sound like? I tried to remember, but couldn't.

Noah loosened the knot of his tie, revealing a freckle on his neck, and handed me a fork.

"Bon appet.i.t," he said, the streetlamps illuminating his face.

As he poured me a gla.s.s of sparkling cider, I said, "At the end of cla.s.s today you said you had an ulterior motive for asking me to coffee. What was it?"

"I wanted to ask you what you were doing the other day in the hospital. With Anya."

"Oh." Immediately, I regretted asking.

I stared at my pie, which, despite my craving, still tasted bland. I could lie. I could tell him I was there visiting someone.

"You weren't visiting anyone," Noah said.

I clenched my jaw. Okay, that option was out. But I could still evade the question. Or I could just tell him the truth. I felt his eyes on me. He had just run across the city with me, chasing someone I thought was Miss LaBarge.

Reaching into my pocket, I touched the piece of paper on which I had written both parts of the riddle. I told him about my visions of the hospital and the cemetery, how I had gone to each and found this riddle. I omitted Dante and Clementine. "The grave was there, just like I had seen it in my vision."

"You're joking," he said, his eyes searching mine.

"No," I said softly.

"It can't be," he said, a glimmer of a smile masking his unease. "I thought the immortality part was just a legend."

Taking the paper with the verses out of my pocket, I handed it to him. He unfolded it and spread it out on the ground and read the inscriptions.

to arrive there follow the nose of the bear to the salty waters beneath; here it is laid to rest where to only the best of our kind it shall be bequeathed.

Noah didn't say anything for a long while. "You really found these? You didn't just make them up?"

"Why would I make them up?"

The smile fell from his face. "I don't know," he said.

Inching toward him, I leaned over the paper. "I've been trying to figure out what it means, but I haven't been able to get anywhere. It must mean somewhere in the cemetery, but there isn't any water there except for a drinking fountain."

He held the verses up to the light, reading them to himself again, before turning to me. "But of course it isn't buried in this grave. Look." He pointed to the line: here it is laid to rest. "When this line is isolated on a tombstone, it would lead you to believe that the secret was literally buried in that plot. But when you put it next to the riddle from the hospital, its meaning changes."

"The tombstone isn't marking anything," I realized, squinting at the page.

"Exactly," Noah said. "It's not buried in the cemetery. It's a trick, done on purpose to make people searching for the secret to think it's buried there. But it's not. It's in salt water. Maybe in the ocean. The problem is that you're missing the last part, which I would guess is actually the first part, if you look at the punctuation."

"How do you know there's only one part of the riddle left?" I asked. "What if there are more?"

"I don't think there are," he said. "If there are three riddles, with three lines each, then there are a total of nine lines. One for each of the sisters. All the tombstone riddle tells us is that the secret can only be found by Monitors," Noah said. "The phrase the best of our kind must mean that only the best Monitor will find it." Noah's eyes fell on me. "That's you."

Pulling my knees toward me, I shook my head. "No, I'm just ranked number one at St. Clement. There are lots of older, better Monitors than me. I couldn't even figure out the riddle without your help."

"All Monitors work in pairs...." he said, his gaze resting on me.

Blushing, I looked at my food, which I had barely touched. I should have felt flattered, but instead I was overwhelmed with guilt. "And you have Clementine," I said softly.

"Right," he said, and we sat in an uncomfortable silence, Noah slicing more cheese as I glanced around the courtyard, wondering if, somehow, Dante was watching us right now.

"What we have to do is start looking for a body of salt water with some sort of bear near it. One that only Monitors can find."

"Or alternatively, that the Undead can't find. The Undead can't sink in water," I said, unable to meet his eye as I remembered the Dead Man's Float lecture from gym cla.s.s last year, and how we learned that once a person dies and reanimates, he floats to the surface. "It's got to be buried underwater somewhere."

"You might be right," Noah said, his hand grazing mine as he pa.s.sed the piece of paper back to me. "What do you think it leads to?"

