"I just want to know one thing. Just tell me one thing. When has a girl ever – ever! – refused to walk through a door because you were holding it for her? Tell me, Paddington. Tell me. When has that ever happened?"

"I—"

"It's never happened. It. Has. Never. Happened. It's probably some shit Rush Limbaugh said while you were blowing him in a dream. Right?"

"That's—"

"'Ah ah ah Paddington don't stop, why won't girls let me hold the door for them, ah don't stop, is it because of feminism or is it because I'm a fat creepy weirdo ah ah ooooohhhhh....'"

It was fun watching Caroline tee off on this guy. She was worked up. Her arms and forehead were glowing ("Horses sweat, men perspire, ladies merely glow," Lata remembered from some book of quotations she was obsessed with as a kid) and every movement of her body sent rainbows rippling through her dress.

Taddlington Taft was practically crawling up on the kitchen counter to get away from her. She had no conception of personal space, and she was jabbing her finger in his face so hard it looked like she was about to stab his eyeball with one of those glittery nails. That would have been kind of a shame, as Taddlington looked somewhat less dickish than he did in his Ambassador op-ed photo, though he had the same floppy frat-bro haircut and the same bowtie, which, now that he was in living color, Lata could see was the same shade of purple as Caroline's nails. School spirit was just out of control on this campus. With the hair and the bowtie and the slightly-too-big blazer, Taddlington looked like a kid playing dress-up in his dad's clothes.

"I'll tell you what. Next time you try to open a door for me, I'll kick you in the shin. Does that work? Will that help prove your little theory?"

"Listen—"

"FUCK!"

They all stopped and turned their attention to the living room. There was a commotion on the dance floor. A guy was slumped over, his hands between his legs, cursing. Renee was trying to force her way through the crowd, who were pressing even tighter to see what had happened. Lata got a glimpse of the guy's face – it was the vampire guy with the "Xander" tattoo who'd come storming out of the Purple Room. Looked like he'd finished chasing that tall girl, and now Renee was pissed at him.

Caroline turned back to Taddlington. "To be continued, Paddington. Expect a strongly worded letter to the editor."

Now that the haranguing seemed to be over, Taddlington's smirk returned. He straightened his bowtie. "I await it with bated breath."

Caroline grabbed Lata's hand to go help Renee. Lata wanted to get in her own parting shot. She looked Taddlington up and down. She could see a perfect line, hovering just past her fingertips, out of focus. Something that would pierce his heart and pin him down like a butterfly. She just had to open her mouth and say it. "Nice bowtie, dingus." Taddlington snorted, neither pierced nor pinned. Caroline pulled her into the living room.

Dingus! How is that the word that came out of her mouth? Way to be cool, Superfly. That'll learn him. Caroline bulled through the scrum of people in the living room and found Renee. She grabbed her and dragged them both to the door and out into the hall. "What happened?"

Renee was operatically drunk. All of her joints were loose, greased by the Goose. Stop rhyming, dingus. The camera slung around her neck threatened to pull her down to the floor. "Just want to go." Lata and Caroline helped Renee down the stairs. She was so light, her feet barely touched the steps.

Down in the street the night was winding down. The bars were still open for a few more hours, but the semester hadn't even really started yet. The amateurs had returned to their homes, and the true creatures of the night held court now. The saxophone guy had been joined by a clarinet player and a guy with an electric guitar and a portable amp, and they were going full Ornette Coleman over by the Foxfire Tavern. A balding guy in a bathrobe engaged in an angry contest of volume with the preacher in front of the newsstand. Some leathery townies lurked on the concrete planters in front of the diner, smoking American Spirits and directing menacing laughter at any student who ventured by.

Renee was fading. Lata reached for the camera strap around her neck. Renee protested weakly. "It's okay," Lata said. "I'll take care of it." She lifted the strap over Renee's hair, and as she did she saw that that the black tendril tattooed on her neck wasn't a solid line. It was made up of tiny words. Lata could read "THE POINT OF THE GAME IS TO LEARN HOW TO" before it disappeared under Renee's wifebeater. Lata slung the camera around her own neck. Gravity loosened its hold on Renee, just a bit.

"Do you want us to take you home?" asked Caroline.

"No!" Renee shot upright and pulled Caroline's face to hers. "No. Just go." She let go of Caroline and nearly fell. They both pulled her back, their arms wrapped around her waist. "Go. Xander's coming."

Caroline looked over Renee's head at Lata and mouthed Who's Xander?

Lata mouthed back: Boyfriend. Then she shrugged. Boyfriend?

