It would take some time to work, and the universe was still howling in her ears.

She needed help.

She slipped into the hallway, bumping against the door frame as she went. She went to Janelle’s door and knocked. After a moment, there was a sleepy, “Yeah?”

Stevie tried the door and found it was unlocked. She was too muddled to be embarrassed or feel bad for waking her.

“What?” Janelle said, sitting up. “Are you okay?”

“Panic attack,” Stevie said. “Can I . . . can you . . .”

Janelle pushed herself out of bed, grabbed her robe, and put it over Stevie’s shoulders. She guided Stevie to the bed and sat her down, putting an arm around her shoulders.

“Sorry,” Stevie wheezed, “sorry.”

“Here,” Janelle said, taking her hand. “It’s okay. We’re going to do this. Hold my hand.”

Holding Janelle’s hand brought some semblance of reality back.

“Can I sit here for a minute?” Stevie said.

“You stay until it’s over,” Janelle said. “As long as it takes. Did something happen?”

Stevie couldn’t bring herself to explain. Everything was wobbling. She leaned back against Janelle and the wall behind the bed and waited for everything to stop moving, for the words to stop running through her mind, for Truly Devious to leave.

The next morning, when Stevie emerged from her room, Janelle was in the common room, looking amazingly perky for someone who had been up half the night helping a friend. She was wearing a fleecy sweatshirt that said ASK ME ABOUT MY CAT and a pair of yoga pants, and her braids were coiled up under a cheerful red scarf. Stevie, on the other hand, was still wearing the sawdust-covered sweatpants. She had not consulted her hair. It could be doing anything. She had not bothered to wipe her face or crusty eyes or brush her teeth. She just needed to get up and shake off the night.

Stevie was embarrassed looking at her friend. She’d never really had an experience like that before, outside of her parents, where someone actually took care of you like that. Janelle had put her back into bed just before dawn, and Stevie had slept heavily for a few hours. Now she was groggy and heavy and slow.

“How are you doing?” Janelle asked in a low voice.

“I’m okay,” Stevie said. “A little nauseous. Tired. But okay.”

She couldn’t bring herself to say “thanks to you” out loud, but she tried to convey it in her eyes, and then by generally being awkward. Janelle just shook her head in a don’t worry about it kind of way.

Stevie went outside. The morning was fresh and bright—big blue skies and shaggy, happy clouds blowing over the mountains. It was the kind of morning that mocked the fear of the night before. This kind of pleasantness almost made it worse. How could she be anxious when everything was so cheerful?

Very easily, as it happens. Brain chemistry doesn’t care about how pretty things are.

She stepped along the edge of Minerva, through the moist grass to retrieve her book from the ground outside her window. It was a bit damp, but on examination it showed no real damage.

What had happened? She had been reading case materials right up until the time she went to sleep. She was thinking about the kidnapping and the tunnel. She could have easily dreamed that note on the wall. But it was vivid, crisp. She had gotten out of bed. She’d thrown a book out her window trying to catch a stranger.

She watched the sky for a moment and held her wet book and tried to work out what was real, then she rubbed her burning, tired eyes. She still had to go to class. She dried the cover with her shirt and brought it back inside.

As she went to her room, she bumped into David coming downstairs.

It was nothing, really. He just kind of half smiled at her. He had that long mouth with the twisting edges. Just a smile. But something about it made Stevie boil. She blocked him.

“Good night?” she said.

“It’s so nice of you to ask,” he replied, leaning against the wall. “Sure. How about you?”

His tone was neutral but his smile was expanding by just a few millimeters.

“Busy last night?” she asked.

“You have a lot of questions.”

Still neutral, still half smiling. Something in his eyes, though. A flash. It was impossible to tell what was going on, but there was something there.

“This is fun and all,” he said, “but can I go and get breakfast?”

Stevie stepped aside, but turned to watch him go. Could David have put that note on her wall?

She was fairly unfocused during the discussion of Leaves of Grass that morning. She spent most of the discussion trying to remember the words she had seen.

Riddle, riddle . . . something murder, something lake, something Alice. Definitely Truly Devious in there somewhere. But the more she tried to remember, the more the words slipped away and didn’t feel like words at all.

Walt Whitman was getting involved now:

And the hints about old men and mothers, and the offspring taken

soon out of their laps.

What do you think has become of the young and old men?

And what do you think has become of the women and children?

They are alive and well somewhere . . .

Riddle, riddle. A woman in a lake, a girl in a hole . . .

She would be a girl in a hole later tonight, when she went into the tunnel.

She went in and out of the explanation of the functions of the axial and the appendicular skeleton in anatomy. Lunch brought her closer to the surface, and by the time she was in Spanish lab, the dread was burning away and she began to focus on going into the tunnel. She felt a flutter of excitement, which carried her through the afternoon.

Stevie hurried back to Minerva in the midafternoon to get her flashlight and gloves, then met Janelle for their first yoga class at five. Yoga was the class she picked from Ellingham’s mandatory physical education selection. It sounded better than Running for Fitness and Clarity, Cooperative Boot Camp, or Perspectives on Movement. At Stevie’s high school, they let you just go on the treadmill for half an hour and left you alone to listen to podcasts, which was literally the only thing she preferred about her old high school.

Janelle met her outside the art barn, a rolled mat tucked under her arm.

“Doing okay?” Janelle asked.

“Yeah,” Stevie said. “I think so.”

“Anxiety dreams are the worst,” she said.

Stevie had, late last night, managed to explain to Janelle what she had seen. She must have made it sound like it was definitely a dream, and not some questionable occurrence that may or may not have been real.

“I guess . . . I guess I dreamed it?” Stevie said. “I don’t know.”

Janelle nodded, as if this was the only answer she had been expecting.

“But,” Stevie said as they walked into the art barn, “let’s just say for a second I didn’t dream it. How hard is it to project something on the wall like that? I guess you’d need a projector?”

“Oh, that’s easy,” Janelle said. “You can make one out of cardboard and tape and a mirror. It’s not impossible, but . . .”

“I mean,” Stevie said. “I woke up. I was in bed, and I saw it on the wall. I threw my book out the window trying to catch whoever was out there. Like, tried to drop the book on their head.”