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We barely spoke during class The sky was overcast, and Professor Starking switched off the lights and turned on a projector Suddenly an iraph of outer space, of a rust-colored cloud of dust cresting upward like fingers

"The Pillars of Creation," Professor Starking said "This is what stars look like before they’re formed They’re called celestial nebulas"

He flipped to the next slide, and then the next--each of different nebulas, their otherworldly for onto the darkened wall of the Observatory

"What did you want to tell me?" I whispered to Dante

"I can’t tell you here," he replied, studying the iht of the projector, his face eine what it was he wanted to say tolove Renée, he would say, I love you Run aith o north into the wilderness and live desperately, dangerously And I would say yes Or maybe that’s not what he had planned at all If it hy couldn’t he just say it here, in the darkness of the Observatory? Things said in private were usually bad things: things that were too shaht of day, in front of other people If he loved me, wouldn’t he want to tell me as quickly as possible? I self-consciously adjusted ed his ht; maybe now he could see flaws he hadn’t noticed before--blemishes, the scar under e

Professor Starking stepped back to adlance, they e and alien," he said "But all of us are made of the eleives they that fully for, Dante inched closer to me and slipped his hand into mine I trembled at his touch, his palms cool and dry

Neither of us dared to look at the other Instead, we re our eyes trained on the pictures I shifted closer to hiainst his To the rest of the class we looked like a boy and girl sitting side by side But beneath the surface, everything withincloud of particles, ephe, like stardust

By curfew Eleanor still wasn’t back It was unusual: she always ca Dante to dwell on her absence She was probably in the library, asleep in one of her books, or out working on the school play for the Huht, and then I could tell her everything

I sat onat the down the minutes until I would see Dante When the hands finally reached 10:45, I opened the flue, pulled an to cli hts, and an oxford shirt with an overcoat on top to keepsooty

The cli to look forward to at the end I was so anxious to see Dante that I barely noticed the cobwebs and dust and cru brick But when I reached the bottoht

The flue was only partially open, just enough forsounds that the furnace gave off, it was co And then drips, like a faucet leaking into a bathtub full of water

I cli, and then another, until I was almost completely out of the chi becaed in water I pulled it back and leaned out the botto on

The entire basement was flooded ater, which had risen to just feet below the ceiling I sighed, only now re what the irls’ dor frohts reflected dihts shining up from beneath

For soh an invisible force were towing et outside, but it was useless Reluctantly, I climbed back into the chimney My left shoe was soaked, and squeaked as I ascended, each step taking ot back toand rang, and I went to bed iainst the stone beneath the gargoyles, his face slipping into the shadows

It took ten days to drain all of the water from the base the entire caround outside was hard and impenetrable, so they pu floppy hoses that trailed across the pathways like the ar I stepped over them as I walked to class, unaware that the water inside was freezing, preventing theht days, or even nine, things e and uncontrollable; they operate under their own set of rules And as I would soon discover, ten was an entire rule unto itself

In the ht aht pm But the problem in the basement was more than just an inconvenience It meant that I could only see Dante in class The baseht, or at least the only way that I knew of

But let ht that I discovered the flood, I had trouble getting to sleep I paced aroundfor Eleanor to cliave up and collapsed inthe covers over ether, and hoping that he was drea of a strange chain of events that was taking place at Gottfried

Eleanor didn’t co I woke up froht of her unruffled bed I iie opened the door with a yawn She hadn’t seen Eleanor since Grub Day, which was already two days ago I went to see Bonnie and then Rebecca, and finally Genevieve They hadn’t seen her either