"I guess we're taking her to the Tower?" said Caroline.

"I guess so."

Neither Lata nor Caroline had a car. Asha now had possession of Lata's beloved baby-blue 1988 Grand Marquis, the GrandmarCar, so named because one night when Lata was leaving Blockbuster some redneck had shouted "Look at you driving Grandma's Crown Vic!" and Lata had waited until she was safely inside the car, windows rolled up, before replying "It's a fucking Grand Marquis!" Lata was fairly sure her own Nani wouldn't be caught dead in something called a Crown Victoria.

The bus stop was a block away on Delmonico, at the entrance to West Campus. Lata and Caroline carried Renee's wispy body down Main, drawing leers from the townies outside the diner. At the bus stop, they plopped Renee down on the bench in the rain shelter, next to two girls in purple T-shirts, both holding white boxes tied with string.

"Make sure she gets home safe," one of the girls said.

Some kind of weird itch hit the back of Lata's brain. "What?"

"If you're looking for a different ending to your night," said the other girl, "next time give the Everybody a chance." The itch intensified. This was so familiar. Maybe she'd run into these girls and whatever weird cult they were in over Interview Weekend. She hadn't been paying much attention to anything that weekend except Caroline and one-upping Asha.

"The fuck is the Everybody?" said Caroline. The two girls both turned their heads toward her in eerie synchronicity.

"You've heard of the Nine Dead Men," said one girl.

"And the Living Creatures," said the other.

"We're not those."

"All students welcome."

Caroline seemed unimpressed. "Sure. What's in the boxes?"

An anguineous hiss of brakes announced the arrival of a bus turning the corner onto Delmonico. A glowing windshield appeared above two headlights, floating down the street toward them, with no apparent means of support or locomotion. The itch in Lata's brain turned to a cold spike as this apparition approached. She reached for something to steady herself, and one of the girls in the purple T-shirts rose and took her hand.

The bus stopped at the shelter, and a streetlight glinted off its black body, finally revealing its solidity. The Black Line. Lata let go of the girl's hand. A bus painted black, and she thought she'd seen a ghost. Just full-on Caspered. Embarrassing.

The driver gave them a look as they maneuvered Renee up the step, onto the bus, and into the wide For Disabled Passengers seats at the front. Lata figured Renee qualified at the moment. There was no one else on the bus anyway. "She's not throwing up on my bus," said the driver. Not a question or a threat, just a statement of fact.

The two Everybody girls sat across from Lata, Renee and Caroline. The bus shuddered as it pulled away from the stop. "You don't have to be embarrassed," one of the girls said.

"What?" Lata was having trouble telling which one of the girls was speaking. It was some kind of optical illusion.

"About the bus," the other said. "A lot of people get freaked out, the first time they see a Black Line at night."

"People say they're phantom buses, forever circling campus with the souls of the recently graduated."

"I heard they're the chariots of the Nine Dead Men, ferrying the University's secret rulers to their dark appointments."

"In 1985, a sophomore told the campus police he saw Milo Kirby driving a Black Line."

"Of course, his blood alcohol level was .22, so..."

"Administer grains of salt as necessary."

Lata didn't know what to make of this. She kept trying to unfocus her eyes, get the two girls to merge into one, like a stereoscopic image. Truth be told, Lata was a little ways down the same path as Renee. Those Jimmy Carters were sneaky dangerous.

"Are you seriously not going to tell us what's in the boxes?" Caroline was fidgeting in her too-tight dress, like a snake preparing to shed its skin.

"Come to the next Box Social."

"Find out for yourself."

"All students welcome."

"Well you be sure to save me a seat." Caroline reached across Renee to poke Lata in the shoulder. "What do you say? Want to go to a Box Social? I missed Cotillion this year, so Lord knows what the ladies will say if I don't make an appearance at the Box Social."

But Lata was drifting off, lulled by the Jimmy Carters and the rocking of the Black Line as it turned onto Milligan and then Suttledge and rolled past the Student Union and the stadium, these empty spaces in the night aching to be filled. Lata closed her eyes.

When she opened them, the Tower loomed in the window behind the Everybody girls, framed perfectly between their heads. Spotlights illuminated the first few floors, but above that the only indications of its height were the sporadic lights still on in windows, and the rings of lights in the windows in the top floor, like a sparkling crown. Lata raised Renee's camera to her eye, adjusted the focus so the Tower was sharp and the girls were two indistinct smears to either side, and snapped the shutter. She wanted Renee to see the Tower as she saw it.

