Derek returned from the bathroom, snatchedhis keys off the desk and left the room without speaking a word. Amoment later his voice drifted back from across the hall.

Albert spent no time wondering about Derekor Carrie. He turned his attention back to the box and immersedhimself again in its curious secrets.

He’d questioned everyone he knew about thebox. He even called his parents and sister to see if they knewanything about it, half expecting it to be some sort of bizarre,belated birthday present, but no one knew anything about it.Everyone seemed to have the same opinion: that someone left itthere by mistake.

He supposed he could just break the boxopen. He could smash it or saw through it. It was only wood. But hedid not want to damage it until he’d had a chance to find thesender. After all, it might be important to somebody. Besides, hedidn’t want to destroy any of the markings before he could decipherthem.

Each of the box’s three messages was writtenusing only straight lines roughly gouged into the wood. This leftsome characters frustratingly ambiguous. On one side, for example,there were ten characters arranged in three rows. To Albert, theyappeared to read,

I Z

V I I

I O O S T

but it was difficult to be certain. It wasimpossible to tell whether some of these characters representednumbers or letters. The straight vertical lines could have been thenumber one or the letter I, for example. Or even a lower-case L.The S could have been a five. The two Os in the bottom line weredrawn as squares, and could have been zeros instead, or for all heknew they could actually have been intended as squares. There wassimply no way to know for sure, which made the clue that much morepuzzling.

He had pondered over these three lines forhours now, trying to decipher them. The middle line could have beenthe Roman numeral seven, but with nothing else to go on, and noidea how to decipher the other two, he had no way of knowing forcertain. It could be a V and an eleven. For that matter, the linescomprising the V were slightly crossed at the bottom. It could evenhave been a sloppy X.

Frustrated, he turned the box around.

Perhaps the most haunting of the messageswas written on the side opposite the keyhole. Here there were fivelines. The first four were complete words. From top to bottom theyread HELP, COME, TOGETHER and YESTERDAY. The fifth line was not aword, but just three letters: G, N and J.

These lines were much easier to read thanthe previous three, even with their straight-line lettering, butwith the legibility came a haunting feeling. Help. Come. It was asthough someone were calling out to him for something. But whatcould yesterday mean? Was it literal? If so, he’d received the boxthe previous evening, so yesterday would have been two days ago. Ordid it mean the past in general? Help come together yesterday. Itmade no sense. And how did the last line fit in? Perhaps it wassomeone’s or something’s initials.

The final side of the box was carved withonly seven letters, scrawled across the surface diagonally fromcorner to corner, in larger letters than the other messages.

B R A N D Y R

He thought that he recognized these letters.It looked like a name. Brandy R. He knew a Brandy R. Or at leasthe’d met a Brandy R. Brandy Rudman was his lab partner inChemistry. She was a sophomore, one year ahead of him and likewisea year older, nearly twenty, while he was barely nineteen, yet shecould have passed as a sixteen-year-old high school student, smalland girlish with a soft face and small, modest figure. She was verypretty. He had not expected to find a lab partner so quickly, butshe was sitting in front of him on that first day and when theinstructor told them to pair off she turned around, scanning theother students in the class until her pretty eyes fell on him. “Youmind?” she asked simply, to which he replied a startled “Sure.”

It was just dumb luck for him. He’d beenattending classes for not yet a day and a half at a school where herecognized no one and instead of being the last lonely studentstanding around looking for a pair that would allow him to join, ashe’d expected to be, he found himself paired off almost at once andwith a very pretty young woman. And by even greater luck, she hadso far turned out to be a very lovely person to know as well,friendly, kind, outgoing and fun.

His Chemistry lab was scheduled for Tuesdaysand Thursdays at ten o’clock in the morning. Today was Thursday.That morning he stuffed the box inside his green backpack and tookit with him to class, intending to see if she knew anything aboutit, but she was as ignorant of its origins as everyone else he’dspoken with, his last chance at an answer severed at its root.

“Must be another Brandy R.,” she’dconcluded, peering down into his backpack at the strange, woodenbox. “I’ve never seen it before. It was in your car?”

“Yeah. All the doors were still locked.Nothing broken.”

“Weird.”

Weird was right. It was also disappointing.A part of him had hoped for an excuse to get to know Brandy alittle better.

Albert turned and looked at the clock again.It was after five now. He needed to go eat dinner. He usually triedto go before Derek returned. The less time he spent with him thebetter.

He stood up and stretched. Some time awayfrom the box would do him good. He was becoming frustrated with itagain. Perhaps everyone was right, perhaps the box was never meantfor him and he would never understand where it came from or what itmeant. But that thought became like a looming darkness. He did notwant to be left ignorant. He wanted to know about this box. Hewanted to understand it. He didn’t like to leave mysteriesunsolved. It simply wasn’t his nature.

He was reaching for his shoes when the phonerang. It would probably be somebody looking for Derek. Somebody wasalways looking for Derek. It was funny how Albert was alwayslooking to avoid him.

He sat down on the bed and answered thephone.

“Is Albert there?”

It was a woman’s voice, feminine, petite,pretty. “Speaking,” he replied.

“Hi. This is Brandy. From Chem.”

Albert stood up again, surprised. Theyexchanged numbers the first day of class in case either of themmissed and needed notes, but he never expected her to use it.“Hi.”

“Hey, did you find anything out about thatbox?”

“No. Not a thing.” His heart sped up a notchwhen she told him who she was. Now it jumped again, shifting fromsecond to third.

Brandy was quiet for so long that he beganto think the line was disconnected, but before he could ask if shewas still there she said, “There was something in my car when Ileft class today.”

Fourth gear. He started walking across theroom, pacing as he sometimes did when he was on the phone. “Whatdid you get?”

Instead of answering, she said, “You’re inLumey, right?”

“That’s right.” Lumey Hall was the mostexpensive dormitory on campus. He’d spent the extra money for thesemi-private bathroom and coed environment. From his first tour ofthe Hill he did not like the prison-like feel of the communityhalls elsewhere on campus, so he forked over nearly twice whatother freshmen were paying in the Cube. Over here, two rooms madeup a suite and a bathroom connected the two, so only four peopleshared facilities, instead of an entire floor. Also, unlike anyother building, Lumey was entirely coed, hence the fact that therewere girls living right across the hall from him. And since Lumeywas usually reserved for students with a junior standing or higher,he was very fortunate to obtain his room. It turned out that thefreshmen dormitories were overcrowded. In the next few years theywould probably have to build a new one.