“You don’t look like the type that would find a place on campus to smoke,” I said as he lingered. I wanted to keep him around longer. The more he stared at me, the more I stared back. And the more I started to feel hot on my cheeks, my neck, between my legs.

“Neither do you,” he said. He started backing away, only to lose his balance on the edge of a step, tipping backwards until he caught himself, his thick boot stomping back on concrete. “These fucking steps,” he said, tapping his joint against the air in an attempt to recover from his embarrassment.

I’d never seen stairs like these before: the tread was at least two feet, but the rise was only five or six inches.

He kicked the step, rustling the edge of an anthill. “These stairs have a lot of nicknames,” he said. “Did you know that?” He looked up at Ruthie and me like he was waiting for an answer even though he knew we wouldn’t have one.

“The smoking steps?” I toyed.

He smiled at the thought. Clever. “That’s one of them. At least to us. They don’t really teach you that here, but you learn.” He stuck the joint into his mouth and bent at the knees, watching the ants frantically evacuate the home he’d just crumbled. “They’re also called the Rape Steps.”

I suddenly realized how cold I was. I was shaking, the sheen of sweat on my face—from fear—making it even worse.

“Why?” I asked, stepping closer to him like a dare. Why would he bring that up? And why did I like it?

He jolted to his feet and I knocked backwards, tripping over two steps before grabbing the edge of a tree and standing up straight. Ruthie didn’t move. She stood a foot away from him, stoic, making a point. You don’t scare us.

He looked at us blankly, like whatever was in that water bottle was finally setting in. “Apparently, the way they’re built—shallow and long like that—it benefits a girl’s gait but not a guy’s.” He jumped up suddenly, landing on my step with a thud that seemed to echo around us. “Rumor has it, they were made special so girls could outrun rapists.” He let out a laugh. “Or anyone trying to chase them, I guess. Regardless of intent.”

His dark eyes were so close to mine, I could differentiate between his brown iris and the black pupil. He didn’t move so neither did we. But I wanted to run.

The edges of his lips curled up, then went flat again as he raised the joint to his mouth and puffed. “It’s also possible they were built in the eighteenth century and made this way so horses could easily climb them,” he said, laughing to himself. “I guess we’ll never know, huh?”