Chapter Text
4 bed/1 bath apartment. 3 female roommates looking for a 4th roommate. Share of rent is $450/mo. Call or text Shelby at 555-4683. No calls on Sundays. Someone flexible with finicky plumbing is a plus. Creeps need not respond, thanks :)
The door swings open before Leah can finish applying a series of timid knocks to it.
“Who are you?”
Leah opens her mouth, then closes it. “Um.” She blinks at the girl in the doorway— lanky, dark hair in a low side pony, basketball shorts, oversized white tank top with one strap drooping off her shoulder. The hand that isn’t holding the door is in possession of what appears to be a strip of bacon. She lifts it to her mouth, tears off a bite, chews. Stares and waits.
If only Leah didn’t have to take detailed stock of literally every single situation and scene set before her. If only she could just speak first and observe later. It sure would save her a lot of stress and sweat.
“I’m the, uh, new girl,” she eventually answers. Feebly, she raises the duffle bag that contains her entire life. “The... new resident? I’m moving in today.”
The presumably not-so-new current resident frowns with her entire face— forehead scrunched, nostrils flared. She’s barely finished chewing when she says, “I don’t know who you think you are, but—”
A pair of hands appears from behind the door, fastening over the girl’s shoulders and urging her to step aside. A beaming blonde takes her place, apology written in the slight grimace that strains the edges of her smile. She speaks with an inflection that’s in a constant upward tilt, very exclamation mark friendly. “I am so sorry, she’s just messing with you. Classic Toni, always wanting to break the ice by making more of it first!” She gives the aforementioned Toni a firm look that doesn’t quite reach the rest of her face, then returns her attention to Leah. “Don’t mind her, she’s just mad at her best friend for moving out.” She sticks out a slender arm, tilts her head. “You must be Leah. I’m Shelby Goodkind.”
Shelby is as warm, friendly, and strikingly charismatic as her voice on the phone had indicated. Leah would have recognized her even without an introduction. “You’re the one I talked to,” says Leah, accepting her hand, “before. On the phone.”
“Yep, that was me! Sure am glad I didn’t scare you off,” Shelby quips. She gives Leah’s hand a couple solid shakes using both of hers, then motions her inside. The cross around her neck, tiny and understated on a thin silver chain, winks as she moves. “I know I was battling a cold when we talked, had a gullet full of snot going on, but it’s all good now, so—”
“She probably got it from me,” Toni remarks, now finished with her snack. “I’m known to spread things, so you better watch out.” Her deadpan delivery crumbles when Shelby elbows her in the ribs, causing her to fold forward and snort back some laughter. When she straightens again, she points at Shelby and says, “And I’m not mad at Marty, by the way. I don’t care. She can go live with whatshisface.”
“Whatshisface? You mean her boyfriend?”
Toni nods, once again dead serious. “Yeah, him.”
Shelby conceals an eye roll by fluffing her hair, then gives Toni another little push. “Alright, alright, shoo. Why don’t you go grab Fatin for me? She ought to be in her room. I told her she just had to be here to say hi to our new roomie!” For the last part, she spins back in the direction of Leah, who has been standing stiff as a mannequin this whole time, back against the closed front door, duffle bag at her feet, watching the other two.
“Okay, jeez, Little Miss Waco,” Toni mutters. “Be right back.” She ambles down a hallway that leads to where the bedrooms are presumably located.
This leaves Leah alone with Shelby, who can’t seem to slow down the movement of her feet nor her mouth. She leads Leah around the apartment and shows off the open-concept living area. “I’m sure you noticed we’re not exactly your typical apartment building,” Shelby explains. As they roam around, she dusts off corners of shelves and cabinets even though they don’t appear to need any dusting. “See, we’re in this old converted warehouse-slash-factory type thing, so we’ve got plenty of space, but plenty of little snags too.” She curls up the edge of a small area rug to expose a weak spot in the floorboards underneath. “You’d best watch your step here.”
Right off the entryway is a cozy-looking hangout. It boasts a pair of worn vinyl loveseats with fuzzy blankets tossed over the backs, both of which are angled toward a flatscreen that shares space on its stand with a small collection of personal photos and knick-knacks. Next they enter the kitchen, which houses a sizable island that doubles as an eat-in table and a fridge that, despite its stainless steel finish, looks like it saw its best days roughly twenty years ago. Leah likes it, though. She likes all of it. As long as the bones of the place are good— as in, good enough to support a roof over her head— then hey, she can fucking live with it. The people she will be sharing her shelter with, however, are a whole other matter entirely.
Toni reappears while Shelby is describing the, in her words, “wishy-washiness” of the dishwasher. “... to be frank and all, I just hand wash my dishes,” she says. “I reckon they last longer that way anyhow, less chips and such. Otherwise, there’s always good old-fashioned paper plates.” She pauses and looks expectantly at Toni.
“So what if I told you... Fatin is not here?” Toni asks.
Shelby puts her hands on her hips and looks at the floor for a moment. “Well.” Then she abruptly perks up again, making Leah startle a little. Shelby gives her shoulder a squeeze, which only causes her blood to thicken more. “Sorry about that, Leah. Didn’t mean to make you all tense like a rat in a room full of rattlers.” She shakes her head. “Ain’t that a bummer,” she says through a gritted-teeth laugh. “I was really hoping she’d be here this time.”
