The door opens with a low whine, and I walk in, fingers searching for the switch, my flats abandoned in the tiny vinyl entranceway before the carpet. The backpack slips off my shoulder without ceremony. The kitchen light turns on.
Well, the kitchen light. The key light in my 200-square-foot studio stays off. I should get it changed.
I think I say that every time I notice it.
I don’t really need the light, to be honest. There is nothing here. Seven steps ahead: the tiny kitchenette, fridge, stove, sink, dishwasher. Eight steps to the right there’s the desk disguised as a dining table, the single chair, the stack of books I’ve actually read annotated to the margins in pencil, the notebook with a half-finished paper on Morrison’s “Unspeakable Things Unspoken” that I will show no one. Two steps from the desk is the box spring mattress I call a bed. Two steps from the bed is the tiny hallway that fits me and a pedestal sink across from a shower and toilet.
The sink had a toothbrush; I didn’t use this morning. I hadn’t used it yesterday, either. Nobody was going to get close enough to know.
My life in one, empty, room.
I shuffle to the kitchen, not sure why I bother when I already know what’s waiting for me. My body goes through the motions of opening the fridge, a scoff from my nose validating what I already knew.
I have an empty fridge in an empty room. At least I cleaned out last week’s cafeteria leftovers and the month-old milk. That was rank.
Productivity.
I close the fridge, taking one second to debate getting away before making the slow trek to the bed. I have time until the study group Stacy invited me to last minute because my eyes met hers while she was talking to her friends.
“Yeah, let’s meet at the library!” Her eyes met mine, and her open-mouth smile flickered. A pause.
I watched the calculation move across her face in two discrete steps. Does Stacy even know this girl? Will the group be weird about a stranger? I saw her decide to be generous about it a beat before she said so.
“Rachel, right?” She glanced back at her friends, their polite nods, their nonchalant shrugs, and turned back to me. “You can join us too!”
I didn’t expect to.
“Okay.”
I was a pity invite to a study group for a class I was barely functioning in.
…I was barely functioning anyway.
Before I could collapse onto the mattress, still in my shoes, my phone vibrated in my jacket pocket. I don’t want to answer it.
I already know who it is.
She is the only one who calls, and when she does, it’s because no one else has bothered to yet.
My eyes close. There is a shuddering breath stuck in my throat. If I don’t pick up now, she’ll try again tomorrow because Mom would poke and prod her. If I don’t pick up then, she’ll call later that same day because now it’s a mission.
If I answer, how long would it take before I get another call?
From anyone.
God, that’s depressing. If I don’t answer, at least the phone will stay useful. If I do answer, the phone becomes inert.
I take a slow breath and pull out the phone, letting it vibrate twice more before I click the green accept button and bring it to my ear. “Hey, Mila.”
“There you are.” I can hear the slight tinge of annoyance. “Mom told me to check up on you.”
Of course she did. Mom outsourced her job to you, and since you are the responsible one, you took time out of your busy day with your residency to check on me. No one else does, so you do, because Mom told you to, because she is busy with Valentina and I am inconvenient.
I don’t say that. I can never say that.
I have to keep the peace, even now, in an empty studio apartment, in a world that keeps moving without me.
“Yeah, I’m sorry about that. I’ve been busy with classes, so I haven’t called her.”
I haven’t called her because the last time I did, two weeks ago, she didn’t pick up. I left a voicemail talking about passing my midterms, and she never called me back. I haven’t called her because the last time I heard from her was a chain message. From her church. My name wasn’t on it.
“Well, let her know how you’re doing. She’s been busy with Tina’s Quinceañera. A call might give her a distraction, you know.”
Because a call from Rachel is one she’ll definitely pay attention to between dress fittings and cake tastings.
I remember standing with thirteen other girls, holding small bouquets as Camila stood on the podium, Dad holding her manicured hands while Mom sniffled through her speech on how she was so proud of the woman her daughter was becoming.
Camila’s hilariously puffy pastel pink and champagne gown, glittering tiara on her updo, and fading embarrassment overlooking like a Barbie-doll cake gown took center stage, until the pride and joy on my parents’ faces was all that remained in an overblown ceremony.
I stood watching her being fawned over by our abuelitos and abuelitas, clapping and crying, and for a moment, I looked forward to turning fifteen.
Money got tight. I understood. I always understood.
Mom is busy with Tina’s Quinceañera.
I let out a shuddering sigh a little too close to the phone.
Camila pauses. Her voice lowers. “You doing okay? Classes going well?”
My bottom lip trembles before my mouth parts. “I’m —” I close my mouth, choking on the words, my throat closing in before I try again. “Sure, I’m —”
“Good, glad to hear it. Glad to hear you finally honed in on a major. Rach, I’m jealous. I wish I were back in college. I don’t know what I’d choose, but this residency has been hell. I couldn’t even read one patient’s chart; the handwriting was illegible. Thank God for the nurses, because that would’ve been a malpractice suit waiting to happen—”
“Uh huh.”
