Every Heart a Doorway decides to jump into murder mystery horror very quickly with the students beginning to drop like flies and accusations of who killed them begin being tossed. But throughout it all, there is a level of morbid understanding between the students. When one student mentions a dead girl’s parents should be contacted, it is quickly shut down by the morbidly logical Jack.
“If we call Lorelei’s parents, if we tell them what happened, that’s it, we’re done. Anyone who’s under eighteen gets taken home by loving parents. Half of you will be on antipsychotic drugs you don’t need before the end of the year, but hey, at least you’ll have someone to remind you to eat while you’re busy contemplating the walls. The rest of us will be out on the streets. No high school degrees, no way of coping with this world, which does not want us back” (McGuire, 105-106).
This is just accepted by almost every student when Jack says this. They have been forever changed by their worlds, allowed to become their true selves. Even the ones who didn’t get whisked off to lands of the dead or vampires are forever changed in a way that does not comply with their “born reality” anymore. This home is the only solace they have, a place where they can have support from others like them. Maybe they’ll find their door, but if not, they can find some ability to move on in a world not quite fit for them. A sense of loss and feeling unwelcome in this world binds them all, even if they don’t particularly like each other. Doesn’t matter that we have to go hide a body of your friend, school needs to not be shut down. So help out or shut up.
The morbid understanding when Jack explains why a mutilated body is of no use to her. She is in the business of reanimating the dead and you need a full body for that. With that in mind, obviously she isn’t going around killing others. While Jack isn’t particularly liked by the more fanciful land students, no one denies this. They knew deep down, that killing like this was of no use to Jack, and that if it was her killing, she’d have reanimated the body by now. So the accusations cease and they go about disposing of the body.
Kinda like one big messed up found family where you don’t particularly like some of them, but you can’t let anything bad happen to them because then it could mess it up for everyone.