The Boy in the Tunnel

Fall 1997, Chapter 1: Tim

Tim's mother pulled the Crown Vic up to the entrance of the parking lot and popped the trunk, not even bothering to put it in park. Tim opened his door, unclicked his seatbelt. "Well," he said.

"I suppose this is it," his mother said. She reached one arm to his neck for a stiff hug. When it was over Tim got out and collected his one bag. She was already driving away as he closed the trunk, and it would be four months before he spoke to her again.

Thus liberated, Tim stepped into the lobby of Wintertree Hall for the first time. The room vibrated with semi-organized chaos, as children strained for the freedom that was almost within their grasp, and parents pulled the leashes tight for the last few minutes they were able. Here and there returning sophomores slouched against rails and chairbacks in familiar clumps, smugly chuckling in recognition of the excitement they were now too wise to feel. A banner strung between two columns announced "WELCOME TO WINTERTREE FALL 1997." Underneath it a tall, granite-faced RA spoke with a thick Slavic accent into a sheet of construction paper rolled into a crude megaphone: "If your name is starting with A through L, please to table one." He and the other RAs manning the tables all wore grey T-shirts silkscreened with the slogan "DUH" in purple block letters.

Tim stepped up to table one, manned by a DUH-shirted redhead, her hair and smile both unrestrained, almost overwhelming. "Department of University Housing" was printed in smaller letters underneath the DUH on her shirt. "Welcome to Wintertree!" she said. "I'm Holly!"

"Tim Levitt," he said, and she gave him paperwork to sign, and in exchange for that a room key, a mailbox key and a Student Handbook. The Handbook was a small book bound in purple cloth, with the motto "LIFE MEANS NOTHING TO THE DEAD" stamped in gold foil on the inch-thick spine. On the cover, underneath the University of Northwest Georgia seal, was his name: TIMOTHY JAMES LEVITT. Tim ran his fingers across the embossed foil. His name shimmered and breathed as it caught light from the flickering institutional fluorescents.

"You're on Tier 3, Inner Arm 5, Room 79A," Holly said. "Awesome!"

"What does that mean?"

"Follow the signs! Thanks, Tim!"

She pointed to a glass security door at the east end of the lobby. Tim dragged his suitcase across the lobby and consulted the map posted next to the propped-open door.

Aside from the large open white rectangle of the lobby, marked YOU ARE HERE, the halls on the map looked to Tim like the curves and folds of a cube-shaped brain. After a minute he found 79A on the map, tucked away somewhere near the center, but it looked like it would take most of the day to get there.

"Use the Handbook," one of the sophomores said, a tall Indian guy with a thick south Georgia accent. He leaned against the Dutch door of the mail room across from the map, taking in the moving-day spectacle with a wry smile. Inside the mail room, a hugely fat guy with bristly muttonchops unwrapped a Honey Bun. "Maps're no good. They're just there for plausible deniability in case some freshman pulls a Milo. Check your Handbook—it'll get you where you're going."

The sophomore nodded to someone waving across the lobby and walked away. Tim opened his Handbook; in size it reminded Tim of the pocket-sized Gideon New Testament he had as a child, and accordingly the pages were Bible-thin, the text near small enough to warrant a magnifying glass. There was no table of contents, just an "Introduction, Argument & Words of Welcome" from someone named Anthony Delmonico. Tim turned to the back and found an index. No entries for "maps," nor for "Wintertree Hall." On a hunch, he looked up "Milo."

A persistent campus legend holds that in 1967, the year Wintertree Hall opened its doors, a freshman named Milo Kirby got lost trying to find his room in the spiraling halls and dead ends of Wintertree, and never emerged. His prospective roommate, one Warren Pullman, was discreetly paid a large sum to keep Kirby's disappearance quiet, and Kirby's parents were told he died at sea during a maritime commencement ceremony.