The front door of Mary Rutherford was locked. For real – it wouldn't budge whether Tim pushed or pulled. He was soaked in sweat, his legs rubbery, and he had five bottles of Glacier Freeze that he desperately needed to get to Joanie.

There was a phone next to the door. VISITORS CALL RESIDENT FOR ENTRY it said. "Do you know their number?" Tim asked Alex, sprawled out on the steps, sucking down a bottle of Lemon Ice.

"What room are they in?"

Tim remembered it from his Handbook. "Two thirty-seven."

Alex pointed a finger-gun at Tim. "Punch it in, baby."

"The phone numbers aren't the room numbers. It's four digits."

Alex rocked over on his knees and crawled up the stairs like a spider. One of those translucent white spiders that lived in a cave and never saw the light of day. "Come on, man. I've been here a year. I've got some idea how things work." Alex picked up the receiver, handed it to Tim and dialed 237 on the keypad.

"It's not ringing."

Alex thought for a second, then hit 0. The phone rang three times. A sleepy male voice answered: "Hello."

"Yeah, uh, I'm trying to get into Mary Rutherford?"

"I'm in the Tower, idiot." Then he hung up.

Tim handed the receiver back to Alex. "Hey, man, I tried," Alex said. "How'd we get in the first time?"

"That Sarah girl had a key to the back door."

"I'll go see if it's open. Sometimes people prop open the back door for the pizza guy or whatever." Alex jogged down the steps and disappeared around the side of the building.

Tim had pretty much memorized the Handbook's entry on "The Girl on the Bus," and he didn't recall it mentioning any phone number. He searched through the index and found "UNWG Campus, telephone extensions."

Every telephone on campus is connected to the University network, which means that any phone can be reached by simply dialing its four-digit extension from any other phone on campus. Those of you who aren't fuzzy-headed West Campus denizens will realize that there are therefore ten thousand possible extensions; currently approximately 8,700 of these are in use. Of those, around 4,500 are residential rooms in Wintertree, Hayes, Sluke, Mary Rutherford and Meadows Halls; the rest are various administrative and educational offices. See page 18 in this Handbook for a list of the most commonly used extensions.

If you're trying to reach a specific room in the residence halls, we suggest you get to know that room's residents on a personal level, and politely ask for their "digits" at an opportune moment. Of course, the numbers are not chosen at random, so a student with a rigorously logical, non-fuzzy mind could probably discern the pattern and ring up any room he or she desired. Or one could locate a copy of the Purple Pages, an elusive directory that is rumored to contain not only the extension for the current location of every member of the UNWG family, but also the nine legendary secret extensions. That same logical student, if he or she had far too much time on his or her hands, could also probably figure out the nine secret numbers, though calling any of them might set in motion security measures to which most students, fuzzy-headed or no, would not want to be party.

Alex returned from the back of the building. "Back door's locked," he said.

"Do you know anything about the Purple Pages?"

"Yeah, I know they don't exist." Alex lay down on one of the front steps, staring up at the sky. "Your Handbook's really feeding you the prime bullshit. The Purple Pages are like a sorority-girl joke. Like if you don't know where your boyfriend is, you track him down in the Purple Pages."

"You really think this is all made up? The Purple Pages, King Milo, the Nine Dead Men..." Tim struggled to articulate the feeling it all gave him. "I saw you, outside the tunnel. When Joanie collapsed. You came running down from the Garden. I saw your face."

Joanie lies on the dirt path, her eyes closed, her entire body vibrating with some implacable palsy. All you hear are her last words: "Rip me out of your book." You don't hear her three pursuers until they are rushing up, barreling past you to Joanie. The short girl, her hair an abstract sculpture in black carbon fiber, falls to her fishnet-encased knees at Joanie's side. She takes Joanie's head in her hands like she's picking up a baby bird, fallen from its nest, and whispers to her. She's wearing a T-shirt from R.E.M.'s Fables of the Reconstruction tour, the one with the monkey riding a bicycle. You coveted that shirt when you saw your sister's friend Lisa wearing it, years ago, and you covet it still. Seeing it here, on this heartsick stranger, you are reminded of something – but not Lisa. You don't have to be reminded of her. That memory has permanent residence.

The Asian girl asks if you have a car nearby. You don't have a car at all. She asks the same question of their male companion. His hair is like a work from the same collection as the short girl's. You see a stark white gallery, dotted with impossible black geometries on pedestals. He doesn't answer at first. He is staring with a kind of awe – not at Joanie, but at the short girl. He sees something beyond what can be seen. A door is opening for him. He is standing on the threshold. "Audrey," he says, in a voice that comes not from him but through him.

Audrey looks up. She wipes away a black tear. "I have a car," she says.

Alex stared up at the sky, at the stars that were still brighter than this piece of earth. "It's good to be open, Tim. It's good that you are. A lot of people get here and they're already closed off. Keep the doors unlocked. See what comes through." Alex sat up, patted down his pockets. "Do you have a cigarette?"

Tim shook his head.