“Hey, it’s cool. Not everything has to be all perfect the first time around.” Toni moves closer, hesitantly pats Shelby’s arm before quickly retracting her hand. “Leah’s still here. She obviously doesn’t hate us yet. That’s good news, right?”
Leah tries to speak, only to realize her throat is filled with a conglomeration of unrealized mumbles and half-formed questions that have congealed there over the past several minutes. When was the last time she spoke? Could it really have been when she got here nearly half an hour ago? Her own voice has gotten sucked away along with time itself. If Shelby and Toni have picked up on Leah’s lack of commentary, though, they haven’t mentioned it.
“Yeah. You’re right, Toni. Let’s just... focus on Leah.” Shelby blows out a breath, evens her shoulders, and fixes her cover girl smile back on the newest arrival to the apartment. Leah peers back and forth between her two prospective roommates. Toni seems to have an established knack for keeping Shelby grounded, yet at the same time there’s this sense of unestablished boundaries between them, like neither is sure how far the other is willing to go. How high they would reach for each other, how deep they would probe. Like two teenagers who got shoved in a closet together for seven minutes in heaven, and are now stuck on whatever happens in the eighth minute.
Fuck. Leah had vowed to herself that she would quit being so over-observant. It doesn’t do her any good to psychologically analyze these girls using the sliver of that psych degree she dropped out before earning. But the funny thing is, it turns out that the promises she makes to herself are always the easiest promises to break.
“Don’t sweat it,” Toni says. It takes Leah a second to realize she’s addressing her now instead of Shelby. “It’s not that Fatin doesn’t wanna meet you. She just has her own shit going on.”
“Oh, don’t we all,” Shelby mutters.
Toni shrugs. “I can always throw out the homemade avocado paste she keeps for her toast. Tell her I thought it was mold forming its own colony in the fridge.”
Shelby delivers a light shove to her arm that doesn’t even make Toni’s balance wobble. “Now, Toni, there’s no need to be mean.”
“What? Food isn’t supposed to be gray.”
“Could I, um...” Leah unclogs her throat and thoughts. “I’ll take it. A key, I mean. I— I’d like to live here.”
Shelby aims her blinding smile at Toni for a moment before she turns it back onto Leah. It’s like she wants to see her enthusiasm reflected back at her, but her face already contains enough of that for all three of them. “You hear that, Toni? She wants to live here! With us!”
“Yup, I heard. I think she was gonna be moving in even if an ogre opened the door, though,” Toni says, nodding at Leah’s overstuffed duffle. “Rent’s too cheap to pass up.”
“Ain’t that the truth. We’ve had a whole circus marching through here trying to get a piece of the pie. But nobody was the right fit ‘til you, Leah.”
Leah attempts a grin, though the fit of it on her face isn’t quite right. “Well, it’s either here or my car, so—”
“Wow, isn’t this some fantastic news!” Shelby claps her hands together and scurries over to a small shelf by the front door, where she fishes out a key from a shallow dish. She drops it onto Leah’s palm while she prattles on about signing the lease agreement and the sketchy yet mostly absent landlady. Leah zones out and examines the tiny pewter rabbit charm attached to the keychain, turning it over with her thumb.
“Wait, you’re giving her Marty’s key?” Toni asks suddenly, plowing right through the middle of Shelby’s monologue.
Shelby frowns. “Well, I don’t see why not. She did leave it here, and it’s the only spare. Can’t have too many of those floating around.”
Toni huffs. In lieu of a response, she storms off and flings open the fridge door. She plucks out a bottle of ranch dressing and something wrapped in tin foil.
While she furiously unscrews the cap, Shelby provides some context. “Her best friend Martha, she moved a couple blocks away but used to live here. Toni’s still a tad hung up on it, seems like.”
“‘m not,” Toni argues around a mouthful of cold pizza and ranch.
Shelby leans in closer to Leah with one hand cupped around her mouth as she whispers, “A couple blocks away in this L.A. heat may as well be a trek up a volcano for that Minnesota snowbird. I’m a Texas girl, see, so I grew up on rolling blackouts and melting car tires.” She waves a hand, makes one of those pshh, no big deal sounds, then trots over to the kitchen to tidy up the mess left in Toni’s choppy wake.
“Yeah, right,” grunts Toni. “You grew up in one of the swankiest neighborhoods west of the Mississippi. I bet you always had at least a dozen generators on backup. Or you’d go sit in your family’s loaded Suburban with the A.C. blasting.” She raises an eyebrow at Shelby. “And I bet Dot can back me up.”
“For what it’s worth, you’ve got it all wrong,” says Shelby, “and there isn’t any use in going and bothering poor Dot with such silly little matters—”
“Not silly if it proves me right.” Evidently satisfied with getting the last word in, Toni makes her grand exit back to her room. As she goes, she tosses the ball of foil over her shoulder, and it lands with flawless precision in the trash can. She reserves a tiny smirk just for Leah, who half-expects her to pair a wink with it. Then she’s gone.
Shelby shakes her head, sighs, and moves on. “Well, then. How about you, Leah? Where do you hail from?”
“Uh... lifelong California resident, actually.”
