Page 26 of You Belong Here

It was true. We had never been friends. We had been drawn to each other as teenagers and, just as quickly, had fallen apart.

Like me and Maggie. And here I was, trying to stake a claim to the past only when I needed it.

Eventually we had been on opposing sides of a tragedy.

Me, a friend of the suspect. Cliff, a friend of the victims. Whatever sense of obligation once existed between us, it was long gone.

He was messing with me, just like someone was messing around in my parents’ house. He had information—something I wanted—and he could finally hold it over me. I could sense the power of it radiating off him, like when he’d caught me in the woods during the howling my freshman year.

“I saw you, you know,” I said, and watched as his demeanor slowly changed, the corners of his mouth pulling down first. “In the bell tower. At orientation. Like you were up there watching everyone.”

He let out a single incredulous laugh. “I wasn’t watching, Beckett. The automation system’s broken, so I had to set it off manually during orientation. We’re still trying to get it serviced, in case you haven’t noticed.”

I hadn’t. I’d heard the bell tower the night we arrived in Wyatt Valley, and I’d heard it during orientation, the noise drawing my attention that way in the first place.

But he was right—if I gave it any thought, I hadn’t heard it any time throughout this morning.

There was nothing to wake the students. No chime marking the hours from nine a.m. to eight p.m. It had been the soundtrack to my first twenty-one years of life.

A dull thud came from somewhere upstairs, and my head jerked up, every muscle on high alert.

“My cat,” he said as an orange tabby peered down at us from between the slats of the hall balcony. And then he sighed. “All right, come on.” He gestured me toward the closed door on the side of the foyer. “What else are old friends for?”

Behind the door, inside his office, I knew, were things I was not supposed to see.

The blinds were kept closed, so the wood-paneled walls seemed even darker, like we were stepping into the past. The two wide-screen monitors side by side on his desk, connected to a laptop—as if he were keeping an eye on things after all.

And the photo on the windowsill of a young boy, five or six, with side-swept blond hair.

Cliff took the seat behind his desk. “My son,” he said, noticing me looking. “He’s with his mother right now.” His mother. Sounded like a divorce. My eyes drifted to Cliff’s bare hand: no ring.

He shifted the photo before opening his laptop, as if warning me it wasn’t up for discussion.

Maybe I’d read him wrong. Maybe this was why he was letting me see what he knew.

He was a parent, too. Maybe these were fears he could understand—the nightmare of things that could happen when you weren’t paying attention.

He gestured for me to sit in the gray love seat against the wall, but I thought he was trying to keep me back while he entered the log-in information. Now I wondered if it was even his.

“I’m doing this as a favor,” he said, in warning. As if there were things he was worried about, too. A threat I had implied: Cliff Simmons in the bell tower. Cliff Simmons accessing the cameras.

A rumor I might be capable of spreading: Dean Simmons is watching.

Right now, I didn’t even care if he was doing something he shouldn’t be. Right now, the more he could see, the better.

The glow of the large monitors turned his face an unnatural hue in the dimly lit room. “Like I said,” he began, eyes skimming the screen, “I can’t access the cameras. I can check the card scans. But that’s it. Anything else needs to go through campus police.”

How many students thought themselves untraceable, not realizing someone could track their every move?

“Here we go,” he said, and I stood from the love seat, stepping closer. “She entered Beckett Hall just before midnight last night.” He looked away from the monitor, up at me, face stoic.

“That’s it?”

He swiveled the monitor so it was facing me. Delilah’s identifying details were listed at the top: Bowery, Delilah. Class of 2029 . He placed his thumb directly on the screen, beside the time stamp from Friday night, so I would know he wasn’t lying.

“That’s her last card scan,” he said. “But if she was with someone else, her card wouldn’t necessarily be used.”

“She could’ve also been using her phone to get inside, right?” I asked. It was the first thing she had set up during orientation. A newer technology than we’d had as students.

His eyes cut to me. “Yes, they have the card programmed in their phones, too. This system doesn’t tell us which she used.”

“What was she doing over there at midnight?” I asked. Beckett Hall was an academic and administrative building. It would’ve been empty in the evening.

“I have no idea. Studying? There’s a library on the second floor.” He raised an eyebrow, as if he knew it was unlikely on a Friday night. “Look, she’s fine. This was barely eleven hours ago. She’s not missing, Beckett.”

But I was already picturing her running across campus in the night. Hiding. Desperately holding her phone in front of her to gain access to the locked building. Heading to a place I’d once told her about, to get away—

“Cliff, do you have a key to the tunnels?” I asked.

He stared at me, unblinking, and there was something dark and dangerous hovering between us. “No,” he said slowly. “Do you ?”

I shook my head.

“Half of the entrances are sealed off now anyway,” he said, throat moving as he swallowed. “They don’t connect all the buildings like they used to.”

