Page 37 of You Belong Here

BEFORE: THE SEARCH

I couldn’t find her. The barn was burning and the sirens were crying and I couldn’t find Adalyn anywhere. My bare hand gripped the flashlight and the falling snow seeped into my hiking boots as I ran through the woods.

“Adalyn!” I yelled, her name catching in my throat. I bent over to cough.

I didn’t know where else to look. I couldn’t feel my hands, and the smoke from the fire clung to my jacket, my hair.

They said she did it. They said Adalyn set the fire. It had to be an accident, but she had disappeared into the night.

I thought she wanted me to find her, to explain, but I’d already checked every place I thought she’d go to hide—Cryer’s Quarry, the alley behind the Low Bar—until eventually I thought: The dorm.

I sucked in a wheezing breath and turned around, heading back out of the woods.

In the distance, the flames were visible over the trees. I worried the fire would spread in the wind. Take out the hillside, spread to the campus, come for us all.

Other students had started spilling out of the woods, back to safety. A handful stood wide-eyed in the quad, staring up at the glow in the dark sky. They didn’t even notice me pass.

My ID was in my back pocket, and my fingers were frozen so that I could barely pull out the card. But eventually I was inside, stumbling down the first-floor hall to our room.

“Adalyn!” I called, struggling with the door. I couldn’t escape the scent. Wanted to strip it all off me—

Finally I was inside, but a new chill washed over me.

The room was empty. But the window was wide open, flurries blowing in with the wind.

As if she’d come back here after all but had wanted to remain unseen.

The surface of her desk was bare—laptop missing—and I felt a surge of rage. She’d been here while I was out looking for her, screaming for her.

I threw open the closet door and immediately saw the absence: the small purse where she kept her wallet, the large bag stored on the upper shelf.

I started opening drawers—dresser, desk—but there was nothing left behind for me. No clues. No note. Nothing.

That was when I knew it was true. She didn’t want to be found. Not by me. Not by anyone.

In the days that followed, the police kept issuing promises on the news: “We’re going to find her,” they said. But I knew that was wishful thinking. Time kept moving. A day. A week.

In a month, or two, or three, who would really look that hard for a girl who once started a fire in a small Virginia town? The families of the dead—the Riverses, the Whites—were not the type to either demand or afford private investigators who would keep the case alive after the leads ran cold.

I imagined that as soon as Adalyn crossed a border—a state line, a country checkpoint—she was as good as gone.