Chapter Eleven: The Friend Who Understood

Eli's pov 

The campus security office smelled like burnt coffee and printer toner, and the guy behind the desk had the specific energy of someone who'd said no to a hundred students before me and was fully prepared to make it a hundred and one.

"I need to see if there's footage from a specific date," I said. "January eleventh, the hallway near the gym entrance, science building side."

"You a student here?"

"Yeah."

"You involved in some kind of incident that got reported? Assault, theft, something with a case number attached to it?"

"No, it's, I mean, it's personal. I'm trying to figure out something that happened at a party, and I have reason to believe the hallway camera might have caught part of it."

He looked at me the exact way I'd have looked at somebody saying that sentence to me. "Man, I can't just pull footage because you've got a personal thing going on. We need a police report, a Title IX complaint, something official with a case number. Otherwise that's a privacy violation waiting to happen, and I'm not losing my job over it."

"There's no case. Nothing happened that would get reported, not like that. I just need to know who was in that hallway."

"Then I can't help you." He said it without malice, just flat institutional certainty, already looking past me at whatever was on his screen. "Sorry, man. Rules are rules."

I stood in that hallway outside the security office for a long minute after he'd waved me off, staring at a bulletin board covered in flyers for a capella auditions and a lost cat named Biscuit, feeling something in my chest curdle into the specific frustration of hitting a wall you can see straight through but can't walk past.

"You look like you just got told no about something."

I turned around and found Claire standing a few feet away, a coffee in each hand, one of which she held out toward me before I'd even said anything.

"Here. You look like you need this more than I do."

"Thanks." I took it, more out of reflex than thirst. "How'd you know I was in there?"

"I didn't, I was just walking by. You've got a face like an open book, Eli, you always have." She fell into step beside me as I started walking, not asking where we were headed, just matching my pace like it was the most natural thing in the world. "What happened? You seemed pretty locked in on whatever you were asking that guy."

I hesitated. Claire and I had orbited the same friend group for years, closer since the breakup than we'd ever been before, mostly because she was one of the few people who didn't tiptoe around bringing up Mia's name, who let me talk about it without flinching or changing the subject. It had started to feel easy, talking to her. Uncomplicated in a way almost nothing else in my life currently was.

"I'm trying to find out who else Mia was with," I said. "That night. The one everybody talked about for weeks after."

Something crossed her face, fast, gone before I could name it. "You're still on that?"

"There's a baby, Claire. There's a real chance it's not mine, and I can't just sit here not knowing for the next two months while everybody waits for a test I can't get until it's born."

"I get that." She said it gently, no judgment in it, which was part of why I trusted her with things like this in the first place. "I just worry about you, is all. Digging into that night, it's not going to feel good no matter what you find. Might be better to just wait it out."

"I can't wait it out. I need to know who I'm supposed to be preparing myself for."

We walked in silence for a stretch, past the quad, past a group of freshmen throwing a frisbee badly, and I found myself talking without entirely meaning to, the whole story spilling out of me the way it seemed to whenever Claire was around and willing to listen, Marcus Webb and the coffee shop, the cameras that might exist, the security guy's flat refusal, the wall I kept slamming into every single direction I turned.

"So there might actually be footage," Claire said slowly, once I'd finished. "That's, wow. I didn't realize it was that close to actually being solvable."

"If I can get access to it. Which right now I can't."

"There's probably a way around that. My uncle works adjacent to the registrar's office, he might know somebody in security who'd bend the rules a little if it came from the right angle." She said it easily, offhand, like she was offering to lend me a pen. "Let me ask around. No promises, but it's worth a shot, right?"

"You'd do that?"

"Of course I would." She bumped my shoulder with hers, warm, familiar. "I hate seeing you like this, Eli. Stuck in limbo. You deserve to actually know instead of just guessing yourself sick over it."

Something in her voice caught slightly on the word guessing, some small hitch I noticed and then let go of, because it was easier to let go of than to sit with, because Claire had been nothing but kind to me for months and I didn't have the bandwidth to start questioning kindness on top of everything else currently falling apart around me.

"Thanks," I said. "Seriously. I don't know what I'd do without somebody actually willing to help instead of just telling me to move on."

"That's what friends are for." She smiled, easy, warm, the kind of smile that made a person feel like the only thing in the room worth looking at. "I actually heard some things too, you know. From that night. Nothing solid, just whispers, the kind of stuff that goes around after something like that happens and nobody wants to be the one who says it out loud first."

I stopped walking. "What kind of whispers."

"Nothing I'd want to repeat without being sure. I don't want to send you chasing something that turns out to be nothing, that's not fair to you." She glanced at me sideways, something calculating flickering behind her easy expression, gone again before I could be certain I'd actually seen it. "Let me ask around properly first. About the footage, and about what people were actually saying. I'll get you real answers instead of rumors, I promise."

"Okay." I felt something loosen in my chest for the first time in days, the relief of finally having someone actively pulling in the same direction instead of stonewalling me at every turn. "Thank you, Claire. I mean it."

"Don't thank me yet." She smiled again, and this time I didn't catch anything strange in it at all, just warmth, just a friend offering to help carry something heavy. "Let's see what I actually find first."