“No,” Adya said, stretching across her bed. The lamp clicked off, plunging the room back into its night-lit haze. “And I don’t want to. But I can’t shake the feeling that it’s still there, waiting just out of frame.”
“That’s deeply creepy.”
“We’re all a little creepy,” Mackenzie chimed in. “That’s why we’re here.”
Delaney curled into herself, cold in spite of the three layers of blanket she kept bunched beneath her chin. By the door, Mackenzie’s phone screen lit the bow of her lips blue. The ceiling was awash with its glow. She stared into the treacle warmth of a half-shell night-light and counted back from one hundred, the way her parents used to do on nights when the ringing in her ears drove her to claw at her face. She made it all the way to the sixties before the first waves of sleep washed over her.
Just before she drifted under, she thought she saw a figure hunched over the end of Adya’s bed, but when she woke in the dawn, she was sure it had only been a dream.
***
Delaney’s midafternoon meeting with her human anatomy professor was turning out to be as discouraging as her philosophy meeting with Beaufort.
She waited before the wooden lectern, quiz in hand, and stared down at the angry red slashes across the top of her paper. Her stomach was a knot. Her hands were clammy. Outside the amphitheater, a crowd of incoming students had begun to gather in the lobby. Scattered bits of conversation droned through the room like the buzzing of bees. Flanked by the rigid chassis of a human skeleton, Professor Haas sat with arms folded over his stomach, the long stem of his tie adorned in twisting vertebrae.
“There’s no hand-holding here,” he said, his considerable baritone projecting through the empty theater at a volume that made her cringe. “You’re not in high school anymore. It’s the responsibility of the student to apply for any necessary academic adjustments ahead of their courses.” He jabbed a finger at the papered flurry of his desk. “These weekly quizzes make up one-third of your final grade. I’ve seen your file. Your GPA can’t afford to take the hit.”
“I understand,” Delaney said, determined to appear as amenable as possible. Her insides felt like shredded paper.
With a groan, Haas rose from his chair. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have another class beginning in just a moment.”
As if on cue, the dam broke and students began pouring into the room. Mortified, Delaney shoved her quiz into her bag, intending to flee. She didn’t make it more than a half step before she drew up short, her stomach plummeting to the floor. There, planted like a rock amid the rush of seniors, stood Colton Price.
Their eyes met. For a moment, neither of them moved. Embarrassment ignited beneath her skin like a combustible as she replayed the last several minutes in her head. The open criticisms. The blatant condescension. Ears burning, she rocketed toward the door, hoping desperately that if she looked like she was in a rush, he’d let her pass by without remark.
Her hope flagged and died the instant she nearly trod right upon the toes of his shoes. She managed to careen to a stop seconds before slamming into his chest.
“You’re in my way,” she whispered into the gray knit of his sweater.
He didn’t step aside. This close, his considerable height forced her to crane her neck up to see his face, and she felt infuriatingly small beneath the lean frame of his shoulders. She didn’t recognize the thing that built inside her belly at the nebulous brown of his gaze. She only knew that she was seconds away from crying, and she didn’t want to do it in front of him.
She shoved past him, her shoulder clipping his bicep as she went. To her surprise, he turned a half step with her, thrusting out a hand to catch the edge of the door before she could escape into the hall.
“Wednesday—”
“How much of that did you hear?” She hadn’t meant to ask, but the question forced its way out of her anyway. Her eyes pinched and she pulled them shut, willing the sting of humiliation out of her skin. Acutely aware of the way his arm bent before her in a barricade.
“Enough,” he admitted.
She didn’t wait to see if he’d say anything else. She only pushed through his arm and out into the lobby, her boots clattering across the wide plank flooring. Through the windows, the mid-September sky deepened to a bruise. Not full dark, but too close for comfort. The long walk to the freshman dormitories would be sheathed in twilight, shadows crawling along the pavers.
The door caught on her way out, tugged from behind as though someone had reached out and stayed it with a hand. She felt the tangible weight of a body, the heat of another person standing much too close.
“Wait,” said a boy’s voice, soft enough to be a sigh.
She spun on her heels, fully prepared to come face-to-face with Colton. She wasn’t sure what she’d do when she saw him. Chastise him? Burst into tears?
Only, it wasn’t Colton who stood there.
It wasn’t anyone at all.
The lobby was empty. The door to Haas’s lecture hall was shut.
And yet, even now she felt it—a presence. The feel of eyes on her face. The temperature in the lobby was cold as permafrost, the air dense as wool. She didn’t know how long she stood there, transfixed. Staring back at nothing. She only knew that by the time the vibration of her phone in her coat shook her free of her trance, the lobby’s motion lights had clicked off.
Outside the window, the sky was a deep and starless black.
Alone, and with an autumn chill wending around her ankles, she fled.
