Someone had scrawledCRINGEacross the bottom of the flyer closest to her. Which seemed a bit harsh. Lucy raised her hand to it with the absent, sympathetic instinct to smudge the letters, but they were pretty well carved into the paper.
She didn’t see the plain, faded flyer at first, haloed by the Pallas Radio advertisements. Though once she did, the first thing she noticed was the way the Pallas flyers gave this one a respectful berth. Most of the pink flyers overlapped edges with the older flyers around them, or covered them altogether. But this one had been avoided. It remained prominent, despite its age. And though it was faded, it was still legible.
MISSINGHAVE YOU HEARD FROM SADIE GRAINGER?
Last seen 9/22 Holmwood Hall. If you are in contact with Sadie, PLEASE ask her to reach out. We’re not angry. We just want to know she’s safe.
To send tips, please take contact info below.
The tabs at the bottom of the poster had all been ripped off. And in the center, there was a black-and-white picture of Sadie’s face, largely faded except for dark eyes and a smiling mouth. Maybe it was the printer quality, but Lucy also thought she could make out a smattering of freckles.
Lucy smoothed the poster. Rollins had looked idyllic in the brochures, of course: hiking trails full of steep hills and clear waterfalls, lush gothic architecture, gushing testimonials from the student population of ambitious misfits. But it was the moment she saw it as a cold, impersonal dot on Google Maps that made her realize it was where she was meant to be. It wasn’t as far as she could get from Jacksonville, distance-wise. But it was far from civilization. As far as she could imagine from the life she’d lived until then.
That isolation didn’t suit everyone, though. She knew, from all her late nights reading everything she could find about the school, that the first-year dropout rate was unusually high. The student newspaper frequently published lengthy interviews with the campus mental health team, or homesickness-busting tips. Even the very bus shelter she was standing in had at least two posters reminding her to practice mindfulness.
Lucy’s hand lingered on the missing poster for a moment. Her grandmother had always taught her to imagine stress like the pressure gauges they sold at their family’s hardware store: You equalize, or you explode.Little escapes, she’d said.That’s the key. You’ve gotta come up for air every so often, or you drown.
So she was great at little escapes. Long sprawls under the stars. Dancing at clubs that had been lenient with her fake ID. Stick-and-poke asterisk tattoos with dubious symbolic significance. It was a fine-tuned equation. Take on pressure, let off steam. Find an equilibrium until the bigger release could come.
Poor Sadie. Rollins was Lucy’s goal. Her big release. If Sadie hadn’t wanted to be there—Lucy could only imagine how claustrophobic the sprawling campus could become. It was difficult, under the poster’s crinkled stare, to imagine anything but the worst. But hopefully Sadie just needed a little escape of her own. Hopefully she’d reach out when she was ready.
The campus shuttle rumbled up to the shelter. Lucy checked her destination one last time before she climbed aboard, and Sadie’s black-and-white face whipped out of view as the bus pulled out into the loop road.
Falls Quad was a cluster of junior and senior dorms along the opposite edge of campus. Lucy had her phone out to check the suite number as she stepped onto the wet grass. Though, as it turned out, she didn’t need to. A few feet away, there were people spilling through an open door into the quad, laughing almost too hard to stand up straight. Behind them, the heavy bass beats of “Tainted Love” thumped like a heart. It was extremely clear where the party was.
And if it hadn’t been, the sign out front readingALL ARE WELCOME! GET IN HERE!!would have given it away.
As Lucy crossed the lawn, she could see curtains fluttering in the other dorms. She couldn’t tell if the eyes beyond were curious or glaring, but either way, she waved sheepishly and kept walking. She grew up in a tightly packed housing complex. She’d been the one glaring on the other side of the window her fair share of times.
She sidled around a group in the doorway. They barely shifted to let her pass—a curtain of body heat closed around her as she disappeared into the suite.
The way ahead was lit by two rotating globe lanterns with aqua light and star-shaped cutouts, and the galaxies spun across the walls as Lucy made her way deeper. The swirls of light glanced across dancing figures, the effect twisting the room like curtains in a gale.
Lucy didn’t notice that one of those figures had broken away to bound toward her until there was an arm slung around the back of her neck.
“There’s mygirl!” someone hollered in her ear. “Ready to start your Rollins life off right?”
Lucy huffed a startled laugh, and staggered around to face junior Natalie Baker, the party’s host. She was beaming at her like they’d known each other for years, instead of for roughly thirty cumulative minutes. Though Lucy could already tell that that was probably just how Natalie was with everyone.
She’d first crossed paths with Natalie the day before, when Natalie gave Lucy’s orientation group a library tour. They’d only exchanged a few words then, but Lucy had been able to see immediately why she’d been tapped to lead tours—she had an enviably smooth way of keeping a conversation going, even to a group too shy to laugh at most of her jokes. She had hennaed burgundy hair and a perpetually all-knowing grin, and she was built just like Lucy, short with rounded hips and a soft, prominent stomach. She’d been wearing the kind of rib-knit bodycon dress that Lucy’s mother would have told herwasn’t suited for a pear shape, and she made it look confident and effortless. So much so that Lucy had realized, with a jolt, that she could dress however she wanted now.
In any case, Natalie had stood out to Lucy. And apparently, Lucy had stood out to Natalie, too. Enough that Natalie had recognized her when they’d crossed paths at the campus pool earlier.
Lucy had been on her way to swim a few laps, blow off some steam, when a text from her mother buzzed in. Lucy understood that they were fighting, of course. Jillian had made that quite clear. But she hadn’t expected the kind of low blow that had popped up on her phone screen this afternoon.
Then she’d looked up from that text and seen Natalie’s smiling face waving her down. She’d burst into tears on the spot.
Which was probably what Natalie was thinking about now as she gave Lucy a once-over. Lucy grimaced, and strained to pitch her voice over the music. “I’m sorry again for earlier!”
Natalie vigorously shook her head. A few strands of hair got caught in her glow-in-the-dark lipstick. “I love a good cry!” she bellowed. “Wish my skin looked as good afterward as yours does! I’d have been pink and blotchy all day!”
Lucy laughed through the twist of embarrassment. But embarrassment didn’t seem like an emotion Natalie Baker spent much time entertaining. Back at the pool, she’d sat Lucy down on one of the hard-backed plastic chairs, gotten her a glass of water, and let her cry it out. And when Lucy managed a few wobbly excuses about “family drama,” she didn’t pry.
Instead, she’d gently put both of her hands on both of Lucy’s.I don’t know you, she’d said.And please tell me to fuck off if I’m overstepping. But you strike me as…someone who has not enjoyed herself recently.
So there Lucy was, at the first campus rager of the year. Ready for one last little release so that the Big Release could begin in earnest.
But before that. “Hey,” she said, “I saw a ‘missing’ poster at the shuttle stop?”
