7

Abi had never been a good sleeper. She worried too much. She worried about what people thought of her, about where her life was heading. Her grandmother told her that the older you got the less you cared, but to Abi, it was the opposite.

In her childhood, she worried that her parents would die, her friends would reject her, and her favorite band would break up. In her teens, she worried that she wouldn’t find a job or a boyfriend and she’d end up penniless and alone. In her twenties, it was all about finding stability. Now, in her thirties, there was very little that Abi Ansell didn’t worry about.

At 3 a.m., after an hour of clock-watching and a night of worrying about her neighbor, her age, and whether she was eating enough fiber, she finally climbed out of bed and trudged to the kitchen with phone in hand. She didn’t bother to turn the lights on, even when she flicked on the kettle and added a spoonful of powdered stevia into her favorite mug. It was a ritual she had performed many times. She could, and often did, do it with her eyes closed.

—

With a cup of steaming hot coffee in hand, Abi entered her office, again choosing to leave the lights off. She sat in her swivel chair and leaned back, phone in one hand, coffee in the other, her pale face illuminated like some miserable specter as she swiped through her social media accounts and soaked up whatever meager entertainment they provided.

Abi had accounts on all major networks but rarely used them for personal reasons. They existed either to promote herself as a freelancer or to connect with people she met in real life, as well as a few people from her past. The former she did happily and willingly, the latter was an unfortunate side effect of the former.

She had never been very popular at school. Her childhood best friend was a boy named Simon. He was weird, lonely, and they didn’t have much in common, but they lived next door to one another so they were destined to be best friends. In high school, she made friends with a group of mean-spirited, under-achieving girls who never really appreciated her and constantly poked fun at her for being too quiet, too shy, too “weird.”

Those same girls had tracked her down just a couple years ago. She used a pseudonym so that she couldn’t easily be found, but they had managed to find her, stumbling across her profile after she posted a comment on a friend’s profile they were loosely connected with.

They seemed very interested in everything that she said and did, wondering where she had been “all these years,” and seemingly mistaking her teenage contempt for friendship as they invited her on journeys down memory lane. Their initial curiosity faded when they learned that Abi lived a life even less exciting than theirs; their nostalgic group chats ended when they realized they hadn’t shared many notable experiences.

Their relationship now consisted of swapping occasional likes and comments, which was pretty much the same relationship that Abi had with everyone else in her life.

Abi sighed as she scanned her inactive timeline—the odd comment from a guy she’d met playing a mobile game, an enigmatic post from an old client who wanted the world to know he was angry at someone or something, but didn’t want to commit to an actual name, place, or story. She turned off the screen and stood, ready to return to bed, but a light outside her office window caught her attention.

The window wrapped around the front corner of the house, providing a panoramic view of her street. The light in her next-door neighbor’s yard had snapped on and had pinned someone in its fluorescent glare. He was standing in the middle of the yard, unmoving. Judging from his stiff and rigid position, Abi reasoned he hadn’t seen the light or expected it to turn on.

Abi watched as the man slowly gathered himself and raised a hand to his forehead, shielding the light from his eyes to give himself a better view. He looked to his right, away from Abi and down the street, punctuated by occasional streetlights and a distant bedroom light. He then turned toward Abi and looked directly at her, just as the security light snapped off and bathed him in darkness.