I was 14 when I met the man in the room.

It was the summer my mom and I moved from my farm upstate to New York City.

After the divorce, my dad fought to keep his house, so we had to move into the spare bedroom of my grandma's apartment.

It was a musky building tucked into a neighborhood at the northern tip of Manhattan, somewhere between Harlem and Washington Heights.

It was a hundred floor of bodies, piled on bodies, of dark spaces and strange sounds.

On the night after we moved in there was one particular sound that really bothered me.

It sounded like a party, people laughing and yelling, having a great time.

My mom was asleep in the twin bed we shared, so I was laying on the floor, staring at the

ceiling.

After two months of a horrible divorce and two days of moving boxes, all I wanted was to sleep, but I couldn't.

The sound seemed to get louder throughout the night.

When it hit midnight, I had enough. As I walked up the

stairs, it quickly became clear that the sounds were coming from the apartment at the

end of the hallway. I could see a faint light spill out from

under the crack. All the other apartments were dark, asleep. I don't know how the other neighbors

didn't complain. As I walked closer, the sound grew

louder and louder like everyone's voice was running through a megaphone

directly into my head. When I knocked I could hear the sounds cut out one by one as if they had been pulled from the atmosphere.

As the laughter dwindled down to silence, I heard footsteps walking up to the door.

As the doenob turned, a friend said, I heard footsteps walking up to the door.

As the doenob turned, a feeling of regret sank deep into my stomach.

What was I going to say?

...