Chapter 1
12:30 AM, I tried to fall asleep but couldn’t, too many thoughts in my head, or maybe I didn’t have any left and that’s what worried me. The house was silent, no sounds except for Polly’s paws scratching the floor as she reached my bed. She was the only one who stayed with me after everything that had happened; maybe it’s true that dogs are man’s best friends. Even the building was eerily quiet, no noise, no lights on. Everyone was probably already asleep, except for me.
1:30 AM, an hour had passed and still, I hadn’t closed my eyes. This had been happening every night. I got up from the bed and went to the kitchen to drink a glass of water, and as always, Polly followed me. I placed the glass in the dishwasher and went to sit on the couch, turned on the TV, and started watching the umpteenth movie of the day, with my dog still keeping me company. Polly was a 3-year-old Maltese, I had adopted her two years ago after she had been abandoned by her previous family. That’s why she was always with me; she believed she could be abandoned again, maybe she was the only one still afraid of losing me. Like her, I’d always been afraid of abandonment: I feared that one day, all my friends would distance themselves from me, but they reassured me, “Don’t worry, Marisol,” and yet, they all left me, but maybe it was my fault.
3:00 AM, the movie had just ended, but I still wasn’t sleepy. I got up from the couch, walked over to the mirror, and stood there staring at myself. It had been so long since I’d worn makeup, since I’d styled my hair in any particular way, but I always had my long red hair tied in a low ponytail, and my tired face was decorated with dark circles under my eyes, I wasn’t beautiful anymore. I returned to my bed, and Polly followed me.
4:00 AM, I was about to fall asleep when I started hearing noises: it was the voices of the guy who lived next door and his friends. I thought they were coming back from a night out and that once inside, they would be quiet and go to sleep, but it wasn’t like that. The guys next door turned on a stereo and started talking and laughing loudly. I got out of bed, angry, and knocked on the wall that separated my room from theirs. I knocked once, but they didn’t hear me, or maybe they just ignored me. The second time, I knocked harder and yelled “hey” angrily. At that point, the guys turned off the music, and a male voice came closer to the wall to talk to me more clearly: “What’s up?” he asked gruffly.
“It’s 4:00 AM, keep it down!” I replied, and the guys went silent.
I lay back down on my bed and tried to fall asleep, but after a minute, the neighbors turned the music back on at full volume and continued to behave as if I hadn’t asked them to be quiet, or as if it weren’t already past midnight. But at least they were happy, unlike me, locked in my house for 4 months.
