The Black Line shook and sighed as it rolled to a halt at the bus stop behind Mary Rutherford. She'd already passed this stop twice tonight. Just get off the bus, she told herself both times, but both times the doors hissed closed and the bus resumed its circuit before she could will her body into motion.

Just get off the bus. The doors at the back of the bus swung open. All she had to do was stand up, take two steps, and she would be off the bus, back out in the world. Just get off the bus. Just go to your room. Just face Kenya. Just figure out what to do about Dr. Burton.

(just find some gunpowder)

She scooted to the edge of the seat and planted her feet on the striated metal of the floor. Just stand up.

The doors closed again. The driver cast her a glance in the rearview mirror, but said nothing. He spun the wheel and pulled the bus back into the street, ferrying his lone passenger on her endless ride.

The girl on the bus, she'd read somewhere or heard someone say. That's who I am now. When she saw her Handbook in Dr. Burton's bag, she'd swallowed the urge to hit him. Instead she suffered through his inane chatter about his day – the terrible poetry of the freshmen in his beginning creative-writing class, the overcooked chicken in the faculty dining room, some petty argument with Dr. Dade – all the while seeing red flashes of his head caved in, a ragged hole where his easy smile should have been. When he finally shut up she mumbled something about going for a jog and got out of there as fast as she could.

All she took with her was Kenya's Handbook, just as she had the night she went to Dr. Burton's, riding the Black Line around campus in a fog of anger and unwanted, misplaced guilt. If they betrayed you, you must have done something to deserve it. She walked for what felt like hours as night fell, holding Kenya's Handbook close, until she came to a Kangaroo with a payphone on the edge of its lot. She swallowed her pride and called Marcy and Thor, and they let her stay in their apartment, her legs awkwardly folded like a gas-station map on their tiny loveseat. It only took four days for that situation to become untenable, when Thor exploded over a missing Diet Coke. Their boyfriends were coming up from Statesboro on the weekend anyway, so Joanie would have had to leave in a few days no matter what. And so she found herself back on the bus.

You're the girl on the bus. It played in her head like a stray snatch of melody, a song she knew but couldn't name. You have no home, and nothing to guide you to a new one. You're the ghost on the Black Line now.

She sank into the thrum and rumble of the bus as it drove past the stadium and the Union, Thorn Hall looming in the windshield at the top of its little hill. It was her favorite building on campus, but now it was tainted. Dr. Burton even knows about the roof, my secret spot. Lord knows what else he's seen in my Handbook. The thought sent a hollow feeling through her stomach. Reading someone else's Handbook is bad enough. Taking one is unforgivable.

Joanie hugged Kenya's Handbook tighter to her chest.

The bus turned onto Milligan and then Osborne, chugging up the hill toward downtown. The tall First Magnolia of the Founders' Garden rose above the surrounding trees on the right side of the street. Anthony's tree. Though, technically, not his. Every Living Creature knew the story; Joanie supposed it would be in Kenya's Handbook, just as it was in hers.

By the Presidency of Anthony "Three Teeth" Delmonico IV, the half-acre plot containing the Founders' Garden remained the only University land still owned by the Delmonico family. The rest of the campus now belonged to the University itself, though the trustees had to battle the Hollister family for every square inch. "Three Teeth," a man of prodigious appetites, saw that he would be forced to sell the Garden plot to cover a portion of his debts; but he could not bear to see his great-grandfather's beloved magnolia fall into the hands of a Hollister – or worse, to be cut down. He could not bring himself to sell the Garden, though creditors hounded him day and night.

It was his ten-year-old daughter, Mary, who provided the solution. "A tree is a living creature," she told her grandfather, "just like you and me. How can anyone own it?"

And so "Three Teeth" sold the Garden to the University, after a bitter bidding war with Caleb Hollister. But the First Magnolia was not included in the exchange. He deeded the tree, and the land surrounding it to a radius of nine feet, to itself, in perpetuity. The First Magnolia is its own master, and though many a Hollister and trustee has threatened to take the matter to court, none has dared risk the storm of ill will such a maneuver would inevitably create.

The bus pulled onto Delmonico as Joanie closed the Handbook. The magnolia is a living creature. Just like me. If I climbed it, could I see what Anthony sees?

A handful of passengers got on the bus at the downtown stop. One of them, a guy in a blue sweater, with a square, fleshy face, sat down across the aisle from Joanie. He smiled at her, a smile with too many teeth. She forced herself to smile back.

The bus was passing between the art school and the parking deck when the guy spoke. "Do you know if this bus goes to the Tower?"

