To my right, students stand in a long line on the red bricks surrounding the Old Well. Waiting for a sip, and good luck, on the first day of classes. Beyond them, the grounds are dotted with old-growth trees, low bushes, and a Confederate statue facing north.

I cross the street and trot between the South building and the old Playmakers Theatre. As soon as I clear both, I’ve got a picturesque view of Polk Place, the university’s main quad. Then, it feels like the seven-hundred-acre campus stares back at me all at once.

Academic buildings hold the border on all four sides of the rectangular lawn, connected via a sprawling network of walkways that stretch long over the grass and cross one another like red brick latticework. A hundred yawning, groggy students drift across the quad like birds in scattered migration. Some navigate the campus by memory, heads bent over their phones. Others move in pairs or groups, cutting across the grounds toward the dining hall for breakfast before their eight a.m.’s. Late summer’s early morning clouds cast the sky in muted grays and turn leaves to rich greens.

This is probably only a tenth of the grounds, but it’s still more school than I’ve ever walked. It takes a minute to get oriented. I thumb through the campus map on my phone and take off at a jog through the low-hanging mist and dew-drenched grass for the Student and Academic Services Building.

My mind tosses up images from last night like dark, confusing confetti. I want to tell Alice what I witnessed, but would she believe I saw a golden-eyed boy who uses magic to hypnotize students and a girl who carries a bow and arrow in her back pocket? And what about the deputy—maybe even the entire Sheriff’s department—who almost definitely knows the truth and helps keep it quiet? Alice didn’t see the isel, but she saw Selwyn dismiss Deputy Norris. She might agree that that hadn’t been a typical encounter between a police officer and a teenage boy, but would she leap with me from the shores of not normal to the wide, unknown ocean of absolutely terrifying?

“Ms. Matthews, Ms. Chen, please, sit down.”

Dean McKinnon has a former-football-player look about him: broad shoulders stretch the seams of his blue-striped button-down. I’m grateful that he’s offered us a seat and sit quickly. I have at least an inch in height on him, even in flats and not counting my hair, tall in its bun. It tends to make older men uncomfortable when I meet their gaze equally.

Sometimes I wish I could shrink into someone more convenient.