Page 16 of You Belong Here

I made it back to Wyatt Valley in record time, just after seven in the morning, as the sun crested the mountains, the town ablaze in orange, like the sky was on fire.

Five hours since the dropped phone call, and still no word from Delilah.

As I drove through the grid of downtown, I didn’t notice anyone out on the streets or sidewalks—but the air felt alive.

The branches and the leaves were swaying overhead; an empty plastic bag, caught in the breeze, drifted along the edge of the pavement; an American flag fluttered from the front porch of the white corner house, colors vibrant.

The howling had swept through the valley in the night.

The windy season was here.

The downtown seemed like it always did after a windstorm. Leaves had blown from the trees into the yards and driveways. Pieces of debris and loose paper crept along the edges of the streets, caught at the lip of the curb.

I passed my parents’ empty house, then the burned-out lot on College Lane, yellow caution tape rippling across the yard next door.

I entered campus through the service road, weaving around the perimeter.

The construction vehicles were more visible from this side, tucked away from the central footpaths.

Muddy tire tracks veered on and off the pavement as I passed the location of the old student center, now a gaping hole.

I lowered the windows of the car as I approached upper campus, as if I might hear something in the wind. But the only noise was the churn of my engine, gears shifting on the incline.

The dorm parking area was mostly empty—students weren’t permitted to keep cars on campus—but the bike rack was overflowing.

I parked in the back corner, just inside the edge of the lot, knowing Delilah’s room was on the third floor, with a clear view down.

Behind the building, the wind funneled through in a soft whistle, and I felt the mountain chill of the early-morning hour.

Delilah had probably gotten back late and was sleeping soundly upstairs. She rarely called me before noon on a weekend.

I stood behind the dorm, staring up, counting the windows to where I believed hers would be.

What would she think if she saw me out here?

I called her cell one last time, but it went straight to voicemail again. My text from the night before still hadn’t been delivered. My throat was tight with fear. I had convinced myself that by the time I arrived here, she would’ve checked in.

Now that I was here, the panic had taken hold fully.

I tried to talk myself down. To act rationally.

I circled the building until I was in the front quad connecting all the dorms, a span of green between a perimeter of gray stone buildings, the forest stretching outward beyond them.

I wasn’t surprised to find the front door of the building locked.

The doors to the dorms had an electronic entry system that worked with the physical ID cards the students received at orientation or the digital ones on their phones.

Unlike the academic buildings, which were locked only at night, the dorms required the tap of a card or phone at all hours.

I turned around, taking in the quad. There were blue-light emergency phones positioned on the brick pathways between each building, a promise of safety. The closest one to her dorm was just before the spot where a trail branched off into the woods.

My eyes traced the route from the woods to the phone, and from the phone to the front door of the dorm, looking for signs that something had happened here—evidence of chaos, of a chase, of an accident—but everything felt typical for a sleepy college campus on a Saturday morning.

It was probably too early even for the dining hall to be open.

I sat on the bench at the corner of the path. I’d have to find the number for Raven the RA, ask if she could let me in. But just as I pulled out my cell, ready to search the website for a directory, the front door swung open.

I jumped up as a man in a gray uniform emerged. In the morning chill, he wore a black windbreaker, zipped closed, straining against his gut. Lenny, I thought—the man who had fixed the window inside Delilah’s room, who’d told us this was his building.

He stood in the entrance as I quickly approached, door resting against his shoulder, like I’d startled him yet again.

“Well, hey there,” he said.

“Hi, Lenny,” I said. “I’m Beckett Bowery, Delilah’s mom.” I gestured toward the rooms overhead.

He nodded. “I remember. Room 302.” The keys jangled off his hip as he shifted, checking the time on his watch.

“She’s not answering my calls,” I said, feeling the lump tightening my throat. “She’s late,” I added, the lie slipping out so easily.

He looked over his shoulder into the lobby.

“Probably the power surges,” he said, frowning.

“Bet her alarm never even went off. That’s why I was out here this morning at the crack of dawn.

Systems had to be reset.” He narrowed his eyes at the rustling trees along the perimeter.

“The wind last night, if you can believe it.”

