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It’s dark when I get to my building. The front gate’s fixed. It’s been broken since I moved in, two whole years. Now it swings shut behind me and clicks, heavy and solid, like a jail cell.

The light in the third-floor hallway’s out.

I walk down to my door in the dark with my keys in my hand and put my key in the lock.

It won’t go.

I pull it out, try again. Nothing. I look up. There’s a new deadbolt. Shiny brass. Right above the old one.

Then I look down at my keys.

There’s a new key on my ring.

Brass. Shiny. Right between my car key and my mailbox key like it’s been there forever. I never put that on there. My keys haven’t left my bag since I left that hotel.

They were in my bag. On my shoulder. The whole day.

When did he do it?

My hands are shaking so bad it takes me three tries to get it in. It turns like butter. I push the door open.

The apartment’s dark.

“Tash?”

Nothing.

“Priya?”

My phone buzzes, and I almost drop it.

Tasha: hey girl i’m at marcus’s tonight!! priya went home to her mom’s for the weekend. text me!!

So I’m by myself.

I flip the light switch. Nothing. I flip it again. Nothing.

It’s the breaker. It’s an old building. It does that.

I turn on my phone flashlight and go to the kitchen. The fridge is humming, so the power’s on. I open the door and the light comes on, and I stand there with my mouth open.

It’s full. Steaks. Berries. Fancy cheese. Greek yogurt. Juice in little glass bottles. Not the store-brand coffee creamer, the real one I like. And a bag of the big expensive mangoes I always pick up at Ralphs and put back down.

He’s been in my house. In my fridge.

Then I hear it. Or I don’t hear it. The toilet’s not running.

It’s been running for a whole year. I called the landlord eleven times. Now it’s just quiet.

My bedroom door’s closed. I didn’t leave it closed.

I stand in the dark hallway with my little phone flashlight shaking in my hand.

Girl, turn around. Walk out that front door and go to Marcus’s house. Do not be the dumb Black girl in the horror movie. We don’t do that. We leave.

I put my hand on the knob.

It’s my room. That’s my room. He don’t get to have that too.