The library is never as quiet as a library probably should be.

A group of friends to Indy's left bond over their mutual hatred for Orgo and its apparently eccentric professor. A reticent boy to her right, for whatever reason, decides to watch a YouTube video without headphones. And faintly, beyond the library's gothic arched windows, rings the chaotic revelry of all the Proudley students who decided studying was the very last thing they were going to do with their Saturday night.

How Indy wishes she was one of them. Someone who could wing all their exams with little consequence, someone to whom an A or a B meant more or less the same thing. But she isn't, and she never has been, so she whittles away the hours at the mahogany desk in front of her, the air scented with carpet cleaner and coffee gone cold.

When her phone rings, she nearly misses it, her mind is so far away. The YouTube boy picks up his head and glances at her from behind smudged glasses as if to say, You gonna answer that? Indy curls her lip, and answers. "Hello?"

"Indy. Hey. Are you busy?"

It's Sylvia, her roommate, who was her enemy for much of her first semester here, before being enemies got old and Indy needed someone who actually knew how to cornrow. "Sort of."

"No you're not. Listen. I need you to come to Dauphine Street."

Indy isn't sure how she knows, but it's something in the exhaustion of Sylvia's otherwise colorful voice, the way it drops partially into a whisper, too, like she's saying something it's better someone else doesn't overhear. "Tell me straight, Syl," Indy says with a sigh, already closing her laptop, the click of it echoing off the high ceilings. "Is it Percy?"

There is no sigh, no hesitation, only grim acceptance. "It's Percy."

She's going to kill him. One of these days, she swears she's going to. "Put him on the phone."

"Bad idea," Sylvia says. "He's currently upchucking next to a sewer drain. Even if he were available I don't think it'd be the most pleasant conversation."

Indy wants to throw her backpack through one of the windows. Instead, she tosses it over her shoulders. "I'll be there in five. Don't let him wander off anywhere."

"Sure. Hurry up," Sylvia says, and the call clicks to a close in Indy's ear.

The autumn air is crisp, skin-tingling, not yet enough to make Indy's teeth chatter but enough to make her wish she was wearing a slightly heavier jacket. The red and pink cobblestones of Proudley's central walkway are strewn with leaves and shiny with puddles of dubious depths; it rained the night before, and the smell of damp earth and grass still lingers in the air. Normally Indy would pause, at least for a second, to appreciate the reflection of the gold street lamps in the pools of water between the stones, the throngs of laughing people tucked under the brick awnings of the residence halls. Now her heart is beating too fast. She cuts a sharp diagonal through the Commons, the square lawn around which Proudley's Tudor-style buildings are all organized.

It's a further walk than she would like at this hour, since Dauphine Street isn't part of Proudley at all, but rather just beyond the campus border, leading into the town surrounding it. She walks fast, and when her legs begin to ache with the effort, she ignores it.

She doesn't see the man turning the corner on his way out of Bethune Building until she's already slammed into him, sending a flurry of crisp white papers floating towards the soggy ground. Indy's pulse speeds with embarrassment, even before she looks up into a face she wishes she didn't recognize.

"Dr. Clover!" Indy yelps, bending to retrieve the papers, ignoring his insistence that she doesn't need to. "I'm so sorry. That was completely my bad."

Though Dr. Clover is currently her professor for a basic intro journalism course she has to take as part of her media degree, he has a strange way of making you forget he's a professor at all. Other professors stroll Proudley's grounds in suits and starched shirts and leather shoes polished to a shine, but Dr. Clover leans towards jeans and threadbare sweaters, and sports a different fedora over his graying close-cropped afro every time Indy sees him. His smile is the sort that makes his eyes crinkle like an endearing grandfather's. Indy has yet to decide whether she pities him or respects him, though she suspects it's a bit of both.

"Everything okay?" Dr. Clover asks, overgrown eyebrows, threaded with silver, pinching with subtle concern. "You seem in a rush."

