My neighbor shouldn’t live on his own. Not once in the four weeks since I moved in, have I seen a soul enter his apartment—no friend, no family, no girl—and yet, the boy cannot be older than seventeen.

Grey skin, overcast eyes, an odd edge to his shadow. We never talk.

When I leave for work, straight in my stiff collar and high heels, I feel him stare at me from his dirty window. I come home after dark to his breathing under the door and the smell of old carpeting. With the languor of winter’s dreamless slumber, I press the key into my lock, lingering in the unheated corridor for a bite of his voice. I get nothing.

***

One Friday night, after a tall, lonely glass of coke on the rocks, I lose it.

“Hey you, in there,” I call out, mouth to the wall. “I’m new here. Care to say hi?”

No answers but a blank breath, and by my thigh, a spot of tepid plaster where on the other side he lays his cheek.

I startle at my own imaginings and let out a curse.

What is there here but me, a weekend of too many empty hours and sugar to rot my teeth?

Nothing, indeed. Under my palm the wall is so cool, wetness coats the length of my fingers. I step back.

Fresh out of college, I long to be a girl a while further, a somewhat child, close to what the boy is. Truth is, I should have gone home after all, stuck with mom and dad and the soul-numbing local job. Except I’m still holding out for something out here—the gold, the fleece, the prince, the big opportunity, who knows?—something beyond the black pair of overpriced pumps and sullen pencil skirt that bind me into this pretense that I am worth minding. Isn’t that what you’re supposed to do for yourself—go get the world, hold out, be worth minding—before you skitter back home with your tail between your legs?

I bet the boy’s in college, getting the world, or the next best thing.

***

Sunday morning, I knock.

“Hey kid, wanna have lunch with me?”

You can come out, I don’t bite.

For my troubles, I get shushed footsteps padding away from me.

At noon, I leave steaming beet soup in front of his door with a quick, quiet rap. Seven days it remains there, as I watch for him to pick it up, clean it out, the bright stew, garnet as wine, curdled cold and lumpy.

By next Sunday, the forgotten food has grown a hairy coat of green and white, a delicate doormat at his shut door.

***

Days pass; I find myself pondering his unnatural aloneness as I fall asleep in my single bed, nails bothering white blisters off the wall. Why doesn’t he answer? Why is he watching me? How does he spend his days? I’ve had a belly full of ice cubes since I moved in.

One night, I am on the balcony, having a smoke, stalking the moon’s slow rise, fingers croaky in the December air, when I hear it: a milky whisper, unnerving as the damp look that licks my neck every morning.

“Cold,” he says.

For a stretch, I think I’m dreaming, the texture of his voice grainy in my ears next to my own thoughts. Is someone missing me at home? Where are all the friends you’re supposed to make in college? Did sweet Danny Frost from middle school get married? What about the dude who promised he’d French kiss me if by thirty no one else had?

The tip of my tongue meets the bitter end of the cigarette and curls away.

“It’s going to snow,” I say.

I don’t see him across the black chasm between our balconies but there’s no one else.

“I wish I could see it,” he says. Or maybe that’s not what he says, only what I hear. It doesn’t matter: he doesn’t care to be reached.

Still, my mind probes the darkness for him.

“You will, soon.”

The snow will be down before dawn.

“So much cold,” I hear once more.

***

Next morning, the snow starts as I walk out. Watching his empty window, waiting, I stick my tongue out and catch a shaving of falling ice. He doesn’t show.

I wonder who he is. A lost kid. A ghost in a stony city. A kin.

***

On my way home, I grab ice cream for two. Cold on cold. I’m about to knock when his door sways open an inch or two.

“Hey there, kiddo? Everything OK?”

I push in, no warmth puffing out of his place, no light either.

Inside, his apartment mirrors mine in all things but furniture. The sharp, straight lines of white walls cocoon a small expanse of nothing much but dusty air. No heater, no lightbulbs dangling from lonely ceiling wires, no boy. A tiny box of absence.

And too much ice for one person.

***

Outside, the snow blankets everything. Ice on ice, the extra chill gloved in bittersweet quietness. Sugar rots my teeth; I fall asleep, lips to the wall, holding out for his soft breath—my too-young, grey shadow, my kin. The boy no one misses.

Let me hold out.

 

Divya Kernan (she/her) is a biracial and neurodivergent speculative fiction writer, a French native and an alumna of the Short Story Incubator at GrubStreet, Boston. Her work has appeared in Baffling Magazine. You can find her on Bluesky: @divyakernan.bsky.social.