My sister kept breaking into my apartment like she owned it.
She read my mail, used my things, and went through my drawers—twenty-three times in six months. I asked her to stop. She laughed and said, “You’re overreacting.” So I moved out quietly.
A week later, the alarm went off at 3 a.m. That’s when everything changed.
The first time I realized my apartment in Boston didn’t really belong to me, it wasn’t because I saw a stranger in the hallway or heard footsteps behind my door. It was smaller than that—quieter, and somehow worse. I came home to a lamp glowing that I knew I had turned off. The air smelled like someone else’s shampoo, sweet and floral, clinging to the steam still trapped in the bathroom mirror. My throw blanket was folded the way my mom folds blankets—tight corners, perfect edges—as if the room itself had been corrected while I was gone.
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