It took Joanie a second to realize he was speaking to her. She looked over at him. He was still smiling, his head tilted at an expectant angle. He could have been a student, a fifth-year senior maybe, though he was probably in his thirties; but he wasn't old or even mature, the way her father was. He was like every guy on campus, everybody who fit the term "guy," that deep shapeless lacuna between boy and man: that void where impulses roistered, unchecked, and soured.

"I think so," she said, "but it takes a while."

"That's fine. I've got plenty of time."

Joanie turned back to look out the window, at the crazy angles of the art school, a hot white explosion in the night. There were floodlights hidden in bushes all around it, just like at Sluke – a signature of the architect. God bless campus tours. Any excuse for a college to pat itself on the back.

"Admiring the Rankerson, I see." The guy was talking to her again. His smile reflected off the window as the art school retreated out of sight. Don't talk to me, guy. Not now.

"I said," he said, "I see you're admiring one of our Rankersons. We're lucky to have two."

What is the smallest number of words I can say to this guy to get him to leave me alone, without pissing him off? "So lucky." If she had her Walkman, she could block out the guy with headphones. But all she had was Kenya's Handbook. She opened it to a random page and buried her nose in it.

"No offense, but so many members of your generation just don't take the time to appreciate all these amazing things all around us. Too busy playing video games or surfing the web to live in the real world." This guy will not quit. "It's good to see somebody like you. At least one young person pays attention to what's really important—"

"Sir," Joanie said. The guy shut up. His lips twitched, trying hard to maintain his smile. Nothing shuts a guy his age up faster than a younger woman calling him "sir." "I'm sorry, but I'm trying to read."

He raised his palms: I give up. "Fine. Fine..." He leaned in, squinting to read the Handbook's cover. "Kenya." He sat back in his seat and picked at a piece of nonexistent lint on his sweater. "That's fine."

Joanie nodded and turned back to the Handbook. Kind of have to read it now. The page she'd opened it to was just a list of campus phone numbers. She flipped a few pages, keeping her eyes down, not looking over at the guy. She came to a mostly blank page, which Kenya had filled in with her own terse, angular handwriting, dated at the top 10/27/96.

Joanie,

she began,

I'm watching you from across the room right now. There's still some green paint on your left leg. You're reading your own Handbook. Lost in it. I hope you're not reading about the boy in the tunnel. Whoever he is, he doesn't deserve you. I'm writing this to you because you're the voice I hear when I read the Handbook. You're who I want advice from. You're who I want encouragement from. You're who I want to hear the phone numbers from, even. I feel like if I say something to you here, you'll see it. Even though you're never going to read this.

But mainly I'm writing because I fucked up so badly last night.

"But that's not your name, is it?" The guy was talking to her again. Ignore it. Obviously my name isn't Kenya. "No, I know Kenya. I was just talking to her yesterday. And I know you too, Joanie."

Joanie's fingernails dug into the purple cloth that wrapped the covers of Kenya's Handbook. She wished the book was Kenya herself, her protector, to shield her from this guy. Don't look at him. To her right, his distorted reflection bounced and undulated in the hazy glass of the bus window. Behind it, the woods between the Union and the Box scrolled by. They were almost back at Mary Rutherford.

"Is this how you treat a fan? I've been to all your games. That was such a heartbreaker last year."

Joanie closed the Handbook. The welcoming lights of Miss R twinkled in the windshield. Her apprehension seemed so foolish now. I could afford to be apprehensive then.

"Some friends of mine, they're fans too. They'd love to meet you."

The light at Suttledge and Boone was green, and the driver showed no signs of slowing. Just before the bus reached the stop at the intersection, Joanie pushed the PRESS HERE TO STOP strip. The brakes screamed in protest as the driver brought the black hulk to a stop. The doors behind Joanie swung open. She pulled herself out of her seat, jumped over the steps to the sidewalk, and sprinted toward Mary Rutherford, not looking back to see if the guy was following.

She crossed Boone at a dead run, headlights bearing down on her. An angry horn dopplered past as she bounded up the steps to the parking lot behind the dorm. The back door was closed. She raced around the front of the building, up the steps to the front door. She realized too late that her ID card was still in her bag at Dr. Burton's apartment, but as she crested the last step the door opened for three girls heading out, and she shouldered in before the door closed with a click of the magnetic lock.

This is my home. You're always welcome at home.

Mary Rutherford had no lobby to speak of, just a small common room that hadn't been redecorated since the 40s. No one was using it, because no one ever used it. There was no sound on the first floor except for the muted rustling of two hundred girls ensconced in their own private worlds. Joanie knew so little about what went on behind all those closed doors. She recognized faces but didn't know names. They were all so small, so far away.

