“Are you kidding me?” I set the box down with a thump that echoes down the corridor, my pulse already spiking. “Who does this?” I hiss, staring at the abandoned bike and the ugly sofa like they’re personally insulting me. “Who just leaves their stuff in the middle of a hallway?”
Mom appears behind us a beat later, brushing loose strands of brown hair off her flushed face, breathing like she’s just finished a triathlon rather than a few flights of stairs. She plants a hand on the wall for balance, glaring at the landing like it personally offended her lungs.
“Maybe”—she pauses, hand on her chest—“your neighbor’s moving?”
Dad chuckles, eyeing the couch with the bemused resignation of a man who’s encountered his fair share of questionable furniture. “If I owned that thing, I’d want it out of my house, too,” he says. Then he nods at the bile-green upholstery. “Looks like something a swamp monster would pick for a living room set.”
I narrow my eyes at the door across from mine, arms over my chest as irritation bubbles in my veins. The apartment number reads 301.
“Well, it’s completely blocking my way,” I say, gesturing at the obstacle course masquerading as a hallway passage, “and with my track record of catastrophic clumsiness, I’ll be faceplanting over that bike within hours.” Probably while carrying something fragile. Probably in front of witnesses.
Considering the Great Bean Can Avalanche on the day I arrived, we all know this isn’t an exaggeration. I march across the hall and knock firmly on my neighbor’s door, the sound echoing down the narrow.
Nothing.
I knock again, harder, each rap punctuating my growing frustration. My patience thinning with every second of silence.
“Seriously?” I knock three more times, harder still.
The door stays stubbornly silent, as if the apartment itself has decided to pretend no one lives here.
“Well,” I huff, turning back to Dad with my hands planted on my hips, “guess it’s up to us.” I nod toward the bike and that swamp-monster sofa.
Dad shrugs like this is just another Tuesday in the chaotic saga of being a parent, sets his box tower down, and hauls the rusty bike toward the wall. The moment I take one end of the sofa, the stench hits me, wrinkling my nose. The thing reeks of decades-old upholstery with spoiled food hiding somewhere between the cushions.Yuck!
Together, we muscle the hideous green beast into place, inch by grudging inch, until it settles against the hallway wall like it’s sulking. The gap it leaves is barely human-sized, but it’s enough. We can squeeze past with our boxes now.
Then I grab a sticky note from my bag and scribble:
Please move your bike and sofa out of the hallway.
It’s a hazard for anyone passing by.
If you don’t remove them, I will.
I slap the note onto my neighbor’s door. I haven’t even met this person, and I already have opinions.
Inside, my apartment is tiny—really tiny—but cozy in its own way, like a blank canvas waiting for me to turn it into something remarkable, something that feels like the next chapter of my story. The hardwood floors announce my presence with every step, although it’s less creaky than the hallway outside. Soft, neutral walls—somewhere between fresh snow and the pages of a well-loved book—stretch up to meet a ceiling that bears the faint watermark of some long-ago mishap. My bedroom barely accommodates the full-sized mattress that will soon become my sanctuary, nestled against the wall beneath a single window that promises to flood the space with unfiltered morning light.
When we venture into the kitchen, I trail my fingers along the brown-and-tan cabinets, the laminate cool beneath my touch.Several handles hang at odd angles, crooked little surrender flags, like they’ve clung on through multiple tenants and finally lost their war against gravity.
Dad notices instantly. His eyes narrow, that familiar handyman calculation clicking into place.
“I’ll bring my toolbox,” he says. I can practically see him mentally tightening every loose screw in the place, patching and fixing and making it safer for me.
Once he’s back, his calloused fingers test one of the loose handles. Dad’s love language has always been fixing what’s broken—whether it’s cabinet hardware or hearts. The irony that some things can’t be secured with a Phillips-head isn’t lost on me.
Mom’s enthusiasm bubbles over as she bustles into my bedroom like she’s on a mission. “This room needs some air. It feels stuffy.”
She wrinkles her nose and waves her hand dramatically, as if she can physically swat the staleness out of the room.
She heads for the window, then stops so abruptly it’s like she’s hit an invisible wall, her hand flying to her chest. “Oh, honey,” she breathes, voice pitching higher with delight, “but look at the balcony!”
She points, and only then do I actually notice the wide glass doors I somehow missed in my first overwhelmed sweep of the apartment.
I slide open the glass door. Warm, fresh air rushes in like a welcome, curling around me and filling my lungs.
The Ouachita Mountains unfurl before me in a panorama so vast, it steals whatever breath I’d just taken. At the foot of the hills, maple trees sway in the breeze, their branches whispering, while pine trees climb the slopes in haphazard ranks, dark green slashed against stone-gray rock.
