The Sun Down Motel

She wasn’t getting paid, not exactly. But it would still be easier for Janice to turn the lights out, lock the office door, and go home instead of trying to find someone to sit there all night.

Her feet ached, and her body relaxed slowly into the bed. Lonely or not, this was still better than hitching on that dark highway, hoping for another stranger to pick her up. She started to hope there was a vending machine somewhere in the Sun Down, preferably one with a Snickers bar in it.

The man in the yellow collared shirt had put his hand on her thigh like it belonged, like they had an agreement because she was in his car. He’d curled his fingers gently toward the inside of her thigh before she pulled away. She felt that jolt in her gut again, the fear. She’d never felt fear like that before. Anger, yes. And she’d slept a lot since her parents’ divorce, sometimes until one or two in the afternoon, another thing that made her mother yell at her.

But the fear she’d felt today had been deep and sudden, almost like a numbing blow. For the first time in her life, it occurred to her how erasable she was. How it could all be over in an instant. Vivian Delaney could vanish. She would simply be gone.

I’m afraid, she thought.

Then: This seems like the right place for it.

She was asleep before she could think anything else.

Fell, New York

November 2017

CARLY

Greville Street was barely three blocks long, a street of low-rise apartments ending in a dead end covered by a warped chain-link fence. The buildings looked like they were made from children’s blocks stacked on angles, a boxy style in concrete and vinyl siding that had gone out of favor sometime around 1971. I drove slowly past the short, squat driveways to each building, looking for number twenty-seven.

I parked next to a dusky gray Volvo with a rounded rear and balding tires, feeling a little like a time traveler. I’d come here to see where my aunt had lived, maybe get a glimpse into what her life had been, but I hadn’t expected to stand on a street that looked almost unchanged from 1982. If the address was correct, she’d stood exactly where I did now, looking at the same landscape.

There was no one around except for two kids riding bikes up and down the street, ringing the bells on their handlebars and laughing. I walked to the front door of number twenty-seven and found that it was unlocked, so I went in.

There was a short hallway lined with tenants’ mailboxes and a set of stairs. The mailbox to apartment C said ATKINS, H. I had poked my head around the edge of the stairwell, looking up and wondering how not to look like a stalker, when a girl appeared in the upstairs hallway.

She was about my age, with a slight, firm build and dark blond hair that fell straight to her chin. She had taken the front hank of her hair and pinned it back from her forehead in a single bobby pin, and she looked at me with eyes that were clear and intelligent in an expressive face. She was wearing a large knitted poncho, basically a square placed over her shoulders with a hole for the head.

“Are you here for the ad?” she asked me.

“I—”

“There’s only one person coming,” she said. “The roommate for apartment C.”

That gave me pause. “Apartment C?”

“Sure. Come on up.”

I didn’t even think of turning around.

Instead I followed Poncho Girl up another set of stairs and through a door. The apartment inside was surprisingly big, with a linoleum-floored kitchen, a TV room, and two bedroom doors opening from opposite ends.

“I’m Heather,” the poncho girl said as she closed the door behind me. She stuck out her hand from beneath the folds of wool. It was a slender hand, porcelain white, and when I shook it, it gave my skin a little chill.

“Carly,” I said.

“I’ll give you a tour.”

The next thing I knew it was ten minutes later and I had seen every room. I knew that the hot water was fussy and the Wi-Fi reception was unreliable and the rent was two hundred per month. I also knew I was a bit of a jerk, because I still hadn’t told Heather the truth.

“Two hundred a month isn’t very much money,” I pointed out.

Heather rubbed a hand on the back of her neck. She had faint purple circles beneath her eyes, as if she were very tired, but she still gave off a tight vitality that was hard to look away from. “Okay, I can’t lie,” she said, the words in a rush. “I don’t really need the money. My father pays for this place while I’m at Fell.”

“At Fell?”

“Fell College,” she said. “It’s weird, I know. A local girl going to a local college, moved out into an apartment paid for by her parents. Right?” She tilted her chin like she wanted me to answer, but she kept talking without giving me the chance. “I needed the experience, or so the parental units tell me. To feed myself and fend for myself, something like that. And I like it, I do. But I’m alone all the time, and this apartment makes noises. And there’s no one to talk to. I’m a night owl and I don’t sleep at night. I think I posted the ad for a roommate just so I can have someone here. It isn’t the money really. You know?”

“Okay,” I said, because she seemed really nice. “I’ve never heard of Fell College.”

“No one has,” Heather said, shrugging her thin shoulders beneath her poncho. “It’s a local place. Not a college in the usual sense, really. It’s obscure, and we locals go there. Makes us feel like we’re going to college without leaving town.”

“Isn’t the point of college to leave town?”

“The point of college is to go to college,” Heather said with utter logic. “And I’m surprised you aren’t one of us. I took you for a fellow student.”

I looked down at myself: worn jeans, old boots that laced up the ankles, black T-shirt that said BOOKS ARE MY LIFE beneath a stretched-out hoodie, messenger bag. Add my dark-rimmed glasses and ponytail and I was pretty much a cliché. “I am a student, actually. But not at Fell College. I’m . . .” I looked around, cleared my throat. “Okay, I can’t lie, either. I didn’t actually come here about the roommate thing. You just assumed.”

Heather’s eyes widened. “Then why are you here?”

“Um, because I like grim Soviet Bloc architecture?”

She clapped her hands once, the motion making the poncho ripple. Her eyes sparkled. “I like you! Okay, then! Tell me why you’re really here. The details.” She closed her eyes tight, then opened them again. “You’re mooning over an ex-boyfriend. There’s a guy who lived in B who wasn’t bad, but he moved out last week.”