“Yeah,” she looked down.
“Well, look, if you ever really need anything, please don’t hesitate to call,” Eric said. “You can always reach out.”
“Thanks,” Madison said, beginning to walk away. “I appreciate that.”
“Good luck,” Eric said.
“Good luck!” Amy echoed.
“Good seeing you,” Madison said, then turned and continued down the street.
Once Madison was out of earshot, Eric and Amy explained to Mike the backstory: the aggressive recruitment, the verbal commitment, and the last-minute switch. Mike told the two coaches they had been nicer to Maddy than he might have been, given her behavior in the past, but the two coaches were too thrilled at the idea that they might have a second shot at Madison. “Amy and I both said we were really happy to see her,” Eric later recalled. “We both kept talking about how great she would be for our team. She looked good; she looked fit. We were happy to see her, and it seemed like good fortune. We just thought it was meant to be, a little bit.”
A few minutes later the three coaches went into Fado for dinner. When they left, about an hour and a half later, they noticed police cars blocking the street, but that was not unusual in Philadelphia. The group turned around and walked the long way, giving not another thought to the commotion.
The parking garage at the corner of Spruce and 15th is a block from Fado. The structure is nondescript: it’s next to a Rita’s, the famous Philly water ice chain, and the ground floor is occupied by a sports bar, Fox & Hound. In fact, the entire corner is unremarkable. There’s a drugstore on one side, a dry cleaning joint down the street, and the Kimmel Center is adjacent—a lovely, looming building, but hardly magnificent. “We asked her Penn friends how she would know to go there, and they said they had no idea,” Justine says. “It’s not near Penn. I’m guessing she might have gone for a run or a walk one day. Or maybe she chose it that day. No one in Philly can make the connection.”
One notable distinction exists. On the front of the parking garage is a small art installation. Painted onto the cement walls are fragments of phrases. The words conjure distinct images, and an energy emanates from the building that makes a passerby feel as if something within might be haunted. The artwork frames the entrance door to the parking garage, which leads to the interior stairs, which eventually lead to the top of the structure. The installation, called Passing Through, is one in a series of twenty throughout Philadelphia, the City of Murals.
The artwork on the parking garage consists of dozens of unconnected phrases, fleeting thoughts, stenciled onto the cement. One phrase, along the bottom of the wall, reads “She had wings on.” Next to the words is a drawing of a woman with flowing hair who appears to be trapped in some metaphysical state, her eyes pressed closed, her hair unruly. At first glance the words on the building seem confusing: Do any relate? And if so, how?
The origin story of each Passing Through site starts with a tape recorder. A person standing at the site of the future artwork records the conversations of people as they pass. But because the person holding the recorder is stationary, only fragments of these conversations are caught, which produces a steady stream of seemingly unrelated words and thoughts.
On its website, Passing Through posted the text captured at each site. Here is a chunk of the conversations recorded at the parking garage at 15th and Spruce: “I try to live life as if tomorrow will never come good luck to you nice talking to you no one can compare cracks it open warm bottle the point is the other half wants to ask that question you know she constantly argues and fights I tell her all about the patient about an hour and 45 minutes later she doesn’t answer my page could you give me all of them at once…”
Madison walked directly to this parking garage after running into Eric.
Before she left her dorm room that morning, she made her bed. She never made her bed. She also cleaned her side of the space and scribbled a note that she left in the room: “I don’t know who I am anymore. Trying. Trying. Trying. I’m sorry. I love you… sorry again… sorry again… sorry again… How did this happen?”
Maddy had placed a second note inside the bag she was holding, tucked among the gifts for her family. She opened the door to the garage stairwell and climbed the nine flights to the top. Only one or two cars were parked on the top level because there were spots open below, so there was no need for drivers to circle all the way up. The pavement of the top level sloped upward toward the southern railing. The view of South Philly, of its twinkling lights, was arresting. Madison loved views. She loved images she could frame, that she could file away if only for a few moments in the cabinet of her mind. And the vista from this perch was vast; the tallest buildings were behind the viewer, so the twilight sky seemed to stretch all the way to Delaware. In a way, standing at the top of that parking garage felt like being inside a cube, but with one open side—the side Maddy was now facing. Every other direction consisted of tall buildings pressing against each other.
Madison placed the shopping bag on the ground. The note inside explained, as best she could, what was about to happen, but mostly the words provided a guide for something much less confusing: which gift was for whom.
She left the picture of herself as a kid with a tennis racquet tucked inside a copy of the young adult book Reconstructing Amelia, which tells the story of a devastated single mother who pieces together clues about the death of her daughter, who supposedly killed herself by jumping off a building at her prep school. The book is a mystery in the vein of Gone Girl, and both books feature a twist: At the end of Reconstructing Amelia it’s revealed that Amelia didn’t jump; she was pushed. In the book, nothing is as it seems.