People say your school days are the best of your life, but at the time they didn’t feel like it. If only I’d known back then it was true, I might have smiled more. Either that or given up altogether. I put in all that work for a bar job and a dingy apartment with water that ran cold five days out of seven.
I tried to tell myself things would get better, that happiness lurked just around the corner, but it always remained a few steps ahead of me. And what was behind me? Well, I’d acquired either a genuine stalker or a deep-seated sense of crazy.
CHAPTER 2
I COULDN’T SIT on the floor all night. Besides the draught creeping under the door, my behind was slowly going numb, and the rest of me ached from being on my feet the whole day.
Just thinking about work brought on a yawn. I needed to get some sleep, because in five hours, I’d have to get up for my morning job cleaning Buck’s Bar of the detritus left by fifty or so men who treated drinking as a sport. Believe me, I knew all about that—in the evenings, I worked the late shift as a waitress-slash-barmaid-slash-general-dogsbody.
Living the dream, right?
I hauled myself to my feet and breathed in deeply, cringing at the familiar scent. The faint trace of cigarette smoke and cheap men’s cologne that meant an unwelcome visitor had been in my apartment. Again.
The first time I noticed the strange aroma, I’d convinced myself I was imagining it. The second time too, although doubt started to creep in. The third time, when I saw the TV remote on the fold-out bed, I knew I’d had an uninvited visitor. My apartment may have been tiny, but everything had its proper place, and the remote always lived on the crate that doubled up as a television stand.
Twice more over the next week, the odour of stale cigarettes seeped through the mustiness that came with thrift store furniture. Paranoia set in. Had I forgotten to put my favourite mug back in the cupboard? Did I move that pen from its home on the nightstand?
Was I losing my mind?
The day I came home to find my underwear drawer cracked open and the contents in disarray, I threw up. What kind of sick freak chose to rummage through my panties? Actually, I wasn’t sure I wanted to know the answer to that question.
But I suspected he was following me. The next evening, I was almost certain I heard soft footsteps trailing behind as I walked home from Buck’s, but when I spun around, there was only darkness. A paper bag blew past, end over end. Had I been mistaken?
Another week passed, and my nerves stretched thinner with every waking hour. A rustle here, a shadow there. Was I going insane or had I acquired an unwanted companion?
My friend Missy thought the former. She didn’t say that, of course, but when I confessed all over coffee, her frown told me she doubted my story. I remembered that day well. We’d met in our regular spot, a diner midway between us that served food that was edible and, more importantly, cheap, and she dumped three spoonfuls of sugar into her cappuccino before she spoke.
“Have you actually seen anyone following you?” she asked.
“Well, no. He could have hidden behind a tree or something.”
“You see many trees in NoHo?”
“I guess not.”
The place was a concrete jungle. The only greenery was the occasional cannabis leaf that popped up in the graffiti that adorned every building.
“So maybe there isn’t anyone? What if the smell in your apartment drifted in through a vent or something?”
Was Missy right? Did I just have an overactive imagination?
That afternoon, I taped a plastic bag over the air conditioning duct. The AC hadn’t worked since I’d moved in, so it was no great loss. But the day after, the whiff of cheap cologne and tobacco smoke once again lay in my apartment like a slumbering monster.
A knock at the door a few hours later made me jump out of my skin.
“It’s me,” Missy yelled. “I’ve come to check you’re okay.”
Bless her, even though she thought I’d lost my marbles, she’d come to help me gather them up again.
We’d first met two years ago, in the hospital. Her brother was having chemo at the same time as Momma, except his was for bowel cancer. Someone up there smiled down on him, and he pulled through, but although I