WHEN I GOT BACK TO MY ROOM I SHUT THE door behind me, turned on the bedside lamp, and sank to the ground. Seventh Meditation was a small leather-bound book with unevenly cut pages that had been faded yellow by the sun. It left a dusty residue on my fingers. I opened it, excitement stirring within me. The pages were so stiff I worried they would fall out if I turned them too quickly. Carefully, I flipped to the first section and began to read.
I. OF DEATH AND THE SOUL
In these meditations, I will attempt to consider the idea of the Dead as Undead. Matters of the Body and Soul are ones that our faithful institutions of government and justice would like to keep hidden. Therefore, in accordance with the idea that knowledge should be accessible to all men, I will divulge in these writings the little-known facts about Life and Death.
I skimmed until I reached the following text:
Humans are made of two things—a Body and a Soul. Upon death, a person’s body dies, after which point his soul is “cleansed” and reborn into a new person. This is why some moments feel as though we’ve lived them twice; why a person can often have the same essence as someone who died decades before.
The text was peppered with diagrams and sketches—one of the human body; another of the cross section of a human head, inside of which was a drawing of a homunculus. This, presumably, was the soul. I skipped forward to the next section.
II. OF THE DEATH OF CHILDREN
The matter of Children is one that is particularly troubling to adults. All adults follow the rules stipulated in Part I of this Meditation. However, there is one exception. When a child dies, his Soul leaves his body. Yet, in opposition to our customary education of the biological processes of Life and Death, the child does not die. Instead of “dying,” as adult bodies do, the child’s body lies dormant for nine days. On the tenth day it rises again without a soul. The child then wanders the world, searching for it. It is my supposition that this is nature’s way of giving youth a second chance at life. They are what we call Non Mortuus, or the Undead.
Non Mortuus. That was the word on Cassandra’s file. Did that mean she was Undead? I scanned the page. Beside the text were more sketches, this time of children lying in a field. It looked like they were sleeping, though after reading the text, I knew that they were “dead.” I flipped forward.
III. OF NON MORTUUS
The Undead have no Souls. They cannot be killed by normal means, for they are already dead. Although they are still children, and appear harmless, this is a falsehood. The Undead have no human instincts. They do not eat, they do not sleep, they do not feel. With time, their bodies decay, and they must constantly seek ways to preserve themselves before their bodies die again and return to the earth.
The observed characteristics of the Undead are those often associated with other dead creatures. Skin that is cold to the touch. A stiffness of the limbs. Breath that contains no human warmth. They have also been identified to have incredible healing powers, their wounds closing as quickly as they are broken. Fluency in Latin and Latinate tongues. A lack of complete sensation and emotion. Yet most notably, they are known to reanimate into the best versions of themselves. Stronger than their human form, or more intelligent, or more beautiful.
My heart began to race as my eyes darted back and forth across the text. I was no longer thinking about Cassandra and Benjamin. Skin that was cold to the touch. A stiffness of the limbs. Breath that contained no human warmth. Fluency in Latin.
I read the words over and over, trying to find some other explanation for what I now realized were symptoms. But it all fit. The cold skin and breath, the way he had healed in a heartbeat. I hadn’t been seeing things. It was all true. That’s why he never wore a jacket, why he never came to the dining hall, why he never slept. Because he wasn’t human. He was dead. But what did it even mean to be Undead? The word conjured up grotesque images of corpses and vampires and mindless creatures staggering around in a trance. But Dante wasn’t any of those. Was he?
Thus, their existence is a tortured and miserable one. They have but one purpose—to seek and obtain their missing Soul. They have twenty-one years to find it, twenty-one being the number demarcating the transformation from child to adult. If by their twenty-first year they do not find their soul, they begin to decompose at an accelerated rate until their bodies are completely destroyed. This, I have observed to be a particularly painful process. However, if they do find the person with their Soul, they reclaim it through the pressing together of mouths, otherwise known as Basium Mortis. Through this act the Undead becomes human again, and lives a natural life. The victim dies from a failure of the heart, their corpse aged and withered without its soul.
I reread the last sentence. It described my parents. Benjamin Gallow. And most likely all of the people who had died of heart attacks at Gottfried. This was the Curse. The Undead.
The danger of the Undead lies in this method, for they are also able to take Souls that are not theirs. This temporarily reverses the decaying process; however, it also results in the death of the other. The problem for humans lies in the dire handicap that we are unable to distinguish between the living and the Undead. In my logic, it would thus seem that humans are doomed to fall under the mercy of these unkillable, soulless creatures....
