A Wall Between

Chapter 2

"I think someone lives in the apartment next door," was the first thing Cooper said to Ellie when she got home. He had been laying on her and Abra's bed, staring at the ceiling in silence, for at least two minutes. That was a very long time for him. He hadn't heard a single noise from next door.

"On the side we didn't already know someone lived in, right?"

"Right," Cooper confirmed.

Ellie went to put the milk she'd just bought in the fridge. "Have you considered ghosts?"

"I always consider ghosts, El, but I heard the toilet flush and— nevermind. Toilet ghosts. It might be ghosts."

"It usually is ghosts," Ellie agreed. "Or someone doing maintenance or doing a viewing of the apartment."

"No, I didn't hear the door open or shut. So it's definitely ghosts."

Ellie sat down on the bed next to Cooper. "Man, I wouldn't be surprised if this building was haunted as fuck. There have got to have been like... at least a few overdoses and dead old people. And surely at least one murder."

"Surely."

Cooper checked the planner on his phone again. Or... at least he thought he'd already checked it at least a couple of times today already. His schedule for the day was empty, as he'd thought.

One interesting thing Cooper had noticed was that if you were bad enough at something — like remembering literally anything at all — the compensation strategies you used to continue being a semi-functional person could actually make you superficially better than most people at the thing. At least to outside observers.

Of course, then you'd inevitably run into a situation where you couldn't use your compensation strategy and everyone would be confused about why you were suddenly a complete mess when normally you seemed to function just fine.

But these days that wasn't so much of an issue. Ellie and Abra understood him and he only took temporary work, so nobody had time to build up expectations. Expectations were the worst.

"Do you have any work today?" Ellie asked.

"Uhh..." Cooper said as he checked his planner again.

#

Sasha lay in the corner of his bed, curled up under the blankets and facing the wall as senseless anxiety coursed through him. He hated it. He hated that he had to feel this way even when he knew the thing that had triggered these feelings wasn't even a big deal.

He had been so careful to be quiet, to save his noise making for when everyone next door was out. Today, though, he'd woken up a little later than usual and after listening for a while and hearing nothing he'd concluded that everyone next door had already left.

So he'd gone to the toilet, and no sooner had he flushed than he heard Cooper's voice call out, 'Hello?' through the thin wall that separated their apartments. Sasha had immediately frozen and then retreated, as quietly as he could, to where he lay now.

Ellie was back now as well and she and Cooper were talking, but Sasha couldn't hear what they were saying. That was usually the case, except sometimes they'd get excited when they were playing games or something and talk a bit louder so Sasha could hear snippets of their conversations. That was how he knew their names.

Sasha hoped Cooper had already forgotten what he'd heard. His vicarious enjoyment of their friendship was predicated on them never having the opportunity to form an opinion about him. The second they saw him and either smiled politely and then avoided him or started talking to him like he was a small child because of how weird he was, he could no longer imagine that they were all friends hanging out together.

Reality was an ugly place and Sasha didn't want to live in it.