My night only seems to get stranger when an examination of Wayne's crusty jacket and a few personal belongings turns up almost nothing about him or where he had come from. 

"That's everything on me," Wayne dumps the last of his belongings—a set of noisy keys full of assorted keychains—onto a nearby table, and a few fuzzy-looking Lemonhead candies roll out, stuck with lint. "I already told you two bozos I got nothing else. You want me to spread my ass cheeks so you can do an anal exam for drugs next?"

He winks at me and clicks his tongue when I grimace at him.

"There's nothing here!" Virgil sighs as he sifts through Wayne's assorted pieces of junk. "Not even a wallet to prove who you are!" He seemed somehow disappointed that Wayne had been telling the truth, or at least half of the truth. It was possible that he was still lying about how he'd ended up in Monmouth after midnight, not wanting to end up suspended on the first day.

"Not very bright for two guys who go to such a fancy-ass college, are you?" Wayne reaches over and snags a lemondrop, picking the lint off it before popping it into his mouth.

"We should go," I tell Virgil, shivering a little as the cold begins to settle into my bones. "It's past midnight, and I still have to get up early to unpack the rest of my things."

"Right." Virgil glances down at the shiny Rolex on his wrist. "Let's get you back to the dorms. I'll call a meeting in the morning and we can discuss what to do with--" He closes his eyes as if it hurts him, "Wayne."

"Hey," Wayne pipes up, candy rolling out of his mouth and clicking on the tile near his boots. "I'm not staying here overnight by myself, poindexter. This place gives me the creeps." 

I'd never seen a man more defeated than Virgil in that moment. It was as if he couldn't say no to the stray dog that had shown up in his driveway begging for food and water, but I felt like I understood his reasoning for not turning Wayne away. There was an air of mystery about the dirty man, and just like the crack in the basement wall, he couldn't be ignored. 

"I have an extra sheet and pillow," Virgil grumbles finally. "You can sleep on the floor."

We leave the science building under the cover of darkness that night, with an added person in tow, his boots crunching on the gravel. Wayne whistles the whole time as we go, and it's only when we reach the dorms that I piece together the song he's copying. I wasn't the type of person who listened to rock or particularly old songs, but even I had to agree that Fortunate Son was one of those songs that everyone paused and listened to at one point.

Virgil leads us back into the residential building, which had fallen into a deep silence. The ice machine and vending machine hum in the lounge as we pass by, their eerie glow illuminating the old pool table and empty stools sitting around.

"This place seems familiar," Wayne admits, and pauses to look into the washroom where the students did their laundry. "Feels like I've been here before."

"You really don't remember anything?" I ask him, Virgil's footsteps growing fainter as we fall behind, a yellow light flickering over our heads on and off as it readies itself to go out. "I don't remember seeing you the first time I walked around the science building."

Wayne furrows his eyebrows as if thinking extra hard. "I remember a party," he admits, "a couple of us in costumes, but then nothing after that. Maybe somebody slipped something into my drink. I must have had a couple of beers; I smell like a bar right now."

"That's awful," I reply, a little horrified. "What kind of person would do something like that?"

"Plenty of them," Wayne shrugs. "Not everyone in a suit and tie is going to be your best friend. A lot of wolves in sheep's clothing prowl around places like this."

I'm once again left even more unsettled than before, and I follow him down the hall, the light above us burning out with a pop before we go. 

And I swear, in those short few seconds between shadow and light, when Wayne Ward looks in my direction, his eyes shine like silver coins being flipped before he turns away.

__

It doesn't take us very long to reach my dorm room, but I'm exhausted and on edge by the time John opens the door in his boxers and blinks blearily out as we three stand in the hallway.

"Oh," His swollen eyes start to close. "I'm going to regret asking this, but why is one of the band members from White Snake standing outside my door? I don't have anything for him to autograph except for my underwear right now. Is that okay?"

"John, this isn't a band remember from White Snake," Virgil says. "This is a dirty drunk who we found lying in the dirt behind a display case. He'll be staying in my dorm until we figure out what to do with him. Anyway, we just stopped by to drop off Dante for the night."

"He's got a way with words, doesn't he?" Wayne asks me as he leans against the wall.

"Oh," John yawns, opening the door wider for me. "Come on then, Dante."

I duck down under his stretched-out arm and slip into the dorm, but before I go, I find myself glancing back at Virgil, who lifts his hand in a small wave. "I'll see you at breakfast?" He calls, craning his neck when John starts to close the door, "Eight a.m. in the cafeteria?"

"Man," Wayne says as he looks at him, "you're shit at flirting."

John closes the door on them and turns to me, rubbing his eyes with one hand. "Did everything go okay with the initiation? You're back really early."

I go and throw myself down on my plain, boring mattress without any sheets on it. "I believe we've uncovered a mystery, John."