by D Haltinner
"Like chatting, or that facebook stuff?”
“Yeah.”
“Who do you talk to?”
“My friends.”
“You mean the ones here at school?”
“Yeah.”
“Why don’t you just go knock on their door?”
Jack looked up at Darren, confusion written across his face.
Darren held his palms up in defense. “Never mind.”
Jack turned back to his computer.
Darren changed into the flannel pajamas he picked out and sat down on the edge of the bed, rubbing his eyes.
“You can shut the lights off,” Jack said.
“How long are you going to be up?”
Jack shrugged. “Dunno, but I don’t need the lights anyways.”
Darren got up and went to the switch next to the door, clicking off the lights. The warm glow of the computer monitor left Jack’s face lit in a faint blue glow, sending a thick shadow against the dresser behind him. Darren headed back to the bed and crawled under the sheets.
His mind went back to the hatch, but he fought the thoughts off. Just wait until tomorrow and see what’s going to happen. There’s nothing left to do about it tonight, so just let it rest until tomorrow.
Well, later this morning anyways.
Darren pulled up the sheets and rolled toward the wall, dozing off while surrounded by the clicking of Jack’s keyboard.
Chapter 3
“Hey! Wait up!” A voice called from behind Darren.
Darren stopped and turned around toward the low hanging sun, his backpack swinging into his elbow. Rachel was jogging toward him, oversized sunglasses hiding most of her face. The roll of flab that had been growing ever so slowly on her belly jiggled back and forth with each step she took, moving in unison with the bag over her shoulder. She smiled and pushed up her sunglasses as she closed in on Darren, revealing the line of freckles at the corner of her eye, looking like a streak of eyeliner gone bad.
Rachel brushed her dirty blonde hair behind her ear. “Where are you off to in such a hurry?”
Darren gave Rachel a hug when she came within reach. She felt warm against him-a nice contrast against the morning chill. “Just needed to stop by the library before class.”
“The library?”
He couldn’t tell her about Troy and the hatch. At least not until he found out what happened after he left last night. “Yeah, I... I think I forgot my history folder there last night.”
“Want some company?”
Darren’s throat froze. If he let her come, she’d know that he lied about the folder. But if he says no, she’ll think something is suspicious.
“You won’t be late for class?”
“Nah,” Rachel said. “Professor is always a couple minutes behind anyway.”
“I guess you can come with me.”
Rachel frowned and stepped back. “What, don’t want your own girlfriend around?”
“No, no, I just thought-”
Rachel laughed and pulled Darren down to her height for a kiss. “I’m just joking with you,” she said. She moved beside him and linked her arm into his. “I‘ll go with you, I haven’t seen you since yesterday morning anyways.”
Darren started to walk with Rachel in his arm. “We both lead busy lives.”
“You’ll just have to make more time for me.”
She was the one who had to make the time.
He wouldn’t dare say that to her, but she was the one who always had something better to occupy herself with. She was either off with her new friends, watching the football team practice, or doing God knows what on the other side of the campus. Darren spent all of his free time laying in bed reading, so how could he be the one at fault?
Darren and Rachel passed a small group of older students and turned onto the sidewalk running along College Street. Traffic was as busy as it was every morning as the commuters searched the parking lots for somewhere to park. The walkways were full of people moving in every direction, professors with briefcases, students with backpacks. The mood was solemn at this time of day, but when three o’clock rolled around, everyone would be chomping at the bit to get away from their classes.
Rachel slid her sunglasses back down over her eyes. Darren thought they made her look like some sort of insect, but she seemed to think they made her look fashionable.
No one else wore sunglasses that big though.
She was an attractive girl-not model quality, but she caught Darren’s eye three years ago at school. She was one of the only girls to actually acknowledge him back then, and it was only a matter of time before he began to fall for her. And now, three years later, they were still together.
“Did you want to go see a movie this weekend?” Darren asked. He already knew the answer, but he wanted to try anyways. “There’s a couple new ones opening up that look pretty good.”
Rachel sighed. “I don’t know,” she said. “There were a couple parties going on this weekend, so I guess we’ll have to play it by ear.”
“You’re always going to parties.”
“I always invite you.”
“You know I don’t want to drink.”
“Doesn’t mean you can’t come.”
“Yeah it does, and you know that.”
Rachel squeezed Darren’s arm against her. “You might have fun.”
A light breeze passed around them, sending a chill up Darren’s spine. “That’s not my kind of fun.” He hesitated, not sure if he should say what he was about to, but he had to get it out into the open at some point. “And to be honest, I don’t like you going to all those parties and drinking so much.”
Rachel loosened her grip on Darren and looked up at him as another pair walked by them on the sidewalk. “Why not?”
“I never see you, and when I do, you’re too hung over to do anything but lay in bed,” Darren said. “And I worry about you-your safety. Do you even know the people at these parties?”
