"Cora!" Lisette's exclamation stopped me in the doorway. "Thank God. I was about to call the police!"
I looked around our living room. Lisette had roused half the apartment complex. Sarah, Hannah, Emily, and Sabrina were waiting with various expressions of relief and outrage on their faces. Even Christina and Chelsea were there, lounging in the corner in skin-tight shirts and their clubbing makeup.
Sarah was talking on the phone. "Yeah, you can come back up. She's here. She's okay."
"What's going on?" I asked.
"What is wrong with you?" Lisette demanded. "Why didn't you answer your phone? You left four hours ago. We thought something horrible had happened to you."
"Oh, crap," I said, seized by guilt. I fumbled in my clutch and pulled out my phone. I'd missed eight calls, mostly Lisette's. "Twenty-four texts, guys? Really?"
"No one knew where you were," Sarah said, hanging up. "Geoff saw you get into some rich dude's car. Lisette thought you'd be back in a couple of hours. When nine o'clock rolled around and you still weren't answering your phone...."
"Lisette said your new doctor is really sketch," Hannah said. "You didn't tell her where you were going. He could have been some kind of serial killer rapist or something."
"Seriously, though, he could have been really dangerous," Lisette said.
I sank onto a corner of the couch, edging Sabrina to the side. I felt emptied, hollowed out, and my finger was throbbing.
They were right. So very right. Mr. Thorne was the most dangerous man I'd ever met. And his interest in me, for whatever reason, was far more intense than scientific attentiveness could possibly account for.
"I'm so sorry, guys. The meeting ran long, and I had my ringer off, and I was so tired afterward that I forgot to check my calls."
Lisette's face softened instantly. She always forgave easily. "It's just that it's not like you to disappear for so long. If it had been Chelsea or Christina-"
"You know we're sitting right here," Chelsea said, lobbing a pillow at Lisette's head.
The girls all laughed, and I joined in, terror and regret and relief somehow all spilling out at once. The tension dissipated.
Slumping back against the couch cushions, I thought about it for a minute. I said, "Wait. You all thought some guy had me locked up in his torture dungeon or something, and you thought the smart thing to do then was to huddle in our apartment? And, what, send Mike to walk around campus looking for me?"
"Shut up, Cora," Emily said, running her hand through her cropped hair. "You'd be a lot more embarrassed if you'd come back to find that we'd called the campus cops."