Page 19 of You Belong Here

The kids were clever.

The path here had not existed when I was a student. The access point was barely visible until you were inside the tree line, hidden from view. It was narrow, unmarked, like offshoots of a main trail on a mountain hike that would lure you to a hidden overlook.

All it took was one step inside the trees, and I was back—racing through the woods, screaming her name into the night. Adalyn, where are you? The crunch of fresh snow and the cold wind stinging my cheeks, my exposed neck, my bare hands.

Twenty years later and the panic and adrenaline from the past were seeping into this moment, tinging it with something else—dark and dangerous and unspoken.

Inside the woods, there were no blue emergency lights guiding the way, promising safety. Here, there were no cameras to follow your trail. Here, you were on your own.

This was a place you’d go if you didn’t want to be seen.

The trail was just wide enough for one person to walk comfortably, though I had to duck under the branches at times. I couldn’t imagine this being used for running. No, I was sure—Bryce had been out here for something else.

I moved with the terrain, letting gravity guide me, drawing me down, down, down.

Soon I was sure I was off campus, but the trail kept going, briefly disappearing in sections, only to pick up again on the other side of a tree.

In the dark, it would be so easy to take a wrong step and head deeper into the woods, disoriented.

To panic. To lose a phone—or your way.

A rustling sound came from my left, and I stopped, standing perfectly still. But the wind quickly drowned out any signs of movement.

“Hello?” I called.

Nothing. My imagination, maybe. An animal. A dead branch knocked loose in the wind, falling to earth.

In the daylight, the wind was nothing to fear, just a hindrance, something to push against as you walked up the hill to your dorms. We used to call the slight dip between upper and lower campuses the border, where the wind caught in a gully behind the bell tower, pushing sideways—like it was some supernatural boundary trying to keep us from crossing.

In front of me, the trail abruptly stopped at a row of trees. This path had gone nowhere but down, and I’d have to retrace my steps up to make it back to my car. But before I turned around, there was a flash of movement through the trees. A blur of silver, moving quickly—here and gone.

A car. A road.

I wove between the trees, maneuvering over a hedge of low bushes, prickly burrs clinging to my joggers. The end of the path was hidden from the other side as well. When I finally emerged from the woods, I found myself at the edge of a familiar road—directly across from the Low Bar.

The front window was dark, but a subtle green glow came from within.

The back room had always been for the late-night crowd, with people packed in the gaps between tables.

As I approached, I spotted a collection of cigarette butts on the sidewalk, a No Smoking sign on the front door, and another below it that said We Check IDs.

They’d gotten stricter—or at least put on a show of it.

I pulled at the glass front door, but it was locked.

Inside, I could see straight to the pool tables in the back room, and the outline of neon signs gone dark.

There was one left glowing, probably by accident, in the outline of a green beer bottle—the cause of the eerie glow.

The shadow of a jukebox fell just below.

It was probably the same one I used to lean against, dart in hand, shot glass in another.

Aiming, and bracing myself backward for balance.

A collection of dollar bills strewn on the high-top table beside me, from people who should’ve known better by now.

Adalyn, catching my eye from across the room, already tracking down the next victim.

Growing up, I’d spent years practicing on the dartboard in the old student center before asking my parents to buy me one for my birthday; I’d hung it against the house in our backyard.

This was our place that final year—just one of the many things in town I’d introduced her to. Something very different from her country club upbringing.

Adalyn loved making money off the local patrons, even though she didn’t need it.

She loved being the one in control. I think, above all, she loved a game.

We’d spent so many Friday nights at the Low Bar that final fall, pushing past closing time, convincing the bartender to stay just a little longer .

She’d tip him from our winnings, order drinks she didn’t consume, offer cash for things around the room she had no intention of wearing: a chunky bracelet; cheap rhinestone sunglasses; a hat for a sports team she didn’t follow.

But I couldn’t imagine that Bryce had been coming back from the bar at this hour.

It was closed down, with no signs of activity.

Maybe he’d been at his own house, somewhere nearby.

I wasn’t sure where Violet Harvey, now Wharton, lived anymore, though I could probably find out easily with a question or two.

The only storefront open—and just barely—was the deli, catty-corner across the intersection. The sign on the inside of the front door was turning from Closed to Open as I watched.

My heart thudded, then skipped. The deli.

I pictured Bryce not coming from the bar at all. But from behind the deli, where—anyone who lived here would know—you’d find the best shortcut to the quarry.

The back of the deli had no windows—just a metal access door used mostly for deliveries.

A single black sedan was parked in the small makeshift lot, which was really an unpaved area of patchy grass that was never able to fully take root under the car traffic.

The black sedan was parked directly in front of the trailhead, as if barricading the entrance, hiding it from view.

Unlike the path from the campus to the bar, the trail entrance here would be readily apparent without this car in the way. There once was a sign stuck in the dirt—a hand-painted arrow beside the words Cryer’s Quarry— but it had long since been removed, probably to dull the allure of it.

There was also an unpaved access road that led to the quarry from the other side. But a chain hung across the dirt road, with Private Property signs nailed into the surrounding trees.

Years ago, it belonged to the mining company that had dug it out for granite or limestone—I was never sure which. I wondered if, like Fraternity Row, the property had been relinquished back to the town.

