Chapter 1: The Woman Who Hates Phone Calls
POV: Miranda
The phone on my desk was vibrating with the rhythmic, aggressive persistence of a debt collector who knew exactly how much I had in my checking account. It was a sleek, matte black piece of technology that I usually held in high regard, but right now, it was a demonic artifact designed specifically to dismantle my remaining sanity.
Accept Call? the screen demanded.
I stared at it. I was currently huddled in the corner of my living room, the only place where the Wi-Fi signal was strong enough to support my freelance graphic design business but far enough away from the front door to avoid potential human contact. I was wearing an oversized sweater that had once belonged to a boyfriend I broke up with three years ago—mostly because the sweater was made of a material that felt like a warm, fuzzy hug—and leggings that had seen better days.
“It’s just a phone call, Miranda,” I whispered to the empty room. “It’s a client. A client who wants to pay you money to make their boring company look slightly less boring. This is how you pay for the coffee that keeps you alive. This is the circle of life.”
The phone stopped vibrating. Silence rushed back into the room like a vacuum.
I exhaled, a sound that was half-sigh, half-death rattle. The “ADHD tax” had been particularly brutal this morning. I had started the day with the best of intentions, armed with a color-coded calendar that looked like a rainbow had thrown up on it. By 10:00 AM, I had successfully managed to:
Start a load of laundry that I had immediately forgotten about.
Attempt to make toast, only to get distracted by a sudden, urgent need to reorganize my bookshelf by spine color, resulting in burnt bread that filled the apartment with the scent of charcoal and regret.
Lose my phone for twenty minutes, only to find it under a pile of discarded snack wrappers and a sketchbook I hadn’t opened since 2022.
The phone rang again. It was the same client—a marketing manager named Greg who wore ties that were too tight and breathed heavily into the microphone. I knew it was Greg. I had specifically set his ringtone to the sound of an alarm clock that wouldn’t stop, a subtle psychological torture I inflicted on myself to ensure I never accidentally answered his calls while I was in my “Don’t Talk To Me” zone.
I didn’t answer. I couldn’t. Answering the phone meant committing to words, and my brain was currently playing a chaotic game of Tetris where all the pieces were falling way too fast and none of them fit the slots. If I picked up, I might accidentally say something unprofessional, like, “I’m sorry, I’ve spent the last three hours trying to decide if the font ‘Helvetica’ is morally superior to ‘Arial,’ and I’m currently having an existential crisis.”
Instead, I slid the phone under a couch cushion. Problem solved. The existential crisis would remain private, and I would send a very polite, carefully worded email later about how “my connection was spotty” and “I was in the middle of a deep-dive research phase.”
I stood up, my knees cracking, and walked to the kitchen. The smoke from the toast had finally cleared, but the lingering smell was a reminder of my spectacular incompetence. I poured myself a third cup of coffee—a dark, viscous sludge that served as my primary food group—and looked out the window.
The apartment building I resided in was a brick monstrosity that had seen better decades, but it was cheap, which was the only requirement I had for housing. A moving truck was parked out front. Great. A new neighbor.
Moving in meant noise. It meant potential “Hi, I’m your new neighbor” conversations where I’d have to pretend that I didn’t want to hide in a ventilation duct. It meant the potential for someone to ask to borrow sugar, which was a terrifying prospect because I didn’t actually own any sugar—only packets of Splenda that had expired in 2021.
I watched as a man stepped out of the back of the truck.
He was... a lot.
He was wearing a faded t-shirt that looked like it had been stretched to its absolute limit by shoulders that seemed designed to hold up the ceiling of a cathedral. He had hair the color of warm honey, and he moved with a sort of frantic, joyous energy, hauling a heavy box out of the truck as if it were a bag of cotton candy. He didn’t look like a human being; he looked like a golden retriever that had been granted a wish to become a person for a day.
He paused, looked up, and for a second, I thought he was looking right at my window. I ducked behind the curtain, my heart rate spiking.
“Don’t be weird,” I told myself, clutching my mug. “He’s just a person moving into a space. He has no idea you exist. You are a ghost, a shadow, a whisper in the wind. Just keep it that way.”
My phone, now muffled by the couch cushions, started vibrating again. Greg.
I ignored it, leaning my head against the cold glass of the window. My brain, ever the traitor, immediately began to run through a list of potential disasters. Maybe the new neighbor was a serial killer. Maybe he was a serial killer who also played the drums. Maybe he was a serial killer who played the drums and held loud, late-night parties where everyone was expected to do icebreakers.
I needed to organize my desk. No, I needed to check my email. No, I needed to find my missing scissors.
I turned away from the window, my mind already darting to a new, equally pointless task. The phone kept vibrating. Somewhere in the distance, a siren wailed, and I felt a familiar, sharp spike of anxiety in my chest.
Just be normal, I thought. Just act like a person who answers their phone and eats breakfast and doesn’t hide behind curtains.
But that wasn’t me. I was the person who overthought the grocery list, the person who made plans to be productive and ended up watching a three-hour documentary on the history of paperclips. I was Miranda Poe, and the world was entirely too loud, too fast, and entirely too interested in making me talk on the phone.
I walked back toward the couch, stepping over a pile of reference books. The phone finally went quiet. I let out a breath I hadn’t realized I was holding.
Peace. For now.
I looked at the blank, white screen of my laptop. I had a logo design due in two days, and so far, I had nothing but a series of squiggly lines and a growing pile of coffee-stained paper.
“You can do this,” I whispered. “Just one, tiny, non-phone-related step.”
I sat down, pulled the laptop into my lap, and opened the file.
Immediately, the notification pinged. An email from Greg.
Subject: Checking in!
Hi Miranda, just wanted to see if you had a moment to hop on a quick call?
I closed the laptop. I was done. I needed to go to the kitchen, find the scissors, and maybe, just maybe, see if the new neighbor was actually a serial killer. It felt like a safer hobby than graphic design.
[M's Brain Log]
Current Status: Avoiding human contact at all costs. Successfully avoided: 3 phone calls, 2 texts, and 1 potential interaction with the outside world.
The Problem: The new guy across the hall moves like he’s powered by pure sunshine. It’s suspicious. Nobody is that happy when they’re moving furniture. He’s definitely hiding something. Perhaps a collection of rare, aggressive exotic birds?
Current Hyperfixation: Researching if I can legally claim that I live in a different time zone to avoid answering calls before 2 PM.
ADHD tax: The toast was a sacrifice to the gods of procrastination. I still have no idea where my scissors are, but I did find a three-year-old receipt for a burrito I really enjoyed. It’s a net positive.
