I step back inside. Close the door. Lock it. Like that'll help. Like I can lock out reality.
My laptop is still open on the floor, my blanket fort glowing from the fairy lights inside—draped over chair backs to make my fort.
The place where I live.
Where I actually live, not this apartment, but inside the words, inside the stories where everything makes sense, and people want each other, and being broken is something beautiful instead of something that makes you unlovable.
I open the envelope and pull out the stack of papers.
FINAL NOTICE screams from the top in red letters. Bold. Unavoidable. Like they knew someone like me would need it spelled out, because we're good at ignoring things, those of us who live inside our heads.
My stomach knows before my brain does. That drop. That freefall. Like an elevator with cut cables.
I'm holding my breath.
When did I start holding my breath?
The words swim. My eyes can't focus. I blink and blink and the numbers don't change.
Four thousand two hundred dollars.
That's not?—
That can't be. My rent is only ten-fifty a month. Which is criminal. A fucking felony, if you ask me. But this is Idaho Falls. A pretty place. Breathtakingly beautiful, actually. The markup for rentals is astronomical.
My mother has been telling me to move somewhere cheaper—she lives in Kansas City with her 'new family'. But the thought of moving from Idaho Falls to Kansas City makes me want to cry.
So I stay.
And I suffer for it. the point is—in order to be four-thousand two hundred dollars late in rent means… I count the months in my head. September. October. November. December. Four months. I paid September. I know I paid September. Didn't I?
I remember the transaction, transferring the last of my savings because Daddy's life insurance money finally ran out and I told myself I'd get a job, I'd get something, I'd figure it out.
But then I didn't.
Because every time I tried to fill out an application I'd have a story idea and I'd tell myself just let me get this chapter done first and then it'd be three days later and I'd have fifteen thousand new words and no job.
Three days to vacate.
Vacate. Such a polite word for get the fuck out.
Eviction proceedings happened yesterday.
I didn't show. Obviously. I didn't even know it was happening.
I read the notice again. Some stupid desperate part of me hoping I misread, hoping it's a mistake, hoping the universe isn't actually this cruel.
Four thousand two hundred.
Not four hundred. Not forty-two. Not some number I could maybe scrape together by selling my laptop, or my daddy's typewriter, or my body on a street corner somewhere.
Four thousand. Two hundred. Dollars.
I don't even understand how this is possible. How could I be four months behind in rent? Surely, there were signs. I would've noticed.
Right, Scarletta. You left your fucking front door open for four hours before you noticed.
My lungs burn.