It was tradition for freshman Suttledge Scholars to live in Hayes, but a mysterious fire over the summer had closed down an entire wing of Hayes for the year, so half of the incoming Scholar class was shunted over to the Tower. That was fine with Lata. Even before the fire, Hayes seemed unfit for human habitation. During the Interview Weekend tour of Hayes, the RA guiding the prospective Scholars had broken both legs falling off a staircase that ended in a sheer ten-foot drop, right after telling them that the building was cobbled together from the dismantled pieces of UNWG's original 19th-century residence halls. That probably seemed whimsical to some students, but to Lata the place just screamed "death trap." She'd take the cold, imposing, impersonal Tower any day, despite the theatric sympathy Lata received from the upperclassman Scholars because she wouldn't get the "full Scholarship experience." The Tower was beautiful in its own way. It could be a home too, something worth defending.

The bus turned onto Castell Drive, placing the Tower in the windshield. It grew as they approached, until it was the only thing visible, the only thing that mattered. The Black Line hissed to a stop, and the doors opened. "Meadows Hall," said the driver.

Renee was now completely out of it. The Everybody girls helped Lata and Caroline carry her off the bus and into the cavernous lobby of the Tower. They placed her on one of the circular purple couches that ran up the center of the room. She tipped over, an unbalanced doll. "Thanks," Lata said. "We've got her from here."

"We're happy to help."

"We are Everybody."

"And so are you."

The two girls walked toward the elevators, the white boxes swinging from their fingertips, "WE ARE EVERYBODY" gently undulating on the backs of their shirts, everything synchronized down to the millisecond. A show for her benefit, Lata thought. A sales pitch.

"So," said Caroline. "Your room or mine?"

"Mine, I guess. My roommate won't be here till Saturday. Renee can have her bed."

Behind her, the front door of the lobby opened with a click. The sound was so loud, it drew every other sound in the huge round room into its aural singularity. For a moment the lobby was completely silent. No breathing, no buzzing fluorescents, no footsteps.

Lata looked over her shoulder. Something gaunt and pale and hungry entered the Tower. It opened its mouth and sound filled the room again. A single shouted name: "Renee!"

Lata knew him. It was the vampire guy again. Except it wasn't him. Not exactly.

"I'm taking Renee home." The guy was twitchy, wired. He was in pain, physical and otherwise. "I need to talk to her."

Caroline took off her heels. Thick red lines were pressed deep into the flesh of her wide feet. "You can talk to her tomorrow." She squared up, ready to get physical if she had to.

Lata looked toward the elevators and the front desk. The Everybody girls were gone. There should be security people, an RA, something. But no one else was there.

There was only Lata and Caroline, and the captainless ship of Renee's body, and this thing on the threshold of her home.

"You're Xander, right?" Lata stepped in front of Caroline and moved toward him. Caroline reached for her arm, but she pulled it away. "So Alex must be your...brother?" She pointed at Xander's forearm, where a tattoo read "Alex," just as the vampire guy's tattoo said "Xander." Xander reached for his arm, feeling for whatever that name could give him.

"Renee's cheating on Alex. I saw it."

Lata stepped closer to Xander. He was giving off fumes: sweat and alcohol and something darker. "What does that matter to you?"

"You don't hurt Alex. Nobody hurts Alex."

"And nobody hurts Renee."

"I'm not going to hurt Renee! I..." He looked past Lata at Renee unconscious on the couch. She believed him. "You don't even know Renee."

"I know enough." One more step and she was there. She reached for his wrist, the one with the "ALEX" tattoo. He looked at her with his wounded-animal eyes. She leaned in close to his ear and said, just for him, "You aren't supposed to be in here."

Then she pulled her room key out of her pocket and jabbed it into his forearm, right into the "X," and she pushed as hard as she could until the key drew blood, and she dragged the key down, gouging a line in his arm.

She let go of his wrist and held her breath, waiting for him to react. He stared at her, his face a contorted mask of pain and rage. She felt for Renee's camera, swinging from her neck. She looked through the viewfinder at Xander. She saw him writing her obituary. She brought him into focus and took his picture. It was his decision now.

He turned and ran, barreling through the door and out into the street, howling his wordless song into the night.

Lata exhaled. Caroline was right behind her. "What the fuck, Lata?" she said. Lata reached for her and fell into the warm soft shelf of her chest. She saw her reflection close up, cracked and hazy in the cosmic shimmer of Caroline's dress, and she didn't recognize the face that looked back.

Tim tries to bring Joanie back.

The Boy in the Tunnel was named to the 2018 Wattys longlist this past Friday! So that's pretty cool.