Long was a decaying shell of a building situated right in the middle of Louisiana State University’s campus like a dead tooth set in a jaw of milk-fortified pearly whites. They’d built the place—a swimming pool and rec center—back during the great depression, but they boarded it up in the nineties and everyone somehow forgot about it. It was never demolished, never repurposed. Now, weeds burst from the concrete, blackened mold oozed from red rooftop shingles, and algae crept up the pale sides of the outdoor swimming pool, which stayed half-filled with stagnant rainwater. Like the secret Subway under Foster Hall, most people didn’t even know Huey P. Long existed. “LSU,” Jeffery whispered, pulling back the broken flap of chain-link, “has many secrets.” “I see that,” I whispered back, crawling through the fence. “My question is: how is it you seem to know so many of them?” Jeffery grinned, his teeth white by my cellphone’s makeshift flashlight. “I know people.”
