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Woodbury doesn’t shut down. The dorms stay open. The dining hall by the library does a Thanksgiving dinner at two o’clock on Thursday for anybody who stays, which Kylie says she heard from someone else that it’s “surprisingly good, actually, the stuffing slaps.” There are international students who don’t go home until December. Athletes with practice. People whose homes are too far, or too expensive, or not the kind of place you go back to. Elliot’s flight home to Oregon isn’t until Friday because, he says, flying on Thanksgiving costs “a kidney and part of a lung,” so he’ll be around Thursday, too.

I won’t be stranded in a ghost town. I’ll have the library. I’ll have my mailers. I’ll call my grandma. I’ll eat the stuffing that slaps. And the quiet I love will finally be quiet enough to hear myself think.

I’m genuinely okay with it.

I’ve also noticed that I’ve stopped checking on Rafe’s location as much. When I do, he’s at his normal places: the rink, Corvin, the gym. His dot has stopped meaning danger and started meaning nothing at all, which is so much stranger than I expected it to be.

Except that afternoon, I’m in the library on the third floor, and I check the time, and his dot is in the business building.

My stomach turns over as an old reflex. For one second, I’m sure he’s waiting somewhere on the second floor by the back stairwell, the way he did before. And then I remember I’m not in the business building, I’m in the library, half a mile away. He isn’t waiting for me. He’s just there.

His dot stays there for an hour.

I don’t know what that means. Rafe doesn’t have class in that building. He’s never had class in that building. And that evening, I see him in the hall outside his room with his backpack open on the floor, shoving books into it, and the one on top is a fat red textbook that says Introduction to Financial Accounting down the spine.

He sees me see it. He zips the backpack.

I don’t ask. He doesn’t say a word to me. But I think about it for the rest of the night. And I also think about how we didn’t even say hi to each other. We’ve become complete strangers, and it’s nice to finally be able to breathe around him.

Later that night, I’m coming back from the lounge with a stack of mailers when he comes out of his room, and we end up walking the same direction down the hall, two feet of carpet between us.

“If you want to avoid me this weekend, I’ll probably be with Kylie,” I say.

He looks at me. “What?”

I swallow. “It’s Thanksgiving.”

He’s quiet for a second. “I’m driving down Wednesday.”

I don’t know why I didn’t consider that. “Oh.”

“You’re not going home?” he asks.

“Christmas,” I say.

He’s looking at me with that look, the one I can’t read, the one from the basement at Theta.

“Not Thanksgiving?”

“No.”

I wait for the next question. Why not. Two months ago, he’d have backed me against the wall and asked it six different ways until I gave him something. He’d have made it a thing. He’d have wanted to know, and when Rafe wanted to know something, he found out.

He doesn’t ask.

He just looks at me for a second longer, and then he nods, like I answered something, and goes into the kitchen, and the door swings shut behind him.

I stand in the hallway with my mailers.

He didn’t ask. He let it be quiet.

I don’t know what to do with a Rafferty Waleska who lets things be quiet.

Tuesday starts feeling different by noon. Not empty yet. Just thinner.

Doors that are usually cracked open are shut. People keep passing me in the hall with duffel bags over their shoulders or rolling suitcases bumping against their ankles. Every few minutes, the elevator opens and somebody steps out carrying more than they normally would, headed toward the lobby.

By the time my last class lets out, there are cars pulled up along the curb outside Corvin. A girl from the second floor is loading a suitcase into the back of an SUV while her dad tries to fit a laundry bag beside it. Two boys I recognize from upstairs are standing near the entrance with backpacks on, arguing about who has the keys.