Shelby gives a pleased hum as she sweeps crumbs off the counter and into her hand. “Isn’t that something! You and Fatin both.” The ever-enigmatic Fatin strikes again. What must it be like to be somebody so worth mentioning all the time? Then Shelby asks, “So what brought you to L.A.? Assuming you’re not the offspring of some famous Hollywood producer or what-have-you, trying out the normal life for a change.”
Leah opens her mouth. Closes it. A cacophony of clichés echoes inside her skull, all as true as they’re not. An escape. A fresh start. Something new. I ran, because being a coward is easier than acknowledging what happened.
Instead, what comes out is “I’m gonna go set up my room.”
She doesn’t stick around to see Shelby’s reaction.
Leah doesn’t own much to make her room look like her room.
It’s not like it matters, anyway. It’ll be easier in the long run if she doesn’t get attached to this room, this apartment. These people. If she needs to make a break for it, it has to be clean and quick. Long ago she learned the skill of clipping herself free, of making herself like a leaf in autumn, hitching a ride on the next breeze, drifting away seamlessly, easy to forget. Beige cardigans, same long straight hairstyle, no jewelry. Nothing that will snag, nothing that will leave behind a calling card if it rips off of her. Her phone background is still set to the default smeary pink and orange eyesore it had when she got it in high school. Bland. Flavorless. Perfect.
Even if she did have a few photos she carried around, protected in cheap craft store clearance frames with price tag residue on the glass, Leah doesn’t know who would be in those photos. Or a vintage poster of a movie or band she loves— she has no clue what that movie or band would be. She’s the persona non grata in her own life. She’s always been too attuned to others, to all the crushes that have slipped through her fingers over the years. Looking inward now would be too little, too late. She can’t turn a magnifying glass onto herself. She can’t turn her skin inside out and spill some of herself if there’s nothing to spill. For so long, she was a blank slate— was.
Leah steps inside the empty bedroom, drops her bag on the floor by the bed. She takes out a charger and plugs her phone into the wall. Then she sits cross-legged on the bare mattress and tucks hair behind both ears. She picks at her peeling nails until they bleed at the edges, crescent-moon smiles of blood and angry keratin and chipped nail polish.
After a while she looks up, and she’s surrounded by thick, rich, plasma-curdling heat. It closes in on her, hugs before it strangles. The morbid beauty of the highway is everywhere, its copious litter like sprinkles on a cupcake. Bits of paper, crushed soda cans, shattered glass. Glittering metal, curls of tire tread on the shoulder, abstract markings of tar on the flat sun-baked surface. West coast dryness chafes her throat. Gravel fills her socks, crunches under blistered feet. Cars whip past. The smell of sun-roasted playground mulch plugs up her nose. The rubber soles of her shoes melt, bind her to the asphalt. How did she get here. It’s not real. How could she be here if here isn’t a real place. No. No no no. It’s not solid, it’s only mist, she could put her hand through it— but it feels so real!
Impact. Screeching brakes, like a wild bird call she’s never heard before. She’s on the ground, on her stomach, chest buried deep in the earth below the layers of road, a million miles away from her, her soul safely separated from her body. Her traitorous heart’s still with her, though, a mallet hammering at her ribs, prying them apart. If she could just turn it over in her mind one more time, what happened that day— trade perspectives with the sky, with that driver—
Blood inside her cheek, salty and vinegar-like. Gravel in her mouth, she’s spitting a tooth onto the pavement, and there’s a string of her saliva tie-dyed with blood, wet and glistening among all the beautiful trash. If she could just get away, just squirm out of whatever sick con her mind’s playing on her—
She doesn’t know she’s fallen asleep until she wakes up again. It wasn’t sleep, though, not really. She isn’t sleeping through these dreams. She’s on the perimeter of sleep, maybe, but still awake. She wouldn’t be surprised if her eyes are open, if she walks around while dreaming. Nightmaring.
And so the pattern continues here, too. A different bed, a new place, and still the beast follows her, hot on her trail, nibbling at her heels.
Leah rolls off the bed and pushes open the door. She can’t tell what time it is, nor does she bother to bring her phone with her. She swims through the dark hallway and feels out her path with her arms outstretched to the walls, like she’s holding them apart with all her strength to stop them from snapping shut with her in the middle.
Finding the bathroom doesn’t take long. It isn’t far; this place is big but it isn’t a labyrinth like the hospital had been. Besides, Shelby’s tour was abundantly thorough. Leah starts to fumble for the light switch. Then she freezes. There’s a shape in the bathroom-sized void in front of her, more scent attached to them than anything else. Smoky perfume, heavy and bronchi-obstructing.
“God, my brain needs a fucking antacid.” She’s rifling through one of the drawers, items clunking against each other, an overture of cheap plastic tubes and old forgotten combs. “So much for Shelby’s uber-organized color-coded bullshit. Toni blew right through that like a tornado of Takis.”
Leah stands there in the open doorway and gulps. She focuses more on trying to comprehend who this is— not Toni, and definitely not Shelby— than trying to quiet her breathing. That becomes her downfall.
The figure squeaks. “Jesus Christ, what—” She lashes out and flicks the light on, only to immediately snap it back off, plunging them among shadows and unknowns once again. “So not doing lights. Definite nope from me.” She draws in a quick breath, and Leah feels the glare she pins on her. “Okay, what the fuck? Who are you?”
