Part 16 – Messy

Kat

This wasn’t going to do. How could she relax with her apartment this messy? 

Kat was trying to center herself and prepare for her first shift alone. It was a nerve-wracking prospect in itself, but every time she tried to take a break and calm down, it felt like she was going to be bowled over by an avalanche of refuse. 

Her logical side told her it was no worse than normal but, to her sleep-deprived eyes, the dirty clothes and scattered nick-nacks resembled an offshore island of garbage. And there she was, awash amid that trash, phantom smells of rot making her feel like a rat. 

She pulled her clothes together. They were slightly damp due to her window being perpetually cracked open. She grimaced as she heaved the pile over to her in-suite laundry.  

A gift from her aunt, these machines were a major luxury for a broke student. But when she opened the door for this new load, she found it already full of wrinkly wet clothes. The slight whiff of mildew reminded her of the last scattered attempt at cleaning, four days before. She had clearly forgot to turn the laundry over. She dropped in a new pod of detergent and restarted the machines, its starting jingle drowning out her ragged sigh. 

How could she have anyone over if the place looked like this? Sure, her best friend Andy was away at UW but he’d be back for the summer. But even if he was around, there was no way she could invite him over for another other than a much-needed intervention. And she didn’t need it. The evidence of her failure to adult was all around her. 

You always were a failure. 

She hadn’t heard her mother’s voice in person for years now, and yet, it was a structural column within her subconscious. Like concrete, it was unshackle – immovable, rough and cold.  

Kat shook off the feeling. She had bigger fish to fry. 

Only a few hours to go before her shift. Kat had done her best to adjust her sleep schedule, but it hadn’t taken effect yet. She was running on five hours tops and it would be a long night, alone. 

She tried to remind herself that for almost half the shift people would be around. Lucy, Daisy, Bradley…that weird guy who makes the pizza crusts. She just had to make it through the night and that was going to be spent reading and making sure the odd trucker had access to snacks.  

It would be okay. She didn’t believe in ghosts. As for people, that’s what locks were for.  

A fresh wave of anxiety threatened the false calm she’d been nurturing all day. She shouldn’t have thought about the locked door. The reasons why she’d ever need to hide in the office needed to stay out of her mind.  

Busy. She had to just keep busy. 

She could clear up her desk and the coffee table. There were books everywhere, but she had so little storage in this apartment. 

A glance at the overstuffed antique bookcase confirmed nothing more could rest within its dark wooden frame. The shelves were already bending from her personal collection, and she’d have to reorganize everything for her textbooks to even make sense among them.  

She didn’t have time.  

Scanning the room, she saw a cardboard box sitting in the back corner, beside her couch.  

What if she made a new friend at work? Maybe Lucy would defrost a bit? Come over for a girls’ night? 

Kat laughed; it didn’t seem likely. Besides, she knew who she’d like to have over, even if she wasn’t ready to think about it.  

She pulled the box away from the white baseboards and looked in, it was still half full of stuff from her original move. Almost a year now, and she wasn’t unpacked.  

Still, free space. 

She slid the box over to the coffee table and tossed in anything that wasn’t school-related. She did the same with the end tables and her desk before surveying her progress. It wasn’t too bad. The clothes were still in a heap, but they were now in front of the washing machine. The clutter was mostly cleared, even if it was now stuff in a box she’d never sort. What remained was school stuff. She was a student – that was fair.  

Maybe Tom could overlook that.  

She thought about texting him, but it had only been a day. That would seem needy. The balance of maintaining social propriety and loneliness weighed on her.  

It was just a friendly invite. It didn’t need to be a big deal. They could even grab a bite to eat before work. That was neutral ground. There was no need to show him she couldn’t keep her apartment clean. Not yet. 

This pit isn’t the problem. 

Kat rubbed her right arm reflexively. Her fingers ran over the old scar. Another anchor point. Like the concrete pillar, time hadn’t managed to weaken this constant reminder. The intersection of her life, where metal proved far stronger than flesh.