When Kenya woke up alone in her room in Miss R on Monday morning, it was the first time in a week that she hadn't felt alone. Joanie's absence was no longer a presence unto itself. She hadn't expected to see Joanie there, and so she felt no disappointment when Joanie wasn't there.

It would have been a lie to say she forgot about Joanie. She couldn't just forget about Joanie. But she could let Joanie, and Charlie, and Sarah and Audrey and everything else, recede from the forefront of her mind. Let them drift off into the stars like aliens sucked out of an airlock, until they were no more than pinpricks of light against the great black void.

Chet was waiting for her outside, shoeless on the freshly mowed grass of the quad. He looked asleep on his feet, but when he saw Kenya walk out of the dorm his face exploded into life like he'd been given a jump-start. He was smitten, and Kenya couldn't help but bask in the light he reflected back to her. At least for now.

He met her at the bottom of the steps with a kiss. He smelled like toothpaste and Right Guard, barely masking the just-woken-up funk. It wasn't a bad funk. She reserved the right to change her mind in a few weeks, or a few days, but for now his smell intrigued more than it disgusted. "You need a shower," she said, half expecting him to say Only if you join me. If he did, she would.

"I don't have class till noon." He walked her to the bus stop instead, and waited with her until the Blue Line showed up to take her to class.

The bus rolled up Suttledge to the next stop at the Student Union. Students swarmed onto the bus. A girl sat in the empty seat next to Kenya, her bony elbow poking into her side. Kenya tried to make herself even smaller in the cramped space next to the window.

The bus took off again. "Kenya, it's me," said the girl. Kenya looked up at Sarah sitting next to her. She looked terrible. A funk came off of her, not unlike Chet's.

"Sarah? What happened?"

"What happened?" Sarah picked at a scab on her arm. "What happened to you?"

"What do you mean?"

"We were supposed to keeping tabs on this Alex guy, remember? I've been following him all weekend."

"Come on." It seemed so long ago, Charlie telling them to follow Alex. It was light from a dead star, one of billions in the galaxy that now occupied her mind.

"You come on. You're the one who said he was a Dead Man."

"When was the last time you slept?"

"Don't worry about it." She picked at the scab again.

"You need to go take a shower and get some sleep. Maybe not in that order. But you definitely need both."

Sarah put a finger to Kenya's lips. "Shhh." The bus pulled to a stop in front of Thorn Hall. Before Kenya could even get mad at Sarah, she was out of the seat, fidgeting as passengers disembarked. "Come on!" Sarah grabbed for Kenya's wrist.

"Just stop touching me, all right?" Kenya got up and followed Sarah off the bus. "What are we doing?"

"Quiet," Sarah said. She pointed to a head of artfully disheveled black hair, part of a scrum of students moving up the path to Thorn Hall. Alex.

"I didn't think he was ever up this early," said Kenya.

"He's always up," said Sarah. She stared at Alex's head, like she was trying to will it to explode. Sarah's own hair was starting to mat and clump, ends sticking out at irregular angles. She had a food stain of some kind on her cheek. Kenya had never seen Sarah this agitated. She was always so in control. Even when she threw up on Kenya, the night they met, she seemed like she knew exactly what she was doing.

"Do you know who gave him the gunpowder?"

Sarah didn't acknowledge the question. She was in motion again, following Alex toward Thorn. Her right foot dragged on the concrete with each step. The ankle was visibly swollen, a sock-encased softball bulging out of Sarah's Chuck Taylor.

Kenya caught up to her and stopped her with a hand on her shoulder. "Sarah, just wait a second. Your ankle..." Sarah turned and her eyes met Kenya's. Whoever was looking out of them wasn't the Sarah that Kenya knew. Her right hand went to the scab on her forearm again. "We need to call Lark or something. You need to see a doctor."

"No." Sarah dug her finger into the dark spot on her arm until it bloomed bright red. A bead of blood ran in a thin line across her arm, hung wavering from her skin for a second, and dropped to the concrete. "Do you want to find out what happened to Joanie or not?"