I nodded. But I wasn’t sure if I did believe it.

No, I knew what used to happen during the first howling—how local kids would flip off the power under the guise of the wind.

I’d done it once myself, senior year of high school.

Getting a boost from Cliff over the high locked gate, dropping into the utility space before climbing back over on my own.

“Well,” Lenny said, stepping to the side, “you enjoy your visit.”

In the end, for all the safety protocols on campus, nothing could beat human instinct: He held the door right open for me.

I veered from the lobby, heading up the steps to the third floor. About half the doors here had a sign with the roommates’ names. Delilah and I had hung a blue-and-white-striped D on the left side of her door, leaving space for her roommate’s.

But now the door to Room 302 was bare. I rechecked the room number, frowning, then felt a surge of anger displacing the fear. Wondering if this place had already started to change her.

There were signs of life all around: a pair of muddy sneakers left outside the door across the hall; a toilet flushing somewhere above, water rushing in the pipes. But nothing stirred from inside Delilah’s room.

I imagined her inside—dead asleep, maybe even hungover. Out of my watch for the first time and taking full advantage. I thought of how I would explain my presence to her— Surprise, I’m taking you to eat! I tried calling first— hoping she didn’t read the panic in the hollows under my eyes.

I knocked gently on the door, cringing at the way it echoed down the hall. I strained to hear motion inside, but the only thing that registered was a cough coming from another room nearby.

I used the side of my fist, knocked harder, the noise managing to sound both dull and violent—something that shook the door against the frame.

Movement then—a rustling of sheets. I pictured Delilah slipping out of bed, bare feet on the cool tile floor, wearing a matching pajama set, hair in that messy bun she slept in each night.

I stepped back in a wave of anticipation. The door cracked open, and one sleepy dark eye peered out.

Her roommate, Hana. I’d seen pictures of her during their first week. Tall and thin, Korean descent, and, like my daughter had noted, a fan of all black.

“Hi,” I said, “Hana, right?” I craned my neck, trying to peer past her, deeper into the room. “I’m Delilah’s mom.”

Hana just frowned, not opening the door any farther. In the pictures Delilah had sent, I’d only seen Hana smiling. I couldn’t reconcile it with the girl in front of me, who seemed unmoved by my presence.

Her silence stretched on, though it was probably because I’d woken her and she was confused. “Can I…” I gestured to the door, trying to push it open, but she stuck a foot in the way just as I got a better view of the room.

Delilah’s bed: fully made, electric blue comforter pulled up.

No shoes kicked off on the throw carpet or laptop open on the desk.

Hana’s decor, dark and moody, had encroached across the center line, so that it was her black backpack hanging from Delilah’s desk chair, her dark clothes folded in a pile on Delilah’s bed, like she was using it as a staging area.

Delilah’s name in lights over her bed had been removed as well.

“She’s not here?” Hana said, but like a question—like I should know better.

My eyes slid back to Hana’s, as if I had been wrong about the source of the danger after all. As if it were Hana, and not the school, who had managed to strip Delilah’s personality from this place.

“She doesn’t stay here anymore,” she added, something sly in her tone. As if she were telling on my daughter. Looking to embarrass me. Something I surely would have known if I were a better parent.

The school chose the roommates based on surveys they turned in beforehand.

Delilah had told me they weren’t a great match, but I figured they just didn’t have much in common.

Not that there was any animosity. But standing here, I wasn’t so sure.

I wondered if she’d come to find it unmanageable.

If she instead stayed with other friends whom she meshed with better.

“Where—” I began.

“Excuse me!” A voice carried sharply from down the hall. A woman in a terry-cloth robe with her hair wrapped in a towel stood just outside the bathrooms, shower caddy in hand. “How did you get in here?”

I frowned, trying to understand why this young woman was acting as an authority figure.

A strand of dark red hair had fallen free of her hair towel, and the white fabric was stained slightly pink around the edges from the hair dye.

She looked different, younger, without the maroon lipstick and winged eyeliner, but this was the RA, Raven.

Hana pushed the door fully shut then, the click of the lock resounding through the hall.

I turned to face Raven—I’d been trying to find her number after all.