Basium Mortis. The cause of death in Benjamin’s file. Did he die because someone took his soul? I turned the page. The pictures were disturbing. They showed children sucking the souls out of other children. Their faces looked hungry and bestial, driven by animal cravings. Though strangely, I thought, it looked like they were kissing. The realization struck me, and I sat up and gasped. Kissing. Dante refused to kiss me on the lips. This must be why. A kiss could kill me.
IV. OF BURIAL RITUALS
Ancient civilizations discovered a way to prevent children from turning into the Undead. Before this period, burial rituals were not yet in existence. The dead were left to nature, which was the fate that all of Earth’s creatures met when they died. The Egyptians were among the first to discover that by mummifying their dead and encasing them in pyramids, the children wouldn’t rise again.
Later civilizations found that there were three things the Undead could not withstand without decaying: fire, geometric golden ratios, and the underground. Since then, each society has discovered new ways of preventing the Undead from rising: by fire—funeral pyres and cremation; by golden ratio—coffins and pyramids; and by the underground—burials and catacombs. Each of these rituals was created for one sole purpose—to let our children rest.
Over time and transgression, the rituals became so ingrained in society that people forgot why they were performed. Soon, everyone—including adults—was buried or cremated, and no one remembered that children could rise from the dead.
The words blurred as tears filled my eyes. Raising a trembling hand, I wiped them away with the back of my fist. Images of Dante lying dead in a field flooded my mind as I gazed at the pictures, unable to look away. To illustrate the burial rituals, Descartes had drawn diagrams of each tradition, with steps next to it. One was a six-sided coffin, around which Descartes noted how it had to be made of a hard wood, nailed shut, and buried no less than six feet beneath the earth. This was why Dante didn’t go underground. It wasn’t a childhood trauma, per se, although dying was traumatizing. He didn’t go underground because he couldn’t; otherwise he would die for good.
I skimmed through the next few pages, examining the diagrams and rules of the pyramids, of mummification and embalmment. In the margins were all kinds of notes about the kind of gauze that had to be used, the number of layers the mummy had to be wrapped in, and the design of the maze within the pyramids and their geometric orientation.
They were all familiar to me from History class, as mummies were of particular interest to Professor Bliss, though I had never considered their purpose.
The next drawing was of a body with coins on its eyes, resting on a funeral pyre. The use of coins, Descartes explained, was a discovery of the Greeks, and were given to the dead so they could pay the boatman on the river Styx to take them to Hades. Below it was a picture of a child with cloth stuffed in his mouth. I stared at it, unable to believe what I was seeing. My parents couldn’t have been Undead; they were adults. So why would they have died that way? And what did their deaths have to do with any of this?
V. OF LATIN AND ITS EXTINCTION
Latin is the language the Undead speak. In ancient times, before the founding of the Roman Empire, before people discovered burial rituals, Latin was only spoken by children. It was the one way to tell who was Undead and who was alive.
In Roman mythology, two children were the original founders of Rome. Their names were Romulus and Remus, and they were brothers. While this is a commonly accepted myth among educated society, what most are not aware of is that Romulus and Remus were Undead, having both drowned in the River Tiber before rising again.
Before the founding of Rome, knowledge of the existence of the Undead was not prevalent.
Romulus and Remus gained followers by displaying their incredible abilities in large public gatherings. People were awed at their inhuman healing powers, their inability to be killed by normal means, and their advanced rhetoric and linguistic skills, and believed the children to be sent from the gods to found their city.
However, they quarreled over who would be king. Romulus slew Remus by burying him alive. As the first king of Rome, Romulus instituted Latin as the primary language, teaching it not only to children, but to adults of the upper class who were involved in governmental matters.
Eventually the clergy adopted Latin. Since Latin came so naturally to the Undead, they believed it had to be a language sent from the gods. Meanwhile, Romulus was trying to find his lost soul, and worried that the other Undead in Rome would accidentally take it. He thus instituted burial rituals and funeral pyres to rid the city of the Undead.
Skimming through the history of Latin through the ages, I skipped ahead to the part on its decline.
With the spread of Protestantism and the reform of the Catholic Church, Latin slowly died out, replaced by the Romance languages. Many people forgot about the Undead and, consequently, the origins of Latin. Thus, it came as a surprise when an entire language ceased to exist. Of course, one realizes that a language can only become extinct when the people who speak it have been exterminated.