"It's—I—" Indy stumbles over the words, trying both not to lie and not to harm Percy's reputation worse than he already has, which is proving a more difficult feat than she bargained for. "Percy's...not feeling well. Not sure what it is, but apparently he's throwing up a lot. I was just headed to check on him."

"Percy Mitchell?"

She nods.

"You're pretty close with him, aren't you?"

It's a wonder she's strong enough not to roll her eyes. She's heard that question, in that tone, more times in her life than she ever needs to. "You could say that. It's just...we grew up together. He's like a brother to me, really."

An annoying asshole of a brother, she wants to add, but refrains.

"I see. He's lucky to have you," says Dr. Clover, reorganizing his papers in his hands, before tipping his fedora—today it's black and white striped—at her. "Tell him I hope he feels better soon, then. See you in class Monday?"

Indy nods, offering the professor one more rushed apology before they part ways.

She reaches Dauphine Street three minutes later, close to midnight. The bright street lamps and the neon glow bleeding from the bars that line the walk almost give the illusion that it's much earlier than it is, the crowds still humming with life.

It doesn't take her long to find the two of them; the long, hot pink hair spreading across Sylvia's back certainly helps. Sylvia and Percy sit side by side on the curb, Percy with his head lolled onto Sylvia's shoulder, Sylvia sucking on a lollipop as she plays with the charms of her bracelet.

She looks up when she hears Indy's footsteps, and gently shakes Percy off her shoulder. Plucking the lollipop out of her mouth, she says, "Chin up, big boy. Your mom's here."

"My mom?" Percy says. His dazed eyes meet Indy's through the curtain of his dark locs, and his gaze narrows with accusation. "You're not my mother."

"Correct," Indy says, tossing Sylvia a raised eyebrow. Sylvia just grins, her smile gap-toothed and mischievous. "I'm not. I might beat your ass if you keep acting like a kid, though. What happened, anyway?"

"Karaoke," Percy says, and he seems content with this explanation, only elaborating when Indy glares at him. "But you know. I need...liquid courage? Dutch courage? You know. Courage for that kind of thing."

"And where are your friends?"

"Hm?"

"The people you went to karaoke with?"

Percy blinks, as if he's just had his first lucid thought in the past few hours. Or possibly ever. "Hm. Good question."

By then, Indy has heard more than enough. She orders Percy to get up, and he does, although shakily. She swings his arm around her shoulder before he can fall. "Sorry about this, Sylvia. You can go ahead. I'll take him from here."

Sylvia replaces her lollipop in her cheek, her round eyes, made even rounder by the dramatic lashes that fringe them, rife with concern. "Are you sure? I can help."

Indy shakes her head. "You've done more than enough." You're always doing more than enough, really.

With one last apologetic glance, Sylvia leaves, a vivid pink blur blending in with the neon the further away she gets. Indy is glad for it, not because of anything Sylvia's done, but because one more person will be spared the embarrassment that is the man currently hanging on her shoulder.

It takes another twenty-five minutes to drag Percy's dense, D1 athlete body back to campus and to his apartment, which is thankfully on the first floor of the building. The hallways are dark and hushed; motion sensor lights flicker on above their heads as they make it to his door.

"Keys?" Indy asks.

"I've got them," Percy says, but he fumbles awkwardly with his jacket, until Indy grows impatient and reaches into his inside pocket, grabbing them for him.

She gets him inside, nearly stumbling over a pile of shoes just in front of the door. It's cleaner than it is most of the time, the living room couch at least in order and a suspicious lack of socks laying on the floor. Yet, an unpromising scent of rancid food still wafts in their direction from the kitchen.

"You're an angel, Indy," Percy says, slumping onto his couch, tossing his head back. His roommate is nowhere to be found, as usual. Indy sometimes jokes that he lives with a ghost.

Indy fills a glass with water, and presses it into Percy's trembling hands. "Percy," she says. She's forgotten to turn any lights on; everything in the apartment is black and blue as a bruise. "Why do you always do this? It's like...like I'm looking right at you, but where have you gone?"

She worries the words won't reach him, but when he frowns, it's genuine, concerned. "I haven't gone anywhere."

