He looks at his computer screen, shaking his head. “You were lucky to get that one.”
I’ve missed all my classes today, thanks to this mess. And now I’m hungry. East House doesn’t have its own dining hall since it’s so small, so I go to the food hall in City Tower next door. The selection there is disappointing. Sigh. That’s another thing I gave up—West Hall has the best food in the school. I grab a boring-looking grain bowl to go.
When I finally get back to East House, I check my new mailbox to find it empty, then climb the stairs to the third floor. Gracie Song is in the hallway, talking to another girl. Maybe this is my chance to fix things with her? I’ll be living next to Gracie until the end of the term, and awkwardly sneaking past her whenever I see her would be annoying.
“Hi, Gracie! Thanks again for helping me with my box,” I say. “Looks like we’ll be neighbors!”
She blinks at me. The person she’s talking to, a white girl with long brown hair in a ponytail and an expensive winter coat, looks at me witha strange expression. She turns back to Gracie. “Thanks for letting me hide out in your place.”
She kisses Gracie briefly on the lips and then walks toward the stairs. As she passes me, she nods toward my door. “What kind of voodoo did you do to get his room? I think it’ssotacky. The room is probably cursed—you might want to burn some sage or something.” The girl disappears down the stairs.
I look back at Gracie, but she doesn’t seem to want to explain what her girlfriend meant. “She seems nice!” I say. I’m probably laying it on too thick.
“Are you really moving into that room?” Gracie asks. She looks irritated.
Okay. Fine. We’ll skip the small talk and get right to it. I nod. “It’s the only free room in the school. I had to leave my last residence. Roommate issues.”
“Do you know whose room it is?”
I nod. “Yeah, the missing guy, Jay. I only discovered that after I moved in. Were ... are you friends with him?”
Gracie crosses her arms. “No.”
Now that she’s taken off all her winter gear, I see that Gracie is wearing a very cute red-and-yellow floral dress with a yellow cardigan and red lipstick. Her wavy black hair reaches just past her shoulders, and her bangs fall into her eyes. Gracie is East Asian, with a round face and huge smile. She’s not smiling now, though.
“I think you’re in my program,” I say. “Journalism, first year. I’m Aleeza Kassam.”
Gracie’s expression softens a tiny bit. “I thought you looked familiar.”
I smile. I want to ask her why she was so spooked when she found out I was moving into Jay’s room, or why her girlfriend (or hookup?) said I should burn sage, but I’m afraid that will just annoy her again.
“You really didn’t know this was Jay’s room?” she asks.
“No, why?”
She gives me a look that tells me she doesn’t believe me, then uses the key around her neck to open her door. “Welcome to East House,” she says before she shuts it behind her.
I exhale and unlock my door. It will take some work, but I’mdeterminedto make Gracie my friend this term. This is supposed to be my fresh start. New residence, new Aleeza.
I already know that Mia wouldn’t like Gracie. She’d call herquirkywith that dress-and-glasses combo. She’d say that no one wears red lipstick just for class, and Gracie is trying too hard. But Mia’s judgments won’t affect who I associate with anymore.
I open the blinds. The room isn’t really that bad. With the setting sun shining into it, it’s kind of nice. Small, though. I decide to keep the extra furniture. The extra bed can be like a couch/daybed, and I can definitely use the extra dresser.
After eating dinner while watching an episode ofOnly Murders in the Buildingon my laptop, I go back to my duffel and continue to unpack. I put away my school supplies, then stack my books on the extra desk. Finally, I take my now-empty box and start packing Jay Hoque’s stuff, trying not to think too much about him while I’m doing it.
This whole situation is so weird. That ResConnect message, Gracie’s strange reaction to me being in Jay’s room. Even Gracie’s girlfriend’s comment that I did voodoo to get it.
Should I burn sage? I don’t usually put any stock in that woo-woo mystical stuff. Tarot, crystals, and burning sage were all the rage in Alderville last year, but I didn’t get involved. Those things are all based on pagan traditions or Christianity. My family is Muslim, and even though we don’t really practice much, I don’t want to screw up any possible afterlife by dipping my toes into something I shouldn’t.
What happened to Jay is such a compelling mystery, though. A few weeks ago, I did a tiny bit of research on his disappearance, thinking I’d do an episode on his case. What I remember is that he apparently disappeared from his own room. This room. His ID card logged him cominginto the building one night—and then never leaving it. Apparently, an eyewitness saw him in the mailroom on the ground floor. When campus police checked on him the next day, after his mother had said he wasn’t returning her calls, he wasn’t here.
There was no trace of him. He’d justvanished. And no one could figure out how, or why. It’s not possible to leave through the room windows—they don’t open more than a few inches. The front-door camera showed no sign of him leaving the building.
I suddenly remember that newspaper article I wrapped my octopus mug in. I grab it from the recycling bin.
Just under the headline—Jay Hoque’s Final Days—is a picture of him. The caption says it was taken in November, days before his disappearance. I study it, even though I remember exactly what he looked like. Jay had wavy hair in the deepest black imaginable, pale-brown eyes with dark, curly lashes, and a square jaw on a narrow face. I have no idea what his ethnic background was, but he had an olive skin tone—almost faintly Mediterranean, or maybe Middle Eastern. With Jay, it was his mannerisms, hisvibe, that made him as striking as his looks. He was a combination of aloof, rebellious, andway too coolfor this place. And honestly? He was kind of hot. He wasn’t particularly tall but had broad shoulders and a way of moving that said he didn’t care if someone was in his way.
I look closer at the picture. I have seen Jay smile before—when I used to see him around campus. I remember thinking his smile looked too big for his face. But that wide smile is not in this picture. In fact, he’s almost scowling. Looking straight at the camera with those haunting pale eyes. Did he know what was going to happen to him?
