Total pages in book: 57
Estimated words: 56620 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 283(@200wpm)___ 226(@250wpm)___ 189(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 56620 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 283(@200wpm)___ 226(@250wpm)___ 189(@300wpm)
The silence after the footsteps is worse than the sound.
Reality slams back into me like waking up from anesthesia. That horrible jarring sensation of oh god where am I what was I doing who am I except I know exactly who I am and that's the problem.
I'm not her. The brave one. The one who surrenders because she's strong enough to choose it.
I'm Scarletta Mae Desmond. Twenty-two. Alone. Wearing leggings I put on three days ago—or was it four?—and Daddy's old hoodie that smells like the coffee I spilled Tuesday morning. Or maybe Monday. Time does this thing when I write where it stops being linear and becomes this soup I'm swimming through.
My apartment is a shoebox. Studio. Four hundred square feet of pretending I have my life together. The door is open.
Shit.
When did I—
Oh. The mail. I went to check the mail. There was nothing but grocery store flyers and a credit card offer for someone who doesn't live here anymore. I came back and had this idea about the scene where he first collars her, the way the leather would feel against her throat, heavy and permanent and terrifying, and I just... started writing.
The door's been open for—
I check the clock. 11:47 PM.
I went to get the mail at 7:30.
Jesus Christ, Scarletta.
The hallway light buzzes like it's angry about existing. Fluorescent. Institutional. The same light that's been flickering for two months because the building manager doesn't care about anything that isn't an actual fire.
I should get up. I should close the door. I should—
Yellow envelope.
It's stuck to my door like a parking ticket. Like a scarlet letter. Like every bad thing that's ever been official, and terrible, and unavoidable.
My body moves without permission. That's how it feels when panic takes over—like I'm watching myself from a distance, like I'm narrating my own life except I don't want this scene, I never wanted this scene.
The envelope is thick. I know what it is before I touch it.
Yellow envelopes never bring good news. They bring the things you've been pretending aren't real. The things you've been hiding from by staying inside your head, inside your stories, inside the fantasy that you can just not deal with it and it'll go away.
My fingers shake when I pull it down. The tape makes this horrible ripping sound, loud in the silent hallway, fully pulling me back to the reality that it's almost midnight.
I can't open it in the hallway.
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.