Surprisingly, I don’t feel anything. Somewhere, behind the desperation-fueled attempt at positivity, I’ve known they wouldn’t be able to help. “Okay. I understand.”

“You might also look into one of the nonprofits. They’d probably have more resources for you to act independently, too.”

“Okay.” I listen to her rattle off a phone number, but it’s already too late.

The truth that I’ve been avoiding at all costs starts to sink in: I’m fucked from every angle and no lawyer can help with that.

Pain builds in my chest, and I sink to the floor, eyes squeezed shut and barely able to sip in a breath.

I open the text function to my chain with Drea and tap the audio note feature. “Are you home? It’s happening again. My chest.”

I hit send and then curl up around the phone.

There’s nothing I can do about it but wait. I can’t afford another medical bill, and even if I could, they’d likely just tell me I need to reduce my stress, which isn’t exactly an option at this point.

Maybe it is a heart attack this time, though, because I’m sweating and shaking and the pain in my chest is intensifying. Hell, I wouldn’t be mad if this is the big one. Then I could get some rest and someone else could deal with the mess I’m in.

I lie on the floor for a long time, breathing and daring my punk-ass body to put up or shut up, then wondering what my mother would say if she saw me like this. I know what Marcus would say. “You want to make a scene and act crazy? Fine. I’ll treat you that way.”

That memory beats at my chest, but I call Mommy’s number and listen to her voicemail, and the panic attack recedes.

I get up shakily and make my way to the shower, where I squeeze an almost comical amount of exfoliating body scrub onto my washcloth, running it over my body until I feel like maybe I’ve scoured off a layer. After a face scrub and rinse, I head into my bedroom and work a thick body butter into my skin, taking my time, allowing myself to zone out during this familiar daily ritual.

I’m staring at the wall, mind blank and gaze unfocused, when a tiny black spot begins to scurry.

Any calm my little self-care routine has won back is lost immediately. I charge toward the crawling speck, scooping up the water glass on my bedside table and slamming it onto the wall.

It better not be another goddamn bedbug.

My skin starts to itch like the moisture’s been sucked out of it, but as I peer through the thin glass bottom of the cup I realize it’s just a baby roach. Not ideal, but picking up a can of Raid is easier than steaming all my belongings.

I’m about to move the glass when a remnant of my nightmare comes back to me . . . was it about something scratching in the walls? I slowly lower my ear to the glass like I used to do when I was a kid because I’d seen it in a movie. I can hear my own heartbeat, my own inhale . . . and—

The doorbell suddenly chimes and I jump, dropping the glass. It somehow doesn’t shatter after bouncing four times in slo-mo and then rolling under the bed.

I slap my hand at the wall as something scurries in my peripheral vision, but the roach apparently has way better luck than me and skitters off to freedom. We never had roaches when Mommy was here, but back then Miss Wanda still lived next door. She didn’t have a dirty kid, and she bleached down her countertops every night, despite the lies Josie told her friends. I hurriedly pull on my underwear, a shirt, and shorts and race to the door, heart hammering in my chest.

When I get to the front door, there’s a tall white man in a blue shirt standing outside of it. He’s wearing a blue hat pulled low on his brow and is so close to the door, right up against it, that I can’t see the street behind him. He’s bulky enough to do that.

“Is Yolanda Green here?” he asks, his gaze skirting over my shoulder and down the hall.

My words get all jumbled in my throat and I clear it, and school my expression to one of polite annoyance.

“I’m her daughter. Can I help you?”

“I’m here to read the meter,” he says through the glass. “Can you let me in?”

The electrical meters are in the hall closet, meaning I’ll have to let him inside the house to check them. The hairs on my neck rise in warning and I don’t ignore my gut, even if it is still running on Ambien fumes.

I reach into my pocket for my phone and realize it’s still on the floor next to my bed.

“Miss? I need to check the meter.” His voice is kind of amused, like he’s daring me to be dumb enough to believe him or paranoid enough not to. He takes a step closer to the door so his chest is pressed almost against it. The name patch on his uniform sends a chill through me: DREW.

