Zoey
By eleven thirty, I had developed a de ep and sincere hatred for the entire internet.
Not the fun kind of hatred either. The quiet, simmering kind where you stare at a Slack thread and wonder if
the person on the other end understands how computers work, or if they had simply wandered into the profession
by accident.
Ticket one had been a login issue caused by someone typing their password wrong six times and then accusing
the system of “discrimination.”
Ticket two in volved a client who had deleted their own database and then asked if we could “roll the vibes
back to Tuesday.”
Ticket three contained the phrase “urgent emergency” followed by a request to change a font color.
By noon, my shoulders were tight, and my patience had evaporated.
I leaned back in my chair and rubbed my face.
This was the part of the day where my brain usually started looking for an exit ramp.
Lunch.
I pushed away from the desk and stood up slowly. My ankle reminded me it still existed. The limp had mostly
faded but long stretches of sitting made it complain again.
From his perch near the living room window, Markie said, “LUNCH.”
“Yes,” I muttered.
The kitchen felt strangely orderly when I walked in. The cabinets were arranged. The dishes had homes. The
small stack of boxes I had planned to
unpack sometime in the next three weeks had vanished.
I opened the freezer and grabbed one of the frozen meals I had stocked up on before moving. It went straight
into the microwave.
I leaned against the counter while it rotated slowly behind the glass.
And that was when the second realization hit.
Liam had done all of this.
The kitchen hadn’t looked like this before him. The cabinets had been chaos. The counter had been covered in
moving supplies and loose kitchen tools I had intended to organize eventually.
Now everything was where it belonged.
I glanced toward the hallway.
The same thing had happened in the living room. My bookshelves were assembled and organized. The
television was mounted. The furniture had shifted into actual functional placement instead of the temporary
disaster I had been living in.
The microwave be eped.
I glared at it.
I didn’t like how easily he had st epped into my life and started fixing things.
I especially didn’t like how helpful it had been.
Or how he made me laugh.
Or how he paid attention.
Or how he looked at me in a way that made my entire nervous system stop screaming for five minutes.
And— No.
I opened the microwave and pulled my meal out.
That line of thinking was banned.
I walked back to my laptop, carrying the steaming plastic tray.
The room looked almost respectable now. My desk was clear. The monitors were aligned. The cables were
bundled together neatly along the wall.
I hadn’t really registered any of this before now. I was totally checked out.
I sat down, and then I screamed.
The tray slipped from my hands and hit the floor with a loud splat.
A pair of legs hung through my office window.
Attached to those legs was Bobbi.
Her torso was already inside, bent awkwardly over the windowsill while the rest of her remained outside. One
sneaker kicked slightly against the siding as she tried to scoot farther in.
For a full second my brain refused to process the situation.
“How did you get there?” I shouted.
Bobbi froze halfway through the maneuver.
She twisted her head to look at me, hair falling across her face where it had slipped loose during the climb.
“Your front door was locked. And the balcony door.”
“That is not what I asked.”
She wriggled slightly and dropped the rest of the way inside, landing lightly on the floor.
“Oh,” she said. “Window.”
I stared at her. “You scaled my balcony.”
Bobbi frowned. “I used the railing.”
I stared at her some more. “The balcony railing.”
“Yes.”
“You walked along the outside railing of a second-floor balcony?”
She shrugged. “It’s very sturdy.”
“That does not comfort me at all.”
Bobbi pulled the rest of herself through the window and landed lightly on the floor.
I frowned. “Why are you here in the middle of a school day?”
Bobbi looked mildly offended by the question. “Conference day.
Teachers have meetings, so the children are released into the wild.”
“That feels like a design flaw,” I said.
“Can Markie play?” she asked.
I opened my mouth.
Closed it.
Then I sighed.
“Okay,” I said. “What are we playing?”
Markie leaned forward on his perch immediately. “PLAY.”
Bobbi lit up.
The next thirty minutes de volved into a game that in volved stacking coasters into small towers while Markie
attempted to steal them and shout commentary.
Bobbi sat cross-legged on the floor with complete concentration.
“You’re very good at this,” she told Markie.
“DAMN RIGHT.”