Indy shakes her head, a strange smile, equal parts sad and hopeful, spreading across her face. "That's not true."

"Indy?" Percy says.

"Get some rest, Percy," she says, picking up her coat from where she'd dropped it by the door. Suddenly she can no longer stand to be here; the air has grown legs, and it crawls along her skin, itching and strange and foreign.

She wants him to stop her when she goes to leave, to ask at least for a message to know she reached her dorm again safe. But that isn't who he is. Not now, certainly, and maybe not ever.

Monday arrives like a headache, sudden and yet somehow unavoidable. Indy's early to class, and she sits in the empty lecture hall, a page of notes open on the desk in front of her that she's only half-reading, the other half of her mind elsewhere. Percy hasn't texted her since she saw him Saturday, and she hasn't texted him. It's not like they've never fought before. She doesn't even know if they are fighting. But the worry alone is enough to make her regret ever saying what she did in the darkness of his apartment.

Where have you gone?

The older they get, the further he seems to drift. She worries she's just given him the final shove.

"Don't tell me you binged a bunch of sad indie movies over the weekend again."

Indy looks up to find Gatz hovering at the end of her row, a bright green stocking cap pulled over their reddened ears. Such a vibrant hat choice compared with an even more vibrant sweater choice would make anyone else resemble a hot sauce bottle, Indy thinks, but Gatz's specialty seems to be perfecting the things no one else really can. "I didn't, actually," Indy counters. The lecture hall door opens again, admitting a brief stream of voices from the hallway. The quiet hours slip away between Indy's fingers, and now the day begins. "I wanted to, but I didn't have time."

Gatz frowns, as if they find this genuinely concerning. "Then you're just like, honestly sulking?"

"I'm not sulking, Gatz."

"Sure you're not. Staring sorrowfully off into space while you tap your pen against your lips like that." Gatz takes a step back, making a frame around Indy's face with their fingers, which are adorned with clunky metal rings. "Here's a good shot. It's very minimalist, Sundance Film Festival-winning coming-of-age drama."

Indy shakes her head, but she's smiling, even before she realizes it. "No it isn't."

"Oh?" Gatz drops their hands. "So you agree, then. You are sulking."

To Indy's relief, Sylvia comes to her rescue, pinching Gatz on the ear and hip-checking them out of the way as she moves to take the seat next to Indy's. There was a time when Indy had suggested to Sylvia that they walk to class together, but that was before she'd realized it took her twenty minutes to get ready to go, when it took Sylvia over an hour most days. "Spare her, would you, Gatley? It's not her fault she had to babysit Percy again the other night."

Gatz's face crunches into a grimace. "I heard."

"You did?" Indy asks, but there's a sick feeling in her gut, a sensation that warns she might not want to know after all.

The look Gatz is giving her confirms her suspicions, but by then it's already too late. "More like I saw. There may be a few videos going around. One of Proudley's star soccer players, drunk off his ass and singing terrible karaoke. People live for that kind of shit."

Indy drops her pen to the table with an exasperated sigh. "I really mean it this time," she says. "I'm going to kill him."

"I'll help clean up afterwards," Sylvia offers.

"Should we burn him?" Gatz seconds. "Bury him? Throw him in a lake?"

Sylvia scoffs, checking her make-up in a compact mirror. "We don't live anywhere near a lake, Gatz."

Percy walks in then, moving slowly, backpack slung over one of his shoulders like he always has it, despite the number of times Indy has warned him it'll do numbers on his back one day. He looks up at the three of them, as if he's considering joining in, but Indy catches the decision as it flickers across his face, and he heads the other direction.

Dr. Clover walks in just after Percy, and pulls the classroom door shut. Gatz finally takes their seat on Indy's other side. "Exactly," they say, leaning over to meet Sylvia's eyes. "The further away the better, right?"

"Speaking of murder," Indy interrupts.

The trio's eyes zip to the classroom's front, where Dr. Clover clears his throat as the projector powers on.

The title slide reads, in generic, unembellished font: New Crime Journalism Assignment: Cold Cases.