by L. J. Smith
“My God!” James cried out. “You have Elizabeth’s face, and then, when you smile, Thomas’s dimple comes right out. Just the same as his—on only one side. It gave him a certain raffish charm.”
Elena wondered if she should thank James. He was complimenting her, in a way, but the compliments were real y directed toward her parents, and it felt a little presumptuous to be grateful for them.
She settled for saying, “I’m glad you think I look like my parents. I remember thinking when I was little that they were very elegant.” She shrugged. “I guess al little kids think their parents are beautiful.”
“Wel , your mother certainly was,” James said. “But it’s not just your looks. Your voice sounds like hers, and the comments you made in class this week reminded me of things your father would have said. He was very observant.” He delved into his desk drawers and, after a bit of rummaging, pul ed out a tin of butter cookies. “Sure you won’t have one? Ah, wel .” He chose one for himself and took a bite. “Yes, as I was saying, Elizabeth was extremely lovely. I wouldn’t have cal ed Thomas lovely, but he had charm. Maybe that’s how he managed to win Elizabeth’s heart in the end.”
“Oh.” Elena stirred her coffee absently. “She dated other guys, then?” It was ridiculous, but she had kind of imagined her parents as always being together.
James chuckled. “She was quite the heartbreaker. I imagine you are, too, dear.”
Elena thought unhappily of Stefan’s soft, dismayed green eyes. She had never wanted to hurt him. And Matt, who she had dated in high school and who had quietly gone on loving her. He hadn’t fal en in love, or even been real y interested in, anyone else since then. Heartbreaker, yeah.
James was watching her with bright, inquisitive eyes.
“Not a happy heartbreaker, then?” he said softly. Elena glanced at him in surprise, and he set his coffee cup down with a little clink. He straightened up. “Elizabeth Morrow,” he said in a brisk businesslike voice, “was a freshman when I met her. She was always making things, particularly amazing sets and costumes she designed for the theater department. Your father and I were both sophomores at the time—we were in the same fraternity, and close friends—
and he couldn’t stop talking about this amazing girl. Once I got to know her, I was sucked into her orbit, too.” He smiled. “Thomas and I each had something special about us: I was academical y gifted, and Thomas could talk anyone into anything. But we were both cultural barbarians.
Elizabeth taught us about art, about theater, about the world beyond the smal Southern towns where we’d grown up.” James ate another cookie, absentmindedly licking sugar off his fingers, then sighed deeply. “I thought we’d be friends forever,” he said. “But we went in different directions in the end.”
“Why?” Elena asked. “Did something happen?” His bright eyes shifted away from hers. “Of course not,” he said dismissively. “Just life, I suppose. But whenever I walk down the third-floor corridor, I can’t help stopping to look at the photograph of us.” He gave a self-conscious laugh, patting his stomach. “Mostly vanity, I suppose. I recognize my young self more easily than I do the fat old man I see in the mirror now.”
“What are you talking about?” Elena asked, confused.
“The third-floor corridor?”
James’s mouth made a round O of surprise. “Of course, you don’t know al the col ege traditions yet. The long corridor on the third floor of this building has pictures from al the different periods of Dalcrest’s history. Including a nice photo of your parents and yours truly.”
“I’l have to check it out,” Elena said, feeling a little excited. She hadn’t seen many pictures of her parents from before they were married.
There was a tap on the door, and a smal girl with glasses peeked in. “Oh, I’m sorry,” she said, and started to withdraw.
“No, no, my dear,” James said jovial y, getting to his feet. “Elena and I were just chatting about old friends. You and I need to have a serious talk about your senior thesis as soon as possible. Come in, come in.” He gave Elena an absurd little half bow. “Elena, we’l have to continue this conversation later.”
“Of course,” Elena said, and rose, shaking James’s offered hand.
“Speaking of old friends,” he said casual y as she turned to go, “I met a friend of yours, Dr. Celia Connor, just before the semester started. She mentioned that you were coming here.”