I imagined following Miss LaBarge to a small house where she was in hiding. When she opened the door, my parents were behind her, their eyes watering as they ran to me and wrapped me in their arms. "What took you so long?" they asked. I thought of Dante, of meeting him out in the open, on the streets of Montreal. I imagined him pinning me against the wall of my dorm room and kissing me. I thought of us ten years from now, falling asleep next to each other, our chests rising and falling in unison. I thought of the way he would look when he was older; I could almost see it. I picked up a fig, twirling its stem in my finger. "Happiness."

Noah studied me through his gla.s.ses, as if he could see a different side of me. Suddenly he said, "I like you."

I was so taken aback that I didn't know what to say. I loved Dante. He was my soul mate. "I'm sorry," I said softly, "but I-"

"No, I'm sorry," he said, shaking himself out of the moment. "I just meant that I don't know anyone else who would do this with me."

I rested my cheek on my hand, not sure what he meant.

He leaned back on his palms. "Chase a woman around underground. Buy one of every item in a gourmet grocery store and eat everything straight out of the box, while sitting on the ground in a random courtyard. And then for dessert, show me a set of cryptic messages that might lead to the secret of the Nine Sisters."

"I've barely eaten anything," I said. "And you make it sound much more exciting than it is."

Noah let out a laugh. "That's definitely not true. I don't know any girls who would break into a hospital through a private tunnel entry, sneak into a hospital room while someone is sleeping inside, and crawl under the bed to retrieve an engraving."

I wanted to tell him that I had seen Clementine in the cemetery the other night, looking for the exact same thing I had been looking for, but for some reason I didn't. Maybe it was because I liked the way Noah was looking at me, as if there were no one else in the world. It reminded me of what I could have with Dante.

"You know I don't do this kind of thing every night," I said. "Most of the time I'm in my room alone, wishing I had a different life."

"I don't believe that."

"It's true," I said. "I'm not doing this for fun."

"What are you doing it for, then?"

Dante, my heart cried. "A wild dream, I guess."

I shivered. Noah took off his coat and draped it around my shoulders. "No, please," I said. "I'm fine." But he wouldn't let me refuse. Touching its lapels, I pulled it around me. It was still warm from his body.

"You look good in that," he said, gazing at me, his eyes like melting chocolate.

"Noah," I said gently.

Before I could go on, Noah completed my sentence. "You have a boyfriend-I know, I know. But a friend can still give a compliment, no?"

"What about Clementine?"

The smile on Noah's face faded.

"I'm sorry," I said, wishing I hadn't mentioned her. "It's private; I shouldn't have asked."

"No," he said quickly. "It's fine. It's just hard to explain."

Leaning forward, I hugged my knees. "I know the feeling."

"When I first met her in cla.s.s, I knew there was no one like her. She was this amazing sharp wit, and there was something about her that bit into me and wouldn't let go. She would challenge me when I was wrong; she would always push me to be better, stronger, smarter. She'll never settle for anything less than what she wants. I loved that about her."

"Loved? Past tense?"

"I still love her," he said. "But not in the same way. When we're together she wants to do couples things. Watch movies, go out for expensive dinners. But she doesn't want...adventure. She doesn't want to have fun. That edge that she used to have, I only see glimmers of it now. We've been together for a year, and she only wants to work, to be the best." He paused, picking at his spaghetti. "She always says that everything worth doing is hard."

"She's right," I said, surprising myself.

"But should a relationship be hard?" Noah asked.

Around us, pigeons cooed from the tops of the buildings, but it just sounded like noise. The moonlight filtered through the water of the fountain, but no matter how long I stared at it, I couldn't see its beauty. And the food that I'd thought I wanted now sat in front of me, untouched. Maybe things would be easier with another boy, but Dante was the only person who understood how delicate life was, how quickly it vanished. He didn't care if I was the best Monitor in school, or if I was fun enough or wild enough; he just enjoyed my company. He knew how to make a single Latin word sound like poetry, how to make the past come alive and the present feel like it pa.s.sed far too quickly. He made me feel. Without him, the world was nothing but a paper background.

