Chapter Two #2
I copy the number down and fire off a text.
ME
Hi Felicity! My name is Blair. I saw your roommate ad and was interested in the room. Do you have time to talk tomorrow?
I’m expecting a response in the morning, but before I can even push back from my desk, my phone buzzes.
(407) 555-7274
We’re available right now if you are lol
For real though
I stare at the text, then the time. 1:17 a.m.
I look at the text again.
(407) 555-7274
Or we could do this at a totally normal time if you’re like a totally normal person lol
I just figured anyone answering our ad could not be that normal
ME
I can talk now
I’m in the middle of typing I’ll call you in just a moment when my phone begins to buzz with an incoming FaceTime call.
I fumble to answer, and the responding noise on the end is raucous as two faces fill the screen—a tall Black girl with long curly hair and a smaller white girl with blond space buns.
I scramble to lower the sound as I search frantically for my earbuds. It’s doubtful the noise could wake my parents through two closed doors, but I’m not about to risk it.
“Hi,” I say breathlessly. “Sorry. Just one second. I wasn’t expecting—” I break off as I spot my earbud case on the charger.
“—call back tomorrow,” the Black girl is saying, a dubious quirk to her brow, as I pop in an earbud and the sound switches over.
“Nope, all good!” I say, my voice overly loud. I glance nervously at my door, listening with one ear for sounds from my parents’ bedroom. “I’m sorry I wasn’t prepared.”
“Oh my god, you’re so okay!” the white girl squeaks, the sound crackling at a level so deafening, I reel in surprise. “I’m Mikey! I wrote the ad!” She is the human equivalent of an exclamation point.
In the background, someone says, “Roll for initiative,” followed by celebratory whoops.
“This is Liss!” Mikey says over the noise, panning the camera to the other girl.
“Felicity,” the girl says in a way that sounds correcting, though her gaze on Mikey is affectionate. “The one you were texting.”
“I like to think it was a group-effort text,” says Mikey.
“It was not,” Felicity replies. Then to me, she adds, “Sorry if it’s a little loud. Andres is having DnD night, and it’s running late.”
“That’s Andres,” Mikey says, pointing the camera at the kitchen table, where five people are crowded around while one of them stands over the rest, regaling them all with an animated tale, arms swinging like he’s holding a battle-ax.
“He just rolled a natural twenty,” Mikey explains. “So he’s very busy right now.”
“I see,” I whisper back. So that’s Andres—tall and muscular, with brown skin and a head of dark, wild curls. He looks like he’d be very at home in a football uniform.
I get a better picture of the space as Mikey pans the camera around.
The living room doubles as a dining room, with the table wedged into the small space between the couch and the narrow galley kitchen, which I can see through the serving hatch.
It all looks clean enough, though it’s hard to tell with the varying shades of drab greens, grays, and browns.
Mikey moves to the sectional and plops down.
“So Andres lives here,” Mikey says, “and then Liss and I have a room—we’re a couple; I don’t know if the ad mentioned that.”
“It did.” I nod quickly to show I am cool and not at all homophobic.
Here, with these strangers, I don’t have the armor of being the known best friend of Leni Feldman, who sports a lesbian flag on her car and petitioned for the Gay–Straight Alliance to be changed to the Gender my palms are cold and slick with sweat.
It trickles down my back, too, dampening my shirt.
I’m certain that the thing in her that can suss out a serial killer can do the same with a liar, especially one as terrible as I am.
But she just smiles and says, “Well, then. If you’re game, I guess we’ve found our fifth.”