“Sussannah!”
The sun glinted off the awnings on Thayer Street, temporarily blinding her. Bead Store, hookah bar, Urban Outfitters, movie theater—practically a movie set of a college town.
Brent was running from across the street. He was a big goof, did things like call her Soo-JZAH-nah after he noticed that’s how her Korean immigrant parents pronounced it (and probably why they accidentally put an extra s in Sussannah when filling out the birth certificate). But right now he looked dead serious.
Brent had to pause, hands on his knees, and catch his breath next to a sign that said, Congratulations Brown seniors! We have mango bubble tea!!!! “It’s Sri . . .” he panted.
Sri? Her heart jumped. “Is he okay? Did something happen?”
“He’s missing.”
“Missing . . .” She paused. Sri was always missing. As recently as Friday night, in fact. His best one so far. They’d all gone to a campus party. Only he’d left without telling anyone, sidled into the Rock—dead drunk—right before closing, curled himself like a chipmunk into a carrel, and somehow slept undetected by library security until morning. In the meantime, they couldn’t find him, panicked, called Brown security, fanned out looking for him all night, yelling his name—they’d done everything but dredged the shore off India Point Park. “Don’t you have any consideration for others’ feelings?” she’d screamed at him when they found him (adorably, she had to admit) disheveled, stumbling into the bright sunlight of day out of the world’s ugliest college library. “I got bored,” he had replied, as if that were a perfectly reasonable explanation. “I ran out of pot, and I couldn’t find any of you, so I left.”
Sussannah disliked poseurs who used their so-called artistic proclivities and vices as a lazy excuse to forego basic social niceties, but Sri really was moody, mysterious, easily absorbed and distracted, exactly the kind of person who might follow a butterfly for miles, miss lunch and dinner, just to see where it would end up. (That, and he was also a pothead.)
“Text someone next time,” she’d said, as if that would help. Sri hated technology and was convinced cell phones cooked your insides like microwaves. So even if he had his phone, he’d never turn it on. Not helpful. But very Sri.
So she wasn’t panicked now. Not yet.
“I had dinner with him at the Ratty yesterday”—and she had actually seen him later than that, but not in a context she wanted to mention.
“April said she didn’t hear him come in last night.”
“April,” Sussannah groaned. “Great.” April, the old lurker of Environmental House.
Sussannah and her best friend Marla had ended up at Environmental House only because they’d gone into the junior housing lottery together and were awarded the worst—the worst—numbers probably in the history of the lottery. This meant the old janitor’s closet in Pembroke or something. Then Marla, who had a campus job in admissions, was tipped off from her friend who worked in housing that Brown was opening up a new residence: Environmental House. A refurbished Victorian that had once been the Slavic Studies office. It would mean a real bedroom in a real house. Some shared housework, but they could still be on the meal plan and cook if they wanted to avoid “Jambalaya Nite” at the Ratty (there was a reason students since the 1800s referred to the Refectory as the RatFactory, Ratty for short). So attractive an option that they talked Sri and Brent into joining them in the coed house. The only problem was none of them were particularly environmental. But no one asked them to swear on a Bible that they would devote their lives to Greenpeace (“I don’t club seals,” Sri affirmed), and they got in.