Chapter 2

The elevator was broken.

Of course it was.

Lookmhee stood at the bottom of the stairs of Clover Hill Apartments, staring up at four flights of steps with her chin resting on top of the highest box in her arms. She had three more boxes waiting by the front door. Her duffel bag was sliding off her left shoulder. Her phone was somewhere in her back pocket, buzzing nonstop with messages from her mother asking if she had arrived safely, eaten lunch, remembered to bring her vitamins, and also had she arrived safely — again, just to be sure.

She had arrived. Barely.

The drive had taken six hours. The GPS had taken her down the wrong exit twice. She had stopped at a gas station that smelled like old coffee and despair, eaten a sandwich she immediately regretted, and then sat in traffic for forty-five minutes just outside the city while a podcast about “living your best life” played cheerfully in the background.

And now. The elevator was broken.

There was a small handwritten sign taped to the elevator doors. It said: OUT OF ORDER. SORRY FOR THE TROUBLE. — MANAGEMENT. Someone had drawn a sad face next to the word sorry. Lookmhee did not find it funny.

She took a breath. She looked at the stairs. She looked at her boxes.

“Okay,” she said out loud, to no one. “Okay. We can do this.”

She started climbing.

By the second floor, she had already bumped her elbow on the railing twice and nearly dropped the box labeled BOOKS (HEAVY — DO NOT TRUST YOURSELF). She had written that label herself, three days ago, when she was packing and still thought she was being funny. She was not laughing now.

By the third floor, she had stopped talking to herself and was just breathing very loudly.

By the fourth floor, she was questioning every decision she had ever made that led her to this moment — including, but not limited to, owning this many books, choosing an apartment on the top floor, and moving to a city where she knew exactly zero people.

Zero.

She had packed up her whole life, said goodbye to her family, hugged her mother for a very long time, and moved to a city where she did not have a single friend yet. Just a job offer at a small bookstore called The Last Page, a lease she had signed over video call, and a very optimistic heart that kept telling her this was going to be a great adventure.

Her optimistic heart had never carried ten boxes up four flights of stairs before.

She finally reached the fourth floor hallway and stopped in front of apartment 4B. She put her box down on the floor, straightened her back with a groan that was embarrassingly loud, and dug through her duffel bag for her keys.

They were not in the front pocket.

They were not in the side pocket.

They were not in the big pocket.

Lookmhee stood very still for a moment. Then she unzipped every single pocket of the duffel bag, one by one, slowly, with the kind of calm that a person has right before they completely lose it.

The keys were in her jacket pocket. The jacket she was wearing. They had been there the whole time.

She unlocked the door, pushed it open, slid the box inside with her foot, and then leaned against the doorframe and looked at her new apartment for the very first time.

It was small. It was empty. The afternoon light came in through the window at the far end and landed on the bare wooden floor in a long pale square. The walls were white. The kitchen was just a counter and two cabinets and a stove that she hoped worked. There was a ceiling fan with one blade that was slightly bent.

It was nothing like her old room at home, which had fairy lights and too many pillows and a shelf of books so full that she had started stacking them sideways on top.

But it was hers.

Something loosened in her chest. Just a little.

“Hi,” she said softly, to the empty room.

The room did not say anything back. But the light moved a little, the way light does in the afternoon, slow and golden, and Lookmhee thought — okay. Okay, maybe this was going to be alright.

Then she remembered she had three more boxes downstairs and went back down.

✦ ✦ ✦

On her second trip up, she met her neighbor.

She was coming around the corner of the third-floor landing, both arms wrapped around a box labeled MISC (DO NOT OPEN — EMOTIONAL DAMAGE INSIDE), when she nearly walked straight into a woman coming the other way.

They both stopped. Lookmhee stumbled back a step. The box tilted dangerously.

