Megan MIRANDA - The Perfect Stranger

If I were writing a piece about a missing woman, if I were interviewing her roommate, I’d say: Tell me a story about her. Tell me a story that will let the readers know her, too.

So when Kyle got halfway to his car, seemed to change his mind for some reason, came back inside, and asked me to tell him something more about who Emmy was, what she was like, I took some time to think about it. I did not say the first thing I thought.

I wanted to tell him about the time with the knife – two weeks after I’d moved in with her back in Boston, when Paige had called and said she and Aaron were in the area and could they see my new place? How I had frozen in the middle of the living room, the phone hanging at my hip, my head suddenly waterlogged and everything feeling too far away. How Emmy had asked, very calmly, “Who was that?”

I wanted to tell Kyle how Emmy had been cutting up an apple in the kitchen when I’d introduced them, how she’d spun around and taken the knife to Aaron’s flesh, right on the back of his forearm, how his face had fallen open in surprise and rage. How she’d made it seem like an accident but had pressed her lips together like she knew it wasn’t. How she’d stared at him, then said, Oops, didn’t see you there, and gone back to the apple. How she hadn’t said anything to me when Paige yelped and looked at me like Did you see that? And how I’d pretended I hadn’t. How Emmy hadn’t even looked up as Aaron kept saying, It’s okay, no big deal, through clenched teeth, as if she had apologized, which she hadn’t. How she hadn’t turned back around until Paige got him out of there. How I’d loved her in that moment. And how we’d never spoken of it again.

I wanted to say this to Kyle: She eats men like you for breakfast . I wanted him to know that she was strong, that she would not let someone walk all over her. She would not be a girl who did not see the danger coming.

But that’s not the story to tell. The purpose of the story, I knew, was to get people to care, to get the public on your side, to make them see everyone they’ve ever loved in the face of this missing girl.

Kyle was staring, like he could see every story running through my head – hers and mine.

I pretended he was a reporter. That what he was really saying was, Okay, Leah, show her to me.

And so I settled on the first time we met.

“She took me in,” I said. “I couldn’t afford a place, and I had nowhere to go, and she took me in.”

It was a Monday morning, and I’d suddenly, inexplicably, needed a place to live. This was after I didn’t get the job I’d expected and instead took that unpaid internship. This was after I’d spent a month living on Paige and Aaron’s couch. This was after.

I’d headed straight for our old campus – to the bulletin board in the lobby atrium I’d passed a hundred times before, numbers ripped from the bottom of stapled papers. Lost animals, job announcements, roommate searches. I haphazardly took numbers, stuffed them in my pocket, all the details swirling, the prices too high, my stomach churning.

I didn’t hear her at first. “I said, looking for a place?”

There was a girl to my side, perched on the stone wall along the front steps. She was sitting cross-legged, eating a bagel, and she swiped a long strand of brown hair from the corner of her mouth, tucking it behind her ear. She hopped off the wall.

“Hi. I’m Emmy,” she said, sticking out her free hand. “I’m only asking because that one’s mine–” She pointed the bagel toward a paper in the upper-right corner: Short-term rental. $500/mo. Basement walk-out. Females only.

“Leah,” I said, taking her hand.

She looked like she could’ve been a student. Low-slung jeans, cropped T-shirt, kohl-rimmed eyes, and maroon lipstick. “I think I made a mistake with the Females only comment,” she said. “Because ninety-nine percent of the calls are from creepers.” She made a face, some mock gag, like we were conspirators already. “Figured I’d come and do some pre-screening.” She narrowed her eyes, taking me in. “And you don’t seem like a creeper.”

I was on my way to my internship, trying to pretend this was a normal day. Khaki pants, flats, sleeveless blouse, hair brushed up into an easy bun. But I could feel the way I was standing, too self-aware, too stiff. I was not yet myself. My head pounded in an odd, detached way. My ears were ringing. The sight of her bagel suddenly nauseated me.

I looked back at the bulletin board. “I can’t afford that,” I said.

She raised an eyebrow, looked me over again. “Then you’re probably looking in the wrong area of town. What do you think you can get for under five hundred?”

I didn’t know. I’d never been on my own before. I’d worked hard for my scholarship, had periodic jobs on campus to bridge the difference, and had banked any leftover money, using it for clothes and nights out. Room and board had always been covered. I was certain I would get the job I wanted; I had been editor of the college paper, not to mention my impressive transcript and self-assured interview. That job would come with a signing bonus, and I was only waiting on the confirmation letter before placing a security deposit on a nearby studio.

And then I didn’t get the job. I was unprepared for the shock of failure – it had never happened before. The only other position I’d interviewed for began with an unpaid internship.

Paige, sitting cross-legged on her bed across the room when I found out, had said, “So take it.”

It was difficult to explain to her. She would have thought nothing of taking an unpaid internship. She had family money to fall back on. I couldn’t even tell my mother. The failure was gutting; I would hear it in the silence on the other end of the line. “I can’t afford to,” I’d said, my voice faltering.

“You can stay with us,” Paige had said. She had gotten a great job right out of college, but her parents planned to put her up in a nice one-bedroom until she got on her feet – and she was always more than happy to share her good fortune.

“Shouldn’t you ask Aaron?”

She’d waved her hand like I knew better, and I did. Four years of undergrad bonded people together. She’d been my roommate since freshman orientation but had spent most of the last year at Aaron’s dorm room. It seemed only natural that he’d share her apartment after. It seemed only natural that I’d be welcome to stay, too. We’d all practically become adults together.

“Just for a couple months,” I’d said.

I’d moved in after graduation, putting my clothes in the drawers under their television, pulling out the couch at night after they closed the bedroom door, folding it back up in the morning when the coffeemaker started up on a timer. My shampoo in a corner of their shower, my razor resting beside Paige’s and Aaron’s, a thin wall between my head and their bed, and the sound of them keeping me up or waking me.

And now reality settled in, cold and blunt – I could not stay there. Who the hell did I think I was, taking an unpaid internship? Who could do things like that? Who believed that the world would just prop them up in the meantime, with nothing but optimism and naïveté? I was falling flat on my face, and this Emmy was here to witness my demise.

She put a hand on my elbow, steadying me. “How much can you afford?”

I thought of the money I had in my bank account. Subtracted food and the T-pass, divided what was left by three months. Winced. Regretted that spring break trip the year earlier, the clothes I’d just put on my credit card for this job. “Three fifty, maybe,” I whispered.