Romulus and Remus. The first things that came to mind when I heard those names weren’t children, but cats. Siamese cats. The ones roaming about the headmistress’s office. It couldn’t be a coincidence. The rest sounded vaguely familiar from Latin class, but I hadn’t paid enough attention to fully comprehend what Professor Lumbar had meant. Still, Latin wasn’t my concern. Cassandra was Undead. Benjamin’s soul was taken. Then Cassandra was somehow killed again. Buried. And the school’s administration knew about it and was covering it up. Why?
And then there was Dante. My Dante. Undead Dante. Slowly, everything began to make sense. I went over everything, every subtle turn of phrase, every unexplainable moment—the séance, the paper cut, the way I felt when he touched me.
He had been on the green the night of the séance because I had accidentally conjured him. He couldn’t go in the tunnel with me. His Latin was perfect, but he told me he hadn’t studied it before coming here. I thought about what Professor Lumbar had written on the board on the first day of class. Latin: The Language of the Dead. “I just woke up one morning and it clicked,” Dante had explained that night in the classroom. By that logic, the rest of the Latin club—Gideon, Vivian, Yago, and Cassandra—must have all been Undead too.
His skin was always freezing. He didn’t use a blanket and he rarely wore a jacket unless he knew I might need it. He kept his windows open even in the winter and seemed impervious to the weather.
And he never slept. He rarely came to the dining hall. He wouldn’t kiss me on the lips. And when he touched me, the world blurred, sounds and smells and tastes collided into an unrecognizable dissonance. Maybe that was why I always felt weak when I was around him: because he was somehow draining the sensation from my body into his.
But if I accepted the fact that my boyfriend was dead, what did that mean? Did these sensations happen to everyone who was around him? Suddenly I felt weak. I crawled into bed, where I stared at the ceiling and thought about death and life and everything in between, until the sun cracked open its eye.
On Christmas morning, Dustin knocked on my door. “Miss Winters,” he said cheerfully. “Breakfast.”
I didn’t move. My parents were dead. My boyfriend was dead. My grandfather had a mysterious hidden room that had books about the walking dead—which is what I knew I would feel like if I attempted to stand up.
“I don’t feel well,” I said meekly, and rolled over.
“Miss Winters,” Dustin said, knocking again. “Are you quite all right?”
“No. Please go away.”
He lingered a few seconds longer before I heard the muffled sounds of his footsteps disappearing down the stairs. Not long after, there was another knock. This time, no one waited for me to reply. My grandfather ducked into the room.
“Dustin told me you weren’t feeling well,” he said, cautiously stepping close to my bed. He set a glass of orange juice on my bedside table. “I’ve brought you some juice.”
“Please go away,” I said, my voice trembling.
There was a long silence. I heard my grandfather bend over and pick up Seventh Meditation, which I had stupidly left on my bedside table.
He sat on the edge of my bed and placed his hand on the outline of my ankle beneath the blankets. He smelled of cigars and leather. “Death is nothing to be afraid of.”
“It’s not death I’m afraid of.”
“What is it, then?”
“Life,” I said, my voice small. The thought of living without my parents was practically unbearable, and Dante was the only person who gave me something to live for. Now that I knew he was dead, it seemed like there was nothing left.
“I haven’t been honest with you, Renée. I know this,” he said gently. “But if you’ll get dressed and come downstairs, I’ll explain everything over breakfast.”
I blinked back tears. He waited a few seconds longer, but I made no effort to respond. Finally he stood up. I heard the door click shut behind him.
Slowly, I willed myself out of bed and got dressed. I rinsed my face and pulled my hair back into a ponytail. When I glanced at my reflection in the mirror, it was frightening: my eyes swollen, the circles beneath them making my face look hollow.
“Is it true?” I asked, sitting down at the breakfast table.
My grandfather looked up from his coffee and newspaper. Outside it was sunny and snowing, the entire world white and happy, as if the day were mocking me. Beneath the Christmas tree were stacks of presents.
“Is it true that my parents were killed by the Undead?”
My grandfather shuffled around his newspaper and glanced at Dustin, who left for the kitchen. “Yes.”
A portrait of Charlemagne standing valiantly over a slaughtered boar hung on the opposite wall. I stared at it in silence as I imagined my parents’ last moments. The gauze and coins, which I still couldn’t make sense of. And then a faceless child, wild and bestial, sucking the life from their bodies. I closed my eyes as the face transformed into Dante’s. Had he killed people? Had he taken innocent lives?
“Who was it?” I demanded, suddenly angry.