The dancing beam of a flashlight in front of me, leading the way through the tunnels. Nervous laughter in the dark, footsteps echoing—

I shook off the memory. “Can you do me a favor?” I asked.

“That was the favor,” he said, deadpan. His gaze lingered. The droll humor bridging the time, softening the moment.

“Bryce Wharton.” I’d seen him returning from the woods this morning; I wanted to know if he’d also been out on campus, roaming through the same buildings.

“What about him?” he said.

“Can you see if he was with her?”

He turned the monitor away from view. “I absolutely cannot. Look, if you want the campus police to investigate, they will, if she’s really missing.

But it seems to me she could be doing any number of things.

Come on, Beck, we were that age once.” He smiled slightly, and I imagined we were thinking the same thing—the way I once sneaked him into that library off hours, when no one was around.

Already kissing him as I pulled him into the vacant study room.

I shook my head. The dropped call. The writing on my bedroom walls. The intruder in my parents’ house. “I think something’s happening here,” I said, raw and honest. “This isn’t like her.”

He pinched the bridge of his nose, squeezing his eyes shut for a moment.

“Okay, look,” he began, voice low. “I’m a dean of students.

I do know she had some trouble with her living situation.

Put in a request to be moved. We couldn’t grant it.

” He raised his arms in an exaggerated shrug.

“That’s the gist of it. I haven’t heard anything since. I assume everything worked itself out.”

“She asked for a new roommate?” Maybe that was what Raven couldn’t tell me.

“Actually, she wanted to be moved from the entire dorm .”

God, how bad had it been? I couldn’t believe she hadn’t told me. I’d felt that same cold shock when the acceptance letter had arrived, realizing there were secrets she had learned to keep from me.

I thought of the calls she made late at night as she was walking home. Like she was afraid to return. Like she was waiting for me to say something, to ask the right question—

“We’re at full capacity,” he continued. “But she’s okay. Freshmen can take a while to settle. I think she’s getting along fine in her classes, and I see her eating lunch with a group. Plus, she seems to be pretty comfortable off campus. Reminds me a little of you, honestly.”

“You’re watching her,” I said. I hadn’t been wrong about that.

“I’ve kept an eye on her,” he corrected.

“Why?”

“Because she’s yours, Beck. Why do you think?

” He shook his head with a look that managed to cut straight to the heart.

“I’ll talk to campus security. If they think she could really be missing and isn’t just, you know, being eighteen, you’ll be the first to know.

I promise.” He reached over the desk. “Your phone?”

I handed it to him, watched as he input his number. Like we’d met in a bar and he was connecting us for a hopeful would-be date. But this wasn’t flirtatious. I felt nothing but panic.

“So you know where to reach me,” he said. It occurred to me he probably had my contact all along: It was in the system, listed under Delilah’s personal information.

I jutted my chin toward his computer once more. “Can you get me Violet’s address?”

His eyes slowly slid my way again. “Excuse me?”

“Violet Wharton. She’s not one of your students. There’s no conflict of interest.”

He set his jaw. “Joseph Wharton is a big developer in the area, Beckett. I don’t need any enemies here.”

I leaned on his desk, fingertips tingling. “I know it’s public information and that she’s somewhere up in the Estates. I can search it online when I’m back on Wi-Fi, but I figure it’s right there in front of you. I won’t say it came from you.”

I knew I was pushing it—that I’d far exceeded the limits of any claim to friendship—but he took a deep breath as his fingers flew across the keypad. He took a sticky note, wrote the address down, pulled it off the pad.

“Listen, don’t go messing around on campus anymore without permission. I’ll liaise with security, get back to you.”

He sounded like a stranger. Like he was playing some role again. Maybe playing me.

“You’re going to liaise, ” I repeated sharply, and noticed him flinch. As if I’d broken through, finally cracked the shell. Everything shifted then. A mask sliding over the casualness between us.

He stood slowly. “Let’s make a deal,” he said in a low voice. “You don’t treat me like I’m an idiot, and I won’t treat you like you’re a liar whose parents sent you out of the country to get you away from the investigation.”

I clenched my jaw, stepped back. How easy it was to cut back to the past with a single sentence. But he had it wrong.

“That’s not what happened,” I said. “The school practically kicked me out.” After my interview with Fred Mayhew.

He rolled his eyes. “I find that hard to believe. That’s not how we do things—”

“Oh, were you here then? Want me to show you the letter? It’s probably at my parents’ place in some file. They made me take a leave of absence. I had no choice, Cliff.”

He put up a hand. “I’m just saying. Old perceptions aren’t the nicest, are they. Let’s not assume the worst about each other, huh?”

Cliff handed me the sticky note, the corner of his mouth slightly raised. I took the address and slid it into my back pocket, not breaking eye contact.

For all that he insisted about old perceptions, he looked at me like he could see right through me.

Like twenty years of time didn’t matter at all.