She wasn’t waiting at the bench by the corner when I got off the bus, but I can still sense her. I walk slowly up the pathway, which boasts several cracks and a variety of weeds, to my apartment complex.
“Jolene!” Miley calls.
My stomach drops. Damn, I should really learn to climb the fire escape. I could’ve spent all these years figuring out parkour or becoming a master of disguise.
She’s twelve years old and lives in my building, one floor above me, and she’s always so . . . needy. Always looking for someone to talk to about her life, trivial stories about her homework and friends. She just started middle school this year, and I already know how those stories will go. Any day now somebody will laugh at her or somebody else will betray her, and she’ll figure out what the world is really about.
She skips closer, her mousy hair bouncing on her shoulders, before standing in a way that blocks the entire path. “Guess what? I got a new phone. What social media do you have? Facebook, I bet.”
And she’s always rude like that. I’d wave her off, but my hands are full of grocery bags, which are full of bottles of wine I bought to properly celebrate my birthday.
“No, I don’t have Facebook,” I say quickly. “I see enough ugly babies IRL.”
“Really? I thought all old people had it. How do you stalk your friends from your glory days of high school?”
A jolt pushes through my abdomen. Not flinching is the only way she won’t notice.
“Do you have Instagram?”
I shake my head, the bottles clinking against each other in the bags.
Her gaze drifts over me, eyebrows scrunching together. “What are you doing tonight?”
Why are people so obsessed with asking about other people’s plans? Has anybody ever wowed someone with their answer? My answer will always be that I spend my days off recuperating and forgetting my days on.
But because she’s a technical child I say, “I’m just watching a movie or something.”
She scrunches her face, disappointed. “Isn’t it your birthday today?”
“Who told you that?”
Miley curls her fingers uncertainly. “You did—last week during your tarot reading.”
For fuck’s sake. I nod in recognition over this conversation I have no recollection of. The thing about Miley is that she spends most of her time in the common areas of the building that people aren’t supposed to actually hang out in. She’s always trying to rope someone in to chat. Last week, she was sitting there playing with some tarot cards while I was heading to the liquor store for a top-up. The event is blurred, but I remember mentioning my star sign and sitting on the bench for a bit saying who knows what else. Bottom line: I have to be more careful avoiding her when I’ve been drinking. She tracks everything, and I’m bound to say something that’ll scar her.
“Right,” I mutter, taking another step up the path. I’m only a few feet away from the door.
“And are you having a party?”
Miley isn’t subtle about how she investigates the grocery store bags. I shake my head quickly and step around her. “I prefer my quiet times.”
“But it’s your birthday.” Her brow knits. “Last week you said you wanted to celebrate a new era of Jolene.”
Shit. The child may have seen too much at this point to ever lead a productive life. I need to cut things off with her while it’s safe. When I drink, it makes me feel less trapped inside myself. But sometimes, after a few too many, I’ll remember why the cage was built in the first place.
“When you get older, birthdays aren’t such a big thing,” I tell her.
“That’s not true. My mom’s thirtieth birthday was so big that I had to go to my cousin’s ’cause they couldn’t fit us all in.”
My heart constricts against my will. There’s a reason Miley is always in the hallway or sitting on the stoop of the building, much as I try to pretend not to notice. Ever since she was six, her mom would send her outside to play alone. Then she started sending her out to eat dinner alone. When she was younger, she used to draw outlines of bodies on the walkway and insist on playing this portable piano for every passerby’s displeasure. Lately, though, she’s inconveniently become chattier. It’s like she’s suddenly become aware I’m a person with a whole life—in theory.
I take another step, almost past her.
“Can I come over?” Miley blurts out of nowhere. Her eyes are so round.
I shake my head before noticing the way her shoulders drop.
But there’s no way.
Miley shuffles her feet. “I’m running low on data, and I’m learning how to crochet from YouTube.”
“Don’t you have Wi-Fi?”
Miley’s eyes droop. “Yeah, but my mom’s working a double and she changed the password.”
I only ever notice Miley’s mom coming and going in scrubs at odd hours and occasionally leaving in makeup for the evening.
It’s the croak in her voice. I could just let her in, have a glass while I let her watch videos without interacting. The thing is, she’d never leave. And I can’t be a thirty-three-year-old woman hosting a twelve-year-old child in my apartment after the worst day of my career. A terrible plan. The bottles of wine twitch in my hands.
