We knew that Brigid would patrol our hallway sometime between 9:45 p.m. and 10:00 p.m., and at 9:48 we heard the heavy fire door open, then the dull shuffle of Brigid’s clogs against the carpeted hallway, moving slightly faster than usual. She stopped briefly in front of a few doors, and it was unclear whether she’d heard something or she was innately suspicious. By 9:52, she was gone.

“She moves one floor at a time,” Ruthie whispered to me as she peeked her head out our door to double-check we were in the clear. She waved for me to follow her and I turned off the lights and did exactly what she said. We stood against the fire door, peeking through the small glass window until we saw Brigid emerge and disappear down the West Wing staircase.

“Let’s go,” Ruthie whispered, quickly hopping into the elevator and pressing the down button. It’s easy to forget that Brigid is still a student here. She gets weighed in, too. She was probably told by her freshman RA about the benefits of the staircase and hasn’t taken the elevator since. Who knew that one note would be so beneficial.

We pushed out the dorm’s front doors and into the darkness like we had so many other nights, snaking through the bushes, following our usual routine. But this time there was an excitement to it I hadn’t felt since our first night in the woods. This was something new. We were leaving.

We met Catherine, Annie, Andrew, Nicholas, and Timothy in our spot in the woods. When I told Ruthie that Timothy kissed me—running from the spot to our dorm on a mission that afternoon—she didn’t quite react the way I expected her to. She cheered me on and we jumped up and down, excited for me to have experienced my first real kiss, to have my first potential boyfriend, to do all the things with boyfriends that we had talked about. But it felt forced. Fake. Like she was doing it to placate me, not because she actually felt that way; not because she was actually happy. She seemed jealous. Like she wished it was her instead.

In the woods, Timothy realized that if we stood on the cooler, we could climb over the stone wall and we wouldn’t have to worry about getting caught on any cameras leaving campus late. I wanted to ask how we’d get back without a cooler on the other side, but decided not to worry about it. If they weren’t concerned, they probably had a plan. Who was I to question it?