“Where’s Julian?” he asked as he looked behind me and Adam to see if Julian was with us.
“I don’t know,” I answered. I was starting to get worried. “He didn’t answer my text either.”
“I’m sure he’s fine,” Michael said. “He’s probably just trying to deal with whatever craziness is going on with his floor.
“So, you guys are noticing the weirdness too?” I asked.
“Oh yeah, definitely,” Adam said. “All of the guys on my floor have been walking around without pants on all morning.”
“That’s not that strange, though, is it?” I asked. “I mean don’t guys walk around without pants on all the time anyway? Especially college guys?”
“Possibly,” he said. “But do they normally try to stick their dicks in everything they pass?”
“What?” Michael asked with a disgusted expression.
Adam scoffed. “Yeah dude, no joke. I’ve never seen anything like it. And what’s worse is that the girls seem to be thrilled about it. I’ve been literally running from person to person trying to pull them apart before the entire floor becomes impregnated. It’s the craziest and most messed-up thing I’ve seen in a while.”
“You’d better not be up here too long then,” I said as I worried over all the girls that might not be on birth control.
“What about your floor?” I asked Michael.
“It’s not much better, to be honest,” he said. “Everyone has their clothes on at least, but there’s definitely something wrong with them. They keep stopping to talk to people in the hall when there’s no one else there. At first, I thought they all had a Bluetooth earpiece in or something, but nope; they’re literally all wandering around talking to no one.”
I nodded. “Yeah, the students on my floor don’t seem to have a grip on reality right now either. All the girls are making each other over into drag queen clowns on steroids and one of the guys I asked about it said he thinks they look beautiful. Do you think it’s the hallucinogenic that David was talking about?” I asked.
“Yes, what else could it be?” Michael asked with a shrug.
“But, how has he gotten it to all of them already?” Adam said. “And why hasn’t it affected us?”
I shook my head as I turned everything around in my mind. “His delivery method must be in something that none of us have had, but that most of the students have been exposed to.”
I chewed on my lower lip as silence fell around us. But, the fact that Julian still hadn’t showed up made me sick with worry.
“I still don’t like that we haven’t heard from Julian, either” I said. “It’s not like him not to be here when we need him. I think something is wrong.”
“I agree,” Adam said. “I think we should go to his floor to see what’s up and make sure he’s okay.”
Julian was assigned the highest floor out of all of us, so it took us seven flights of stairs before we reached it. There was an elevator I the building, but it was old and had a camera in the corner of its ceiling, so we tried to avoid it when possible. When we stepped out of the stairwell on to Julian’s floor, it was eerily empty and quiet. We walked through the hallway and glanced inside the open dorm room doors to see that all of the students were in their rooms just staring into space. Some were sitting at desks. Others were standing in front of windows; a few of them were even lying on their backs in bed just staring up at the ceiling.
“Now this reminds me of a typical drug den,” Adam said. “These kids just look completely lost and strung-out.”
“They look like zombies,” I said.
Adam nodded. “Essentially, yes.”
I hated to think about what it was like for Adam when he as on drugs. I remembered him telling me the story about how he would run drugs for my father and how my father got him hooked. I tried not to think about that part because it hurt me to think of Adam doing anything that would hurt himself. Instead, I tried to focus on the fact that my mother helped him to recover and break free from his addiction and that Adam was strong enough to overcome it himself.
We searched the entire floor for Julian but couldn’t find him anywhere. Something was definitely not right. I started to panic a little and worried that maybe David came for him as some sort of punishment for me running my mouth at him.
“Guys,” Michael called. “Over here!”
Adam and I rushed over to see what Michael had called us for. He was standing at the open window inside one of the dorm rooms with his head poking outside to look at something. When I got up next to him, he scooted over and held my waist as I dipped my head outside to see what he saw. There on the very thin ledge of the building, stood Julian.
I was about to scream, but Michael quickly pulled me back inside the room and put his hand over my mouth to keep me from doing it.
“Shh!” he said before he took his hand away. “I don’t think he knows what he’s doing. If you startle him, there’s a very real possibility that he’ll fall, and he won’t survive a seven-story drop.”
Adam went slowly to look outside the window as well, and I reached out to hold his shirt on instinct. My God, what the hell was happening to my Julian?
“Oh man,” he said quietly as he pulled his head back inside.
“What are we going to do?” I asked in a curt whisper. “How do we get Julian back inside before something awful happens?”
“Let me get this,” Adam said as he started to climb out the window.
“No!” I hissed as I reached for his arm to stop him. “What are you doing?”
“Trust me,” he smiled. “I know a thing or two about being in a drug-induced stupor. I can help bring him in.”
Michael gently pulled my hand down to let Adam go out the window. The two of us stood together and waited as we let Adam work his magic. And as I watched another man I adored disappear onto the thin ledge, I wondered what the hell was coming for us.
I wondered how in the fuck we were going to survive this long enough to fix it.
6
After what seemed like at least an hour, Julian’s feet came back through the window. He stepped down onto the floor of the dorm room looking completely disoriented but back to his regular, lucid self.
