Chapter 28
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Dr. Robetresse seemed tenser than usual at the council meeting later on. Her posture was rigid, all business. I thought she was worried that our investigation had concluded, that we’d decided it was one of her professors and were ready to call it a day.
Only hours earlier, we’d walked past Dr. Strauss’s office. A group of girls huddled around it, talking. One of them turned to me and whispered excitedly, “They found a pair of girl’s underwear in his office.”
My face must’ve betrayed what I was thinking because her eyes widened as she recognized who I was. “Oh, God. You don’t think it had anything to do with the investigation?”
“No, no!” I said, quickly. Already I’d sparked the attention of the rest of her group.
One of the girls leaned in conspiratorially. “My friend works in the Records office. She said Dani had requested a different advisor, months before everything happened. Apparently, she didn’t feel comfortable with Strauss, though she didn’t cite specifics.”
“Obvious what she meant, though,” another girl said.
The group scooted closer to the doors of his office, trying to catch a glimpse of the man inside.
Strauss caught my eye from inside the room.
He looked like a haunted man, drained of color, like all the ego and power had been sucked right out of him.
Red, splotchy scars crept up his neck from under his collar.
“I wonder if the underwear is hers,” one of the girls said.
“How’d they find it?” I asked.
“One of his students did and reported it to the dean. That stuck-up Christian chick. Joselyn Hart.”
Now, at the council meeting, Dr. Robetresse sipped a coffee, eyes darting around the room.
“Thank you all for coming. I apologize for not being available to meet sooner. I’ve had my hands full fielding questions from anxious parents, and getting hounded by local journalists trying to sniff out a story. If you all haven’t exercised caution when venturing off campus, I urge you to start.”
The meeting concluded quickly. The pressing need for security drew Dr. Robetresse’s attention away, and the rest of us were left to stew in her warning.
I caught Maritza before she left. I touched her shoulder, and she spun, giving me a sharp look. I drew my hand back quickly.
In recent days, I’d stopped visiting her cottage. I was becoming increasingly aware of the way she looked at me. She had a distrustful eye, like she knew I was seeing things I shouldn’t.
“I’ve been meaning to ask you,” I said. “Would you know who was in my room last?” I wasn’t sure who to ask. Maritza was one of those people who, if she didn’t know, would know exactly who would.
She frowned. “I’m not sure what you mean. Before you attended the school? I would have to look at the records.”
“No, I mean recently. I assume someone’s used it since I left.”
“Room 22 has been empty for several years. There were a few boards that needed to be replaced after you left, so a crew was lined up to replace them, but they never showed up.”
“So no one was in there after me?”
“No.”
I hesitated. I almost asked if she could check the records; there had to be some sort of mistake. I couldn’t have been the last one, but she nodded quickly.
“If you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to be getting back.” She spun back toward her cottage.
I started to think I was losing my mind.
Shadows danced in the corner of my vision, just outside my reach.
I noticed more of the symbols on the cattle skulls above the dorms, now on nearly every building on campus, each with the dot-triangle inside a circle and a different number inked on them: 46 above the Science building, 12 above the Arts hall.
Tons of numbers that had no rhyme or reason to them, they didn’t correspond to the number of rooms in the building nor number of doors, windows, lights.
I even counted the fire sprinklers. Even more concerning, I was seeing words written on the walls—though these, I’m sure, were hallucinations.
The fact didn’t bring me much comfort.
I stopped drinking coffee. I’d read that caffeine could spark hallucinations, and I’d always been pretty sensitive to anything stronger than tea.
It made sense that it would affect me now, after the long hours I was putting in at the library.
But even as I stopped drinking caffeine, I made up for it with more books.