Bobbi gasped and pointed at him sternly. “That is inappropriate language to use in front of a minor.”
Markie froze.
There was a long pause.
Then he said carefully, “HELLO.”
I choked on a laugh.
Bobbi nodded approvingly. “Much better.”
Markie sat very straight after that, feathers pulled tight and posture rigid with the kind of exaggerated dignity
that suggested he believed he had just restored order to the room.
I leaned back against the couch and watched the two of them while Bobbi continued building her tower of
coasters on the coffee table. She worked slowly and carefully, lining up the edges before adding the next one.
Every coaster received the same level of attention, her head tilting slightly as she checked the balance of the stack.
It occurred to me that most kids her age would have knocked the tower over on purpose by now just to see
what would happen. Bobbi, however, appeared fully committed to structural integrity.
“Why do you come here so much?” I asked finally.
She didn’t look up. “Because you’re nice.”
That wasn’t the answer I expected.
I folded my arms. “I’m not that nice.”
“Yes, you are.” She placed another coaster carefully on top of the stack.
“You talk normal.”
“What does that mean?”
Bobbi finally looked at me.
“Most people talk with two faces,” she said. “They say one thing but mean something else. There are rules you
can’t see and you’re supposed to know them anyway.”
I considered that for a moment and realized what she said was true.
“That sounds exhausting.”
“It is.” She added another coaster. “You just say what things are.”
That landed somewhere I hadn’t been expecting it to land.
I glanced toward the window. “Well,” I said lightly, “someone has to.”
Bobbi nodded.
For a minute, the only sound in the room was the soft click of coasters being stacked together, then she spoke
again. “My therapist says that’s part of it.”
I raised an eyebrow in question. “She says I like coming here because my brain gets less confused.”
That made a certain amount of sense.
“What else does she say?”
Bobbi rested her chin on her hand and chewed her lip as she thought about it. “She says my brain notices lots
of things at once. So sometimes it gets loud and I have to move around until it quiets down.”
She tapped the table with one finger.
“That’s when I start walking.”
“Hot feet,” I said.
She nodded immediately. “Exactly.”
Markie leaned forward. “HOT FEET.”
Bobbi grinned at him. “Contextually accurate.”
I leaned my head back against the couch cushion and stared at the ceiling. Bobbi talked about therapy like
someone might talk about piano lessons or math tutoring. It was just another place she went each week to learn
how her brain worked.
Meanwhile, my brain had spent the last several years pretending certain things didn’t exist.
My mom and her endless needs. The guilt that followed any attempt to say no. Moving here was the first real
boundary I’d drawn in my life. Even now the idea of it still sat in the back of my mind like an unresolved
argument.
Therapy probably had opinions about people who built entire lives around avoiding emotional landmines.
The thought slipped into my head before I could stop it.
Maybe therapy wouldn’t be the worst idea for me.
I wasn’t sure I liked that realization.
Still, the fact that it appeared at all probably meant something.
I lowered my gaze and slid lower on the couch.
My lunch was abandoned on the coffee table. My Slack notifications were multiplying. And somehow my
living room now contained a runaway child and a parrot on behavioral probation.
Bobbi placed the final coaster on top of the tower, then she looked at me, very seriously. “You’re nicer than
you think.”
The tower tipped sideways, and coasters scattered across the floor.
“CHAOS! CHAOS!”
I stared at the ceiling.
That felt accurate.
As I watched Bobbi play, I handled minor work tickets. Bobbi and I had reached a point in our afternoon
where the game rules had dissolved entirely.
The coasters had been r epurposed into fortifications. Markie had attempted three s eparate theft operations.
One had been successful. Two had resulted in Bobbi lecturing him about ethical behavior. He’d listened to the
lecture with visible patience.
An unexpected calm had settled over the apartment, and that was when the knock came.
Bobbi’s head lifted immediately. “Oh,” she said.
I opened the door.
Mei st epped inside with the confidence of someone who had already learned that asking permission in this
apartment was largely ceremonial.
She was carrying a basket, which required two hands and visible effort to hold.
Bobbi stood and brushed the coaster crumbs from her legs. “Hi, Mom.”
Mei looked relieved to have found her child exactly where she’d expected her to be.
