Chapter 3
The next morning, I sat down to work and realized my sketches were gone.
Worse, my USB drive—my lifeblood, my entire career archive—was missing.
“Hey, Chloe, did you clean my room yesterday?”
She walked past with a toothbrush hanging out of her mouth. “You’re welcome.”
“I wasn’t thanking you yet. Did you see some papers on my desk?”
“Threw them out.”
Holy hell.
I had never seen someone violate privacy and still manage to act self-righteous about it.
“Why didn’t you ask me before trashing my stuff?”
“It was drawings of demons and ghosts,” she said, turning to rinse her mouth. “It creeped me out.”
“I’m an occult horror blogger,” I said. “I don’t draw rainbows. I draw ghosts.”
She wiped toothpaste from the corner of her lip and turned back around.
“Okay, forget the papers. Did you see my flash drive?”
“Nope.”
“You were the only one in my room yesterday. If you didn’t see it, who did?”
She pushed past me and grabbed her bag. “I’m late for work. It’s just a stupid flash drive. I’ll buy you a new one.”
“It’s not about the drive. I have fifty gigs of data on there. Work files.”
“Research,” she said flatly.
“Yes. Research. Work. I don’t know. I didn’t touch it. Stop blocking me.”
Then she was gone, the security door slamming hard enough to shake dust loose from the ceiling.
My heart shattered right along with it.
She got home around eight that night and tossed a brand-new external hard drive at me.
“This one has more storage,” she said. “Bigger. Harder to lose.”
“It’s not about the size,” I said, throwing it onto the couch. “We need to talk.”
She tossed her bag into her room, didn’t even take off her coat, and collapsed onto the sofa.
“I won’t hold the drive against you,” I said. “But just because I’m letting it go doesn’t mean you were right.”
She crossed her arms. “Fine.”
“From today on, we define private zones and public zones.”
That got her attention.
We agreed on the living room, bathroom, and kitchen as public. Bedrooms were private. The balcony became her private zone because she needed somewhere to dry her laundry, and her room was basically a cave where nothing ever dried.
In exchange, she agreed to cover the utilities.
Deal made.
Then she marched into her room and started sobbing loudly.
I stood outside her door rubbing the bridge of my nose, thinking, I didn’t even bully her, right?