Lock Every Door

Never take anything you haven’t earned, my father used to say. You always end up paying for it one way or another.

Every so often, life offers you a reset button. When it does, you need to press it as hard as you can.

One time is an anomaly. Two times is a coincidence. Three times is proof.

Because here’s the thing about being poor—most people don’t understand it unless they’ve been there themselves. They don’t know what a fragile balancing act it is to stay afloat and that if, God forbid, you momentarily slip underwater, how hard it is to resurface.

She's fascinating in the same way tornadoes are fascinating. You want to see how much they're going to spin.

I try to pretend I'm not as lonely as I feel.

That can be said of certain places. The closer you get to them, the uglier they become.

I'm starting to think I don't belong anywhere. That it's my lot in life to occupy limbo al my own.

We grow up expecting our parents to live forever until, one day, they’re suddenly gone.

That girl is gone now, replaced by someone wiser and harder but no less hopeful.

Because that's how I feel. Like I'm perched on the edge of a great chasm, waiting for the slightest breeze to shove me screaming into it.

The elevator resembles a birdcage. The tall, ornate kind - all thin bars and gilded exterior. I even think of birds as I step inside. Exotic and bright and lush. Everything I'm not.

I'm the kind of girl you don't want to fuck with.

That’s another thing most people don’t understand—how quick others are to judge. And make assumptions. And presume your financial predicament is the result of stupidity, laziness, years of bad choices.

Think about the people who come here," Nick says. "Writers and artists, scientists and captains of industry. Think of all they give to the world. Now think of yourself, Jules. What are you? What do you offer? Nothing.

I take a deep breath, trying to collect my thoughts. But they’re an unruly, unreliable bunch. My skull feels like a snow globe recently shaken, swirling with important bits of information that have yet to land. And I can’t grasp

God, the worry. It's always there. A loud hum buzzing through every waking thought. Things have gotten so bleak that I've recently started wondering how far I have left to fall before hitting bottom and what I'll do if I ever reach that point.

Why do boys totally suck? I'm starting to think it might be ingrained in them. Like, they're taught at a young age that they can be assholes because most women will let them get away with it.

Think. That's what will get me out of this mess. Not panicking. Panic only breeds more panic.

You strike me as a gentle soul," she says. I've never thought of myself as gentle. Fragile is more like it. Prone to bruising.

I'm sure someone would say it's my own damn fault. That it was my responsibility to build an emergency fund. At least three months' salary, the experts say. I would love to backhand whoever came up with that number. They clearly never had a job with take-home pay that barely covers rent, food, and utilities. Because here's the thing about being poor-most people don't understand it unless they've been there themselves.

With wealth comes power. Power earns you importance. And the truly important people in the world deserve to live longer than those beneath them. That's especially true as we face another epidemic.

If I feel sadness, it's the same simmering grief I always experience. The kind of pain I long ago learned to love with.

They’ve never waited for their paycheck to be directly deposited at the stroke of midnight because their wallet is empty and their credit cards are maxed and they desperately need to pay for gas. And food. And a prescription that’s gone unfilled for an entire week.

It's a beautiful afternoon. Mid-sixties, sunny and clear. It reminds me of my childhood. Of pumpkins and piles of leaves and trick-or-treating.

But fiction can be an escape, which is why we need idealized versions of New York City. It balances out the crowded, gritty, heartbreaking real thing.

Instead of making a right, I go left, accidentally taking a few steps toward a door at the end of the hallway. It’s wider than the others, locked in place with a deadbolt.

That is, after all, what I’m being paid to do. Live there. Occupy the place. Breathe life into it, as Leslie put it during that surreal interview.