Page 18 of You Belong Here

BEFORE: THE TUNNELS

“We’re not supposed to be here,” Maggie said.

It was the same thing she’d said at fifteen, during the first party we attended together at Cryer’s Quarry.

And at sixteen, arriving at the tattoo parlor two towns away that was notoriously lax with the age requirement.

And now, at seventeen, as I slipped a skeleton key into the door to the tunnels under Beckett Hall.

She said it like an involuntary impulse. But she still always came.

Cliff was with us, and I was showing off—campus was supposed to be shut for winter break.

I flicked my flashlight, shining the beam down the steps, guiding the way.

At the bottom of the stairs, Cliff reached his hand up to the pipes running above our heads. I could hear the hiss of steam moving through the system.

“Don’t touch that,” I said. I had no idea if they were dangerous; if they were flammable; if they could burn you.

“We’re going to get lost,” Maggie said, her footsteps quickening behind me.

“We’re not,” I said. There were no labels on the tunnel walls, but there was a map in the archive room. “This was how they used to transport goods from the president’s house to the main campus in the winter and vice versa.” I was repeating the story my father had told me.

We reached a T intersection, a locked door to either side—a dead end, it seemed. But my key worked on every door down here. We veered left.

I felt Maggie close on my heels, felt her nerves transferring to me. We were deep in the underbelly of campus. I knew how easy it would be to get disoriented down here.

“Cliff?” I called. I spun around, flashlight searching the long empty hall.

“Right here,” he said, grabbing me from behind, laughing. The flashlight fell from my hand as I gasped, light spinning and then cutting out.

“Asshole,” I said, but I was smiling, fingers lacing with his in the dark.

My heart was still racing as Maggie picked up the flashlight and turned it back on. “That’s not funny,” she said.

“It was a little bit,” I said, grinning. “But we have to stay together. You need the key for every door down here.”

We kept moving—left, then right, my memory growing a little hazy down here on my own, without my dad’s insight—but we eventually reached the end of the path, where a stone staircase led to a door directly overhead.

I used the key and pushed the exit open, emerging from what seemed like a trapdoor in the floor.

We were inside a wooden structure, slants of light cutting through the gaps.

“Okay,” Cliff said, stepping into the empty room. “We’re definitely not supposed to be here.”

Maggie hesitated for a moment before joining us. “Where are we?” she asked.

“The barn by the old president’s house,” I said. It was chilly, uninsulated. Outside, I knew, a perimeter of stone circled what used to be a home, fireplace still half standing.

I felt Cliff eyeing the skeleton key hanging from around my neck. “Can I borrow that? Get a copy made?” he asked. “We could use this as a shortcut during the howling next year.”

“No,” I said, tucking it away, under my shirt. “I have to get it back into the archive room before my dad notices I borrowed his access.”

As I led them back down the steps, I wondered if I should’ve shared this with them. Next year, I would be a student here. On the other side.

Cliff pushed at the closed door in front of him in the tunnel. “It’s locked,” he said.

“I know. They lock behind you,” I said. My dad said the inner doors had been installed as a safety feature, to keep the sections sealed off in the event of an issue with the steam pipes. “You need the key.”

When what I really meant was: You need me.

I led them into the next section of the dark maze, heading back.

“Pull the door shut behind you,” I said, waiting until I heard the latch.