I sink onto the edge of the bed, slouching until I’m curling into myself, holding the phone to my ear as a tear falls, the back of my head tingling uncomfortably. My mind goes foggy as I am held hostage by my sister, letting her vent, making the right sounds, and swallowing the three words I can’t get out.
I’m not okay. Mila… I’m not okay.
For forty-five minutes, I am suffocating on my words, listening to my sister talk at me, thinking about Mom working on a celebration I never had but my baby sister will get, while the world moves on without me in a grey, empty studio.
The void will eat me alive.
No one will notice.
* * *
I hate it when I’m right.
No one has noticed that the page in my notebook is blank.
Here I am in the library, sitting next to a classmate I barely recognize — Grace, or Hope, a name that means a word I definitely have nothing of — staring down at my textbook on Quantitative Research Methods in Communication. I’ve been on the same page since I got here at five. Forty-five minutes in, and the page has not turned.
Technically, a problem. Because I read this chapter two weeks ago. The margin notes in my handwriting, small, precise, one in the corner about the difference between content analysis and discourse analysis that would earn me an ‘A’ on Professor Martin’s quiz tomorrow.
If I bothered to open the notebook in which I wrote them, they, together with every other page in this textbook, showed the only evidence in the world that I was paying attention to anything at all.
I would not open the notebook.
I would not share the notes.
The group had not asked. The group had not asked because the group did not know to ask, and the group did not know to ask because I had, six weeks into the semester, stopped raising my hand.
To be fair to myself, as undeserving as I am, the surrounding group made little headway either. All of us gave up on even passing the quiz Prof. Martin would surely give us tomorrow.
I’ll skate by with a C.
Average, neutral.
Invisible.
The conference rooms were full, so our group joined many others huddled around the round tables in the library center. Towering bookshelves, containing every book but the one you need, surrounded us. That you’ll find in the College Co-Op, for the lovely price of this semester’s dining budget.
My stomach growled, but the noise from filled tables, students crowding the edges, and teacher aides lining up to check out syllabus materials for their assigned courses meant no one noticed.
Honestly, I’m about to tap out. I close my textbook, a mumble under my breath like “Thanks for holding the group,” before the person on the opposite side of Grace-Hope touches my elbow.
I shouldn’t acknowledge it.
I shouldn’t.
I glance over.
“Are you doing anything tonight?” Before I can even think of an excuse, she continues. It’s as if everyone here knows the answer is no. “So, like, we got VIP tickets to enter The Underground for their rave tonight and —” The stranger glances over to another stranger across from me. “Kimber pussed out.”
“I didn’t puss out, I’m spending the night at Cam’s, fuck off.” Kimber didn’t even look up from her phone, her acrylic nails tapping rapid-fire against the screen.
The stranger — wait, I think I have her name, Elizabeth, Liz — looked back at me, her glare softening to a polite veneer of hospitality. “So, we got a spot open. Wanna join?”
Stacy perks up, leaning forward, perfectly timed to cut off the Uh — about to leave my lips. “You should join us, Rachel. If we have a full group, we don’t need to wait in line!”
Kimber grabs my phone before I can even react. “Look, these bitches ain’t gonna shut up till you say yes, so I’mma drop Stacy’s number. She seems to know you, right? Hey, can you unlock it?”
“Umm, wait, hold on.” I pried my phone out of her pink nails, my heart beating out of my chest, my ears hot with shame.
I don’t want them to see how empty my phone is. The contact list with no scroll bar, the chain prayer message from my mom, the text left on read by my dad, the security code from whichever food app I used last.
Kimber raises an eyebrow, but Liz cuts her off. “Chill, Kim. I’ll add her to the group chat. Stace, did you get her number?”
Stacy pulls out her phone, her thumb scrolling once, then twice, then a third time before pausing. “Yeah, I got it. This your number, right?”
She holds up the screen, and I nod numbly.
That was my number, right next to the name Hoodie Girl.
With my nod, my phone buzzes and suddenly I’m in a digital room filled with over ten numbers I don’t recognize, filling the space with emojis about something that has nothing to do with me, until now.
“Right, you’re in!” Stacy’s grin blinds me as she puts her phone away. “We’re taking the 10 p.m. DT Bus right outside JSH. You know the stop, right?”
I nod. “I take the 7 p.m. to get to my apartment —”
“Great! We’ll see you on the way, then!”
I was the first one ready to go, and yet been the last one out of the table, my classmates had already abandoned the study session.
Grace, or Hope, I still don’t know, calls out to me over the crowd. “Make sure to wear something cute! Gotta get our free drinks somehow!”
In five minutes, I got roped into going to the worst imaginable situation for me.
A rave.
I glance down at my phone, chewing my bottom lip. The chat, a never-ending flurry of activity, was already spamming with glee and eggplant emojis that had absolutely nothing to do with produce.
I guess I should get ready.