Elena whipped back around, staring at him. He had met Celia? Images fil ed Elena’s mind: Celia held in Stefan’s arms as he traveled faster than any human, desperate to save her life; Celia fending off the phantom in a room ful of flames. How much did James know? What had Celia told him?
James smiled blandly back at her. “But we’l talk later,” he said. After a moment, Elena nodded and stumbled out of his office, her mind racing. The girl who was waiting held the door open for her.
In the hal outside, Elena leaned against the wal and took stock for a moment. Would Celia have told James about Stefan and Damon being vampires, or anything about Elena herself? Probably not. Celia had become a friend by the end of their battle with the phantom. She would have kept their secrets. Plus, Celia was a very savvy academic. She wouldn’t have told her col eagues anything that might make them think she was crazy, including that she had met actual vampires.
Elena shook off the unease she felt from the end of her conversation with James and thought instead of the picture he’d told her about. She climbed the stairs to the third floor to see if she could find it now.
It turned out that the “third-floor corridor” was no problem to find. While the second floor was a maze of turning passageways and faculty offices subdivided from one another, when she stepped out of the stairwel on the third floor she discovered it was a long hal that ran from one end of the building to the other.
In contrast to the chatter of people at work on the second floor, the third floor seemed abandoned, silent and dim. Closed doors sat at regular intervals along the hal .
Elena peered through the glass on one door, only to see an empty room.
Al down the hal , between the doors, hung large photographs. Near the stairwel , where she began looking, they seemed like they were from maybe the turn of the century: young men in side-combed hair and suits, smiling stiffly; girls in high-necked white blouses and long skirts with their hair pul ed up on top of their heads. In one, a row of girls carried garlands of flowers for some forgotten campus occasion.
There were photos of boat races and picnics, couples dressed up for dances, team pictures. In one photo, the cast of some student play—maybe from the 1920s or ’30s, the girls with shingled flapper cuts, the guys with funny covers over their shoes—laughed hilariously on stage, their mouths frozen open, their hands in the air. A little farther on, a group of young men in army uniforms gazed back at her seriously, jaws firmly set, eyes determined.
As she moved on down the hal , the photos changed from black-and-white to color; the clothes got less formal; the hairstyles grew longer, then shorter; messier, then sleeker. Even though most of the people in the photographs looked happy, something about them made Elena feel sad.
Maybe it was how fast time seemed to pass in them: al these people had been Elena’s age, students like her, with their own fears and joys and heartbreaks, and now they were gone, grown older or even dead.
She thought briefly of a bottle tucked deep in her closet at home, containing the water of eternal life she’d accidental y stolen from the Guardians. Was that the answer? She pushed the thought away. It wasn’t the answer yet—she knew that—and she’d made the very clear choice not to think about that bottle, not to decide anything, not now. She had time, she had more life to live natural y before she’d want to ask herself that question.
The picture James talked about was close to the far end of the hal . In it, her father, her mother, and James were sitting on the grass under a tree in the quad. Her parents were leaning forward in eager conversation, and James—a
much thinner version, his face almost unrecognizable beneath a straggly beard—was sitting back and watching them, his expression sharp and amused.
Her mother looked amazingly young, her face soft, her eyes wide, her smile big and bright, but she was also somehow exactly the mother Elena remembered. Elena’s heart gave a painful but happy throb at the sight of her. Her father was gawkier than the distinguished dad Elena had known—and his pastel-patterned shirt was a fashion disaster of epic proportions—but there was an essential dadness to him that made Elena smile.
She noticed the pin on his horrific pastel shirt first. She thought it was a smudge, but then, leaning forward, she made out the shape of a smal , dark blue V. Looking at the other figures, she realized her mother and James were wearing the same pins, her mother’s half-obscured by a long golden curl fal ing across it.
Weird. She tapped her finger slowly against the glass over the photograph, touching one V and then the others.
