Bonnie nodded. “I missed the welcome ceremony.”
Dr. Marshall smiled wryly. “Well, count yourself lucky on that score.” Her smile turned warmer. “But you’ll be reprimanded for missing it. They’ll see you didn’t sign in…”
“Oh, no, Tish Lewis said she’d sign me in.”
“I did not hear that.”
“I’m sorry, Dr. Marshall, but I need the job…”
“Okay, Bonnie, I won’t say anything. But please—try to arrange your visits to the girl during daytime hours, so you won’t risk getting caught again.”
“Oh, thank you, Dr. Marshall.”
The older woman thought of something. “But the outside gates are locked. I’ll need to give you a lift and—”
“No, no, it’s fine. One of the seniors gave me the code for the gate.”
Dr. Marshall sighed. “Do not tell me her name. Then I’d be covering up for three wayward students.”
“Oh, thank you so much, Dr. Marshall. You’re great!”
“Just please rearrange your tutoring schedule, okay?”
Bonnie nodded. She waved good-bye to Dr. Marshall and turned to head back out into the night. As she neared the door, the young man at the counter called over to her.
“Hey, do you need a ride back to the college? It’s pretty dark out there.”
Marjorie was leaning over the counter next to him. “It’s okay, honey. He’s a cop. You can trust him.”
Bonnie smiled. The man had a kind face.
“Thanks anyway,” she said. “I have my bike.”
“Well,” the young cop said, “be careful.”
“I grew up Brooklyn,” Bonnie told him. “Believe me, I know how to take care of myself. Lebanon is like paradise compared to the streets I grew up on.”
The bell jingled again as she left the Bird.
It wasn’t that Bonnie really enjoyed tutoring Amy. The girl was resistant and resentful. Only tonight had she shown any progress. All summer Bonnie had worked with her, trying to get her ready for the fall term. While the other girls on campus had all gone home for the summer, partying in the Hamptons or taking trips to Europe, Bonnie had stayed here, working in the registrar’s office on campus and tutoring Amy in the afternoons. It was really quite baffling. Amy and her older sisters called Bonnie a “rich girl” from Wilbourne—a “Wilbournian” according to townie lingo—while Bonnie’s classmates looked down on her for having to work off campus.
Can’t win for losing, Bonnie thought as she biked through the town square. Halfway there.
She was wearing a pair of shorts and a T-shirt; a baseball cap was pulled down low over her head. She glanced again at her watch. Okay, now she was getting close. It was ten-thirty-five. Twenty-five minutes before the doors of Bentley were sealed shut until seven the next morning. In the event of a fire, they automatically unlocked, but nothing short of a conflagration would get them to open up otherwise.
She pushed on, even though now her legs were starting to burn and her breath was coming in gasps. Six miles into town was a long way on a bicycle. Amy lived out in what was known as “the Banks,” a poorer part of town that reminded Bonnie of her own Brooklyn neighborhood—minus all the trees, of course. She tried to explain to the kid that she wasn’t rich like most Wilbourne girls, that she had grown up in a third-floor apartment over a Greek restaurant. Bonnie wished she could quit the job, but she needed the money. Her parents were sure not sending her any. In any event, the job could only last a few more months at most. There was no way Bonnie could pedal her bike all this way once the weather turned cold.
At last, she passed through the center of town and could see the gates of the school looming in the near distance. Bonnie’s legs ached, and she slowed down. Almost ten minutes to spare, she thought, sliding off the seat and taking deep breaths to try to slow her heart rate down a bit. She’d walk the bike through the gate after punching in the code. Then she could slip through the shadows and scramble into Bentley just in time.
I’m going to take a long hot shower and wash my hair, then just relax. My first class isn’t until eleven tomorrow, so I can sleep in, I might even skip breakfast and take my time getting ready. Maybe Tish has something nice she can let me borrow for the first day of class.
She was walking her bike alongside the tall red brick wall that surrounded the school. She was almost at the gate.
And then she heard something off to the side of the road.
The road was dark. The sky was covered with clouds, blotting out the moon and the stars. Across from the campus stretched deep woods. The noise came again. An animal maybe. Something crunching through the leaves.
Bonnie felt a flicker of fear in her chest, but dismissed it. Right, Bonnie, she scolded herself. Like it’s a bear. Probably a squirrel.
She was no more than ten feet from the front gate. She heard the noise again.
Now, don’t scare yourself, there’s nothing out there—
That’s when she was suddenly bathed in a red light.
“What the heck?”
Great. Just great. Apparently I’ve been caught in a new security system to catch girls who left campus after curfew.
Except the light didn’t seem to come from anywhere. It seemed, rather, just to be: a strange, eerie red glow.
Bonnie turned, ready with her excuses.
But what she saw left the words frozen in her throat.
She tried to scream, but couldn’t.
She dropped her bike. It clattered on the road beside her.
Bonnie ran, heading for the gates of the college as fast as her tired legs could move. She heard the steps coming behind her, crashing through the underbrush on the side of the road, and then directly on her heels.
This time she found she was able to scream.
12
Sue didn’t sleep well. It wasn’t that the bed was uncomfortable, or even that she was in a new and different place for the first time in her life. It was the dreams. They had started almost from the first moment she’d set her head down on the pillow. Weird, crazy dreams that she remembered only in fragments now—a face screaming at a window, a long dark road, a blond girl in a baseball cap riding her bike…
“Good morning,” Malika sang out when the alarm went off at seven-oh-five. “Rise and shine and greet your first day as a Wilbournian!”
Sue sat up in bed. “You’re pretty perky in the morning. Not sure I can get used to that.”
Malika was already dressed and sitting at her desk, sipping a cup of coffee while she read the news on the Internet. “I was very good not to wake you,” she said over her shoulder. “Did you sleep well?”
“No,” Sue grumbled. “Is there more coffee?”
Malika laughed. “I told you not to read Joyce Davenport before going to sleep.”
“Well, something gave me weird dreams.” Sue replied, standing, stretching, stumbling to the bathroom.
Could it have been Joyce Davenport’s strident tone that so upset her and caused her mind to wander all night? The book had been a grab bag of interesting opinion and outrageous nonsense—sprinkled, as Malika had warned, with some heavy helpings of outright bigotry. Arabs were “savages” in Davenport’s description. Mothers on welfare were, one and all, “freeloaders.” But she also talked about personal