If he didn’t actually want to help, what was he after? In my extensive experience with people who hid their real intentions, the truth was never anything to rejoice about when it came out.
I also had plenty of experience at dodging people who were out to use me somehow. Whatever his ulterior motives might be, he wasn’t going to find me an easy target.
The second floor hallway wrapped right around the open space over the stairwell, amber light streaming from a second chandelier. There were three classrooms on each side and a massive set of double doors at the far end that led to a library full of books that all looked—and smelled, even from the threshold—at least a hundred years old. It held no seating, only the built-in shelves on every wall and a few rows of them down the middle too, so I wasn’t surprised that no one wanted to hang out in there.
I wasn’t going to barge into any of the classes after Dean Wainhouse’s warning, but as we left the library, a group of students came walking out of one of those rooms. Really, trudging was a better word for it. They all appeared to be the age I’d expect at a college, somewhere between late teens and early twenties, but their faces… The best word I could use to describe them was haggard. I wouldn’t have been surprised if one of them had pitched themselves over the railing in an attempt to end their apparent misery.
“What godawful class did they just have?” I murmured to Ryo. “It must be brutal.”
My tour guide’s gaze skimmed over his peers with a glazed quality, as if he’d rather not consider them too closely. “Could be anything,” he said in the mellow tone he’d used throughout this tour. “The teachers can get into a demanding mood sometimes.”
Demanding didn’t seem as if it’d wear an entire class down that much, but maybe we had different definitions of demanding. I debated approaching one or two of the students before they drifted away and asking about Cade, but the glance one of the girls shot my way, as if she knew I was considering hassling her and would sooner commit seppuku than have to listen to my questions, held me back for a second.
In that second, Ryo took the questioning upon himself. “Anybody know where a guy named Cade Harrison is at these days?” he asked the hall at large.
We got a bunch of shaken heads and disgruntled mutterings in response. I sucked my lower lip under my teeth and resisted the urge to nibble at it. Was there really no one here who remembered him—had he been wiped out of existence at the school just like he’d been back home?
But his signature was still on that painting. He hadn’t been completely erased. I couldn’t shake the impression that someone here must know more than they’d been willing to say so far. There was something weird about the way certain students had looked at me, as if they could guess what I wanted to ask—and dreaded it. Maybe they didn’t like newcomers, especially ones decked out like I was, but that didn’t totally explain the reactions I’d gotten.
Let’s be real. The whole college had a weird vibe. So far I hadn’t seen any reason at all why someone who had options would go here. The letter and the brochure Cade had gotten had talked about elite professors, unique programs, and “connections that would last a lifetime.” I guessed all that could be true and the place could still be drearier than a shriveled bouquet by a gravestone, but my doubts were growing by the second.
I had to admit that didn’t mean anything at the school was responsible for his bizarre disappearance, though. None of that made any sense. I couldn’t even imagine telling Ryo why I’d insisted on taking the trip out here, why I was so sure something was wrong, because of how crazy I’d sound. For all I knew, Cade had spent a couple of days here, felt just as skeptical about it, and taken off—and run into much deeper trouble wherever he’d gone next.
I might not be able to explain why I was so worried about my brother to Ryo, but maybe he could help me understand why anyone stayed here at all. I turned to him. “How did you end up going to school here, anyway?”
He leaned back against the railing, elbows askew. “Scholarship like your brother. It was an offer I couldn’t refuse. And, well, it was a chance to do something different from the path I’d been on before.”
“Do you like it here?” No one I’d seen so far had looked all that happy.
He laughed. “I don’t think many people go to school mainly to have fun. I’ve learned… a lot.” That hint of melancholy passed over his face again, tightening the edges of his mouth for just a second before it vanished. “It’s where I’m meant to be, so obviously everything worked out fine.”
I would have pushed harder in one direction or another, but he was already moving, sauntering over to the narrower side halls that branched off from the classroom area. Two much less grand staircases rambled up toward the third floor at either end.
“All you’ll find upstairs are the bedrooms. Girls in the south wing and guys in the north. Five rooms with six people in each, if they’re all full up. You’re not allowed on the guys’ side, but I can ask around for you and report back.”
Would he? He made the offer so easily. The suspicions that had risen up earlier sent a prickle down my back. I glanced toward the stairs that he’d gestured to at my right. “Sure. I’ll go up and see if any of the girls know about Cade.”
“I’ll find you sometime after, then,” Ryo said, without any indication that he was worried about our paths crossing. He raised his hand in farewell. “We’ll figure this out, Trix.”
He didn’t even know how huge a mystery I had to unravel. The truth was, as friendly as he’d been acting, I was alone here just like I’d always been when Cade wasn’t by my side.
That was fine. No one to piss me off. No one to piss on me. I had way less to worry about that way.
The staircase led to an even smaller hallway with a dormer window over the stairs, two doors on either side and one at the far end. I knocked and then eased open the unlocked door closest to me, and found the cramped bedroom on the other side empty.
As Ryo had said, there were six beds—twins in simple wooden frames—along the walls, each with a bedside table that must have been for personal belongings and a low chest underneath where the students must keep their clothes. The walls held no décor, but from a jacket slung over a bedpost there and a plate left on a bedside table there, I could determine that all of those beds had residents.
I tried each of the other four rooms in turn, making my way down the hall. In the second one, a girl was lying under the covers of one of the beds. I closed the door quickly without taking any more time to look around. The third and fourth were both empty, only five of the beds in each showing signs of occupation. Like with the first, the walls were bare, the furnishings basic—no sign that anyone had tried to make the space at all homey.
Was that a college rule? No wonder the students were depressed if they had to spend the whole school year living like this.
As I stood in the doorway to the fourth bedroom, my mind slipped back to the day I’d been dropped off at the house belonging to my second foster family—the Fricks. When the social worker had brought me around for an initial visit a few days before, the smiling wife had shown us a small but bright bedroom that was supposed to be mine. As soon as the door had closed behind me and my duffel bag on my official arrival, I hadn’t gotten anything but frowns. She’d led me down to a chilly, cement-walled basement room with four metal cots and a creaky dresser each of their four fosters got one drawer in.