She would ask James about the pins. Hadn’t he mentioned that he and her dad had been in a fraternity? Maybe it had something to do with that. Didn’t frat boys “pin” their girlfriends?
Something nudged at the edges of her mind. She’d seen one of these pins somewhere. But she couldn’t remember where, so she shrugged it off. Whatever it stood for, it was something she didn’t know about her parents, another facet of their lives to be discovered here.
She couldn’t wait to learn more.
12
“Good practice,” Christopher said, stopping next to Matt as he headed out of the locker room. “You’ve got some great moves, man.”
“Thanks,” Matt said, glancing up from putting on his shoes. “You were looking pretty good out there yourself.” He could tel Christopher was going to be a solid team-mate, the kind of guy who did his job and focused on the big picture, working to help the rest of the team. He was a great roommate, too, generous and laid-back. He didn’t even snore.
“Want to skip the dining hal and order a pizza?” Christopher asked. “This is my night to beat you at Guitar Hero—I can feel it.”
Matt laughed. In the couple of weeks they’d been living together, he and Christopher had been working their way through al the Wii games Christopher had brought with him to school. “Al right, I’l see you back at the room.” Christopher slapped him on the back, grinning widely.
After Christopher left, Matt took his time getting his things together, letting the other guys get out of the locker room ahead of him. He felt like walking back to the dorm alone tonight. They were a nice bunch of guys, but he was sore and tired. Between footbal practices and Vitale Society pledge activities, he’d never worked his body quite so hard.
It felt good.
He felt good. Even the stupidest of the Vitale activities
—and some of them were pretty stupid: they’d had to work in teams to build houses out of newspaper the other night—
were kind of fun, because he was getting to know some amazing people. Ethan had been right. As a group, the pledges were smart, determined, talented, everything you’d expect. And he was one of them.
His classes were interesting, too. Back in high school he’d gotten okay grades but had mostly just done what he had to do to pass. The Civil War, geometry, chemistry, To Kill a Mockingbird: al his schoolwork had sort of blended into the background of his real life of friends and sports.
Some of what he was doing at Dalcrest was like that, too, but in most of his classes, he was starting to see connections between things. He was getting the idea that history, language, science, and literature were al parts of the same thing—the way people thought and the stories they told—and it was real y pretty interesting.
It was possible, Matt thought, with a self-mocking grin, that he was “blossoming” in col ege, just like his high school guidance counselor had predicted.
It wasn’t ful y dark yet, but it was getting late. Matt sped up, thinking about pizza.
There weren’t a lot of people roaming the campus. Matt guessed they were either in the cafeteria or holed up in their rooms, afraid. He wasn’t worried, though. He figured there were a lot more vulnerable targets than a footbal player.
A breeze started up, waving the branches of the trees on the quad and wafting the smel of grass to Matt. It stil felt like summer. In the bushes, a few early-evening fireflies blinked on and off. He rol ed his shoulders, enjoying the stretch after a long practice.
Up ahead, someone screamed. A guy, Matt thought.
The cry cut off suddenly.
Before he could even think, Matt was running toward the sound. His heart was pounding, and he tried to force his tired legs to move faster. That was a sound of pure panic, Matt thought. He strained his ears but didn’t hear anything except his own ragged breaths.
As he came around the business building, a dark figure that had been bent over something in the grass took off, its long skinny legs flying. It was moving fast, and its face was completely concealed by a hoodie. Matt couldn’t even see if it was a guy or a girl.
He angled his own stride to race after the figure in black but came to a sudden halt by the shape in the grass.
Not just a shape. For a moment, Matt’s mind refused to process what he was seeing. The red and gold of a footbal jersey. Wet, thick liquid spreading across it. A familiar face.
Then everything snapped into focus. He dropped to his knees. “Christopher, oh no, Christopher.” There was blood everywhere. Matt frantical y felt at Christopher’s chest, trying to figure out where he could put pressure to try to stop the bleeding. Everywhere, everywhere, it’s coming from everywhere. Christopher’s whole body was shaking, and Matt pressed his hands against the soaking footbal jersey to try to hold him stil .
