Page 27 of Stay Awake
“Where are you?”
A floorboard creaks behind me. I freeze.
“A tech conference. Chicago. I fly back on Friday night.”
“I didn’t know that you’re away this week,” I say, feeling incredibly alone and vulnerable as I realize there’s no way Marco can come to my aid. I take another step forward.
“I thought I mentioned it,” he says a little too sharply. Marco hates it when I pry. “You sound upset about something,” he says, cottoning on to the fear in my voice. “Are you sure everything’s okay, Liv?”
“I’m just disappointed that you can’t come over. Amy’s away and the apartment feels very… empty,” I say, too embarrassed to tell him that I’m spooked being alone in my own home.
“I’ll make it up to you.” His voice is husky with promise.
“I’ll hold you to it,” I say haltingly before hanging up.
The banging resumes. It’s definitely coming from Amy’s room. I walk toward her bedroom door, holding the phone as if it’s a weapon. When I reach her room, I gently kick the door fully open and turn on the bedroom light.
Amy forgot to latch the window. The wind must have blown it open and it’s hitting the wall.
I close the window and turn around to examine the room. There’s a walk-in closet and a desk in a nook by the window. When Amy was a medical student, the desk was always covered with books. Nowadays, it’s empty other than a silver laptop.
On her bed is a small suitcase that she appears to have abandoned half-packed. I presume she opted for a bigger suitcase and more clothes. Amy always overpacks. It’s not unknown for her to take two suitcases for a weekend trip. As I turn to leave the bedroom, I almost trip over Shawna’s tail, which is sticking out from under Amy’s bed.
“So that’s where you are!” Shawna opens her one good eye and stares at me in disdain before returning to sleep.
I head to the kitchen to prepare something to eat, acutely aware that it will be slim pickings given the state of my fridge. Besides the eggs and cheese, I find a jar of asparagus in the cupboard. I cook a cheese and asparagus omelet, which I eat while watching TV in the living room.
My eyes get heavy and I fall asleep on the sofa in the middle of the show. I wake to the sound of banging. It’s Amy’s window again. I can’t begin to fathom how it could have opened when I closed it firmly earlier. Once again I go in to turn on the lights and close the window. This time, I double-check to make sure it won’t accidentally open again.
The alarm clock next to Amy’s bed tells me it’s getting close to midnight. I stumble to the bathroom and brush my teeth before opening my bedroom door.
I turn on the light and stand stunned at the entrance of my room. It was neat when I left for work this morning. It’s not like that now. My bedroom’s a mess. The bed is rumpled. The closet doors and some of my dresser drawers are partly open. It looks as if someone was rummaging through my stuff.
One of the photo frames lies on the floor amid a pile of smashed glass. It’s a photo of Marco and me on a weekend trip to Maine. I pick up the frame and the broken glass and put it on the table next to my bed. My chest tightens with fear when I see my bedroom window. Someone has drawn a heart pierced by an arrow in the dust on the glass pane.
I call 9–1–1 even though it goes against the grain for me to turn to the police. I have a deep-seated distrust of the authorities ever since the night a cop pulled me out of Mom’s arms when I was taken by child protection as a kid. That memory has never left me. It doesn’thelp that when I was in college, I was roughly handcuffed and arrested when I happened to be in the vicinity of a student protest. The cops let me go after reviewing footage that showed I wasn’t involved, but the experience only deepened my distrust.
Two uniformed police officers arrive twenty minutes later. By then, I’ve changed into sweats and curled up on the armchair in the living room, taking deep breaths as I try to stay calm. The officers listen politely as I give them a blow-by-blow of what happened.
“So you didn’t go into your bedroom at all when you came home?” a heavyset cop with a thin mustache asks while his much younger dark-haired partner checks the window latches in the kitchen and living room for signs of a break-in.
“The last time I was in my bedroom was this morning before I left for work. It was neat. My bed was made. It didn’t look anything like this.” I gesture toward the mess.
I follow the younger cop to Amy’s room when he checks the window. “Looks like the window catch needs to be fixed. That’s why it’s swinging open when the wind is up,” he says, as he plays around with the latch.
He tells me that nobody could have scaled the external wall of our building to get in through that window. “Not unless it was a cat burglar. Do you know whether your roommate is missing any valuables?”
“It’s hard for me to say.” I rest my eyes on Amy’s silver laptop. “Amy’s computer is still here.”
“That would have gone in a second if the place had been robbed. So would that.” He points at a gold necklace and some other jewelry in a crystal bowl on Amy’s bedside table.
He twists the catch to make sure the window closes properly this time and tells me to get the super to fix it in the morning.
“I suggest you go to sleep and talk to your roommate tomorrow. Maybe she drew the heart on the window as a joke,” the burly cop with the mustache tells me when we return to the living room.
“I really think someone was here,” I say dubiously.
“There’s no sign of a break-in. We checked thoroughly.”
