“He’s in the building now, we have just over an hour and a half before his class is out and he comes back to the apartment for lunch.” Josh hissed over his shoulder.

Kerry had been easy enough to spot going into and out of the dorm, he had a pretty consistent routine that he followed. It had overlapped enough with Josh’s that there was very little guesswork involved in planning their approach to the dorm. They had a stack of four broken down moving boxes, Josh’s backpack, and a dream.

There wasn’t a lot of time to waste, and Josh didn’t want to waste any. He practically pushed Connor and Sara into the dorm in front of him. At this point, he didn’t really care who saw him go in and out as long as it wasn’t Kerry. Kerry would try and stop him in the hall or in the apartment and talk to him. He might have even tried to convince Josh not to move out or to get some distance from Sara and Connor. But that was the last thing Josh was prepared to do. They were the only thing keeping the nightmares and the alien influence of whatever it was that was trying to make contact with him at bay. The only other option was to get a mark so that he could do that himself, but Margot was the only one that could do that and there was no reaching her until she was satisfied that things had calmed down and it was safe to return.

In the mean time, Josh was left with the task of avoid those conversations and thoughts altogether. If he could get in and out with his things before Kerry got back, he could handle any problems with a more distance method of communication that would give him a lot more control over the situation. Kerry might still try and stop by the Benedictine, since he knew where Connor and Sara lived—which Josh regretted, but couldn’t undo—but that wasn’t as pressing of an issue. The Benedictine felt like a fortress, even if only superficially because it would be where Sara and Connor were. That was what really mattered anyway.

That was what Josh kept telling himself, at least; all the way from the front entrance of the dorms to the apartment door. He just had to get himself out and into a more secure location. He could handle the rest after that was done.

“Let’s start with two boxes. I think we can condense some things.” Josh directed as soon as they were standing at the entrance to his bedroom door. “And we can forget about pretty much everything in the kitchen. It’s just cheap dry good and second hand cookware.”

Connor didn’t waste any time unfolding the boxes and securing them with packing tape. Josh was already starting to pull things from shelves and hand them to Sara. It was haphazard, but the more Josh thought about it, the less any of these things actually mattered. He had a few knickknacks, some books, spare school supplies, his computer, clothes, textbooks, notebooks… and that was pretty much it. And of all those things, the ones he really cared about were the things that were required for him to stay undetected and discrete. That meant clothes and school supplies.

And hygiene. Josh had totally forgotten about what he’d left in the bathroom. A decent portion of what he’d packed in his initial overnight bag had been toiletries, but there were still things he’d left behind. Extra soap, shaving implements, his towel… Other things…

“Actually, could you pop up that small box too? I just remembered I have some more things in the bathroom.”

Sara looked like she was at a loss of what to do as Josh started to walk out of the room. “What about the rest of this?”

“Just get the bedding and anything on the shelf that isn’t a knickknack.”

“Gotcha!” Connor called after Josh, but he was practically already in the bathroom.

Josh ripped through the cabinets and vanity area as fast as he could, piling everything up under his arm as he identified the various things he considered necessary to keep healthy. It was pretty much just the things he felt he’d need to buy again if he left them behind. Only the things he used regularly. And by the time he made it back to the bedroom, Connor had already assembled the smallest of the moving boxes and held it out for Josh to dump all of the toiletries in. The first box was nearly full as well. With the bedding having taken up most of the space. Without further direction beyond that, Sara was left nervously picking through the school supplies from the shelf that hanged over Josh’s desk. He was glad none of the furniture in the apartment was actually his. It would have been a big hassle to drag a desk or a chair to the post office, not that there’d be anywhere to put it by the time that it eventually got to the Benedictine.

All in all, the three of them made good time and managed to pack everything that Josh cared about into three boxes and his backpack. Everything in the backpack were things that he expected to use within the next couple of days; like clean clothes, school books, and shaving implements. The rest he could live without for a few days. At least, he hoped so.

“I think we can do this in one trip.” Josh was trying to muster confidence in his voice, but it had gone so smoothly that he expected things to go wrong quickly at the first sign of trouble. He just didn’t have any idea what that trouble would be.

Not initially, anyway.

Once Josh had led the way out of the apartment, making sure to leave his key and a short note for Kerry on the kitchen table, he was practically running down the stairs towards the exit of the dorm. He even managed to get outside safely undetected. But that was where his luck ended. When he looked around the quad outside the dorms, he Saw Kerry walking casually towards him. Or, rather, towards the dorms. But he caught sight of Josh, box in hand, and then Connor and Sara behind him. They stood out easily with their exaggerated load.

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For a moment, Josh thought Kerry was going to try and catch up with them. He was still on the opposite side of the quad and they weren’t headed in his direction, but if it was serious he might have run after them. So Josh started running. He didn’t wait to see what Kerry would do. Josh was fueled by guilt, fear, and a desire to accomplish the task at hand. He didn’t even look back to make sure Sara and Connor were following him. When he finally looked up and found himself at the post office, they were right next to him, but he was panting so heavily he wasn’t sure how long it had taken him to recover or how long they’d been there.

