Chapter 2 Rules Nobody Explains

There was no welcome speech. Chris had sat through four of them and could have written a fifth. We are so glad you're here. Look to your left.

Corvain gave them a sheet of paper.

Two hundred first-years sat in a hall with a ceiling like an upside down ship. A woman in gray walked the rows handing out one page each, face down.

Then a man came onto the stage. Old, neat, no microphone. He stood there until the room went quiet on its own, which took six seconds.

"Read the list," he said. "That is the whole of it."

Then he walked off.

Nobody clapped. Nobody looked surprised. Two hundred pages turned at once, a sound like something taking off.

Chris read hers twice.

1. The uniform is worn from seven until seven. 2. When the bell rings, stop where you are. Do not speak until the sound is gone. 3. Do not ask a senior student for a favor. 4. Curfew is at eleven. 5. The east cloister is closed after dark. 6. Property that goes missing is returned. Do not look for it. 7. Attendance at Founder's Week is not optional. 8. Do not photograph the archives. 9. Do not sit in a chair that is already occupied. 10. Guests are the responsibility of the student who brought them. 11. If you are asked to leave a room, leave. 12.

Rule twelve was blank. Not missing. Not cut off. The number was printed, with a little space after it where the words should have gone, and then the bottom of the page.

The boy beside her had already folded his list into quarters and pocketed it, like a receipt.

Her roommate had been there since Tuesday.

"You're Chris. I'm Nell, Nell Prewitt, that's your side, I didn't touch it, I put your key on the desk, don't lose the key, they don't give you a second one, Marla in the year above lost hers and she still can't explain what happened next."

Nell said all of that in one breath, sitting cross legged on her bed, folding the same laundry twice.

Chris put down her duffel. "What's rule twelve?"

Nell stopped folding. "You noticed that fast."

"It's blank."

"It's always blank." Nell picked up a sock, put it down, picked it up again. "It's been blank for sixty years. My cousin had the same sheet. Everyone asks in the first week and then everyone stops. I don't know why. We just do."

"So ask."

"Ask who?"

Chris looked at her.

Nell laughed, high and short, and went back to the laundry. "Okay. New girl. Sure."

The Founders' Fund envelopes were handed out at the front of the hall, in front of everyone.

They could have mailed them. Instead there was a table, a list, and nine names read at normal volume in a room that had not yet emptied.

Chris was seventh.

She was halfway back to her seat when a voice said, "Everyone, please."

It was not a shout. It was warm, and it carried, and the room turned toward it the way the driveway had turned toward the black car.

The girl on the steps had the kind of face that shows up in a magazine, and she was clapping. Slowly. Kindly.

"For the Fund students," Celeste Laurent said. "It takes so much courage."

The applause started. It was real, which was the sick part. People were smiling.

The girl in front of Chris stared at the floor.

Chris did not.

She stopped in the middle of the aisle and waited for it to run out. It took a while. Applause dies slowly when nobody wants to be first to stop.

When it was quiet, Chris held up the envelope.

"How much is in it?"

Celeste blinked. "I wouldn't know."

"You knew our names," Chris said. "You knew there were nine. You knew it was today."

Celeste came down two steps. Up close she smelled expensive, still smiling, nothing in her face moving at all.

"What's your name?"

"Chris Linds."

"Chris." Celeste said it slowly, like she was checking it for weight. "You're going to be so interesting."

She touched Chris's sleeve, once, right where the fabric ran long over her wrist. Then she left, and the room filled with noise, and everyone found somewhere else to look.

Founder's Week came up twice at dinner.

The first time, two seniors at the next table argued about dates. The second time, one said something about interviews, and the other said his name, sharp, and the first one stopped and looked at his plate.

Nell leaned in. "You don't have to do anything for Founder's Week. It's just a party. It's nice."

"You said that like a hostage."

"I said it like someone hungry," Nell said.

Two minutes to midnight, Nell put down her book and sat up straight.

"What," Chris said.

"Nothing. Just wait."

Chris waited. Down the hall somebody's tap shut off. A door closed somewhere below them, and then nothing closed anywhere at all.

The bell rang once.

It was not loud. That was what surprised her. One long, low note out of the north tower, and it went through the window glass and the floor and the middle of her chest, and it kept going after it should have stopped.

Nobody spoke.

Not in the room. Not in the hall. Not outside, where two students stood frozen mid step under the lamps like someone had unplugged them.

She counted. The sound took thirty seconds to die. The silence went on for thirty more.

Then Nell exhaled and picked up her book, and out on the path the two students started walking again, mid sentence, as if nothing had happened.

"That's it?" Chris said.

"That's it."

"Every night?"

"Every night." Nell turned a page. "Since forever. The birds in the tower don't even move anymore. They're used to it."

"There are birds in the bell tower?"

"Ravens. Loads." Nell yawned. "Sam says if they ever leave, the whole school falls down. Sam also says his uncle met a ghost, so."

Chris laughed.

She was still smiling when she turned to her desk to get her charger.

Then she stopped.

The room had been locked. She had locked it herself, with the one key they do not replace, and Nell had been on her bed the entire time reading a book about crop rotation.

Lying across Chris's desk, on top of the taped box her mother had begged her not to bring, was a single white rose.

It was fresh. There was still water on it.

The box was still sealed. She could see the tape, unbroken, exactly as her mother had pressed it down.

Under the rose was a slip of paper.

Chris picked it up. It was old. Soft at the folds, torn along one edge where it had been cut from something, and the handwriting on it was small and fast and belonged to a man who had been dead for eight years.

She could only read one word before her hands started shaking.

Chris.

Behind her, she heard Nell get off the bed.

Not to come closer.

To step back.