It’s the second time Leah has been asked that question in the past twenty-four hours, and she still isn’t any more positive of the answer. Fortunately for her, this girl knows Leah better than she knows herself.
“Oh, you’re the new girl, right? Um...” She thinks for a moment. “Not Leah, it’s...”
“Leah.”
“It is Leah?”
She nods quickly, then remembers the poor lighting. “Yeah. That’s me.”
“Cool.” A brief pause allows more awkwardness to seep in. “Well, I’m Fatin. And as nice as it is to meet you here at three in the morning, I am currently on a mission to ingest any and all painkillers within a five-mile radius, so unless you’ve got any to share, I ask that you kindly beat it.”
There’s something about Fatin’s voice that makes Leah want to actually see her. She doesn’t want to wait for daylight, either. She’s already witnessed Fatin in the throes of that ugly sixth stage of grief where alcohol further ferments into a harsh, nauseous hangover. Or, at least, that’s what Leah has gathered from the sour tang on Fatin’s breath. If there weren’t layers upon layers of perfume, she bets she would smell the sweat, too. The shame. She’s been there. Fatin has been out all day and night, dancing and drinking for all the hours Leah shut herself in her room and pretended not to hear Shelby’s knocks— first asking if she was alright, then asking if she had any requests for dinner, then asking if she wanted a share of the Chinese takeout they got, and then, finally, telling her good night.
And on the same hand, Fatin is meeting Leah while she is easily at her lowest point in life, lower than the ocean floor and all the garbage that has sunk down to it. In other words, what is there to lose if she invites this girl to her room? The night’s already shot, anyway.
When Leah doesn’t immediately scoot off as requested, Fatin pauses her pursuit again. “Okay, seriously, I don’t want you here to witness my descent, so—”
“I have some in my room,” Leah says.
Silence. The drawer slides shut. “What do you have?”
“Uh, it’s a prescription. I think it might just be store-brand Tylenol, but it helps.”
She feels Fatin sizing her up through the dark, her eyes like an extension of her hands, with fingertips as curious as they are painfully tentative. Typical Leah would lean eagerly into the touch, however removed and implied it may be. In the past, she has glanced in her rear view mirror while sitting at a red light and fallen in love with the person in the car behind her. A five-minute fantasy, fleeting fulfillment, a hungry haiku scribbled in the margins of a larger story, leaving the sole reader— herself— starving for more but with nothing more to give.
Leah doesn’t repeat her typical pattern this time, though. Fatin is different, and she spreads that divergence by poking so cleverly at the rudimentary sense of amusement Leah houses somewhere inside herself. She’s just a tiny bit intrigued— and what better respite is there from the demanding, full-time job of being obsessed with everything else?
“Fuck it. I’ll bite,” Fatin says. “Lead the way.”
She follows Leah back to the skeletal bedroom with its bare mattress and naked walls. Nothing but a phone and a rumpled duffle bag to indicate someone is attempting to exist in this room.
Leah toggles on the cheap Ikea lamp on the nightstand, bathing the room in a mellow light that seems to be on its way out at any moment, as if it would rather be illuminating any other place but here. Then she kneels down and searches through her things.
“Not really one for interior decorating, huh?” Fatin observes drily. “Bare mattress is certainly a choice. Sort of a statement I can appreciate, as long as you’re not a serial killer.” She stands with her arms crossed a few feet away, closer to the door than she is to the other occupant of the room, and suddenly Leah has to look anywhere else besides her.
She stays quiet, keeps rooting through her bag. She tosses aside balled-up tissues and bits of wrappers and receipts for the self-worth she tried to purchase by way of books. If reading too much was a crime, almost every single bookseller and library back in NorCal would have evidence against her. And half of those places can also attest to a strapped-for-cash girl with eyes adrift who has tried to return a non-returnable book all marked up with forgotten notations. More than once, she’s cracked open the pages of something and realized, Huh, so that’s where she left that misplaced thought.
Like she’s been locked in an interrogation room, like she didn’t just meet Leah not even five minutes ago, Fatin continues filling the silence. “You know, this is honestly better than most of the stuff Martha had in here. I love her, total sweetheart, but it’s like that girl was addicted to this one specific shade of purple. And you know what, maybe I’m just saying that because I’m still a little mad she hasn’t returned my purple camo jacket.” She chuckles to herself; Leah drinks it in. “Damn, I looked so good in that jacket, too. Bitch knew what she was borrowing. It instantly converts you into this, like, effortless Zendayan goddess.”
At last Leah finds the almighty orange bottle. She pushes to her feet and, upon handing it to Fatin, allows herself a better look at her— a glimpse that feels like it’s been anticipated for much longer than only a few minutes. Leah’s brain tries valiantly to synthesize the information that’s been fed to it: the sound of Fatin’s borderline self-deprecating laugh, the sight of Fatin’s Any Given Sundae t-shirt despite talk of more fashionable attire, and most importantly, Fatin’s face. Smudged makeup. The slight furrowed slope of her eyebrows. The tiny sideways frown carved in her cheek as she takes the bottle, examines it for half a second, then unscrews the top. Leah wishes she wasn’t so struck by her. She’s used to her mind screaming at her. She doesn’t know what to do with silence when it’s inside herself. She’s like a prolific potter; her restless hands can’t form anything without plenty of brain clay to work with. But in an instant, it’s all gone.
