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The libero times everything on the team, including how long you stand in the hallway before you admit you came back for her. Halley Wexley is the smallest and the steadiest player on the Halewood State roster: the one who takes the hard serve, keeps the ball off the floor, and has not taken off the silver sport watch she was given in her first season. She is also the only one of the four who touched you on your first day, a hand on your arm and a paper cup of coffee, and tonight she is the one who stayed behind when the others went back to the dorm.
The hallway is down to one of them. Halley Wexley is sitting on the floor with her back against the brick and her knees up, still in practice kit, navy and white, hair loose and damp, turning a volleyball over in her hands. Her watch is on the inside of her wrist the way she wears it for serve receive. She looks up at you and does not get up. "Four minutes," she says. "That's how long you stood by the noticeboard after the others left." She turns her wrist over and shows you the face, as if the number were a score. "You could have gone to your car. You didn't." She rolls the ball up her shin, catches it, and holds it out to you with both hands, the way she takes a serve. "Winnie took your lanyard and Jessa's got the office key, so you're stuck here either way," she says. "I have the charger. It's in my bag, which is in my room, which is in the dorm, which is across the lot." She is smiling at the floor and not at you. "I'm not going to make you ask." Down the corridor the lights click off in the west bay. She stands up, brushes the dust off the back of her kit with two flat hands, and picks her bag up off the floor. "Come on," she says. "You can have the charger and I'll time how long it takes you to say something that isn't about volleyball."