Fresh blood ran in thick crimson streams against the brighter red of the jersey’s material.
“Christopher, man, hold on, it’s going to be okay. You’l be okay,” Matt said, and pul ed out his phone to dial 911.
His own hands were covered with blood now, and the phone was a slimy mess as he held it to his ear.
“Please,” he said, his voice shaking, “I’m at Dalcrest Col ege, near the business building. My roommate, someone attacked my roommate. He’s bleeding a lot. He’s not conscious.” The 911 operator started to ask him some questions and Matt tried to focus.
Suddenly Christopher opened his eyes, taking a deep gulp of air.
“Christopher,” Matt said, dropping his phone. “Chris, they’re sending an ambulance, hold on.” The shaking got worse, Christopher’s arms and legs vibrating in a rapid rhythm. His eyes settled on Matt’s face, and his mouth opened.
“Chris,” Matt said, trying to hold him down, trying to be gentle, “who did this? Who attacked you?” Christopher gasped again, a hoarse gulping sound.
Then the shaking stopped, and he was very stil . His eyelids slid down over his eyes.
“Chris, please hold on,” Matt begged. “They’re coming.
They’l help you.” He grabbed at Christopher, shook him a little, but Christopher wasn’t moving, wasn’t breathing.
Sirens sounded in the distance, but Matt knew the ambulance was already too late.
13
Bonnie clutched the banana-nut muffin to her chest as if it was some kind of sacred offering. She just could not bring herself to knock on Matt’s door. Instead, she turned big pleading brown eyes on Meredith and Elena.
“Oh, Bonnie,” Meredith muttered, reaching past her, shifting the pile of bagels and the carton of orange juice she was carrying, and rapping loudly on the door.
“I don’t know what to say,” Bonnie whispered back, agonized.
Then the door opened, and Matt appeared, red-eyed and pale. He seemed somehow smal er and more hunched into himself than Bonnie had ever seen him. Overwhelmed with pity, she forgot al about being nervous and launched herself into his arms, dropping the muffin in the process.
“I’m so sorry,” she choked out, tears running down her face. Matt held on to her tightly,
bending over and burying his head in her shoulder. “It’s okay,” she said final y, desperately, patting the back of his head. “I mean, no, it’s not … of course it’s not … but we love you, we’re here.”
“I couldn’t help him,” Matt said dul y, his face stil pressed against Bonnie’s neck. “I tried my best, but he died anyway.”
Elena and Meredith joined them, wrapping their arms around Matt from either side.
“We know,” Elena said, rubbing his back. “You did everything you could for him.”
Matt pul ed out of their arms eventual y and gestured around the room. “Al this stuff is his,” he said. “His parents don’t feel like they’re ready to clear out his things yet, they told the police. It’s kil ing me to see it al stil here when he’s not. I thought about packing it up for his parents, but there’s a possibility that the police might want to look through his stuff.”
Bonnie shuddered at the thought of what Christopher’s parents must be going through.
“Have something to eat,” Meredith said. “I bet you haven’t eaten for ages. Maybe it’l help you feel better.” Al three girls fussed around, fixing the breakfast they’d brought for Matt, then convincing him to taste something, anything. He drank some juice and picked at a bagel, his head lowered. “I was at the police station al night,” he said.
“I had to keep going over and over what happened.”
“What did happen?” Bonnie asked tentatively.
Matt sighed. “I real y wish I knew. I just saw somebody dressed in black running away from Christopher. I wanted to chase him, but Chris needed my help. And then he died. I tried, but I couldn’t do anything.” His forehead creased into a frown. “The real y weird thing, though,” he said slowly, “is that, even though I saw a person running away, the police think Christopher was attacked by some kind of animal. He was … pretty ripped up.”