My grandfather clasped his hands together and shook his head. “I have spent every day since their deaths trying to figure that out. But sadly, I do not have an answer for you. The Undead are hard to track, especially when they perform random acts of violence, which I suspect was the case with your parents.”
A random act of violence? It couldn’t be. There had to be a better reason than that. “But what about Benjamin Gallow? He’d died under almost exactly the same conditions.”
“Exactly. They were all killed by Non Mortuus. It isn’t as rare as you think. Why do you think Gottfried exists?”
“So...so everything in the book is true?”
“Most of it. The rest is based on myth and assumption.”
“The Undead,” I said, trying to get used to the idea. “What exactly are they?”
“Children who died and were not buried.”
“So they’re like zombies?”
“The common depiction of the zombie does not do them full justice. They have functioning minds, they have thoughts. The only difference is that they don’t have souls, which leaves them unable to feel sensation. They can see and hear, but they cannot perceive beauty or sadness or wonder associated with the things they see or the sounds they hear.”
“Are you sure?” Dante definitely felt sensation when he was around me. Hadn’t he told me that in his room the night after Grub Day?
“Quite positive. It’s one of the primary characteristics of the Undead.”
“Even when they’re around a living person?”
“Yes, even when they’re around a living person.”
I hesitated. “So anyone can become Undead?”
“Only people who die before the age of twenty-one. You, for example, could become Undead if you died and were not buried or cremated or mummified.”
“And then someone else would have my soul?”
“Yes. A child born on the same day that you died.”
“And then I would be soulless for twenty-one more years, before I died again?”
“If you weren’t buried, yes. Though the myth is that if you somehow found the person with your soul, you could take it back by Basium Mortis, or sucking the soul back into the body. Then you would be human again, and live a natural life span.”
I imagined Dante taking his soul back from a child, but quickly shook the thought from my head. “Why is it a myth?”
“Because finding one’s soul is an almost impossible task. Think of the odds—how many people are born and die each day, all over the world. There hasn’t been a single recorded episode of an Undead finding and taking its soul back. It is the great myth of history. That one can cheat death.”
I couldn’t ignore my grandfather’s use of the word its. “So why do people think it’s possible?”
“Because it is possible for the Undead to take souls that aren’t theirs. It delays the decaying process, giving them a few more years of ‘life’ before they begin to decline.”
“And the human who loses his soul dies?”
My grandfather nodded. “Or, if he isn’t discovered and is under the age of twenty-one, he could also become Undead.”
“But then couldn’t he just take his soul back from the Undead who took it?”
“No, because a taken soul will not occupy the Undead who performs Basium Mortis unless it is the original soul of the Undead. Otherwise, it will soon leave the Undead and be reborn anew.”
Dustin brought out a plate of poached eggs and Canadian bacon.
“So Gottfried Academy is...is a school for zombies?”
“The Undead,” my grandfather corrected. “And no, it isn’t. Not exclusively, at least. Though at one point it was.”
I waited for my grandfather to continue. He cleared his throat. “It was originally founded to educate the Undead about who they were. As you probably know, Bertrand Gottfried was a doctor who built the school as an infirmary for children. What many do not know is that it was an infirmary for dead children.
“He had learned about the existence of the Undead years before founding the infirmary. His idea was to create a hospital that housed Undead children, so he could study them. He was trying to figure out how the bodies of children differed from adults, for only children can reanimate. The seclusion of Attica Falls was one reason why the location was ideal, as was the altitude and climate. At the age of twenty-one ‘Undead years,’ as some call them, the children begin to rapidly decay. Cool temperatures help prevent that process, much like the effect of a refrigerator. The last reason was the lake. Salt is a preservative; each patient was required to take a bath in the lake every morning.
“Now, as you may know, soon after the infirmary was founded there was a reported outbreak of the measles and mumps, which killed over a hundred children. Of course, disease wasn’t the real cause of death. Many of Bertrand’s patients were due to expire around the same two-year period. Although Bertrand had devised many ways to help prolong the ‘life’ of the Undead, he had not discovered a way to stop their decay. They all perished. Most of the children didn’t have parents or families, so there were no further inquiries.” My grandfather held out his coffee cup, and Dustin stepped up to the table and spooned sugar into it.
“When all the children died, Bertrand didn’t know what to do with the bodies. Instead of burying them in plots, he dug a vast underground tomb. Yet these catacombs also served another purpose: if Bertrand encountered an Undead that he wished to put to rest, he could bury them there.