“Oh! Sorry! — I’m so sorry, I didn’t see you—”

“No, no, my fault, I was going too fast.” The woman grabbed the other side of Lookmhee’s box before it could fall, steadied it, and smiled. It was a very warm smile. The kind that made a person feel immediately like everything was going to be fine. “Are you moving in?”

“Yes,” Lookmhee said. “Fourth floor. 4B.”

“Oh!” The woman’s face lit up. “I’m 4A. Right across the hall from you.” She shifted the reusable grocery bag on her arm and extended her hand. “I’m Engfa.”

“Lookmhee.” She shook her hand. “Sorry again for almost walking into you.”

“Don’t worry about it. Are you doing this alone? All the boxes?”

Lookmhee laughed a little. “Unfortunately, yes. The elevator is—”

“Broken, I know. It’s been broken since Tuesday.” Engfa said it with the tone of someone who had already made peace with it. “Here, let me help you with that one.”

“Oh, you don’t have to—”

But Engfa had already taken one side of the box, and they were going up the stairs together before Lookmhee could finish her sentence.

By the time they had brought up the last two boxes, Lookmhee had learned the following things about Engfa: she had lived in 4A for two years, she worked at a clinic downtown, she had a very strong opinion about the best noodle place within walking distance, and she was the kind of person who just — helped. Without being asked. Without making it a big deal. She just saw a problem and moved toward it.

Lookmhee found this both incredibly kind and slightly overwhelming, because she was used to doing things alone.

They sat on the floor of the empty apartment with their backs against the wall, resting. Engfa had produced two cold bottles of water from her grocery bag like a magician and handed one to Lookmhee.

“Thank you,” Lookmhee said. “For the help. And the water. And — all of it.”

“Of course.” Engfa looked around the apartment with an easy, appraising look. “It’s a good unit. Better than mine, honestly. Your window faces the park.”

Lookmhee looked at the window. She hadn’t noticed that yet — through the glass, past the rooftops across the street, there was a thin strip of green. Trees. She felt something warm move through her.

“That’s nice,” she said quietly.

“There’s a group of us,” Engfa said. “Friends, I mean. We all ended up in this building somehow — me, Freen and TK on the second floor, and Becky on the third. And then there’s Sonya, she’s on the fourth floor too, 4C.” She paused. “We have dinner together most weeks. Nothing fancy. Whoever can come, comes. You should join us sometime.”

Lookmhee blinked. “Oh. I don’t want to intrude—”

“You wouldn’t be intruding. You’d be invited,” Engfa said it simply, like it was obvious. “Actually — we’re doing dinner tonight. If you’re not too tired.”

Lookmhee looked around at her ten boxes. She had a mattress arriving tomorrow. Tonight she was going to sleep on a blanket on the floor. She had half a sandwich left from the gas station and the faint, creeping loneliness that came with being in a new place where no one knew your name yet.

“I’d love that,” she said. “Thank you.”

Engfa smiled again, that warm easy smile. “Great. Come knock on my door at seven. And don’t worry—” she stood, brushing off her jeans, “—they’re mostly harmless.”

Mostly, Lookmhee thought. That was an interesting word to choose.

✦ ✦ ✦

At exactly two minutes past seven, Lookmhee knocked on the door of apartment 4A.

She had changed into a clean shirt and fixed her hair and then immediately messed it up again by running her hand through it too many times on the walk across the hall. She was holding a small box of pastries she had found at the bottom of one of her bags — her mother had packed them without telling her, because that was the kind of thing her mother did — and she felt, standing at a stranger’s door in a new city in a new building, exactly as small and hopeful as she had felt at seven years old on the first day of school.

Engfa opened the door before she could knock a second time.

“You came!” She said it like she was genuinely happy, not surprised, which Lookmhee appreciated more than she could say.

The apartment was warm and smelled like food. From somewhere inside came the sound of two people arguing cheerfully about something, and then a loud laugh, and then the sound of something falling over.

“Is everything okay in there?” Lookmhee asked.

“Always,” said Engfa serenely, and stepped aside to let her in.