A floorboard creaked above Joanie's head as one of those nameless girls shuffled around her second-floor room. She imagined the dorm without walls or floors: all the bodies stacked in invisible boxes, as far as she could see. With the structure gone, she could see Kenya in their room, above her and to her right. Between them were other girls, other lives, each in her own box, with her own fears and joys and doubts and obsessions. They played out their own dramas independent of Joanie, free from her worries but bound by their own. They had their own stories, written in their own Handbooks. They were girls on buses too, surely, girls in the coffeeshop or the diner, girls in the back row at the theatre, girls at the concert, girls with guitars, girls in calculus, girls throwing Frisbees, girls reading Faulkner. Joanie was but one of an infinite number of girls multiplying in four dimensions, all just as important as her.

But they aren't. Not really.

This house had many rooms, but only one mattered. The one she and Kenya shared. The one she had abandoned. She would have to ask to be let back in, and hope that Kenya said yes.

A knock on the front door broke the silence. "Joanie," said a mocking voice outside. "Are you in there?" The guy from the bus had followed her. He can't get in. You're safe. Your home is secure.

A key slid into a lock. Joanie froze. The front door was controlled by the ID-card system. Its only mechanical lock had a keyhole so big you could see through it, like a naughty Victorian child spying on his sister. Joanie assumed it was purely decorative.

But now the brass doorknob was turning.

Joanie broke into a run, heading for the stairs at the south end of the hall. She vaulted up them, three at a time, and sprinted down the length of the second floor to her room. She pounded on the closed door. "Kenya, it's me. I'm sorry. Let me in." Joanie tried the knob: locked. Her keys were with her ID card, at Dr. Burton's.

Slow, deliberate steps rang in the stairwell, even here at the other end of the hall. He's stomping like that on purpose. Toying with me.

Joanie ran to the bathroom in the middle of the hall and ducked into a shower stall. Outside, the guy's steps moved at an unhurried pace down the hall. "Joanie," he called out, singsong. The shower tiles were clammy against her arm. Why are you hiding? She could stand up to him, probably overpower him if she had to. Something told her that was a bad idea. There were always unforeseen consequences. "Joanie," he sang again.

A door opened in the hall. The guy's footsteps stopped. "What are you doing here?" said a female voice. It was maybe Joanie's RA. "You're not supposed to be in here."

"My apologies. I was just looking for—"

"I don't care who you're looking for. Men can't be in here after ten. Get out of here before I call campus police." The door slammed shut. After a moment, the footsteps receded, until the only sound Joanie heard was the intermittent drip of water from the showerhead.

She counted to a hundred before stepping out of the shower stall. She left the bathroom by its other door, on the far side of the showers.

Something was different on the second floor. Before, it was quiet. Now it was silent. She heard no muffled sounds from behind any of the doors. She put her ear against the door of room 223, across the hall from the bathroom. Nothing. The door itself was strange: it has the usual dry-erase board and resident name placards, but they were blank. Every decoration on every door was stark white.

Only one door on the hall was open: 235, right next to Joanie and Kenya's room. Light shone through the doorway into the hall. It looked like sunlight. Joanie crept down the hall toward the room, instinctively holding Kenya's Handbook in front of her as a shield. Mary Rutherford 235 wasn't occupied by any students. It was maintained as a velvet-roped historical curiosity, preserving the way it looked in 1960 when a campaigning John F. Kennedy spent the night there, "writing a speech." Legend had it that he wrote more than one speech that night.

As Joanie approached the room, she heard a faint sound from inside, the soft scratch of pencil on paper. The light from the room was indeed sunlight, streaming in through the window, even though it was nearly 11 p.m., casting a golden aura around a girl sitting at the room's sole desk. She was dressed like she wished it was 1973, in bell bottoms and a yellow ringer T-shirt. Her long brown hair obscured her face as she drew something in a notebook. It looked like blueprints.

"Hello?" said Joanie.

The girl shut her notebook so fast it broke the point off her pencil. Her face was square and plain, but the eyes set in it, just a little too far apart, were dark and fierce, almost feral, and they bore down on Joanie. "Who are you?" the girl demanded.

"I'm Joanie. I was..." She was ashamed to say it. "I was hiding."

The girl broke into a cracked smile. "That's okay," she said. "I'm Molly." She pointed at the open door, where a sheet of purple construction paper displayed her name in big loopy letters traced in silver puff paint. "I'm hiding too."