University of Wisconsin–Madison

The University of Wisconsin–Madison is a brief refuge for Maren and Lee, and a setting where Maren turns borrowed access into a tentative routine. After arriving in Madison, they enter the orbit of student life through Kerri-Ann Watt’s dorm room and the university library. The campus offers a pause from the road, but not a secure place of their own: Maren enters the library using someone else’s ID, and later worries that the people around her could be reported to campus police.

Arrival and Student Life

Lee and Maren reach Madison just after four o’clock, riding with Kerri-Ann, an incoming senior at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. While Kerri-Ann checks into her dorm and collects her keys, they wait in the car. Around them, students in T-shirts and caps bearing badger designs greet one another with laughter, hugs, and high-fives. This lively arrival scene presents the university as a community already in motion, full of familiar rituals of return and welcome. Maren and Lee observe it from the margins, without a room or a plan for what comes next.

Kerri-Ann offers them a place to stay for the night, in her single room, if they help her move in. Her offer draws the pair briefly into the practical work of campus life: they carry her belongings upstairs, and Lee helps assemble the room. The welcome is real, but limited to the immediate need for shelter. Maren already anticipates that the next morning will bring another decision about where to go, and that their future will not involve Kerri-Ann.

The Dormitory as Temporary Shelter

The dorm room is plain and functional, with painted cinderblock walls, gray linoleum, and fiberboard furniture. Kerri-Ann makes it personal by putting up posters, including ones of Tom Cruise in Risky Business and Right Said Fred. The room’s details mark it as a student’s space rather than a home Maren can claim: Kerri-Ann chooses its decoration, asks Lee to set up her loft bed, and invites Maren to help arrange her toiletries and cosmetics.

The three go to a campus pizzeria for dinner, following a lakeside path. Kerri-Ann walks beside Lee and touches his arm to point things out; Maren notices the gestures and grows impatient with the situation. The scene places her close to the easy sociability of student life while underscoring her status as an observer and temporary guest. Later, the room becomes more than a one-night stop: Maren wears Kerri-Ann’s black clothes, including her underwear, and uses her university ID. The arrangement gives her access and shelter, but both depend on another person’s belongings and identity.

The Library and Maren’s Routine

The university library is the largest Maren has ever seen. Each day, she passes through its turnstile by showing Kerri-Ann’s ID to a bored student at the front desk; nobody checks whether her face matches the photograph. That small failure of scrutiny is essential to her access. Maren is present in the library, but the institution has not admitted her as a student or employee: she enters under another person’s credentials.

She spends hours reading, then walks among the stacks to stretch her legs. When she sees books on carts waiting to be returned to the shelves, she begins reshelving them, although she notes that there never seems to be anyone assigned to the task. Putting away books belonging to other people soothes her. The library thus provides both a place to read and a modest, self-made task. Its order contrasts with her uncertain life outside it: she can restore books to their places even when she has no settled place of her own.

One day, after reading and writing at a library desk for a couple of hours, Maren leaves for a bathroom break. On returning, she finds a long white strip lying in the gutter of her open textbook, an object she initially cannot recognize. The discovery interrupts the routine she has established at the library, though the scene at this point identifies the object only by its appearance.

A Precarious Haven

The university setting offers Maren temporary structure rather than lasting security. During the day, the library gives her a desk, books, and the repetitive work of reshelving; in the evenings, Lee brings her a burger and a strawberry milkshake. Yet their shelter remains vulnerable. Maren worries that someone might come looking for Kerri-Ann, notice the light on and voices in the room, and report them to campus police. Her concern makes clear that their continued presence depends on remaining unnoticed.

The contrast between the campus’s visible welcome and Maren’s concealed position gives the location its particular significance. Students arrive with keys, belongings, and a place in the academic community; Maren moves through the same environment by borrowing an ID and occupying a room that was not hers. The University of Wisconsin–Madison briefly lets her inhabit an ordinary pattern—reading, walking the stacks, and returning to a room—without resolving the deeper uncertainty of where she belongs.