He taps the glass as if I’m not staring right at him. “We’ve been billing you on estimates for months now. If you don’t let me in—”

“Sydney?”

The “Con Ed” guy looks back over his shoulder and steps out of the way to reveal Theo waiting at the bottom of the stairs. His hair is wet and his expression is . . . off.

“Thought we were supposed to meet at eight thirty,” he says, which I have no recollection of agreeing to. I’m wondering if he even sees the weird man looming in my doorway, then his gaze shifts with intentionality behind it. “Oh, hey man. What’s up?”

He does another one of those white-guy moves, placing a hand to his brow and scrunching up his face as he gives the meter man a lingering look that makes him aware that he’s been clocked.

“I can come back if you’ve got an appointment, miss,” the guy says. Then he’s gone, hustling down the stairs, hopping into the passenger side of a white van that pulls off.

I open the door enough to lean out and watch as the van drives out of sight. “That wasn’t a Con Ed van.”

“Maybe the clown-van clan is back in business.” Theo leans back from his hips, then takes a few steps back. “No license plate, front or back. Should we call the police?”

I shoot him a look. “Yeah, so another scary white man can show up at my door, but one who can definitely kill me with no worries instead of probably kill me with no worries.”

“Shit, Sydney.” He exhales. I wait for him to push back, but he says, “I get that. Just . . . that’s a pretty common con. Pretending to be from a utility service. So many cons are just banking on the fact that people will trust you because of the social contract.”

I take a step back into the doorway, ready to close the door on the world and this conversation. “Thanks for running him off,” I say.

“Have you spoken to Mr. Perkins this morning?” He scrubs his hands over his beard, and it’s in that moment that I realize he’s hungover. His eyes are red and he’s looking the worst I’ve ever seen him; beard unkempt and a waxy sheen to his skin. “I got kind of drunk last night, but I swore . . . I can’t remember everything, but I think I saw something in his window.”

My stomach clenches.

“Something like what?”

“Like maybe something happening to him?” There’s worry in his eyes. “I think I was trying to get up to see if he was okay but I passed out. I just remember that Count howled, and maybe I saw a shadow in his window. I wasn’t trying to get wasted, but Kim left me and I drank some of her expensive wine out of spite and . . .” He shrugs. “No one answered when I knocked on the door this morning.”

“Of course not,” I say. “He’s usually out doing his morning tour of the neighborhood, he wouldn’t be home.”

Theo shakes his head. “I’ve been keeping an eye out between puking sessions. He didn’t take Count for a walk this morning that I saw.”

I curse and slip my feet into the flip-flops by the doorway, feeling the vein in my temple start to throb. “You said you were drunk, right? Was that all you were doing? Drinking?”

“I ate some shrimp scampi, too,” he says, and I’m expecting that to be sarcasm, but when I turn to look at him, his forehead is wrinkled and he seems to be trying to remember where things took a wrong turn in his evening. “I’m never drinking Riesling again.”

I head down the stairs, passing him and going through Mr. Perkins’s gate—he’s more likely to be hanging out in City Hall watching Good Day New York than up in the apartment. I knock on the window, wait a beat, and then knock again. After three more attempts, I head up the stairs, ringing the buzzer for the first floor, pressing more insistently as my worry starts to pummel me.

Scary Uber driver. Preston in jail. Fake Con Ed guy the morning after Theo saw something in the window.

I think about Mr. Perkins jerking in his sleep the other evening.

I think about how he’s been around for my whole life, and how everything I care about is getting torn away.

I suck in a breath. He has to be okay.

Melissa, the college student whose parents paid a year’s rent up front, according to Mr. Perkins, comes down. She has on shorts and a too-large tee, and her short dark hair is artfully disheveled. Her bike helmet is in her hand.

She looks back and forth between me and Theo in surprise, as if she didn’t expect us to be standing there.