"Renee has mine." Alex stood up, walked about ten feet across the sidewalk and out into the verdant expanse of the quad. Even here, alone with Tim, he strutted. He turned on his heels with what had to be a practiced motion. He looked up at the windows of Mary Rutherford, just a few with their lights still on. "Keep the doors unlocked. But be careful what you invite inside. Don't let just anything make your decisions for you. Learn the difference between a pursuit and a distraction. Anything that purports to show you a hidden truth is just a scam. I read that somewhere."

Tim recognized what was happening. This wasn't a conversation. Tim was in the audience. Alex was on a stage. "Where did you read that?" said Tim.

"I can't remember. Read your Handbook. Follow King Milo around. Just be aware that they don't always have your best interests at heart." Alex picked a rock out of the lush grass of the quad. He looked up at the windows, calculating. He pointed to the third from the corner, still illuminated. That's Joanie's, isn't it?"

Tim walked out on the grass to join him. He tried to remember their passage through Mary Rutherford, the number of doors between the central elevator and Joanie's room. "I think so," he said.

Alex threw the rock. It made a perfect tink! as it ricocheted off the window, a sound that Tim recognized from more movies than he could recall. He had never heard it in real life. He wondered if anybody had. Throwing a rock at a girl's window, climbing up a tree, crawling in through the window – it all seemed so Romeo & Juliet. It was old men trying to sell things to kids by lying about teenage love. That kind of passion didn't exist in the real world.

No one came to the window. "Should you throw another one?" Tim asked.

"Why don't you climb up that tree, see if anyone's in the room." Southern magnolias grew at both ends of Mary Rutherford, pruned into fat pinecone shapes whose peaks kissed the eaves overhanging the third floor. The middle branches of the northern one reached to the window they thought was Joanie's.

Tim hadn't climbed a tree in years. Nor had he skinned a knee or kept a frog in his pocket. Tim wasn't what you would call "rambunctious." Plus he wasn't fond of heights. He wasn't even sure how one got up to the lowest branches of the average tree in the first place, as they were usually higher than he could jump, but as he approached the magnolia he saw that the branches nearly touched the ground. He could almost go inside the curtain wall of leaves and walk up the branches like a spiral staircase, alone in the secret world of the tree.

The famous magnolias of the UNWG campus are all examples of the "Blood Royal" cultivar of Magnolia grandiflora, distinguished by its wide pyramidal spread and nine-petaled flowers. Anthony Delmonico cultivated the "Blood Royal" magnolia himself, and every tree on campus is a descendant of the first one, personally planted by Delmonico in the Founders' Garden. In his later years, Delmonico often spent his afternoons ensconced in the solitude of his first magnolia, sitting among the branches in a specially built chair. On occasion, he would command his servants to raise the chair by means of a clever block and tackle system, and he would sit suspended in the uppermost reaches of the magnolia, looking down on the wide swath of green land to the east that would become the Delmonico Box.

The dense array of branches below him hid the fact that Tim was now fifteen feet above ground, but he could feel the height in his gut. With one arm locked around the trunk, he peered through the leaves. The window was ten feet in front of him, but to see inside he would have to climb further out on a limb. The one he was standing on seemed sturdy enough here, though it got narrower as it extended. Another branch ran parallel to it at chin-height. He wrapped his arms around it and shuffled out toward the window.

Both limbs started to bow as he crept along. "Do you see anything?" asked Alex, but Tim was so focused on maintaining contact with the tree that he didn't answer. Around seven feet out from the trunk, he could see into the window. It was Joanie's room. He recognized the purple stuffed elephant on the mini-fridge next to the window, the Lady Ambassadors gear and paraphernalia, the Politiks poster above the desk. (Tim had never really gotten into Politiks. You couldn't deny "White Rain," but Stephen Brick copped too many of his moves from David Byrne and Michael Stipe. At least until his solo album, which, the less said the better.) But Joanie wasn't there. Her roommate wasn't there. Sarah and Audrey weren't there.

Tim turned his head to reorient himself with the trunk of the magnolia. As he did, he could see right into the window of the room next to Joanie's. The lights in the room were off, but there was enough ambient light coming in from the streetlamps along the sidewalk between Mary Rutherford and the quad itself that he could see the furnishings in the room. They were older and a little grander than the usual residence-hall issue. There was only one bed, one desk, one dresser. A dark men's suit was laid out on the bed. A few feet inside the door, a velvet rope was slung between two brass stanchions.

A small tealight in an etched glass holder illuminated the desk. A girl sat at the desk, writing – or maybe sketching – in a notebook. Her hair hung limply on either side of a wide, flat face, and her eyes were dark and intelligent, focused on her work in the notebook. She wore a mustard-colored T-shirt advertising some summer camp, and high-waisted flared jeans covered in patches and floral embroidery. In the dim, flickering light she looked grainy and faded, like a photograph unearthed from a forgotten shoebox.

Tim stared at her, unsure if she was real. She didn't seem to notice him. Then a light came on in the window next to her room, on the corner of the building. A voice screamed out "Peeping tom!" The girl in the dark room looked up, directly at Tim, and he lost his grip on the branch and fell.

Dick gets mad, maybe gets even.