“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 na?veté? 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.
She scrunched up her nose. “You’re not going to like what you can get for three fifty. Listen, I’m bleeding cash over here, waiting for someone not crazy to come along, and I really can’t afford to pay double. Something’s better than nothing. Why don’t you come see it, see if you like it. See if we can work something out.”
“I can’t right now. I have to be at my job.”
She cocked her head to the side.
“It doesn’t pay,” I added.
“Never really understood the purpose of those.”
“It’s to get a paying job. Ironically.”
She gave me the address, and I agreed I’d stop by on my way home. Except I got to work and changed my mind about waiting. I took a half-day, called her at lunch, told her yes right then, and packed up my stuff and carted it over to the basement two-bedroom before Paige or Aaron could return home. Texted Paige so I wouldn’t have to say it to her face. Good news! Found an apartment over in Allston. Friend of a friend. The place is all yours again.
Emmy’s apartment was a basement—there was no getting around it. The windows were long horizontal rectangles up high, where you could see people’s feet walking by. And the walls were cinder blocks sealed with a smooth paint. She had no television. We lived beside a liquor store, open deep into the night. Sometimes, late at night, you could hear people fighting. But the truth was, I’d never felt safer than in those months living with her.