Minerva rushed down the path while behind her someone rushed, too. The flashlight was like a flickering firefly, practically useless as she tried to see what lay ahead.
As she turned a bend of the road, her foot caught in the protruding root of a tree and she stumbled onto the ground. The flashlight slipped from her hand and rolled away.
“Fuck!” she yelled.
A hand settled on her shoulder and she let out a hoarse cry. She shuffled back, swatted her hands madly, trying to shove whoever was reaching for her away until she bumped her back against the trunk of a tree and a man spoke.
“Minnie,” he said.
She looked up into Conrad’s face.
Her breathing was ragged, as if she’d been running a marathon instead of simply walking a few meters between two dorms. She brushed the hair away from her face and stared at him open-mouthed.
“Are you drunk?” he asked. “Do you want me to take you to your dorm?”
Her heart beat wildly; the itch in the back of her skull was now a loud throbbing, like a drum. He leaned down, his hands found her arm, and she pushed him off. He looked at her with wide, aggrieved eyes.
“Hey! What’s the matter with you?”
“You’ve been following me, you creep! That’s what’s the matter!” she yelled, and clumsily pulled herself to her feet.
“Are you nuts? I saw you on the ground and thought you were in trouble.”
She snatched up the flashlight she’d dropped and pressed the clipboard against her chest. She shone the light at him and felt a trickle of sweat slip down the collar of her blouse.
“I’m fine,” she said.
“You’re nuts,” he declared firmly.
Minerva stepped away from him and ran back to Ledge House. This time she got there quickly, stomping onto the porch and unlocking the door with trembling hands. Once inside she dashed toward the phone and called Hideo. She could feel him smiling when he answered. She cut him off.
“Someone followed me from Briar Hall,” she said.
“What do you mean? A student?”
“Maybe.” She walked back and forth in the living room, pulling the long cord of the phone along the floor. “I bumped into Conrad.”
“Then it was Conrad?”
She closed her eyes and clenched one hand into a fist, pressing it against her mouth.
“Hello?”
She snapped her eyes open. “I don’t know. Someone followed me from Briar Hall, I fell, and then there was Conrad.”
“Look, if someone’s bothering you, we can call campus security.”
She pulled the curtains aside and looked out the window.
“Minerva?”
“I’m not sure it was Conrad,” she said as she looked at the trees outside.
“I’m coming over.”
Ten minutes later he was in her kitchen. He began boiling water for tea while she sat at the table and examined the dark smudges on the palms of her hands. She’d dirtied them when she stumbled and fell.
“You don’t have much of a selection of teas,” he said as he set a mug before her.