Rachel grumbled. “I can’t believe you.” She let go of his arm. “I make new friends and you start getting jealous because you don’t have any? Unbelievable.”
Darren stopped. “That’s not it at all.”
“Sounds like it to me.” She didn’t stop walking.
Darren trailed after her. “That isn’t it!”
“Maybe it’s a good thing you never come,” Rachel said. “You’d just ruin it for everyone.”
“Hey, come on.”
Rachel stopped and spun around toward Darren, eyes glaring.
Darren skidded to a stop.
“You’ve been such a baby since you got here,” she said. “Maybe you should have gone off and left me and went to Madison like you planned.”
“I came here to be with you, but I barely see you!”
“Then make the time! I had nothing to do all last night.”
“I had to work on the history paper!”
“Was it due today or something?”
“Well, no…”
Rachel spun around with a sigh. “Maybe you need to learn how to prioritize then.”
Darren stood his ground, trying to ignore the glares of a few passing students. “I think you are the one who needs to.”
Rachel stopped and spun to face him so fast that her hair whipped across her cheek. “What?”
“I think you need to decide if me or your parties are more important.”
Her eyes widened. “Are you threatening to break up with me?”
It wasn’t what Darren intended, but maybe it was the only way to try and fix it before it got real bad between them. He wanted to just have a rational discussion, but she turned it into an attack on him. She was the one who refused to find time for him, but yet she’s trying to turn that around.
“No, I just think that your drinking and partying is coming between us, and I wanted to talk to you about it before it got too far.”
“You just want to control me and tell me what I can and cannot do,” Rachel said, “And I ain't
going to let that happen." She spun around and quickened her pace away from Darren.
“Where are you going?” Darren called after her.
“I’m going to class,” Rachel said. “We’ll talk about this later.”
Darren shook his head and watched her walk away. There were a number of people still staring at him, waiting for some sort of continuation to the emotional drama unfolding, but he had nothing to give them. He just watched his girlfriend walk off into the distance without a glance back, wondering how the discussion went downhill so fast.
She was the one who refused to make the time for him. Was it really asking too much for her to skip one party to spend a day with him? She wasn’t like that in high school, in fact, you had to pry them apart from each other with a crowbar. It’s only been a month since they got here, and he hasn’t spent more than two full days with her since the first week.
Darren dropped his face to the sidewalk, adjusting his backpack on his shoulder, and continued his walk to the library.
He had other things to worry about right now. He could deal with Rachel later. Perhaps in the afternoon she’ll have calmed down enough to have a more rational talk. Right now he had to find out what happened with Troy and to make sure that he wasn’t looking at some sort of problems from his involvement.
His involvement. He tried to stop the guy for crying out load. He couldn’t be in any trouble.
But he didn’t report it. He could be an accomplice, an accessory.
Troy better have gotten out of that shaft without being caught. Maybe he found what was down there making that noise too, or at least where the tunnel went.
Darren climbed the steps to the library’s front door and pushed his way through the glass doors. The study area was void of students, but there was one dark haired girl wandering off toward the fiction section and a short stocky freshman talking to the woman behind the counter.
No one looked up at Darren when he walked past the desk. At least they weren’t looking for him by description. In fact, nothing seemed out of the ordinary. Had they found Troy injured, the library probably would have been closed, so he should be safe and sound wherever he was.
Darren moved into the mass of shelves and made his way past countless books toward the spot the hatch was. When he neared the aisle and turned the corner, he skidded to a stop before the hatch.
It had been closed up and placed back beneath the bookcase, just as it was when they found it. Out of sight to anyone who didn’t know it was there. The floor had been vacuumed since the bookshelf was moved back over the shaft, the floor still showed the impressions of the wheels in the carpet stretching down the entire aisle.
Darren took a step back from it.
Did Troy cover it back up? Darren was sure he wasn’t the one who vacuumed it at least, someone who worked for the library would have done that. But did that person close it up and trap Troy down there?
Trapped may have been too strong a word. He did have a cell phone, and the shaft was no worse than a basement for coverage. Troy could have found a spot where he got a good signal somewhere along the tunnel and called for help if he really was in danger. He could have gotten himself or Darren in trouble, but he wouldn’t be trapped.
Campus police never woke Darren up that morning, so that was a good thing.
Darren took another look at the area around the hatch, admiring how well placed the bookcase was in order to cover the entire hatch. The edge Darren had tripped over the day before was even tucked away out of sight.
Darren hiked his backpack up his back and turned from the hidden shaft, walking back toward the front of the library. He headed a different direction than he came, passing by the study area void of people, though a sole backpack sat out on a table.
Darren took a second look at the backpack. There was something familiar about it.
But it couldn’t be.
Darren weaved his way around a set of bookcases and lingered around the table, looking down at the blue and red backpack resting on the surface, zipped shut. As if someone slid it off their back and pushed it aside with no intention of opening it.