I felt Noah waiting for me to respond, but I didn't know how to tell him that I wasn't looking for adventure; I was looking for a way for me and Dante to grow old together, so we could watch movies together, go out for expensive dinners. I yearned for the same things Clementine did; I just knew I could never have them.

I DIDN'T REMEMBER GOING HOME THAT NIGHT; I JUST remembered Noah. How he kept finding ways to brush his hand against mine. How our shadows angled together as we walked beneath the streetlamps. How if I closed my eyes, I could almost imagine that he was Dante.

Before I knew it, I was back in the darkness of my room, alone. I took off Noah's blazer and draped it over the back of my chair. But in the dark it almost felt as though Noah was there, sitting with me. Even though I knew Dante couldn't see me, I quickly tucked the coat into my closet, ashamed that I even had another boy's blazer in my room. And pressing my back against the door, I shook Noah out of my head, picked up my towel, and went to the bathroom to take a shower.

But when I turned the k.n.o.b, the door was locked.

"Occupied," Clementine called out. Through the door, I heard a chorus of giggles.

I threw my towel on a nearby armchair, and was about to collapse onto my bed when I heard one of them mention Anya's name.

Crouching by the door, I listened.

"I don't even understand how she got into this school." Josie's voice was full of spite. "You should have seen her the other day, trying to find the dead animal in the river. She had no idea what she was doing."

Josie chimed in. "She can barely speak French or Latin. She can't sense a dead thing when it's on her plate; she can't dig a proper hole or even build a makeshift pyre; but she still ranked number four. Can you believe that?"

I glared at the door, but the truth was, they were right. If Anya had any talent as a Monitor, I hadn't witnessed it either, and I had no idea how she'd ranked number four, or how she'd placed into the top Strategy and Prediction cla.s.s.

Clementine's voice rose above the others. "I heard she tried to commit suicide a couple of times. Obviously, it didn't work. How is she going to kill the Undead when she can't even kill herself?"

At that, I gave the door a firm kick and stormed out of my room, taking my towel with me.

Walking down the hall, I knocked on Anya's door. I could hear heavy metal blaring from inside. I knocked twice more, louder, and eventually the door opened.

Anya stood before me in an oversized collared shirt, and shorts, a towel draped over her neck. Her hair was held up in all sorts of odd angles with pieces of tinfoil, and smeared with a reddish paste.

"Oh, hi," she said, looking at me and then my towel.

Her sleeves were rolled up, showing the insides of her arms, which were covered with irregular white scars that looked like burn marks. They appeared to have been there for a while. I had never noticed them before; she always wore long sleeves.

Anya must have caught me staring, because she immediately rolled down the cuffs of her shirt.

"Are you okay?" I asked.

"I'm fine," she muttered, and looked down the hall.

"Can I use your shower? Clementine and her friends are in my bathroom."

While Anya sat on the bed and flipped through a magazine, I shut myself in the bathroom and turned on the spigot, listening to Anya's music blaring in the background.

Standing under the hot water, I couldn't stop thinking about what Noah had said. Should relationships be hard? The question didn't even seem to apply to Dante and me. It didn't matter if it was easy or hard-with him gone, it felt like a piece of me had been carved away. Did that mean that I didn't have a choice? Water trickled down my face, collecting on my lashes. What if Dante had lied to me about the cemetery? What if he had been there before, and in all of my visions I'd been seeing him? What would I do then?

As steam clouded the room, I pressed my eyes closed and tried to feel the warmth of the water, but the more I concentrated on it, the more tepid it felt. I turned the temperature up, letting it beat down on my back, and then turned it up again and again, waiting for something to happen as the water pooled about my feet and the skin on my fingers wrinkled.

By the time I emerged, Anya had changed the music to a mellow folk alb.u.m.

"You were in there for a while," Anya said as I sat next to her on the couch, the steam following me.

She was sitting cross-legged, stringing something onto a piece of twine. Her hair was still pressed in pieces of foil.

"What are you making?" I said, rubbing my head with my towel.

"A charm necklace," she said. "For you."