Page 1 of Alik

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OLIVE

My neighbor’s eyes stare back at me, holding a haunting accusal like he knows everything inside my head, inside my soul.

It’s only a drawing. Only a black and white sketch I did freehand from countless memories of peeping through the hole in my door, but it’s my best work yet.

I nibble the eraser between my teeth while forcing myself to hold the stranger’s gaze. It wasn’t by accident that I drew him in black and white. The unusual color of his eyes isn’t something I’m ready to attempt to mimic, but even if it was, my drawings are getting too vivid. Too personal. It’s telling just how many I’ve made.

I know for a fact he isn’t in the building, but I still find myself holding my breath while I run my fingertips over the thick, dark hair, and after hours—days, if I’m honest—spent wondering why he hangs it in his face, I’ve come to the conclusion that he does it to cover his strange eye. One is perfectly normal, a soft brown, but the other iris is the color of the red candies my parents put in my stocking every Christmas up until a year ago when I became unwelcome. I imagine him being self-conscious of it, trying to hide himself from the world as thoroughly as I do, but I alsowonder if he has any idea how much more menacing that hair makes him look.

Or maybe that’s the way he wants it. Maybe that’s his point.

I don’t know. I don’t know who the man in 3B is, and I spend far too much time wondering.

When my phone buzzes on the table, I jerk up with a gasp, the pencil falling from my mouth. My racing heart pulses in my fingertips, and my knees shove into my chest, sending the sketchbook hurling to the floor.

A half second passes before I realize how ridiculous I am.

With a palm pressed to my forehead, I look up at the ceiling and groan.

Outside on the street, a man starts slurring curses that reach through my open window. A woman shouts back while I snatch my cell off the end table.

My chest tightens while peering at Creeper’s name on the screen. Two simple words wrap around my throat and squeeze until they steal my breath.

Missing you.

I slap the phone face down on the table as if I can erase the action altogether. As if I can undo the words I’ve read.

Missing you.

He isn’t supposed to talk to me. He knows this. He along with the state of Nevada knows this because it’s laid out in the restraining order a judge granted a year ago when we … broke up, if you could call it that.

It isn’t unlike Creeper to believe he’s above the law. He’s already broken the restraining order a dozen times since I got it, but it’s been two months since the last I’ve heard from him, so I thought we were past this. I thought we were moving on. ThatIwas moving on.Free.

My insides start to itch. On impulse, I run my palms up my arms, over the scars marring my mind more than they now domy flesh. No scabs. No holes. I’m clean. I won’t ruin that tonight. Creeper won’t ruin it.

The couple outside keep hurling insults back-and-forth, the woman wailing and screaming about her bag, and I wonder if they know how obvious it is to everyone around them that they’re addicted to crack. They aren’thigh. Not yet. That’s why they’re being crazy. It isn’t who you are on the drug that’s the worst part, in most people’s cases. It’s who you become when you don’t have access to it.

My mouth suddenly feels dry, so my eyes drift to the kitchen, and I carefully uncurl myself from the couch, planting my feet on crunchy carpet that no amount of detergent can soften, despite my best efforts.

I fill up a cup with tap water then gulp it down, all the while trying to ignore the cravings gnawing at my brain. The pan of brownies I made earlier rests on the stove. I select a corner piece then nibble at the crunchiest part I always save for last, making an exception this time.

Eating isn’t a great distraction, but I praise myself for it anyway. I’ve gained twenty pounds in the last year and still can’t get over a size two, despite how much I’ve thrown myself into baking as a hobby. There are only so many hobbies that don’t require leaving the apartment.

“Help, someone help!” the woman outside screeches. “Help me!”

“Shut up, you bitch!”

“Fuck you, cock sucking motherfucker!”

Chewing slowly, I walk to the window, prepared to close it for the night. When I step in front of it, I freeze, brownie to my mouth, as I spot the man from 3B walking down the sidewalk toward our building.

I gasp and jerk back like I’ve been caught, which is, of course, ridiculous. I was just closing my window. I wasn’t spying on him. I didn’t even know he was there.

After setting the brownie on the kitchen table, I press against the wall and angle my body just so I can peek out the window. The man passes the screaming couple without so much as a passing glance, despite her resuming pleas for help.

So … he isn’t a good Samaritan. Not a naïve one, at least.

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