The Revenant by Sonia Gensler

I’d felt the cold chill in the parlor. I’d seen the fear in proud Fannie’s eyes when she spoke of the dark river water rushing after her. I acknowledged all that—I just didn’t know what to make of it.

Chapter 9
    T HE AIR WAS THICK WITH RESENTMENT in the chapel that Saturday afternoon. To be sure, there were girls who’d chosen not to go to town and sat contentedly reading or working on a composition. But those who were kept from town by demerits were silently seething, unable to concentrate, and sat staring at the wall clock to follow each tick of the minute hand as it traveled the distance of two hours.
    I was one of the seethers. This was my first Saturday to stay at the school, and I was surprised by how much I craved fresh air and some variation in the landscape. We were allowed outside for our walk every day, demerits or no, but that was more of a chore than an escape. Without a trip to town, the seminary walls felt as though they might close in on me, and no matter where I went, it seemed Miss Crenshaw’s eyes were following my every move.
    And though I wouldn’t— couldn’t —admit it to anyone else, I was mourning the lost opportunity to catch a glimpse of Eli Sevenstar. I’d looked at his letter a hundred times since the night of the attempted exorcism. It still twisted my stomach in knots, but it was more than mere jealousy that so affected me. Disgust would have been the proper response to such a note—I told this to myself again and again—and yet a part of me still thrilled at the passion it conveyed. I longed to look into Eli’s dark eyes and find such a passion directed at me .
    It was absurd, of course. I could not be Eli’s welcoming blue sea. A smile or a pleasant conversation was all I could ever hope for if I wanted to keep my position. And I did want to keep my position, for though I felt trapped at that moment, the thought of leaving such independence was … well, it was unthinkable.
    Miss Taylor, the domestic science teacher, sat in a wide wooden chair facing the desks. Though she knitted quietly, her eyes were quick to find any girl who dared whisper. I sat at the back of the room, tasked with shoring up the rear defenses.
    A stack of compositions stood on the desk before me. I lifted the top composition and glanced over it—a junior essay on “Tact versus Talent.” The authoress was a sweet girl who’d worked long hours to perfect her penmanship in a composition as mindless as it was tidily scripted. I placed that one at the bottom. The next essay was blotched and spattered with ink. That could wait until later too. The third was neatly penned, and the introduction unfolded in a thoughtful manner. In fact, for several paragraphs the argument struck me as beautifully clear and logical. I was giddy, quite prepared to give it the highest mark, when suddenly it entered territory that confused me. The language was exquisite, but the meaning behind the words was muddled. Did the confusion arise from a flaw in the argument … or in my own reasoning? I couldn’t think how to express these misgivings to the student without looking like a prize fool.
    I placed that composition at the bottom of the pile.
    When I checked the clock again, five minutes had passed.
    Lucy Sharp—who’d received demerits for insolence in geometry class—sat to my right with her head bent over a piece of paper. She applied her pencil to it with such ferocity I feared the paper would tear. At least one of us was getting work done. I took a closer look and saw that she was drawing the same circle over and over. She caught me staring out of the corner of her eye. Frowning, she curved her arm around the page and lowered her head so that I could no longer see whether she wrote or drew.
    Two desks away on my left sat Fannie, who also leaned over her work, but with pen and ink rather than pencil. Her task consisted of filling out small white cards with text that I could not make out, no matter how I