Kenya saw Joanie floating on a sea of stars, but instead of getting smaller and farther away she got closer and closer, bigger and bigger, until she was the field of stars. She was a constellation. She was all the constellations, all the galaxies, all the stars still burning and those burned out, a billion suns with their planets.

"Fine."

Ahead of them Alex climbed the stairs to the front door of Thorn. He stopped there, leaning on the balustrade next to the wheelchair ramp, watching the throng of students streaming in and out of the door. Kenya figured this was probably the closest he'd ever been to an actual classroom.

"What are you expecting to—"

"Quiet," Sara hissed. Another drop of blood fell from her arm and landed with a tiny splat on Kenya's purple Reebok.

A familiar face exited Thorn. Alex leaned forward and grabbed his arm. He stopped, jumping like a frightened cat.

Sarah wiped her bloody forearm on her shirt. "Is that..."

"The Boy in the Tunnel." It was that kid, Tim, popping up in her life again, like a commercial she never wanted to see, for a product she didn't want.

Sarah moved up the path, pushing against the flow of students hurrying toward the bus stop. Kenya followed. On Thorn Hall's porch, Alex pulled Tim close to talk.

"Why is he talking to Tim?" They had shown up together that night, Alex and Tim, with Sarah and Audrey, carrying Joanie's poisoned body. Somehow this was about her, like everything was. She saw Joanie's face again, the face of an ancient cosmic god, a million miles tall, her eyes filled with stars. You can't escape something if it's your entire world. Joanie was somewhere in the building, or at least she was supposed to be. If she was okay.

"I don't know."

"Did they meet while you were following him all weekend?"

"No."

Tim pulled away, the fabric of his polo sleeve stretching tight until it snapped free of Alex's fingers. He sped down the steps and turned left, away from them, headed for Salley Hall.

Alex slouched back against the balustrade, deflated. He watched Tim go until he disappeared around the corner of the building. Alex remained at his spot, drumming his fingers on the whitewashed wood. He seemed hesitant to leave.

Kenya had half a mind to march right up the steps and grab Alex by those skinny shoulders and demand that he tell them where he got the fake gunpowder and how and why he gave it to Joanie. She wanted to grab him and shake him until all the answers fell out. Just like the name of his stupid band. She wanted to shake him until his brain rattled in his skull like a can of spray paint, until his pale skin turned blue and his eyes bled.

"Shit, he's coming this way," Sarah said. Alex started down the steps. Kenya and Sarah turned, walking slowly down the path. He brushed by them, muttering to himself, in a cloud of BO and stale cigarette stink. He hit the bus stop just as a Blue Line pulled up, and he got on.

Sarah grabbed Kenya's wrist. "Hurry." She dragged her down to the bus and they claimed the last remaining spots on the back steps, just beating the closing doors.

For the next thirty minutes Alex sat fidgeting in the front handicapped seats, which he had to himself as soon as the bus hit downtown and disgorged three quarters of its passengers, giving the remaining few room to get away from him. Kenya and Sarah stayed huddled on the little three-step well at the back door, even though there were plenty of open seats, so he wouldn't spot them. The driver told him no less than three times to stop drumming on the window with his hands.

The bus had nearly completed its circuit of campus when he finally got off at the stop on Suttledge, exactly where Kenya had started this morning. They followed him down to the foot of the stairs next to the bridge, and then up the winding stairs to the Wheeler Science Building. He stopped at the statue of Gertrude Wheeler for a brief one-sided conversation. They followed him, at a distance, into the building and up the stairs to the fourth floor. Kenya made it to the top of the stairs just in time to see him enter another room halfway up the hall.

The placard on the door read "Observatory." Kenya hesitated before opening the door. "He knows you can't see the stars in the daytime, right?"

"Just go in," said Sarah. The blood on her arm was now a dried smear, like fingerpaint. Kenya reached for the knob and turned.