“Unfortunately, Bertrand died not long after the infirmary opened. He was found in the lake. Of course, it wasn’t a natural death. One of his patients took his soul.
“After he died, the three founding nurses shut down the infirmary, keeping only the current patients inside. During that time, they went through his office and discovered hundreds of pages of notes and a journal, in which he had documented his findings. His notes have been integral in shaping our understanding of the Undead and how they function. He had also developed plans to turn the infirmary into a school for the Undead. The nurses carried out his wishes and reopened the school as Gottfried Academy. The purpose of the school was to teach the Undead how to live out their ‘lives’ without searching for their soul or taking the souls of others.
“At first it was only a school for the Undead. The nurses sought to educate them not only in worldly matters, but in matters concerning their situation. Many Undead children were unaware that they were dead. As a result, they suffered from existential crises.”
“What do you mean existential crises?”
“Imagine waking up one morning and everything is the same, except different. You don’t like food anymore. You never sleep. You can’t hear or see or smell things the way you used to. You feel a constant emptiness within you.”
“That’s the way I felt when my parents died,” I said softly.
My grandfather nodded. “Existential crises happen to everyone. With humans it’s emotional rather than biological. This is the real Gottfried curse—the fate the Undead are faced with—and when they are unaware of what is happening to them, they can be very dangerous. Imagine an Undead girl trying to kiss a boy. She would accidentally take his soul and kill him.”
Which was why Dante wouldn’t kiss me, I thought.
“With the medical and technological advances over time, the Undead became rare, as fewer children died and more of those who did were buried. Slowly, the school began to integrate living children into its student body. Gottfried needed money, and accepting normal students, or what we refer to as ‘Plebeians,’ was a secure way to keep the school running.”
Plebeians. I had seen that word before, in Benjamin Gallow’s file. “But wasn’t it unsafe for them?”
“At first, yes. There were a slew of ‘accidents,’ all caused by the Undead. The school opened and closed, and was soiled by scandals that were artfully covered up by the faculty as natural disasters or epidemics. They only stopped when a new headmaster took over and revolutionized the school, training faculty in defense and burial rituals, designing more proactive course work, and instituting a stricter code of rules and regulations, which has now become the Gottfried Academy Code of Discipline. All of the rules have practical safety applications. For example, the banning of romantic relationships was designed to prevent accidental Basium Mortis.”
“But it’s still unsafe.”
“Although the Undead are rather rare these days, there’s still a chance of encountering the Undead at any school in the country. Plebeians are far better off encountering them at Gottfried, where there are trained professors and rules. Moreover, the only way to truly teach the Undead not to kill is to expose them to the living, so that they learn to value others not only in theory, but through their friendships. An Undead is far less likely to take the life of a friend than a stranger.”
I stared at the food growing cold on my plate and considered Dante. I still couldn’t wrap my mind around the idea that he was dead.
“One of the last safety precautions the school took was to dig tunnels that ran through Bertrand Gottfried’s original catacombs. As you recall, the Undead cannot go underground. In the chance of an attack, professors could direct the Plebeians to the tunnels, where they could seek refuge.”
“So all of the professors know about the … the … Undead?” I still had trouble saying the word, as if speaking it out loud made it more real.
“Yes.”
“And the... Pleb—”
“Plebeians.”
“Right, the Plebeians know about the Undead?”
“No. It has long been Gottfried’s policy not to explicitly tell Plebeian students about the existence of the Undead. It was feared that teaching living students about the Undead would create natural segregation and discrimination. The classes at Gottfried address issues that are pertinent to all students, not just the Undead.”
“But the Undead can tell the difference between the Undead and the living?” I asked, thinking about Cassandra and Benjamin. Had she known that Benjamin was a Plebeian?
“Of course. They were once living themselves; they can recognize the changes one goes through after reanimating because they experienced them firsthand. They also have special classes, in which they are taught about what they are and what it means for them.”
Advanced Latin, I thought.
“But more important, they are drawn to life. That is perhaps their only ‘sensation,’ if you could call it that. So it is a safe assumption that they know the living from the Undead.”
“And Gottfried is the only organization in the world that knows about the Undead? No one else knows?”
“There are others. Gottfried is one of three sister schools, each founded by one of the three original nurses who worked with Bertrand. Most of the Undead were listed as disappearances rather than deaths, because the bodies were never found. So when they reanimate and wander home, their loved ones aren’t usually aware that they’re dead. If they are still in contact with their parents, they might inform them; though more often they prefer to keep their condition to themselves.”
