Tony leaned against the concrete wall beside the entrance of the library, watching from beneath the small shelter as the rain kept pouring down. Most of the campus had turned into a muddy April swamp. It was like that in April, every year. Except this year was different… This year, Tony thought bleakly, I’m crazy… The urge to light a cigarette finally overwhelmed him and he did, fumbling in his jacket for the necessary equipment and slowly going through the motions of the ritual, taking a deep menthol drag when it was finished. He sighed and rubbed his face with his free hand. He had class in fifteen minutes and he was just standing around smoking outside the library, too goddamn tired to force himself to make a rain dash for the Fine Arts building. And suddenly he knew he wasn’t going to try. He was just going to sit here, smoke this cigarette, and go back to the trailer. "Tony!" It was Sarah, scurrying through the rain beneath a huge black umbrella. He didn’t think a black umbrella was Sarah’s style at all, and then he realized that underneath the ordinary drab black was a silkscreen image of a blue sky and white puffy clouds…Sarah’s own private pretty day. He had to smile. He waited until she was under the porch too, folding her umbrella and shaking it. It occurred to Tony that she was the sort of person who probably considered open umbrellas bad luck even under a shelter, and he was completely correct. "Good afternoon, Sarah." "Gosh, I wish this rain would let up. The PAC has sprung leaks again. I was beginning to think we were going to have to start bailing…perhaps I’ll get myself a little boat and just sail around campus. I’ll make Chris row. I’ll have a megaphone and everything." Tony was never susceptible as Chris to mental imagery, and that one didn’t even seem all that funny to her, but he laughed, surprising her. He laughed just a little too hard, actually, and Sarah didn’t join in. She frowned. "Are you alright?" He nodded, tilting his head back on the concrete and closing his eyes. "I just didn’t sleep well last night. I’m sorry." In front of them, campus started to crowd up a little. People were dashing from one class to the next, holding their books over their heads, or clinging together under umbrellas. There was more traffic than usual, wet tires hissing on the narrow street past the library parking lot. He could hear it underneath Sarah’s voice asking him if he wanted to talk about what the trouble was. Tony opened his eyes, intending to look at Sarah. Then he gasped and dropped his cigarette. It was the man. Or rather, as he had come to be known in Tony’s mind, The Man, much the way the maze had become The Maze. He was standing there, perfectly dry in the rain, looking at him and Sarah, his eyes clear and blazing. Tony grabbed Sarah’s arm hard enough to hurt her. "Did you…he…" "Ow! Tony!" "Sorry, but…Sarah…the man…" He was gone. A pair of girls passed by in front of him and he was gone. Tony walked out into the rain, looking around quickly. "Sarah, I saw him." "Saw who?" He turned around, the water soaking his black coat and his long dark hair. "I…I don’t know." "Come on, Tony, you’re getting drenched." She walked out to him, opening her umbrella on the way. "But I saw…" He was still looking around, but he was almost to the point where he would begin dismissing the sighting as a fantasy, a tired mind working overtime in imagination. Then it happened. He saw the owl (The Owl) perched lightly on a low concrete wall outside the Science building across the street. He stared for a long time, and then started across the asphalt, running. He didn’t know what he intended to do with it when he got there, but he was going to see that owl. "TONY!" Sarah screamed. There was another sound over her scream, some high-pitched, tuneless screeching he should have recognized but didn’t. He was watching the owl. And it was watching him. Then something slammed into his back, shoving him into the mud on the other side of the road face-first. It was Sarah. And she was hitting him, kneeling in the mud and rain. "How could you be so damned stupid! Tony, you could have been killed!" He pushed himself up, stunned, and wiped mud off his face. When he looked at the concrete wall he saw nothing but curious onlookers, people stopping in the rain to gawk at the guy who walked out in front of a car. On the other side of the road, Sarah’s open umbrella sat on its side, the blue sky catching the downpour. The car was at a stop in the road, and the driver (who looked to be about twelve by height standards) was trying to get out, shaky from the incident and wrestling with the seatbelt. The driver also had short red hair, and it was not a twelve-year-old after all, Tony realized finally. It was a pixieish young woman with a light dotting of freckles across her tiny nose, a Winnie-the-Pooh key chain in one hand. It was Jules.