“Hmm.” He was trying not to argue. Neither one of us wanted to go back down the bumpy road we’d traveled the night before.
I felt the slip of paper in my coat pocket then, the one I’d found there that morning. Though this one was hardly a slip. Nearly half a page, it was folded into a square. I pulled it out. “This is one of my favorites.”
“I know,” Justin said. “I remember.”
and this is the wonder that’s keeping the stars apart
i carry your heart (i carry it in my heart) E. E. Cummings
The waitress came and handed Justin the check. He pulled out some cash and tucked it into the hard leather check holder.
“Wait, you’re not going to help publicize their fascist dragnet, are you?” Justin said, looking suddenly aggravated, as though the thought had just occurred to him. “I can’t believe you’d be okay with something like that. It goes against everything you’ve always believed in.”
Regardless of how old and decrepit he liked to proclaim himself, he could get pretty wound up about social justice.
“I’m reporting on its existence, not endorsing it,” I said, feeling defensive. Justin was probably taking this as yet another sign of my fundamental instability. “Besides, I think they’re hoping that they won’t have to go through with it. That the threat will be enough to make someone come forward.”
“And in the meantime, they want to use you as their propaganda machine?” Justin asked as if it were some kind of personal affront. “I’m not trying to be an asshole, Molly. And I heard you last night about needing to stay on this story. Loud and clear. I just don’t want to see you get used in the process. I hate to say it, but you might be a bit of an easy mark.”
“Well, gee, thanks for that,” I said, but mildly. He was agreeing to drop his objections to my staying on the story. I had to be grateful for that and take the passive-aggressive swipe. “You’re all about the compliments these days.”
“I’m sorry,” he said. I tried not to notice how sad he seemed. “I just— I’m trying to look out for you, that’s all.”
“I know.” I put a hand on his face. “Maybe look out for me a little less, okay?”
“Are you sure?” He smiled. He seemed melancholy still, but less so. “Because I’m so good at it.”
“Yeah, except, lucky for us,” I smoothed my thumb over his cheek, “you’re good at lots of things.”
Halfway to the Athletic Center, I realized I should have driven and parked in the gym’s easily accessible and brightly lit parking lot. I hadn’t really been thinking when I’d parted ways with Justin on the green. It was night, but unusually warm, and I’d figured the walk would do me good. So I’d left my car parked on Franklin Avenue and blithely strode headlong onto campus.
It hadn’t occurred to me, though, how empty and how dark it would be. The dorms and student center were all in the opposite direction, and so, it seemed, were all the people. The language lab, the art studio, and the theater were bright, but a distance away, and the largest academic buildings—Rockland Hall, Barry Hall, and Sampson Hall—were all pitch-black at that hour. The deeper I went into the darkness, the more nervous I became, so that by the time I was halfway across campus, even the sound of my own heels on the path—loud and echoing—was making me jittery.
I texted Justin as I walked. Please tell me campus is safer than it feels. I held the phone in my hand, waiting for him to respond. But he was probably inside Mia’s house getting Ella, his phone left behind in the car’s cup holder.
I walked faster, feeling even more vulnerable with the unanswered text in my hand. I checked over my shoulder to be sure that no one was following me. When that didn’t make me feel any better, I did it again and again. Until I was doing it every couple steps, feeling more wound up with each swivel of my head. There was no one behind me, at least no one I could see, and yet it felt like someone was there as I followed the path down the hill toward the Athletic Center and through a short tunnel of trees.
I was relieved when the sidewalk rose on the other side, the Athletic Center in sight, lit up a welcoming gold. There was a small crowd clustered near the door. Probably not close enough to hear me if I called out, so I picked up the pace, my heels louder as I headed across the last stretch of concrete.
I was about to step onto the tail end of the sidewalk hugging the circular drive when there was a noise to my left. Something in the darkness. The wind, hopefully. That was my best-case scenario. I was looking in the direction of the sound when I bumped right into something—someone. My phone slipped out of my hands and cracked to the ground.
“Oops,” Deckler said, as though I were so silly for throwing my phone around. He bent to pick it up, inspecting it, then wiped the screen over his sleeve before handing it back to me. “Good as new.”
He was out of his snug yellow-and-black Campus Safety bicycle uniform but was even less appealing in his sweatshirt and jeans. Why was he always everywhere, watching me?
The files. A campus security officer would have had plenty of access to each and every one of those girls. And the power to bury their complaints. Not to mention Deckler’s menacing vibe and his apparent willingness to startle a woman walking alone in the dark. He didn’t maintain appropriate boundaries, at least not with women. He knew I had those files, and he wasn’t happy about it—I was convinced of it. He was hanging around waiting to see what I was going to do about them, and then, if necessary, he would pounce.
“Thanks,” I said, taking my phone back. Had he somehow come from the left, where I’d heard that noise? “Are you here for the meeting?”
“Nah,” he said with unsettling vagueness. “Just checking things out.”