Mr. B. laughed. “Oh, but that’s not true. Think of all the creative ways mass murderers have dealt with body disposal. Surely eating someone would be more practical than the coffin, the ceremony, the tombstone.”

Eleanor grimaced at the morbid image, and the mention of mass murderers seemed to wake the rest of the class up. Still, no one had an answer. I’d heard Mr. B. was a quack, but this was just insulting. How dare he presume that I didn’t know what burials meant? I’d watched them bury my parents, hadn’t I? “Because that’s just what we do,” I blurted out. “We bury people when they die. Why does there have to be a reason for everything?”

“Exactly!” Mr. B. grabbed the pencil from behind his ear and began gesticulating with it. “We’ve forgotten why we bury people.

“Imagine you’re living in ancient times. Your father dies. Would you randomly decide to put him inside a six-sided wooden box, nail it shut, then bury it six feet below the earth? These decisions aren’t arbitrary, people. Why a six-sided box? And why six feet below the earth? And why a box in the first place? And why did every society throughout history create a specific, ritualistic way of disposing of their dead?”

No one answered.

But just as Mr. B. was about to continue, there was a knock on the door. Everyone turned to see Mrs. Lynch poke her head in. “Professor Bliss, the headmistress would like to see Brett Steyers in her office. As a matter of urgency.”

Professor Bliss nodded, and Brett grabbed his bag and stood up, his chair scraping against the floor as he left.

After the door closed, Mr. B. drew a terrible picture of a mummy on the board, which looked more like a hairy stick figure. “The Egyptians used to remove the brains of their dead before mummification. Now, why on earth would they do that?”

There was a vacant silence.

“Think, people! There must be a reason. Why the brain? What were they trying to preserve?”

When no one responded, he answered his own question.

“The mind!” he said, exasperated. “The soul!”

As much as I had planned on paying attention and participating in class, I spent the majority of the period passing notes with Eleanor. For all of his enthusiasm, Professor Bliss was repetitive and obsessed with death and immortality.

When the he faced the board to draw the hieroglyphic symbol for Ra, I read the note Eleanor had written me.

Who is cuter?

A. Professor Bliss

B. Brett Steyers

C. Dante Berlin

D. The mummy

I laughed. My hand wavered between B and C for the briefest moment. I wasn’t sure if you could really call Dante cute. Devastatingly handsome and mysterious would be the more appropriate description. Instead I circled option D. Next to it, I wrote Obviously! and tossed it onto her desk when no one was looking. Eleanor rolled her eyes, wrote something below it, and tossed it back to me.

Has he kissed you yet?

I wrote a one-word response and passed it back.

No!

She slid it back with a reply. I unfolded it in my lap.

What’s taking him so long? Maybe he doesn’t know how, and that’s what he’s so pensive about.

I smiled and scrawled back a response. I was wondering the same thing.

Maybe he doesn’t like me like that. I mean, I don’t even know that much about him. He deflects all of my questions. And he called me a “friend.”

Eleanor looked puzzled when she read my note. Out of the corner of my eye I watched her crush it in her fist and drop it into her backpack. Then she mouthed “Later” to me and focused on the board.

Just as Mr. B. turned to write something on the board again, a folded piece of pink paper hit my arm and dropped to the floor. I picked it up and flattened it out. In a loopy blue cursive, which didn’t look like Eleanor’s handwriting, it read:

When darkness falls and eyes stay shut

A chain of voices opens up.

Let wax not wane give breath to death.

Room 21F

Friday, October 31

11 p.m.

p.s. Shhh

I glanced suspiciously around the room to see who had thrown it, but everyone was focused on the board. “Did you write me that note?” I whispered to Eleanor.

“What note?” she mouthed with a grin, and held up an identical piece of pink paper with what looked like the same words on it. Putting a finger to her lips, she bent over her notebook and started copying the terms on the board.

While Mr. B. talked about cremation, my mind drifted from death and burials to the cryptic note and what it meant. Absentmindedly, I started doodling in the margins of my paper.

Renée, I wrote in cursive, and then again in bubble letters and then in the loopy handwriting of the mystery note. I drew a tiny picture of the moon above a lake. And then stick figures of people swimming in it. And then for some reason, I wrote Dante. First in print, and then in large, wavy letters, and then in all caps. Dante. Dante. DANTE. I had just finished writing, when I heard someone say my name.

“Renée?”

I shook myself out of my daze to discover that Mr. B. and the entire class were staring at me.

“Earth to Renée. The most primitive tombs. What were they called? ” he repeated.

I glanced at my notes for the answer, but they were covered in doodles.

“Dante,” I blurted out, reading the first word I saw. Immediately my face went red. “No, sorry, I meant … I meant dolmen.”

I winced, hoping I was right so that I would be saved from further embarrassment. Thankfully, Dante wasn’t in my class.

Mr. B. smiled. “Correct,” he said, returning to the board. He drew a diagram of a stonelike lean-to, which I recognized from the reading. I took notes and kept my head down for the rest of class.

After the bell rang, Eleanor and I walked back to the dorm. But when we climbed the stairs to our room, the door was ajar. We exchanged surprised glances and pushed it open. At first it seemed like nothing was different. But the papers in my desk drawer were out of order, my bookshelf was rearranged, and my dresser drawer was pulled slightly out. The same was true for Eleanor’s.

“Someone was definitely here,” Eleanor said, looking through her closet, which she claimed was messier than it had been; though I doubted it could get any worse than it was before.

There were no locks on any of our doors, but it was an unspoken rule that you never entered someone else’s room without permission. “Who do you think it was? Should we report it? Maybe it was Lynch. You know she doesn’t like me,” I said.