Page 10 of The Quiet Tenant

Number one

He was young. I could tell immediately it was his first time. He wasn’t good at it. Not good at all.

It happened on campus, in his dorm. The way he did it—botched. Blood everywhere. My DNA on him, his on me. Prints, too.

He didn’t know me. But I had noticed him in the weeks before. If you hung around the university long enough, especially on Saturday nights, you could be sure a shy undergrad would eventually walk up to you. Unsure how to ask, when to pay.

Most of them snapped out of it after they handed me the money. Then they carried themselves with the arrogance the world had taught them. They were respectable young men, and I was the woman charging fifteen dollars for a blow job.

I did not expect it from him. He was too young, too frail. He had no idea what he was doing.

He was surprised, I think, that I liked to read. The guys never thought of me as someone who might have liked to read. But I did. I wrote notes next to the passages that made me think, dog-eared the pages that made me feel. That night, I had two paperbacks on the dashboard of my truck:Itand a thriller calledLoves Music, Loves to Dance.I remember them both because I never got to find out how they ended.

He waited until I went to put my top back on. His hand shot out to my neck. Like a dare with himself. Like he knew that if he didn’t do it then, he might chicken out forever.

His eyes widened as mine shut. The air of amazement on his face: Shock that he was actually doing this, and that my body responded in the correct manner. Shock that it was a real thing—that if you squeezed someone’s throat hard enough, they would in fact stop moving.

I remember realizing, while he killed me: if he gets away with this, he’ll think he can get away with anything.

CHAPTER 7

The woman in the shed

You remember bits of yourself, and sometimes they help you.

Like Matt.

Matt was the closest thing you had to a boyfriend when you went missing. He was like everything else, a promise that never came true.

The thing you remember the best about Matt: he knew how to pick locks.

In the shed, you have thought about Matt a lot. You have tried a few times. Pried a splinter off the floor, made a discreet dent in a wall. The wood was no match for the large lock on the chain. You worried it would break, and then what?

Then you would have been fucked.

You remember bits of yourself, and sometimes, they help you. Only sometimes.

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THE MAN WHOkeeps you returns the next day with hot food and a fork. You stuff five giant bites into your mouth before you can even think of trying to identify what you are eating—spaghetti and meatballs. It takes you three more bites to realize he’s talking, two more to find the strength to put down the fork. What he’s saying matters more for your survival than a single meal.

“Tell me your name.”

Your ears are buzzing. You place the lid back on the food container, the leftover meatball calling out to you.

“Hey.”

He walks over from the other end of the shed, catches your chin to force your gaze up.

You cannot afford to piss him off. Not ever, but especially not now.

“Sorry,” you say. “I’m listening.”

“No you’re not. I said tell me your fucking name.”

You put the Tupperware on the floor and sit on your hands to keep them from massaging your face where his fingers pressed. Take a long breath in. When you say this, he has to believe you. It has to be a spell, a reading from a sacred text. It has to be the truth.

“Rachel,” you tell him. “My name is Rachel.”

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