THE FIRST THING STEVIE SAW WAS THE CIRCULAR GREEN WITH A FOUNTAIN in the middle, a statue of Neptune standing in greeting in the splashing water. A thick curtain of trees surrounded the green. Bits of buildings, flashes of brick and stone and glass peeped shyly in the gaps. At the very top of the green, the host of the whole affair, was a great mansion—the Great House, a mad Gothic manor, with dozens of cathedral windows, four arches around the door, and a multipeaked roof.
Stevie was rendered near speechless for a minute. She had seen hundreds of photographs of the Ellingham estate. She knew the maps and the angles and views. But being here in the fresh, thin air, hearing the splash from the Neptune fountain, feeling the sun on her face as she stood on the great lawn—being here gave her a head rush.
The driver unloaded Stevie’s suitcases from the belly of the coach, along with the three bags of groceries her parents had insisted she bring. They were embarrassingly heavy, packed with jumbo plastic containers of peanut butter, powdered iced tea, and lots of shower gel and sanitary products and other things bought on sale.
“Are we supposed to tip him?” her mother said quietly, as all of this was unloaded from the coach.
“No,” Stevie said, forcing confidence into her voice. She had no idea if you tipped the school coach driver or not. This had not come up in her research.
“You okay?” her dad asked.
“Yep,” she said, steadying herself against her suitcase. “It’s just . . . so beautiful.”
“It’s something,” he said. “No denying that.”
A large golf cart circled the drive and pulled up alongside them. Another man greeted them. He was younger than the driver, in his thirties maybe, rugged and muscular and dressed in well-worn cargo shorts and an Ellingham polo shirt. He was the kind of clean-cut person who made her parents relax, and therefore, Stevie relaxed.
“Stephanie Bell?” he asked.
“Stevie,” she corrected him.
“I’m Mark Parsons,” he said. “Head of grounds. You got Minerva. Nice house.”
Stevie’s things and the Bells themselves were loaded into the cart. Germaine and her family were put in another and sent off in the opposite direction.
“Everyone wants Minerva,” Mark added when they were out of earshot. “It’s the best house.”
The property was full of smooth, twisting stone paths between copses of trees. They rode along under the heavy shade, and Stevie and her parents were cowed into impressed silence by the school buildings. There were some large, grand ones of stone and red brick, with Gothic arches connecting them and tiny turrets softening their corners. Some were bare and grand, while others were wrapped so tightly in ivy it looked like they were being presented as gifts to some forest god. This wasn’t her local high school. This was clearly a Seat of Learning.
There were Greek and Roman statues of cold, white stone behind the trees, standing alone in the clearings.
“Someone’s been to the garden center,” her dad said.
“Oh, no,” Mark replied, steering the cart past a chorus of heads, their eyes blank and empty but their expressions determined, looking very much like some committee in the middle of an important decision. “These are all the real thing. A fortune’s worth of statues out in the open.”
There were, to be fair, maybe too many statues. Someone should have had a talk with Albert Ellingham and told him to maybe relax with the statue buying. But if you’re rich enough and famous enough, Stevie figured, you can do pretty much anything you want with your mountaintop lair.
The golf cart stopped in front of a low, dignified house built in alternating red and gold brick. It seemed to be in several parts—there was a large section on the right that looked like a normal house, then a long extension off to the side that ended in a turret. The entire structure was covered in a coat of Virginia creeper that obscured the bas-relief faces that peered from the roofline and from above the windows. The door was bright blue and hanging open, letting in the breeze and the flies.
Stevie and her parents stepped into what appeared to be some kind of common room, with a stone floor and a wide fireplace surrounded by rocking chairs. The room was cool and shaded and still smelled of wood and past fires. It was decorated in a slightly claustrophobic red flocked wallpaper and a mounted moose head that wore a crown of decorative lights. There was a hammock chair hanging by the fire, lots of floor cushions, a beat-up but exceedingly comfortable-looking purple sofa, and a massive farm table that took up most of the room. On the farm table was a tackle box and some small items that looked like craft supplies—beads, or the many mysterious things involved in the scrapbooking process. Right by the door, eight large pegs protruded from the wall. These were maybe nine or ten inches long—far too large for coats. Stevie touched one with the tip of her finger as a physical manifestation of the question: What are you?
“Hello!”
Stevie turned to see a woman coming out of the small kitchen area with a mug of coffee. She had a shaved head with just the smallest amount of peach fuzz and a petite but deeply muscled and tanned frame. Her arms were elegantly tattooed in sleeves of flowers. She was dressed in a loose T-shirt that read I DIG DIGS and cargo shorts, which showed off a pair of strong, hairy legs.
“Stephanie?” the woman asked.
“Stevie,” she corrected again.
“Dr. Nell Pixwell,” the woman said, extending a hand to each member of the family. “Call me Pix. I’m the Minerva faculty housemaster.”
Stevie chanced a better look at the tiny objects by the tackle box. On closer examination, Stevie realized that these weren’t crafting supplies—they were teeth. Lots and lots of loose teeth. Here. On the table. Whether they were real or fake, Stevie didn’t know, and she wasn’t sure it mattered. A table full of teeth is a table full of teeth.
“Did you have a good drive?” Pix asked, quickly sorting the remaining teeth into compartments.
(Plink, said a tooth, hitting the plastic. Plink.)
“Sorry, I was just sorting a few things out. You’re definitely the earliest . . .”
(Plink, said a molar.)
“Can I get anyone a coffee?”
The group was herded into the 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.