"The observatory's not open for visitors today." A guy was standing behind them. At first Kenya took him for a student. He had the soft, unformed look of a freshman, accentuated by the fuzzy blue sweater stretched over his paunch. His doofy, overlarge smile turned his cheeks into perfect round apples, like a Rockwell Boy Scout.

"It's not?" said Kenya. "I just saw somebody go in."

"Yeah, sorry. Is there something I can help you ladies with?" Looking closer, Kenya realized the guy was thirty, at least. She could see how his curly dirty-blond hair was pulling back from his forehead, how that smile created deltas of lines at the corners of his eyes, and how the pudge on his stomach and face wasn't baby fat, but the fat of an athlete gone to seed. His cheeks might have been chubby, but his jaw was hard and prognathous. Together they gave him the look of a grown-up child star whose cuteness never evolved into adult handsomeness. He looked like half the guys who had ever watched her play golf.

"No, thanks. We just thought it was open."

"You know, I hear the daytime's not the best time for stargazing anyway."

Kenya shrugged, made a show of rolling her eyes at her own stupidity: Duh. "Guess that's what I get for skipping Astronomy so many times. Thanks anyway, Professor..."

"I'm not a professor." He smiled. He hadn't stopped smiling. "You can call me Peter."

"Okay. Thanks, Peter." Kenya waited for him to leave, but he didn't.

"We got it, man," said Sarah. "Move along."

Peter focused his smile at Sarah. Her hand went to the fresh scab on her arm, and she shrank behind Kenya. "I just realized," he said. "I know you."

"Me?" said Sarah. The scab broke, and a crescent of red lined her fingernail.

"It's Kenya, right?' He shifted his attention back to Kenya. "Kenya Cassidy?"

"Have we met...?" The more Kenya looked at his smile, the more something seemed wrong. It was the smile of a fish, like one of those fish that lived at the bottom of the deepest ocean trenches, its body nothing but a mouth, its tiny brain focused only on fulfilling its appetite.

"The Lady Ambassadors. I confess I never miss a game."

"Great. Thank you for your support."

Peter's brow furrowed, and the corners of his mouth turned down a bit. A pantomime of concern. "Should we talk about the elephant in the room?"

Those fish, down in the black water of their home, they lured in prey with dangling blobs of flesh, illuminated by bacteria. At those depths, no prey could resist the bait. "What do you mean?"

"Last year. In the quarterfinals. The incident?"

They call it a miracle season. Some college nobody's ever heard of explodes out of Bumblefuck, Georgia to make an end run at the NCAA Women's Volleyball Championship. Sure, in terms of national prominence it ranks somewhere well south of March Madness, but for the kind of people who get excited about collegiate women's volleyball, it's the most exciting fucking thing that's ever happened. An honest-to-God miracle. Except you know full well that God is not the responsible party. It's Joanie, carrying the team on those broad, strong shoulders. You all look like goddamn volleyball geniuses thanks to her, sheltered under the umbrella of her grace. You start to notice more and more TV cameras at the games, and there's some guy from the FIVB sniffing around, passing out free Swatches and trying to convince Joanie to join the pro beach-volleyball circuit.

The quarterfinals are the first real test. You blow through the first three rounds of the tournament in nine straight sets, leaving a trail of broken, humiliated Amazons in your wake. Those matches build the legend of the Lady Ambassadors – but Stanford is waiting in the quarterfinals to destroy it. The Cardinal takes the first two sets, and it's only through superhuman heroics on Joanie's part that you battle back to even the match at 2-2. The fifth and final set is a brutal slog that dragged past 25 and then 30, every seemingly game-changing point answered with force. You play past the point of exhaustion, until your legs are rubbery and you can no longer feel the ball when it hits your hand. The Ambassadors go up 42-41 when a bleary-eyed Cardinal player dives for a save, misses the ball by a foot, and remains prone on the floor until three other players drag her back to the bench.