But Kerry was gone. At least physically. Josh couldn’t see a trace of his now former roommate. But as soon he was confident that Kerry had run after him, Josh’s phone buzzed in his pocket and a notification saying that he’d received a text from Kerry was plainly visible on the screen.

It read, “Are you going to tell me what’s going on, or are you going to just keep running away from me?”

Josh didn’t want to reply at first, but he realized that the longer he took to respond the more likely it was that Kerry would seek him out to try and settle things in person. So he responded.

“Things got a little crazy. I visited my parents and they are going to cut off my financial assistance. Connor and Sara offered to let me stay with them for cheap.”

Josh made eye contact with Sara and held up his phone so she could see the text window open. “Could you guys get these in there and start things? I might be too distracted to actually help for a bit.”

Sara gave him a silent thumbs up while Connor gave him a nod and a gentle pat on the shoulder. It was a silent good luck, you’ll probably need it. And Josh definitely did.

“Well that’s a lie.” Came Kerry’s first reply, closely followed by. “I didn’t think you’d really do that to me after we’ve been roommates for so long.”

“I’m sorry, I don’t know what else to tell you.”

“Well, the truth seems to be off the table.”

“I wish I could, but I wasn’t lying about things being crazy.”

“So you’re not just jumping into bed with Sara?”

“No. It’s not her. But it does also have to do with money. They can cover a lot of expenses for me, and we get along really good.”

Josh was nervous the further into the text thread he got. He felt like he was nearly going to let something slip that would defeat the purpose of moving out in the first place.

“Would it have been so hard to tell me that in person?” That was the hardest question Kerry could have asked. Not because it was difficult to answer, Josh knew the answer—it was yes, absolutely—but it was hard to actually say it for the same reason that it would have been hard to talk to Kerry about this in person.

“I know you don’t trust them. But they’ve been really nice to me, and I trust them. That’s what matters to me. And I know you want to talk me out of it.”

“It’s your life, Josh. Just don’t let them take advantage of you.”

“I know.”

Kerry didn’t respond after that.And, by then, Sara and Conner were already at the desk in the post office with the boxes, double checking the shipping labels and getting ready to pay. Josh didn’t need to go in at all. He just crouched down on the sidewalk outside and read back over the texts that he’d sent and received. He second guessed all of of them at least once, regretted sending most of them, but was relieved that it was over with. It left Josh in a daze.

The situation was mostly dealt with. He followed behind Sara and Connor quietly as they helped guide him to the proper office on campus where he could fill out change of address papers. Josh could barely focus the whole time because of the empty humming in his head that echoed in the wake of such a dramatic shift in his life. He’d been focusing so hard on accomplishing the task at hand, that Josh hadn’t really let himself realize how drastic of a change that task had made. And on top of that, all of the other anxieties that Josh had pushed back behind the problem he could solve then and there were starting to come flooding back in.

Without really noticing how he’d gotten there, Josh found himself back in the spare bedroom of the Benedictine penthouse apartment. His bedroom. Sara and Connor had left him there to settle in and unpack, at least that was what he was pretty sure that they’d done. He couldn’t quite remember. They had also needed to get back to their schoolwork, as they weren’t as far behind as Josh was.

“What now…” Josh whispered to himself. The words faded to silence quickly in the room, but they lingered in Josh’s ears.

And, without alternative, Josh pulled free from his backpack and then dropped his several notebooks on the desk. He didn’t flinch at the loud cracking noise that the cardboard cover made on the faux marble laminate top desk. He opened the page of the notebook on top to his notes on the last lecture he’d attended, and he was about to read over them before he realized that they were nearly a week old. And that meant he needed to catch up, which meant that he needed to send out emails. And that reminded him that he needed to email the dorm administrator and let them know he had moved out so he could get part of his semester’s rent returned.

Things were beginning to stack themselves in a queue of tasks that Josh could write down and organize before tackling. None of the major anxieties, nothing Josh couldn’t do anything about, made it onto that list. He was tempted to write up a second list exclusively of things he wasn’t able to do, but that seemed even more wasteful than making a list of things that he could actually do.

It was dinner time again before Josh had accomplished enough of the schoolwork that he wanted to get done. And even then he knew there was still piles of it left, half his professors hadn’t gotten back to him at all—and he didn’t blame them, they probably had a backlog of emails from the long weekend. When he realized what time it was, though, Josh let himself relax a little. The rest would be a little easier now.

Just a little.

He still had questions he wanted to get answered, most of which he suspected neither Connor nor Sara could provide adequate answers for. And he still wanted to settle the matter of getting a mark before he changed his mind, not that that felt particularly likely at that point. It seemed all his problems went back to having to wait for Margot. She had the answers he wanted, she had a mark she could pass on; even self defense training—as impractical as it still was with his arm bandaged and his head sore—seemed like a welcome reprieve from the worries and second guessing that plagued Josh’s mind.

Every time a difficult topic began to well up in his thoughts, Josh pushed it back down. But the more he pushed them down, the harder that they became to dismiss and the more sparse the reasons were to dismiss them. And as Josh stood and readied himself to venture back out into the apartment and the presence of his new roommates, he found himself muttering to himself. It was almost like a quiet prayer, but less reassuring and more hopeful.

“Please hurry up, Margot. There’s so much I need to talk to you about.”