“Hello again,” she said to me.
“Hello.”
She st epped fully into the kitchen and set the basket on the counter with a soft but heavy thump.
“I brought a few things,” she said.
I looked at the basket. “A few?”
“Yes.”
Bobbi wandered over and peered inside with interest.
“Rice,” she announced.
Her mother nodded. “And a few meals that should reheat easily. I know moving is exhausting, even without
an injury.”
I opened my mouth, but I couldn’t think of anything to say. The basket was full of containers, their glass lids
neatly labeled. One large pot released the faint smell of something warm and comforting that immediately made
my stomach notice it had been surviving on frozen meals and stubbornness.
“Thank you,” I said finally.
She waved one hand dismissively. “You help Bobbi. This is nothing.”
That was what touched me. Not the food, but the lack of ceremony. Mei wasn’t making me earn the help, or
explain the need, or perform the correct amount of gratitude to justify the effort. She had simply noticed a problem
and responded to it.
Bobbi climbed onto a stool and inspected the pot. “Rice,” she said again in approval.
Mei patted her shoulder. “We should go.”
Bobbi slid down from the stool. “Can Markie play tomorrow, Zoey?”
“That d epends,” I said. “Will he continue to use appropriate language?”
Markie straightened on his perch. “HELLO.”
Bobbi nodded. “That’s promising.”
Mei smiled as she guided her daughter to the door. “Thank you again.”
When I was alone in my apartment, I opened the basket.
Inside were containers with real food. Braised chicken with dark sauce clinging to the meat. Stir-fried greens
glossy with garlic. A container of dumplings folded neatly in rows. Another of something that had been slow
cooked with ginger and scallions.
The pot of rice was still warm.
I stood there longer than necessary. This felt really strange. No one had asked me what I needed. No one had
waited for instructions.
Mei had simply shown up with food and left it on the counter.
And maybe that shouldn’t have felt strange, but it did, because I’d seen Bobbi receive the kind of care children
were supposed to receive. Not dramatic. Not heroic. Just a mother who noticed where her daughter was, came to
get her, brought food to the injured neighbor, k ept a hand on Bobbi’s shoulder as they left, and did all of it like this
was what adulthood was meant to be.
There was no guilt tucked into the kindness. No subtle suggestion that the care itself was a burden someone
should remember later. No emotional
invoice waiting to arrive by phone call.
I didn’t know what to do with that.
Worse, I didn’t know what to do with the part of me that wanted it. Not specifically from Mei, just in general.
I yearned for that easy, practical, almost boring care that didn’t turn into a referendum on loyalty or love.
The thought settled slowly in my chest.
Maybe the absence of one kind of love didn’t mean I was barred from finding pieces of it elsewhere. I hadn’t
had a mother who knew how to care for me like that. But maybe other safe relationships could still reach into that
empty space without asking me to disappear first.
That alarmed me. Before my brain could continue down that road, my phone buzzed.
I picked it up. It was the group chat labeled “Survivors.”
The others had been talking all week, sending messages about plans, work complaints, and random photos of
meals that looked suspiciously expensive.
I hadn’t sent a single message.
My silence had stretched long enough that they had stopped tagging me directly and simply continued the
conversation around the empty space where I should have been.
The newest messages sat at the bottom.
Morgan: New sushi place just opened downtown.
Jamie: Saturday lunch?
Cris: Zoey picks the rolls. She has standards.
I stared at the screen. An hour drive. Crowds. People. Conversation.
My natural instincts recommended staying home with the rice, but then my phone buzzed again.
Morgan: Zee? You alive over there?
I leaned back against the counter and looked around the kitchen.
The cabinets Liam had organized. The food Mei had brought. The apartment that no longer looked completely
temporary.
Then I looked back at the screen.
Being socially proactive didn’t come naturally to me. It was almost biologically offensive, which probably
meant I should do it.
Zoey: Fine. I’ll come.
The chat exploded immediately.
Jamie: SHE LIVES
Morgan: Historic moment Alex: Wear the blue hair I set the phone down and opened one of the containers,
releasing deliciously scented steam.
Standing there, fork in hand, I looked around. The apartment felt different today.
Still mine.
Just... less empty.