Page 7 of You Belong Here

Delilah and I stood at the edge of campus, staring up at the landscape.

The gates to the college stood open, as they tended to be only twice each year, by tradition: once at orientation and again at graduation—though there were open walkways on either side.

The college property extended back from the gates, stone buildings and grass quads connected by brick paths and flights of steps disappearing into the trees.

Delilah walked like she knew where she was going, pausing only briefly to read each academic building name as she passed. I wondered if my parents had taken her here on her visits, letting her explore the empty campus when she was young, like I had done.

The dorms were set farther up the hill, deeper in the woods—designated as upper campus. My father was set to meet us there with my car for move-in.

Delilah stopped abruptly in front of the stone building with arched wooden doors that had always reminded me of a church from the Middle Ages. Her smile stretched wide. “This is it, right? Beckett Hall?”

I nodded, grinning back. Only the people I’d grown up with knew I was named after the building where both of my parents once taught—my mother on the second floor, my father on the third.

It was the original structure of the campus from back when it was an all-boys school, with classes and dorm rooms in a single building.

Now it was the center of social sciences.

Sometimes I feared it was the place of my conception.

“Take my picture,” she instructed. She posed beside the sign, arms outstretched, tilting her head back and smiling at the sky.

I stood across the path and took several shots as she changed positions.

She didn’t care that people were watching, and I loved that about her.

I envied the way she didn’t feel compelled to choose words carefully, as if she had to present a curated version of herself.

She was all rough edges, moving through the world like an unstoppable force that had not yet been tested.

There was a poster taped to the wooden doors that seemed student-made: Orientation Tours! written in purple marker and outlined in silver Sharpie.

I followed her inside, where I saw a group congregated in the second atrium, presumably ready for the start of tour.

“Hold on,” I said as Delilah started walking that way.

I needed a moment to take it all in, recalibrate.

I ran my fingers against the lobby wall, where the paint must’ve smoothed over the once-gritty stone.

I tapped at a low door that was now painted the same color as the walls, so it almost disappeared to the eye.

There was no knob, but a keyhole was faintly visible next to the seam.

“What is that?” Delilah asked, eyes tracing the border of the doorframe.

“This used to be the entrance to the old steam tunnels,” I told her, voice low. “They connected all the buildings of lower campus. They’re mostly sealed off now.”

Sealed off, I knew, after two people had succumbed to the smoke, trapped inside the tunnel system at the far edge of campus, underneath the old storage barn.

Delilah ran her hands across the hidden doorway, grinning. “Have you been down there?” she asked, like it was all fun and games. There was a time when I saw it the same way. A dancing beam of light. The hiss of steam. Laughter in the dark.

A door slammed shut from down the hall, jolting me back to the present. Now all I could imagine was the claustrophobia. The dark and the disorientation, hands desperately groping for an exit—

I felt a rush of panic but tried to play it off. “You’re forgetting I practically grew up in this building.”

I’d been raised in these halls. My father had been the first person to take me down to the tunnels, as a way to avoid the winter weather. By high school, I could lead the other town kids through every secret shortcut, winding through the narrow, arched tunnels, using the pipes as a road map.

Most of us from town knew the ins and outs of campus. We thought of it as our own—the students only temporary inhabitants.

For fun, Cliff Simmons once sneaked onto campus during orientation, pretending to be a new student, seeing how much he could get away with.

I’d been helping my parents, so I’d seen him asking questions on a campus tour; sitting with a group of students in the cafeteria; playing Ultimate Frisbee on the quad.

Sometimes he’d catch my eye as I passed, give me a secret grin.

I was a year behind Cliff in high school, dated him on and off during my junior year, and then something a little more casual after he graduated.

He worked construction, I knew; he hadn’t been able to afford college full-time and took classes at night.

But by the time I’d graduated and enrolled at Wyatt, we had moved further down diverging paths, until I stopped seeing him around—like he was avoiding me.

As if I could no longer be trusted now that I was on the other side of the divide between the town and the college.

“What else?” Delilah asked, eyes flashing. Maybe this was the way to bridge the time, grasp the past and fully acknowledge it—letting it go in the process.

I grinned and lowered my voice even more. “Everything echoes in here. If it were just the two of us, I could go to the back atrium and hear you perfectly.”

The acoustical quirk was an architectural feature but generally impractical, considering this building was usually bustling with activity.

“Here,” I said, hands on her shoulders, positioning her at the center of the atrium. “Be quiet.”

I stood beside her, listening to the sudden proximity of the conversation down the hall, in the opposite atrium. Their words were indecipherable, blurring together, but it sounded like we were almost in the same room.

Delilah took a step closer, head tilted to the side, like she was trying to make something out. I knew, of course, that Delilah would love things like this. A history full of secrets, passed on just to her.

“Shhh,” Delilah said abruptly, though I hadn’t spoken. “They’re coming.” She pulled me back from the center of the atrium, like we were about to be caught eavesdropping.

A young woman in a red polo was walking backward toward us, giving an overview of the school’s history. She paused when she noticed us lingering at the edge of the lobby. “Are you two here for the tour? We’re just getting started.”

Delilah glanced over at me before nodding. “We are,” she said, slipping into the group.

I kept at a distance as we moved through lower campus, though Delilah stayed near the front, listening to the guide’s practiced speech, highlighting the health center hours, the logistics of the meal plan—all the things they might’ve skipped over on a general admissions tour.

The guide tried to hurry us along as we passed the location of the old student center, which was now surrounded by cones and razed to the ground; she claimed that the construction for the new center was a sign of strong financial health, of progress.

But in the in-between, all that remained was a gaping, empty pit where a few yellow construction vehicles sat idle behind the hole.

It was a huge eyesore, and presumably loud. I guessed progress was a better pitch. A reframing, which we were always good at here.

“This is a very safe campus,” the tour guide continued, stopping at one of the blue-light emergency phone towers I’d seen glowing in the night.

“But if you press the button on any of these”—she tapped the metal pole—“the campus police will be here within minutes.” Then she smirked.

“Don’t try it for kicks, though. There are cameras. ”

We’d stopped at the bell tower just before a set of steps leading to upper campus when I felt a hand on my shoulder.

“Oh my God,” a voice said from just behind me. “Beck?”

I spun around, stomach plummeting. Like I’d been waiting for this moment.

Or as if something had been waiting, all this time, for me.

A petite woman with wide-set hazel eyes stared back.

I didn’t recognize her at first. Her straight blond hair was cut to her shoulders, and she wore a tight white tank over her tanned, athletic build.

I thought she might’ve been wearing a tennis skort.

“Violet Wharton,” she said, one manicured hand to her chest. “Violet Harvey, once upon a time.”

“Oh my God,” I said, repeating her sentiment—buying myself some time.

I hadn’t seen Violet in years, and it took me a moment to reconcile the woman in front of me with the one I’d known growing up, in ripped jeans and heavy eyeliner.

It was possible I’d last seen her at a party in the quarry, stumbling close to the edge with a drink in one hand, cigarette in the other.

Violet had been four years ahead of me in school, so I knew of her more than anything.

Our high school was about the same size as the college, pulling from a handful of surrounding towns.

From what I remembered, she was sharp and funny and magnetic.

With our age difference, she’d mostly ignored me back then.

But now she was talking to me like we’d been old friends, finally reconnecting.

She grabbed my wrist as if to share a confidence, then nodded to Delilah, who had sidled up next to me, drawn by the conversation.

“She looks just like you did at that age. I thought I was seeing a ghost, ” she said.

Then she smiled. “It’s a compliment,” she continued, getting a grin from Delilah in response. “I promise.”