Darren glanced around. No one was nearby, so he went up to the backpack and unzipped the small pocket on the front. He reached in, sifting through a mass of pens and a calculator until he felt a small plastic card and pulled it out.
He knew what it was before looking at it, but he didn’t know what to think about it. It shouldn’t have been left behind.
Unless he never did leave. It was the only way to get back into the dorms.
Troy couldn’t go anywhere without his ID card.
Chapter 4
Darren took his usual seat beside his roommate Jack and leaned his backpack against his desk. He rummaged through it for his statistics book and dropped it in front of him before leaning back in the wooden seat and letting out a sigh.
“You okay?” Jack asked.
Darren straightened himself up. “Yeah, fine.”
Jack nodded and looked toward the front of the room. “It’s just a fight,” Jack said. “Everyone has fights from time to time.”
“What?”
“I heard you and Rachel. I was walking behind you to class.”
Darren relaxed into his chair a bit. It wasn’t what he had on his mind at the moment, but there was no reason to let Jack know that. “I know fights happen,” Darren said. “But they’ve become more common.”
“I wouldn’t worry about it,” Jack said. “It seems like just a phase in any normal relationship. Everyone goes through a streak like that.”
Darren nodded. “I’m sure you’re right.”
Another student came into the room and settled into a seat in the far corner. There were only a handful of people in the room, but then again, there were only twenty even left in the class.
“Even if things don’t get better between you two, there are a lot of nice looking girls around campus,” Jack said.
“Yeah, true.” Darren couldn’t deny it. He felt guilty looking at other girls, but some of them made Rachel look like a moth among butterflies. “But I love Rachel, and I only came to Redfern to be with her.”
Jack let out a light laugh. “I hope you came for more than just her.”
Darren shook his head. “I was planning on going to Madison until she convinced me to come here at the last minute.”
Jack shook his head. “You two have been together for what, three years?”
Darren nodded.
“Well, now’s the time to find out if you’re meant to stay together forever or not.”
“How so?”
“Well, everyone changes during college, and you two may change together or move into two different directions.”
“Personal experience? You’re not much older than me.”
“Actually yeah,” Jack said. “I had a girlfriend through high school and part of junior high even. I came here, and she didn’t go to college. Within three months of being here, I knew we were growing apart. Not because of any distance, we just had different plans and goals. Sure enough, she left me two months after that.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. It’s turned into a good thing. She was holding me back, keeping me from growing myself. I loved her, still do in a way, but we were too young and immature to know what a relationship was supposed to be.”
Darren sighed. “You do make a point.” He didn’t want to be thinking about life without Rachel, but maybe he should be. Is it just a rough patch that they’re going through, or are they growing apart?
“Just make sure you’re strong enough in case you two don’t make it,” Jack said. “I’m not saying that will happen, but it does happen a lot to people here.”
“You’ve seen it that much?” Darren said. “You’re only a sophomore yourself.”
Jack nodded. “There’s only one of my friends left who came here in a relationship who is still in it.”
“Then I suppose you have some good insight.”
“Some. Just don’t plan for the best, that’s all I’m saying,” Jack said. “And don’t forget that Redfern Sea has a hell of a lot of good looking fish.”
Darren laughed.
“Speaking of damn good fish.”
Darren followed Jack’s eyes up to the room’s entrance. Gliding through the doorway was one of the most beautiful women Darren had ever seen. She was five feet tall in her shoes, with hair the textured color of mahogany in loose curls and waves lying across her shoulders. She had lips lifted into a relaxed smile that had never left her face any of the times Darren has seen her in statistics class or in the history class that he has seen her in.
She glanced around the room for a moment, her dark eyes catching Darren’s for a moment before she moved to an open seat in the front row. In that half second their eyes locked, Darren felt the same thing he did on the other occasions she had looked up at him from across the classrooms.
Pure bliss.
It just emanated from her. She was in a chronic state of joy, just loving every second of life, and it came off of her and spread across the room in her presence. Darren had never heard her speak, but he could tell that there wasn’t a pessimistic thought inside of her. She had the relaxed demeanor of a house cat stretching out in the sun, and Darren envied that about her. He wished he could know the kind of stress free life she led.
The girl settled into her seat, tugging down her shirt around her hips. The black cloth hugged tight around her waist, showing the bumps of her spins down the entire length of fabric. She crossed her legs, tugging at a cuff of her jeans before bending and searching through her bag.
“She would be quite the catch for someone,” Jack said.
Darren felt guilty saying it, but he couldn’t disagree. “She would be.”
“She’s a freshman,” Jack said. “I know that much. But she never talks to anyone in class, so I haven’t found out what her name is yet.”
“She’s in our history class too,” Darren said.
“Is she? I never noticed her.”
“She sits on the opposite side of the lecture hall.”
“I suppose there are a hundred people in that class,” Jack said. “She is a noticeable girl, but hard to see with that many other fish blocking your view.”