There had been signs all around warning us to keep out, but we did not. I doubted the kids who lived here now did, either.

When I was in high school, Cryer’s Quarry was the place the locals met up on weekend nights.

Where the dark yawn of the abyss and the darker water below beckoned.

Where Cliff Simmons dared his friends to jump.

Where I floated on my back in the dark and dared him to find me.

Where the water rushing in and out of my ears sounded like a revving engine, a thrumming pulse—something threatening to consume me.

This place used to belong just to the locals. But maybe things had changed—another shifting boundary; another change of ownership.

I wove around the car and started down the path, which was wider than the one hidden across the street.

This was more official: a hiking trail that continued to weave upward, even beyond the quarry.

I could orient myself perfectly as the terrain rose and fell, even after all this time.

Like something seared into the core of me.

Eventually the woods opened up to a dirt picnic area set just before the old mining site—the original reason for this town’s existence.

Now there were newer Do Not Enter signs, courtesy of JW Enterprises.

I couldn’t imagine what they intended to do with this place.

There was just exposed sedimentary rock and a forbidden swimming pit below.

The water was always shockingly cold, seeping in from the cool underground, no matter the summer heat.

It had been nearly seven hours since the dropped call—seven hours when Delilah could’ve been out here in the dark.

And suddenly I felt the same fear as my father, who’d reprimanded me for driving through the mountains in the night.

How easy it would be to someone unfamiliar with the landscape to slip and fall in.

The water had never been deep enough that we couldn’t touch the bottom, but that somehow made it even more dangerous.

There were so many ways to get hurt. To jump where you shouldn’t, bones jarring against the shallow bottom; to trip, hit your head on the exposed rock, legs gently sliding out beneath you as your body disappeared under the surface.

I’d heard enough news stories, seen enough grainy video footage—the type that shook every parent to the core: a teen, seemingly disoriented, under the influence, last seen wandering into the dark. Wandering toward a river. Toward a dark alley. Toward a stranger.

I imagined Delilah running through these woods, lost. Hearing footsteps gaining on her from behind, difficult to distinguish under the sound of the howling.

Turning to look over her shoulder, phone in hand, dark hair wild.

Tripping and falling forward. Her phone slipping from her grip as she braced for anything to break her fall.

The shock of cold water stealing her breath—

I was practically running now, racing to the crest of the quarry, thighs burning, heartbeat resounding in my skull. I needed to see. To disprove all the horrors of my imagination.

The last time I’d been out here was during the search for Adalyn.

That night, I’d tried to imagine anyplace she might go.

I’d thought she might be hiding out at a place where only I might find her.

That was before I realized that while I’d been out desperately searching for her, she’d raced back to the dorm, preparing to flee.

It had been much colder then, the surface of the swimming hole frozen over, with a fresh layer of snow on top so that you couldn’t even tell there was water underneath. Then, like now, there was no disturbance to the surrounding area.

Finally the edge: The water below was protected from the wind, eerily still, and eerily blue—so clear I could see straight to the rocky bottom. I found myself relaxing, hand to heart, like I was willing it to slow down.

In the daylight, the bright blue water appeared deeper than it did in my memory, the walls lighter, rimmed with chalky white, landscape greener, with trees taking root in the grooves, like some sort of Eden.

I took a moment to sit, muscles trembling. I was out of shape and out of breath, and I wondered if the water was safe to drink.

I felt like I had escaped something. Proved to myself that history had not repeated itself. That humanity wasn’t stuck in the same vicious cycle with only a new frame of reference.

No, it was just me, panicking. Unable to let go, as my mother had so keenly implied. Unprepared to deal with all the uncertainty of my daughter out in the world on her own for the first time.

Whatever may have happened last night, it was over and done. Most likely, Delilah was being a college kid, staying out late, crashing with new friends—or a boyfriend she hadn’t yet told me about—and would eventually see my messages when she logged onto her accounts.

I was standing, brushing the dirt from the back of my pants, when a flash of red at the corner of the quarry caught my eye.

Something new. Recent.

I leaned over the edge to get a better view but couldn’t quite make it out. No, I’d have to go down.

The stratified levels of rock provided sloping steps; we’d used them to climb out of the quarry during high school. I had also used them to ease myself into the cool water, rather than jump.

The steps seemed more precarious now. My shoes had less traction; my age had made me more cautious. I lowered myself carefully, leaning into the landscape, one hand on the chalky rock as I descended.

When I reached the lowest level, I still had to lean out over the water to see clearly. The flash of red looked like a glove or a scarf.

I used a nearby stick to reach forward, pull it closer in the water.

When I lifted the stick, the red fabric hung limply, dripping water. A hat, I was guessing. Something lost nearby in another time of year, until the howling wind last night blew it over the edge.

I removed it from the stick, stuck my hand inside.

There were three round holes cut into the lower fabric.

A face, hollow-eyed, staring back.

A mask.

An old hat, holes cut with a pair of scissors.

My hand started shaking, the cold water trailing down my forearm.

I knew what this was from. What it was for.

Kids, out in the first howling of the year. A game of chase. A tally of names.

Like the tradition, banned or not, was still here.