The Boy in the Tunnel

Fall 1997, Chapter 23: Joanie

She had to escape. For four days and counting she had been followed, every one of her footsteps echoed in duplicate. Hands reached for her unbidden. Her skin tingled from the charged air at the tips of their fingers, but she always pulled away just before contact.

They would be waiting at the front steps of Thorn. Audrey and Kenya. Her two bodyguards. For Audrey it was like returning to an old job she had only left reluctantly, and she had returned with gusto. Were she physically capable, she would pick Joanie up and carry her through the rain like a baby while Whitney Houston sang Dolly Parton. For Kenya it was more of an obligation, though one that she accepted willingly, as a parent does the care of a wayward child. But Joanie would rather stab herself in the eyes than see them again today.

No one could take this much concern. This much love.

When Dr. Dade finally dismissed her Modernism class, she didn't join the masses heading for the exits. She waited for the second floor to clear, and when no one was looking, she snuck into the custodial closet to go to her secret place.

You find it the first week of school and never tell anyone else about it, not even Kenya. Before you left, your mom told you it was important to be social and meet new people, but it was just as important to find a place where you can be by yourself and be yourself. This place is exactly that.

There's an elevator in Thorn Hall - the oldest elevator in Georgia, in fact, but almost no one knows about it because it's hidden behind unmarked doors on each floor that everyone assumes are custodial closets. But the elevator is there, and it still works, and it goes to places in Thorn that the stairs don't. The sub-basement, for instance, which houses Anthony Delmonico's collection of rare documents, now forgotten and mildewing.

But what you're most interested in is the highest point on the elevator's dial: the roof. The elevator terminates in the pedestal of the massive statue of Howard Thorn that watches over the Milligan Pass. The tall merlons of the battlement that extends around the roof shield you from the view of passersby. This alone makes it an ideal spot to escape the bustle of campus life.

The roof, however, is not only attractive for its seclusive qualities, but also for the mysteries of its decoration. The surface of the roof is covered in tiles, each a miniature masterpiece of glass mosaic depicting a scene from the life of Anthony Delmonico. When read in a clockwise spiral from the northwest corner of the roof, they tell in pictures his entire life story, from his inauspicious birth to his ignoble death.

The brass needle shuddered as the cage rattled roofward. The elevator lurched to a stop, and the needle flatlined on the right side of the dial. An ancient bell issued a sad, rusty clank. End of the line. Joanie pushed open the rusty grate and stepped out onto the roof. She took ten long paces and reached the edge. She stood on a tile depicting Anthony, as a young man, climbing the tallest tree in his village, and she leaned out over the edge through a gap between the merlons. Directly below her, Audrey and Kenya were still waiting on the steps. Joanie could call out to them if she wanted. She could spit on them or drop a handful of change on their heads. But she was content to watch. They were arguing – about her, no doubt. Let them worry. Let the needle of their worry swing toward 180 degrees.

After a minute, Kenya threw up her hands and left. Audrey hesitated on the steps for a moment, then went back inside Thorn. If she was looking for Joanie, she wouldn't find her.

Joanie had two hours until her next class. They would find her then, most likely. They would be waiting outside Salley Hall, looks of concern on their faces to mask their suspicion. They wouldn't want to ask the question, but it would still lie there, expectant, the snake in the tall grass of their innocuous small talk: did you take gunpowder? That was the real reason Kenya and Audrey were following her everywhere: to keep her from falling. From succumbing. As if she was some junkie who couldn't help herself, who would shovel whatever she could find up her nose the second she was alone. As if Kenya wasn't the one who introduced her to gunpowder in the first place. As if Audrey wasn't experimenting with god knows what. No way she could hang around those twins for that long without developing a taste for something.