I shake my head. “Sorry.”
“Yeah, it’s a weird ask I guess.” She sighs. “But you took longer than the others to say no!”
Clearly, I need to limit my interactions with her even harder.
At last, I haul open the heavy metal door that’s supposed to stay locked but is constantly propped open with a hunk of wood. Its hinge creaks as I pass through. The drab, musty air of the room that is theoretically the lobby greets me.
My building is one of those rental company specials, the target demographic being us folks who have no room to be picky about vibes with the rent we pay, which means the design is void of personality in favor of cheap durability.
The envelope is taped to the outside of my suite door. Freaking Marty, the landlord, always has to leave his threatening letters the same way. I tear it down and stuff it in my bag. My rent is always three days late due to my pay schedule and tight budget, and these letters won’t change that. Just another piece of clutter to add to the vivid tapestry of life, I suppose.
I unlock my door and am greeted by a counter of take-out boxes, half-filled glasses of water piled on every surface, and clothes that hang from the corners of every piece of furniture, like a whole party of sad people disappeared a few minutes prior.
I can’t believe I briefly considered letting Miley in here. I must never let anyone in here.
And something breaks deep inside me, like my whole day, or lifetime, is catching up with me at once. I blink through the prickle in my eyes. I know what life I’m supposed to live; I have Pinterest. Obviously, this isn’t it.
When I first moved to Calgary, seven years after high school and long after most of my classmates moved away from our town, it was all so easy. Sure, my job wasn’t going perfectly, but it paid. I was finally free from my parents’ home—free from the years of them trying to control me and force me back into being a person. This meant I could finally do more than hide from them in my room reading epic fantasy and crying.
But most crucially, I could be anonymous.
Friday nights were magic. I went to bars and hung out with strangers who didn’t know who I was. Drinking snuffed the usual tightness in my chest I felt around other people, and I could say anything because nobody knew me. I even made friends, or at least a group of drinking buddies. At one point I was tagged in a picture where the group of us regulars were celebrating some birthday. I had a real smile. There was sex and laughing, and sometimes the wrong song would play and I’d order a round of shots that would cost a month’s rent. Yes, during those first years here, everything seemed cured.
It worked, until it didn’t. Because their sob stories would always slip in. And I couldn’t unsee their void stares that never found a place to land.
Because every now and then, I’d say something like, “We’re all going to be dead and we’ll forget we ever existed, someday.” And they’d look at me like they recognized something inside me too. Then they’d ask me if I was okay, or they’d suddenly realize they didn’t even know where I was from. Rather than letting things get messy, I settled into my Netflix and nothing routine.
It meant I had lived through it. Plus, I survived everything before.
Except there’s nobody really living here.
The problem is people eventually want to know more and more about you. And with time, they’ll find out enough to see what’s always been there. I’ve had one real friend my entire life, and she’s not here anymore. It always hits like a brick wall: Ellie technically doesn’t exist anymore.
Yes, when people find out enough about me, they stop wanting to know anything at all.
Nothing bad happens when I’m alone. I have YouTube and my little projects. I like to replay the greatest arguments of my lifetime and win them, research child actors and what their families look like, and disassemble things like the remote control.
I drop my bags on the counter and pour myself a healthy glass of wine, then head to the couch with my phone and open my creeper Instagram account. This is one of my favorite pastimes while drinking: checking in on what people I used to know are up to.
My heart almost drops out my butt when I spot the newest post. They’re all together, sitting at a picnic table with a tent in the background.
Camping.
The hashtags may be ironic, but they’re also not: #highschoolreunion, #friends5eva.
They’re not wallowing or hiding in their apartments drinking alone. They’ve all moved on with their lives.
They can look back on everything with a smile.
It makes sense. I pinch at the photo, zooming into every pixel, studying it like an archaeological dig.
Something about it feels off, uneasy even, but I can’t pin exactly why. I stare at it like it’s a Magic Eye poster, and still nothing.
I let my phone drop onto the faded beige couch cushion. There’s a line of grit tucked into the corner of the case that could kill someone if they were to lick it.
I shouldn’t do this anymore. I should be able to focus on my own life by now, instead of cyberstalking people who don’t matter. They moved out of their parents’ houses, and so did I. They have jobs, and I do too.
But I should have a real Instagram.