“But why? I mean, why is it such a big secret? Why not tell someone? Like the police. Or the government.”
My grandfather laughed. “And what would you tell them? Imagine trying to explain the theory of the Undead to someone else. They would think you were insane.”
He had a point.
“And even if they believed you, it’s difficult to tell the Undead from those who are alive. Can you imagine the kind of damage the police could do if they started blindly arresting children? If the outside world found out, it would be the start of the biggest witch hunt in history.”
“How are you so sure? I mean, a long time ago people did know about the Undead, didn’t they? That’s how they created all the burial rituals. And then over time we just forgot what they were for.”
“Discrimination has always existed, which is exhibited in the fact that they created the rituals in the first place. Romulus killed most of the Undead children in Rome, including his own brother, out of fear.”
“So … why did you send me to Gottfried? I’m just a Plebeian, right? What does this have to do with me?”
My grandfather studied me pensively. “Because it is an excellent school. And a safe school. The Undead exist everywhere; at least at Gottfried the professors are aware of their existence and are trained to deal with them. That, and I wished you to know the truth about the world. Aren’t you glad you know?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know. I mean, yes. And no.” Of course I wanted to know the truth. The question was, could I accept it?
That afternoon I went downstairs and knocked on the door to Dustin’s quarters. The door opened suddenly. “Miss Winters,” he said warmly. “You should have rang the service bell instead of coming all the way down here.”
I shrugged. “It’s no problem. I don’t like using bells anyway.”
“What can I do for you?”
“I was wondering if there’s a video-rental store around here that’s open?”
“There is one but twenty minutes away. Would you like me to take you there?”
“Please.”
We drove through the back roads of Massachusetts until we reached a dingy strip mall with a liquor store, a convenience store, a barber shop, an ice-cream parlor, and a place that read king’s videos.
A gawky teenage boy behind the counter eyed us as we came in. I went straight to the horror section in the back.
Without much discrimination, I started pulling movies from the shelves, all about the Undead. Dawn of the Dead, The Walking Dead, White Zombie, Night of the Living Dead, and about two dozen others. When I was finished, I brought them to the register. Dustin trailed behind me, carrying the rest.
The boy behind the counter smiled, his teeth crooked and covered with braces. “A zombie freak,” he said, giving me a wide grin. “I love this one,” he said, holding up a movie with a ghoulish creature on the cover. “It’s a classic.”
I nodded. “Yeah.”
“These are due back in seven days,” he said, ringing us up.
“That’s fine,” Dustin said from behind me. We took the bags and left.
Dustin set up the DVD player in the Red Room, and I arbitrarily picked a movie from the pile and put it in. Images of the Undead flashed in front of my eyes—people rising from the grave, cemeteries overrun by staggering corpses, women screaming as they ran to their houses, chased by zombies; men trapped in their cars, swarmed by the Undead. Over each zombie face I mentally superimposed Dante’s, trying to come to terms with what he was.
I didn’t leave the Red Room for days. I went from one movie to the next, falling in and out of sleep to the blue light of the screen. Dustin left plates of food outside the door, but I barely touched them. A few times a day my grandfather came in to check on me, hovering awkwardly over the couch before giving up. Every so often I would venture down the hall to get a glass of water from the bathroom. Otherwise, I stayed put. The mansion creaked and groaned as the days grew darker. Gusts of wind rattled the windows. I couldn’t eat or sleep. Dante continued to call every night, but I wasn’t ready to talk to him. “Tell him I’m busy,” I told Dustin when he appeared at the door holding a silver platter with a call note. I couldn’t talk to him. Why hadn’t he told me? And what was I going to say to him? Hi, Dante, I know you’re the walking dead and that you have a secret desire to kill me. How was your day?
Nighttime was the hardest. I called Annie, but I couldn’t tell her about Dante because, where would I begin? So I told her about the mansion and about Eleanor, and she told me about my old friends, who seemed more and more alien to me now. With my parents gone, friends far away, and Dante Undead, I felt so lonely that sometimes I thought I couldn’t bear it. I felt betrayed and used and alone—completely and utterly alone. Now that I knew what Dante was, I couldn’t fathom how I hadn’t seen it before. I wanted to believe that Dante was the kind of boy I’d always dreamed of, the kind of boy who was too perfect to actually exist. And he didn’t. Or at least not exactly. Every night I stayed up until the early hours of the morning, curled up on the couch, staring into the darkness until I cried myself into a fitful, haunted sleep.