“Can I ask you something, Mikaila? You know that package I got yesterday, the one on the porch with my name on it?”

“What? Oh, yeah. That. What was it? Did you order something?”

“It’s a book.”

“Oh. Snooze.”

“Did you see the person who left it here?” Rebecca asks.

Mikaila yawns again, her T-shirt riding up, exposing her navel. She closes her eyes like she might fall asleep leaning against the wall.

“Mikaila?”

“I don’t know, Becca. So many questions so early in the morning.”

“So you didn’t see anyone?”

She sighs. “I don’t know. I told you the package was already sitting there when we walked up. It could have been there all day. I had a really early class at eleven yesterday, so I was gone for a while.”

“Okay. Thanks.”

Mikaila reaches out and starts moving Rebecca’s hair around. “You’d be so pretty with a better haircut, Becca. Maybe some bolder color? Liven up this brown. I can take you to the place I go. It’s only, like, two hundred dollars.”

“Two hundred?”

“Oh, and yeah . . . Steven’s going to be staying here for a few days. He forgot to pay his heating bill, so the landlord shut it off. Can you believe that? So there’s no heat at his place. You don’t mind if he crashes here.”

Mikaila slips into the bathroom without waiting for a response.

Rebecca doesn’t have time to offer one. She’s running late. And she knows Mikaila wouldn’t listen anyway. She dresses in her room—jeans, a sweatshirt, boots. She thinks about bringing the pages of the book with her to read on the bus or during any downtime she has at the writing center, but decides against it. She fears losing some of the pages, since they were just floating around loose, and she could look forward to reading more when she comes home this evening. As she pulls on her coat and steps out into the cold, she pictures the scene playing itself out in reverse in seven hours or so. Rebecca entering the apartment, heading to her room, slipping under the covers, and then reading the rest. Mikaila and Steven could swing from the chandeliers for all she cares, so long as she holds a good book in her hands. And this one is very, very good. . . .

And the more she thinks about the book, the more familiar it sounds. The bus rumbles toward campus and the low set of buildings—none more than three stories high—that makes up Gatewood’s downtown. The air brakes hiss at every stop, the door letting in a rush of cold air as passengers climb on and off. That book—the one from the porch. It kind of sounds like the one Dr. Nye wrote and talked about at the library a few nights ago.