I pour myself another drink and resolve to change my profile picture to my face. I take a few selfies, only they all look weird. I’m either smiling too much or not smiling enough, looking too hard at the camera or not at all.
Finally, I settle on one that seems okay. I change the picture. Then I upload my real name.
Gregory said I should make friends with my coworkers, and I have to start somewhere. I type their names into the search bar—some are already in my recent history from previous creeping.
I hit follow on so many.
I go to pour myself another glass, but somehow the bottle is empty.
That’s okay. I’m ready for gin anyway.
The olives are all the way in the fridge—I’ll have to go without.
The most depraved thing I do when I’m drinking is search for men who are #lookingforlust. I don’t do it for actual sex reasons, but to judge the countless men posting underwhelming pictures of themselves. Their lone penises sit sadly between their legs, not so much a prize as a participation trophy. I know looking at them doesn’t make me any better, but it does feel that way.
A banner appears on my screen, notifying me that Armin has followed me back. Maybe he and I could be work friends. He’s also Persian, and I’m pretty sure we’re similar ages. Maybe, if I think back to when he started at the office four years ago, there were a couple times that he tried to be friendly to me. Unfortunately, I was already deep in my rut. Once, he came over to my desk and asked if I’d tried poutine from the shop across from our building, but I was too nervous to start a conversation because Charlie—the person who used to hold Caitlin’s job—was listening in, which made it all so embarrassing. And one afternoon he pointed at my headphones and asked what I was listening to, but I was caught off guard because the true answer would’ve been an audiobook about souls. I didn’t have it in me to explain that I’m not, like, into souls in a weird way, more just unhealthily obsessed with what other people think happens when we die, but also too logical to believe any of it, yet still hopeful that I’ll find some explanation that will make what happened feel okay. So I replied, “Just a random thing,” and, unintentionally, had a tone in my voice.
I do know that both of our moms come from Tehran. Unfortunately, this discovery was unveiled during a diversity initiative that Gregory organized for the office. We were both quietly enraged that Gregory lumped us and a few others into a token group for a Q&A session to “educate the office.” After the ordeal, Gregory praised himself for personally hiring us both, even though I’m certain during my interview he had no idea I was anything other than white. After that, Armin and I never mentioned anything about our Iranian backgrounds again.
And I’m not even sure we should speak about it, or if Armin even believes me. I grew up with so little contact with anything Persian outside of my family, I have a hard time telling which parts of my upbringing are cultural and which are just my family. I remember how seen I felt when I was twelve and we visited another Iranian family, and they also had a watering can on their toilet tank. I can’t exactly go through the logistical nightmare of bringing Armin to see my bathroom to prove it.
I scroll through his account: photos from concerts in crowded bars, some of his impressive sneaker collection, and a few Twitch clips of some video game.
I turn on the TV to play The Bachelorette in the background. I like feeling like I’m part of Bachelor Nation. I’m a part of something.
I realize I’m not. It happened so fast the way I made my life.
A banner appears on my phone again: Caitlin Joffrey would like to follow me. Maybe things are actually okay then? Maybe we’re not the enemies I thought we were. I scroll through her grid, drinking in all her wannabe influencer vibes: her at the beach with an Etsy blanket cape and mug, her monthly goals written on the page of an open journal in sparkly cursive, smoothies topped with artfully sliced pieces of fresh fruit, her boyfriend’s hand holding hers. Always just his hand or torso. That’s for the best; this way I can picture him having a mild Guy Fieri aesthetic. As I go deeper into her timeline, I find photos of her friends. They do trips together, nights out with matching shirts, spa days, wine and paint nights.
Do they just, like, text each other whenever? I swallow to dislodge the thing caught in my throat.
Another notice: Garret would like to follow me. Somewhere beneath my brain’s cozy booze blanket, a needling thought worms its way to the surface. This timing might not be coincidence.
But I’ll just post a picture to my story of myself laughing. I can be fun.
I’m zooming in on a picture Armin posted over a year ago of art he commissioned for the gamer fandom he’s into. I accidentally hit the heart. And oh my fuck with the deep like.
Maybe it was meant to be? I’m sure it’s fine. This is how people make friends. I should write him a message.
I type: Looks like you have a lot of fun with that game.
I unsend. Weird shit to say to someone.
I type: It’s my birthday and I’m lonely.
I pass out.