The kitchen was full.

A tall girl with bright eyes and an easy grin was sitting on the kitchen counter eating directly from a pot. That was Freen, who said “OH, hi!” when she saw Lookmhee, with exactly the energy of a golden retriever meeting someone new. Next to her, leaning against the fridge with her arms crossed and a look of long-suffering patience, was TK, who nodded once and said “hey” and then went back to watching Freen eat from the pot.

On the couch, sprawled diagonally as if she owned the entire piece of furniture, was Becky, who looked Lookmhee up and down with sharp, clever eyes and then grinned. “Finally,” she said. “Someone new. Tell me everything about yourself. Don’t leave anything out.”

“Becky!” Engfa said.

“I’m just being friendly.”

“You’re being interrogative.”

“Those are the same thing.”

Lookmhee laughed before she could stop herself, and Becky’s grin widened like she had already decided they were going to be friends whether Lookmhee was ready or not.

“I’m Lookmhee,” she said. “I just moved into 4B. I brought pastries.”

“She brought pastries,” Becky announced to the room like this was important news. “I like her already.”

And then the door of the bathroom opened, and a fifth person walked out.

She was drying her hands on a small towel, looking down, and she had dark hair pushed back from her face and an expression that Lookmhee could only describe as carefully neutral — like a person who had decided at some point that showing too much on her face was a bad idea and had stuck to that decision ever since.

She looked up. Her eyes landed on Lookmhee.

“Who’s this?” she said.

“New neighbor,” Engfa said. “Lookmhee, this is Sonya. 4C.”

Sonya looked at her for a moment with those calm, unreadable eyes. Then she said, “You’re the one who’s been making noise on the stairs for the last two hours.”

Lookmhee opened her mouth. Closed it. “The elevator is broken,” she said.

“I know. I’m just saying I heard you.”

“I had ten boxes.”

“Also heard that.” There was a pause. Then, so dry it was almost invisible: “You labeled one of them emotional damage.“

Lookmhee felt her face go warm. “That was — that’s just a joke—”

“I didn’t say it wasn’t.” And then Sonya turned to Engfa and asked if the food was ready, just like that, like the conversation was simply over, like she hadn’t just made Lookmhee feel simultaneously embarrassed and somehow, strangely, like laughing.

Becky caught Lookmhee’s eye from the couch. She raised her eyebrows. That’s just how she is, the look said. Or maybe it said something else. Becky’s eyebrows were very expressive and Lookmhee had only just met her.

Freen hopped off the counter, still chewing. “Don’t mind Sonya,” she said helpfully, too loud, fully audible to everyone in the room including Sonya. “She’s like that to everyone at first.”

“I’m standing right here,” Sonya said.

“I know!” said Freen, just as cheerfully.

And somehow, despite everything — the six hours of driving, the broken elevator, the ten boxes, the floor she was going to sleep on tonight — Lookmhee felt something loosen in her chest for the second time that day. Something that felt, quietly and unexpectedly, like relief.

She didn’t know these people. Not even a little.

But she was already laughing, standing in a warm kitchen that wasn’t hers, holding a box of pastries her mother had packed without telling her, while Freen argued with Sonya about nothing and Becky watched everything with that sharp grin and TK stood by the fridge looking tired in a fond sort of way and Engfa moved around all of them like she had been keeping this particular chaos running for years.

It felt, very strangely, like somewhere she could stay.

✦ ✦ ✦

Later that night, walking the six steps back across the hall to her own empty apartment, Lookmhee pulled out the small notebook she kept in her jacket pocket. She sat down on her blanket on the floor, crossed her legs, clicked her pen.

She wrote three words.

apartment 4B. beginning.

Then she capped the pen, lay down on her back, and stared at the ceiling fan with its one slightly bent blade.

Down the hall, she could faintly hear Freen laughing at something.

She smiled at the ceiling.

Okay, she thought. Maybe this was going to be more than alright.

✦ ✦ ✦