Free Sanctum by Madeleine Roux

say.
    “Listen, Dan, Cal’s not always a bad guy,” he explained. “He was one of the first people I ever met on campus. We were fast friends back in freshman year and even roomies for second year, but people change. I mean . . .” He shrugged, crossing his arms and leaning against the carpeted wall in the elevator as it pulled them up to the third floor. “What if one of your buddies changed? Would you just drop them?”
    Dan didn’t have an answer for that. It wasn’t like Jordan or Abby could ever become as nauseatingly vapid as Cal, who’d parroted what Professor Reyes told him without questioning it. Dan grimaced. Professor Reyes. He’d known he was going to have to confront her sooner or later.
    “And not to pry,” Micah continued, stopping Dan from answering what he now assumed was a rhetorical question, “but how do you know so much about Brookline just from staying there? Most prospies get here and they don’t know thing one about this school, but you seem like some sort of expert.”
    The elevator doors opened, allowing Dan a moment to think up a clever enough response. After having a strange kid scream in his face and nearly jump out of a window, Dan wasn’t exactly keen to cozy up to anyone on campus.
    “I’m not most kids,” Dan said. He followed Micah out through the common room—not the same one from before, luckily—and into a corridor. They turned right and then stopped outside a door marked 312. “I mean, besides staying in Brookline this summer, I’ve also just been looking forward to college since I can remember. I’ve been taking the whole search seriously.”
    “Like me, then?” Micah smiled crookedly at him and unlocked the door. It swung open to reveal a shoe box of a room, cramped but extremely tidy. An air mattress was already set up next to the window. Micah wandered in that direction. “I couldn’t wait to get the hell out of high school. Small town. Small minds. Scattered family. Good people, sure, but I was ready for a change.”
    “I know the feeling,” Dan said absently.
    A soft knock came at the door behind him. Micah went to answer, and Dan heard his luggage being dropped off by another host student. He took the moment to gaze around the room, spotting two acoustic guitars in the corner, a desk with the biggest computer he had ever seen, and walls choked with posters for sci-fi movies. On the dresser, a row of martial arts trophies was lined up underneath a huge map of Louisiana. Dan leaned in close to the map, looking at the red Sharpie circle around one city.
    “Cata . . . Cata . . .” He couldn’t get his mouth around the word.
    “Catahoula?”
    “ Gesundheit ,” Dan said with a smirk. “Is that home?”
    Micah set down Dan’s bag next to the air mattress and stretched, then nodded. “For a little while, it was, then Shreveport, then Baton Rouge.”
    Dan circled the room, picking up other little details as he went—the dean’s list taped above Micah’s computer, commendations from the Biological Sciences and Philosophy Departments, a few photos of what he assumed was family back home, and a whole line of miniature Star Wars figurines underneath his monitor. A row of frames hung near his academic accolades, black-and-white photos showing an old plantation house with a tall oak on the right and what looked like a stream behind it. A formal family portrait filled the next frame, in which a woman in a frilly dress sat in the middle of a herd of befrocked children, all of them staring out at the camera with that old-timey, dead-eyed stare.
    “Family?” Dan asked, leaning in closer to the photos. He bumped one of the Star Wars figurines and hurried to right it.
    “Mom’s side of the family. That’s the old Arnaud Plantation house. Just my grandmother lives there now but she never liked me much. The place is falling down—haunted too. The way my grandma tells it, that’s a badge of honor.” Micah chuckled and joined Dan near the desk. “You