It's game point. Joanie has the serve. She tosses the ball in the air, and just at the apex of its arc, as she cocks back her arm, a thing shuffles out onto the court. It passes between you and the net, but you can barely comprehend the shape of it. It is black and glossy, huge, but its dimensions seem to shift with every movement. It stops in the middle of the court and dances, the Hefty bags and unspooled VHS tape that makes up its body rustling in the stunned silence of the arena. You can't see its feet, but you can hear its shoes squeaking on the hardwood. Beneath the garbage bags and black tape, you can see a body: fuzzy, bulbous and purple.

After twenty seconds of dancing, the thing stops and raises what must have been its arm to Joanie. "You got this, Joanie," it says, in a voice too normal to come out of this body. "J!" it shouts, and stomps out a triplet. "O! A! N!" Before it can finish, two security guards tackle it to the floor. "I have diplomatic immunity!" it shouts, as they try to locate its hands.

By the time order is restored, Joanie is shaken. You can see it in her eyes: the game is already over.

"That was you?" said Kenya. Hot blood ran to her face, to her hands. Peter might as well have stripped her naked. She was exposed to a harsh, uncaring world.

"I can't begin to apologize," Peter said. "I'm just such a fan. I got carried away. I think we all did."

Kenya stared at him, this grinning idiot who had cost the team its miracle season – and, worse than that, had hurt Joanie. She wanted to knock out his gleaming white teeth one by one and make them into a necklace. That's what anyone who hurts Joanie deserves. Anyone who hurts her or betrays her.

"I'm glad I ran into you," Peter said. "It feels good to finally apologize. I just hope you can forgive me." There was nothing behind his smile. Nothing but a mouth.

"Peter," said Sarah. Her voice sounded stronger than it had all morning. Like the Sarah that Kenya knew and hated. She put a hand on Kenya's, which she realized was shaking. "You need to get the fuck out of here."

"What?"

"Leave us the fuck alone, or I will gouge your fucking eyes out."

Peter's shoulders tensed, and one of his round red cheeks twitched. "You can't," he sputtered, caught short by whatever he saw on Sarah's face. "Fine. Jesus Christ. I was just trying to apologize." He wheeled and shoved the push bar of the door to the stairs. "Christ."

Sarah watched the door until its catch clicked shut, and they could no longer hear Peter's footsteps on the stairs. Her hand remained on Kenya's, and Kenya fought the urge to squeeze it, to envelope her smaller body in an embrace. This must be what it feels like to have a protector. This must be what Joanie feels like.

Sarah removed her hand from Kenya's. It felt, for the briefest of moments, like Kenya had lost her own hand. This is what it feels like to be Joanie too.

"Thank you," said Kenya.

"For what?" Sarah scratched at her scab again.

They sat on the floor a few yards down the hall from the observatory doors, their backs to the wall and knees drawn up to their chests, in silence.

After another fifteen minutes Alex emerged from the observatory, followed by a lanky, bearded guy in glasses, backlit in red. "Fuck, Russell, I'm going," said Alex.

The doorknob twisted in Russell's grip. "This is the last time."

"You said I was always welcome."

Russell retreated into the red light and pulled the door shut behind him.

"Fuck you," Alex muttered to the closed door. His right hand was curled around something, and he opened it to take a look. It was a vial of a crystalline substance. He wrapped his fingers tight around it again, and took off down the stairs.

"That's it," said Sarah. "I'll take this to Charlie."

"I can do it, if you don't want to talk to her."

"No, I'll do it." For a second the old Sarah flickered in her eyes. "You probably shouldn't show your face down there until you find Joanie anyway."

When Kenya returned to Miss R at the end of the day, the room was still empty. Joanie was still somewhere beyond reach. Kenya pulled off her shoes and her sweatpants and crawled into her bed. She reached to turn off the lamp on top of the mini-fridge and found herself staring into the face of the stuffed purple elephant.

The elephant in the room.

She no longer felt alone.