Fatin pops a couple pills and swallows them dry. Leah blinks. She’d always assumed she herself was the only person who could manage that, just like desperate people seeking relief in movies.
“ Hello, sweet numbness,” says Fatin. She gives the bottle back to Leah and inches toward the door. “Well, I’d love to stay and chat, but I can feel my organs starting to shut down from tequila poisoning, and I’d much rather crash in my room than in your, uh... minimalist cell, so...” She flashes a smile, catching Leah on her brown eyes. “Thanks,” she tells her. Then she’s gone, the door shut softly behind her.
Leah stares at that closed door for a minute, or maybe for an hour. She thinks she might crash, too. And, eventually, she does.
Leah wakes from a deep, heavy, paralytic type of sleep. Sunlight slants harshly through the single small window on the wall adjacent to the bed, drenching her legs in a pool of gold. She hadn’t even realized she never closed the drapes last night. But why were they even open in the first place? Her mind sketches a scene of Shelby flitting about soon before Leah’s arrival, dusting off the ceiling and polishing the light switches, deciding to leave the shades open “just to let a little light in.” Leah has only known Shelby for a day, but that seems like something Shelby would do.
She unplugs her phone and scrolls through it for a while. At one point Leah had deleted all of her social media apps with the encouragement of an overzealous former therapist, but by now she’s redownloaded every single one. Her thumb flicks between platforms at a mile-a-minute rate, her sleep-infused brain barely absorbing what flies past on the bright screen. All the while, she internally debates the risks of venturing outside this room— her room— again. The last time she did, she met Fatin, so maybe it won’t be all that bad to show her face out there.
Leah approaches the door and listens. She can hear someone clinking around in the kitchen— makes sense, since her room is the first one in the hallway and thus the closest to the kitchen and living area. She steadies herself with a breath. Then she pushes open the door and shuffles back into public view.
In the kitchen she encounters Shelby, who’s popping a couple slices of multigrain bread into a shiny red toaster. She’s dressed like she has some sort of goal to achieve, in a pastel tie-dye outfit complete with a modestly cropped hoodie and running shorts. Her high ponytail wags back and forth violently as she moves to and fro around the room. Even the scrunchie in her hair has a matching tie-dye pattern.
She glances over her shoulder as Leah enters. “Good morning, Leah! How sweet of you to join me. I’m just fixing myself a little something so I can tank up before my jog.”
Leah settles herself on one of the wobbly wooden stools at the island. Her fingers are automatically attracted to the cuffed sleeve of the baggy, off-season sweater she hasn’t taken off since yesterday. “Good morning,” she says.
“I can whip you up some toast, or we have eggs—”
A voice travels down the hall and flattens Shelby’s generous breakfast offerings. “Um, has your brain atrophied since I saw you? I know you know what one night means, Marcus. It means once and done. Therefore, leave me alone!” It sounds an awful lot like Fatin’s voice. Leah startles at the abrasiveness of it. She observes Shelby’s silent sigh and slumped shoulders. So this isn’t anything out of the ordinary.
Using a pair of oddly adorable mini tongs, Shelby retrieves her toast and carefully sets the slices on a paper plate. “I am so sorry about that,” she says with her back to Leah. “Sounds like Fatin’s just having a frustrating time on the phone.”
So it is her. Leah frowns. If this is Fatin, then who did she meet last night?
“Oh, and now the fucking shower’s broken too!”
Shelby visibly tenses up. She drops what she’s doing to lean around the corner and shout softly down the hallway. “Toni! Please tell me you’re awake!” No immediate response arrives, so Shelby turns back to Leah again with a breathless sort of half-laugh. “That’s our Toni in a nutshell. Probably still snoring up a storm. I swear, she could snooze soundly in the bowels of a cement truck speeding the wrong way down I-35.”
Leah hears some more angry thrashing accompanied by indistinct grumbling; she wonders if this is Fatin in a nutshell.
Shelby tries again. “Toni!” This is followed by several seconds of loud pounding that could easily split open brand-new fissures between the planet’s existing tectonic plates.
“Toni!” Fatin snaps, apparently the one trying to wake the entire block by assaulting her roommate’s door. “It’s your turn to deal with the shower! Let’s go! Up and at ‘em!”
“Alright, alright, I’m up! Shit!”
Leah tilts herself just far enough over to catch Toni’s door flinging open at the end of the hallway. The apartment’s most wanted woman of the hour appears in the flesh a moment later, leaning against the outer wall of the kitchen with her arms crossed and a giant yawn splitting her face. Her sleepwear of choice is an oversized t-shirt announcing a statewide basketball tournament from 2018.
Shelby swallows her bite of toast. “Well howdy there, Toni. Glad to see you’re up and swinging.”
“Howdy my ass, Goodkind,” Toni mutters. She groans and hits her head gently against the wall’s edge. “You sure it’s my turn to do the shower thing?”
Fatin’s voice, tinged with equal parts impatience and saccharine insincerity, floats down the hallway: “Aw, you mean you’re not jumping at the opportunity to help a girl out for literally just five minutes?”
