After Ruthie disappeared, I took most of her clothes, stuffing them into my plastic mattress cover to hide them from her mom and stepdad when they came to campus to collect her things. They were convinced she’d simply run away. She’s done it before and she’ll do it again, her stepdad kept saying, unsuccessfully assuaging her mother’s frustration. She’s desperate for attention, he told Brigid, who oversaw their move-out—shoulders back, stomach in, like a drill sergeant disappointed in her trainee’s inability to shut up and take it.

But Ruthie wasn’t coming back. I knew it. She would never leave me. She knew that if she went anywhere, I would go with her.

When I came back to campus after curfew alone, I tried to tell Brigid what happened—“Ruthie’s gone, we have to go get her. Can you drive?”—but I was promised a violation and a fine and then stuffed into my room to think about how Jesus would feel that I was out so late. As if I wasn’t already thinking about how Jesus would feel that I wasn’t a virgin anymore. This man needed to mind his own fucking business.

Then I tried to convince Dr. Theresa Bregg, the head of Covenant’s Office of Equity and Inclusion. Her windowless office was located in the basement of the Student Center, underneath the main dining hall so it smelled like oregano and burned cheese, and while she and I sat at a conference table discussing Ruthie, debris occasionally fell from the ceiling tiles, spraying us with powdery insulation every time a football student ran toward the pizza line upstairs.

I told her we went to a party. That Ruthie and I snuck out, drove to a mountain with a big red barn, drank radioactive pink alcohol, and that she followed a boy into the woods and never came out. I tried searching for her. I yelled her name until my throat ached and my toes were numb in the snow. I ran up and down the forest, trees grating against my body, puncturing holes in my jacket, scraping my face, until I wasn’t sure which way was out. Until I was so deep in the evergreens, I couldn’t see the moon. Until it was so dark, I wasn’t sure whether my eyes were open or closed.

When I found my way back to the barn, it could have been an hour later, I had no idea, everyone was inside, dancing to a Lady Gaga song I’d never heard before but would never be able to forget. All but two of the boys were there, talking to that dark-haired annoyed girl, drinking like nothing happened.

I stormed up to them and slapped the red cup from one of their pale hands. “Where are your friends?” I asked. “The ones who live here?”