Chapter 1 #3
As I stepped out of my front door and locked it behind me, my instincts kicked in and I took a moment to scan the apartment complex.
The U-shaped building was two stories of white, peeling paint and thin windowpanes that desperately needed to be updated.
Even with the entire parking lot and the left arm of the apartment complex standing in the way I could hear the traffic on highway 97 as commuters went about their day.
Half of the assigned parking spaces in the lot were empty, probably out there contributing to the traffic or facing down jobs with normal hours.
My studio was two doors down from the end of the right arm of the building.
My car, a little black Honda Accord, sat in its space directly in front of me.
And beside my car was a silver Mazda 3 hatchback, a woman with dirty-blonde hair tied up in a ponytail and an oversized hoodie was just getting out of the driver’s seat.
“I know, I know,” she muttered to herself, hurrying to the back door and swinging it open so fast I was worried she was going to ding my car for a moment.
She stopped the door just short of scratching my paint, thankfully, and then ducked into the back seat and lifted a young child out of the car.
And that was when the child let out the most godawful screech I’d ever heard. “Hush, darling, You’re okay.”
I stood there frozen, watching as the young woman bounced her child a little, hip-checking the back door and moving to the trunk, completely unaware that she had an audience.
She opened the trunk with one hand while shushing the bundle of pink frills and frightening vocals in her arms once more.
As the child let out another shriek she murmured something, patted her pockets, and pulled out a pacifier.
The child took it, and I could hear my neighbor’s sigh of relief in the silence that followed.
The woman began lifting bags of groceries out of the trunk with her other hand.
Loaded up with an armful of baby on the left and groceries on the right, she performed an impressive balancing act, but as she walked towards me, I caught the expression on the child’s face, and between one second and the next I knew I had to act.
Even as the child let out an unearthly shriek, I threw myself forward, reaching out a hand to catch the pacifier as it slipped from her mouth.
“Oh my gosh, you’re a lifesaver,” the woman gushed as I stood there in front of her holding the saliva-damp pacifier in the palm of my hand.
“Those stupid things keep going missing and that’s her last one.
Not that they’re working these days anyway.
I’m so sorry for all of the noise, by the way.
She’s teething. I can’t imagine you’ve been very happy trying to sleep with the baby next door screaming all night.
I’m Angie, by the way, and this is Eden. ”
“I’m Hale,” I replied, the name still not quite familiar on my tongue, but if Angie had even a drop of focus left between carrying a child, groceries, and a conversation, I doubted that she would spend it on noticing the slight hesitation in my voice before I gave her my new name.
“And I work the graveyard shift, so Eden hasn’t bothered me at all.
The couple above me on the other hand? Constantly making a racket during the day. ”
“Upstairs neighbors are the worst,” Angie agreed, and then moved past me towards her apartment door.
“Here, let me help you with those,” I said as I followed her, taking the grocery bags from her and watching as she shifted the still-screaming child into her other arm so she could reach the pocket that had her keys in them.
I dutifully stood a few steps behind her, holding the pacifier and the groceries while she unlocked the door.
“Right, let’s try this again,” she said once the door was unlocked, turning around to take the pacifier from me.
She slipped it into Eden’s mouth. The little girl—who was old enough to hold her own head up but seemingly not old enough to stand on her own—clamped down around the pacifier and went silent once more.
“There we go. See, sweetheart? We don’t have to scream every moment of the day.
Anyway, it’s great meeting you, Hale. I really don’t know what I would have done if it weren’t for your quick reflexes. ”
“No problem,” I replied, handing over the grocery bags and turning to leave before she’d even shut the door behind her.
Getting into my car and pulling out of the parking lot, I thought about her words, how she claimed she didn’t know what she would have done without me.
I knew, though, because in the moment that I’d predicted that little Eden was going to drop her pacifier I’d also predicted that if I didn’t intervene then it would fall to the ground and Angie would be frustrated, but she would leave it there long enough to get her child and her groceries into the apartment and then come back for it.
She would rinse it off, and that would be that.
Catching the pacifier hadn’t done much, in the long run.
I’d saved my neighbor maybe twenty seconds of effort and a good bit of frustration.
But it felt good to do something useful, to step in and make someone’s day a little easier.
It made me feel like all of this had been worth it, in some small way.