“Yeah, right, like your showers ever take less than an hour,” Toni calls back. Then she tries what Leah can only assume is her best attempt at puppy dog eyes. “Shelby, come on. If I was more awake, I’d be on my knees begging, deadass. Don’t make me do it.”
Shelby appears to choke a little on her toast. “Nuh-uh,” she replies around another bite, holding a hand over her mouth to hide her chewing— and the intriguing blush that’s rushed into her cheeks and ears. “I know I did it last time, Toni. And besides, if we’re gonna get down to the nitty-gritty of it, you’re the athlete among us. You’re the only one who really has the strength to do it.”
“Oh, bullshit—”
“Now, I know you’re still holding that grudge against me for the other day, but—”
“Yeah, because you dragged me to the altar,” Toni growls.
Now it’s Fatin’s turn to make an appearance in the kitchen. Her hair is hidden up in a terrycloth turban and she has a satin robe thrown over the same punny t-shirt Leah saw her in before. “Okay, I’ll pour some milk on this cereal,” she says, eyebrows raised as she peers between Shelby and Toni. “She took you to the what now?”
Shelby is shaking her head so fast, she’s practically a blur. “Oh, no, no, not what you think! She means Altar’d State. You know, the store in the mall? We were there together the other day for whatever reason—”
“She trapped me into it by promising food,” Toni interjects.
“No, I said I was running some errands, and the only part you chose to hear was that I’d be picking up lunch on the way,” Shelby argues with the inklings of a smile. “Anyhow, we were there and I remembered this cute sundress I’d seen there last time and talked myself out of buying, so I thought I’d go back in and see if it had found its way to the clearance rack yet.” She hands Toni an affectionately firm look. “You could’ve just waited outside, you know.”
“Yeah, Toni,” Fatin feeds the fire, “why didn’t you just go socialize at Foot Locker?”
Toni rolls her eyes, but Leah can read her amusement between the lines. “Whatever. You know, maybe the reason I’m mad at you, Shelby, is still for spelling my name wrong the first two months it was in your phone.”
“Hey, hold your horses, that was an honest mistake—”
“You spelled it like I’m a dude who owns a pizzeria in Brooklyn.”
“That is so unfair!” Shelby protests amid laughter. “Tony with a -y is the most usual spelling, ain’t it?”
Fatin’s jaw drops. “Hold up, you got Toni’s number that fast? The first couple months I lived here, I had to communicate with her ass via post-it note. It was like, please stop snoring, exclamation point. I can hear you through the wall, exclamation point. Next time I will smother you with your pillow, smiley face.”
Leah snorts behind her hand, then goes back to picking at her sleeve.
“You’re a liar,” Toni tells her. “You never said please in any of those notes.”
“Okay, just—” Fatin huffs and waves her hands in an orchestra-conductor-like motion to indicate her desire for silence. “Will you please come and hold up the shower head for me so I can have decent water pressure?”
“Try taking a bath sometime. I feel like you could use one.”
“Sit in my own dirt soup for hours? Nooo thank you.” Fatin pulls a face and seizes Toni’s arm, starting to drag her inch by inch back down the hallway. “I am gonna need the biggest, hottest cup of Earl after this.”
“That’s why you take a bath,” Toni points out. “It’s soothing or whatever, so you don’t have to drink your nasty leaf soup.” She turns herself into an anchor that stops their two-woman parade dead in its tracks.
Fatin yanks on her with another whine. “FYI, that ‘leaf soup’ is soothing because it has a delicate floral aroma, with bergamot and—”
“Hate to interrupt,” Shelby says, “but we are fresh out of tea, Fatin. Care for a coffee instead?”
“I’m trying not to do coffee right now,” Fatin responds, “but fine. God knows I need the caffeine somehow.” Then she finds a grin and slaps it on her face as she indicates Shelby’s clothes. “Cute ‘fit by the way, Shelbs.” For the first time, she glances back and catches Leah’s eye— and Leah, the forgotten pawn on the chessboard, remembers herself in this scene. “You should see when Shelby wears her tidyin’-up bandana,” Fatin tells her. “That’s when she really gets down to business. That Swiffer becomes a weapon.”
Shelby chuckles modestly. “You could get down to business and go jogging with me sometime,” she says. “We can twin.”
Fatin is quick to shake her head. “Sorry, babe, I have to let you down gently. I recently came to the conclusion that I do not do heavy-sweating exercise. Or twinning.” There are a lot of things, Leah is starting to discover, that Fatin doesn’t do. “And trust me, I am at the pinnacle of my intelligence when I say there are better ways to—”
“Okay,” Toni cuts her off, taking the lead down the hallway. “And now we’re gonna go. You got the blindfold?”
“You mean the bathroom bandana?” Shelby tosses her the item in question. In turn, Fatin gives an offended scoff.
Luckily, the shower decides to function for Leah when she uses it. She stands and stares, the water’s spray slicing through her shoulders. The bath products perched around the tub’s edges and shelves are a true mixed bag of items— powder-scented Dove body wash has a half-empty bottle of Old Spice as its neighbor. An assortment of shampoo bottles are crammed in the caddy hanging from the showerhead, and that tracks. Of course each of these girls must have her own shampoo, lest a mini civil war breaks out in the apartment.
Curiosity easily gets the better of Leah. She sifts through each soap and gel one by one, scanning the labels. There are a couple of super high-end looking brands sorted in with the rest. Obviously these must belong to Fatin. She probably keeps most of her fancy toiletries in her own room so she doesn’t run the risk of wasting a single drop.
Suddenly, there’s a bang on the door. “Hot water!” someone yells.
Leah twists the faucet to a more lukewarm temperature so she can stay in here longer guilt-free. She lowers herself to the tub’s floor, lets the weak stream sputter over the wet hair plastered to her back. If only she could stay in here all day. If just one more thread is pulled, she’ll unspool completely.
After a while, she forces herself to her feet and grabs a bottle at random to squirt in her hand. She doesn’t currently have any shampoo to her name, regular or fancy or in between. She scrubs off the last couple days’ surface-level depression, since the skin-deep depression isn’t as reachable. Then she rinses off— excluding her brain, because try as she might, she can’t seem to pinch the coils of it through her nostrils, can’t seem to rinse away the sins and needs and wants from it. After that, she cuts the spray and finally climbs out. She stares at a bottle of mouthwash on the counter until the fog recedes from the edges of the builder-grade mirror. She imagines the sizzle of it down her throat— alcohol’s cheap, minty snot. Bile burns above her diaphragm.
Someone smacks the door again, which shudders in its frame. “Drought!”
In a flash, Leah’s arm darts out and shuts off the sink faucet. She hadn’t even noticed she left it running. Together with the water, the remnants of her shower musings swirl down the drain with a final gulping gurgle.
Leaving the building, Leah skips the rickety elevator and takes the scuffed-up cement stairs instead. No enclosed spaces, she thinks, and no other people.
Her plan backfires. On her way down from the third floor, she nearly runs into someone about to heave open the access door to the second level. The stranger stiffens, eyes wide. They both stammer hurried apologies at the same time. Leah is about to make her escape, slinking away like she’s a wanted criminal, but her bothersome brain stops her. You promised yourself you’d be better. You promised yourself you’d try to make friends.
Before the door can close all the way, Leah spins back around and catches it. “Hey,” she blurts out. The girl pauses and stares at her. “I’m Leah. I, um, just moved into the place upstairs, so... I guess we’re neighbors?” She barely remembers to smile at the right time.
Her new neighbor stares for a moment longer, then softens somewhat and offers a small wave. “Nora,” she introduces herself. Leah admires her nose ring and curly hair— then she discreetly pinches the tender skin at the base of her forearm. No more instant crushes. “My sister and I live right below you. You’re in the unit with the loud people.” Nora says this gently, but also matter-of-factly, like she’s explaining the workings of a well-oiled machine to a new hire. And maybe she is, in a way.
“Right,” says Leah. “Yeah, they’re... something else.” She wants to clarify that her new living arrangement isn’t exactly her preferred milieu, but a small tug in her gut stops her.
Nora adjusts her basket of neatly folded laundry— cottony clothes all in shades of black and gray— higher on her hip and nods with a tight grin. “They are something else,” she says. “They’re nice, too. Tell them I said hi.” With one last dip of her head, she backs off the landing and disappears behind the heavy door.
Outside, the late August heat is intense. The sunlight feels like radiation, and the air itself seems to be dyed a flammable, neon citrus hue. Leah throws on an old crooked pair of aviators and hikes around the block to where she parked. She probably won’t be able to get a spot this close to her building again for at least a month, if she’s lucky. She hates to have to leave it.
Eager to escape the oppressive outdoor oven, she mashes the unlock button on the key fob as soon as her almost-teenaged Prius is in sight. Then she climbs inside, flicks the air conditioning up to full strength, and presses her forehead into the steering wheel. How can she want so badly to be by herself, but then as soon as she is, her blood itches and her skin crawls? She wants to take herself out to the curb and wait to be picked up with the rest of the city’s trash.
“No,” she mumbles to herself. “Remember why you’re here. Don’t press the bruise. Don’t press the bruise.” She repeats this a few— several— times, then jams the aux cord in her phone and selects Ben Folds’ “You Don’t Know Me.” If she’s heard this song once, she’s heard it a million times.
Leah slides out of the parking space and merges into traffic. She crawls along through the soupy atmosphere and tries to admire the view. Palm trees and tourists and Teslas— bona fide Los Angeles. But when the traffic and trying to find a new parking spot ends up making her ten minutes late for work, she gives up trying to admire the view.
I think L.A. is a place where people can actually have fun falling in love, she’d told Ian before she left Berkeley. He had helped her play the game of suitcase Tetris trying to pack the rear of the Prius. Unlike her, he was a fresh college graduate with a squeaky clean but boring degree. Like her, he was feeling aimless. He asked her if she really had to go. She told him she needed to be where things happened. Out of her comfort zone. That was before all of her careful planning went out the window. Before L.A. became more of an urgency than a fleet-footed whim. Before her well-packed belongings became a single duffle bag thrown in the back of the car in the middle of the night.
She’s a scavenger. She knows that now. A person who scavenges through the remains of her relationships, platonic or not, and fixates on the worst of them rather than salvaging the best of them.
Leah parks the car and slips through the back door of the café, taming her hair into a sloppy ponytail as she goes. She’s been employed at Paradise Island for a few weeks now, and the job works her more than she works the job. Most of the customers are high maintenance and demanding, but they still have a penchant for thoughtlessly stuffing five-dollar bills in the tip jar, so it’s usually worth putting up with.
The first few hours of her double shift in so-called paradise are uneventful. She scurries around, spills a few drinks, suffers some verbal abuse. Then all of a sudden, Leah looks up and spies one of her new roommates walking in wearing faux animal print and giant sunglasses. And which of said roommates could it be but Fatin, her midnight pill pal? Shit, Leah thinks idly, you don’t even know her last name. Her mind succumbs to the identity of a congested lint trap— in other words, a combustible hazard stuffed with thoughts as useful as dust.
She should go hide. Somewhere Fatin won’t see her. In the back, or inside the wall, or under the sticky floor tiles. Yet she won’t move. Can’t move. Shit. Shit.
Fatin rests the oversized shades on top of her head and approaches the counter, where Leah wavers on the other side of the pastry case feeling mildly ill. She wants to be a hologram, wants to flicker and glitch and disappear when someone’s arm slices through her. It’s hard enough having to interact with pretty people on a regular basis— does Leah really have to interact with the same pretty person in more than one location? That’s just asking too much.
Leah takes the order of the customer in line ahead of Fatin. As he recites them, she scribbles his many nut milk-related specifications on a plastic cup, only for him to sneer in disgust and fork over his reusable extra large coffee cup. “Single-use plastic? Really? Do better.”
“I just...” He’s already moved down the line to pay at the register, and Leah is left standing there holding this man’s giant travel mug, and if unhealthy had a size, this would be it. “... work here,” she finishes, muttering it under her breath as she turns and prepares the drink.
After that debacle, she almost forgets who she’ll be serving next. “I feel like that combination of sugar and fluids,” says Fatin, tipping her head in the direction of the previous customer, “will either make you vomit, or make a bomb.” A smirk twitches on Leah’s lips. Subtly egged on, Fatin adds, “He also looks like someone who would accidentally overdose on Brazil nuts. And trust me, that’s an insult.”
Leah lets her grin show itself a little more. “I thought you didn’t do coffee,” she says.
“Hey, you can’t just pull a reverse Uno card on me,” Fatin protests. “I was literally roasting that hipster alive for you. People like him are the cystic acne of humanity.” When Leah only stares at her, she sighs and explains, “Look, I’m just here for my Earl Grey. He’s my main bitch. It tried, but Shelby’s coffee doesn’t cut it for me.”
Leah nods and grabs a cup. “I haven’t seen you here before,” she says— her way of asking if this is a place Fatin plans to frequent, and if, by extension, she should be planning to put in her two weeks’ notice.
Somehow, miraculously, Fatin catches right on to her. “Don’t worry, I just thought I’d give this place a try for the first time. The decor lacks inspiration, and this one barista is super rude, so I probably won’t be back.” She grins a broad, shit-eating grin while Leah fills the cup with hot water and drops in a tea bag. “This shit better be premium,” Fatin says as the drink is handed to her.
“Oh, yeah,” replies Leah flatly, though she might still be smiling. “It’s sourced from Earl himself. Let it steep, you’ll see.” She finds herself trading places with her coworker so they can continue chatting over the cash register. It’s mostly one-sided chatting, but Leah has never minded being a listener.
“... and her favorite Miley album is the one after Bangerz that no one ever talks about. Taste, right? Even though it’s worth mentioning everyone sleeps on Bangerz too. It’s like, don’t dismiss a bitch just because she was in her twerking era. Miley knew she had a magnum opus on her hands and we all just collectively shrugged at her.”
Leah inputs Fatin’s simple order on the register’s screen. She’s slightly surprised to watch her roommate withdraw an inch-thick American Express from her wallet and tap it against the card reader. Huh. Impressive.
“Well, I’ve got an audition to catch. Wish me luck.” Fatin lifts her tea with a sense of not-yet-earned triumph. “And hey, check out this compostable paper cup. Take that, anti-plastic guy!”
Leah wishes her luck in silence, with a fascinated stare that follows Fatin all the way back out the doors of Paradise Island. She glances at the electronic credit card receipt. Fatin Jadmani. Her mind paints a picture of Fatin Jadmani strolling down Rodeo Drive, Ray-Bans perched on her head, an iced matcha latte in hand, and a giant billboard behind her with her face on it, modeling something premium. And in the cluttered jeopardy of Leah’s mind, Fatin is still wearing a punny t-shirt under all the glamor. This time, it’s a cluster of grapes under the words Love ya a bunch!
It’s not real, it’s only mist. But it feels so real. She feels so real.
When Leah gets back to the apartment late that night, she discovers a purple post-it note stuck to the fridge with gusto. There’s nothing special about the way it’s stuck to the fridge, really, but something about the color of the paper and the loopy, thoughtful handwriting adds a particular flavor to it.
Attn all residents of Apt 3E! I will be hosting a brisket-n-bonding dinner this Friday... + TX style brisket is super delish so I encourage y’all to attend :)
— Shelby
Leah reads over the message many more times than necessary. It isn’t until hours later, however, once she’s enclosed in her safe envelope of a bedroom again, that she decides she will try to be there.