Part 1 (intro)

He woke up, sprawled out on the glossy, hard-wood floor of the hallway. His white cotton tank top was moist, and stuck to his torso like a blanket. In the back room, the dryer shook-back and forth, tumbling boy-jeans and old t-shirts around in circles. He picked his sore and lethargic body up off the floor and questioned whether or not he left his conscience in the laundry room with the rest of his t-shirts. "God, am I still drunk?" He thought, fighting the urge to stick his head in the laundry basket, instead of forcing himself to finish cleaning his apartment.

It was sometime around eight in the evening, late in august. The shriveled up scrap of paper in one of his jean-pockets told him he had a doctors appointment at ten the next day. The dates and appointments couldn't seem to hold his reality together. It felt as if time was only an imaginary idea. "Andy remember where you are" was scribbled on the back of his note, in his handwriting. He tried so hard to blame hangovers for his disorientation, but the only way he could convince himself that it was only the alcohol making him feel this way, was to keep drinking. "It's Sunday, so what if I'm lazin' around, doesn't everyone chill out on Sunday?"  

His cell phone buzzed on the cheap metal table, amplifying the noise so much that it made him cringe. He stood for a moment, amongst the piles of clothes, the cheap posters on the white-washed walls, the plastic linoleum floor, and stared at his cell phone. With an eerie satisfaction he waiting like a predator for his phone to inch closer to the edge of the table. "Buzz...buzz...buzz...buzz." It tipped slightly, and with another vibration it dropped off the table and hit the floor. The sensation he felt was something out of a strange novel, it was queer. He shook himself free of his trance, and picked up his phone. "4 missed calls" It read.

He ignored the last call he missed and instead punched another set of numbers in, tapping his foot and shifting his weight back and forth to play with the creak in the floor. His call rung to a voicemail. "Damn it, Hate voicemails...how am I going to say that-" before he could finish his thought, the voice-machine beeped.

He weakly blurted, "Jaron, hey, it's me, dude, I just needed to tell you something, I'm gonna be out for a few days, man, and I don't know what time your headed home tonight, so If I'm not around for a while, I'm just letting you know I'm not dead." Andy laughed lightly and ended the call, cringing at himself for sounding so weak. He looked around the room, scanning the mess. He felt an urge to pick everything up and throw it out the window.
 
The laundry-room was suffocating his senses, so he picked up a pair of clean looking socks and left the room.
He had everything packed and ready with the exception of what was left in his laundry basket. Andy hated the hell out of packing. "You never know what you need to bring, you never want to bring a lot, and you always bring what you don't need." His father used to tell him when he was younger, because he was always packing for business trips. Tracy never packed for him, his mother was always focused on other priorities. Everyone had a job, everyone had to be responsible for what belonged to them. Andy's room was his room, if he wanted clean clothes, he cleaned them. If his father wanted to eat, he made himself dinner, and if Tracy wanted to spend the night out with her cock-tail-choking restylane-injected friends, it went on her credit-card.

Every-time Andy second-guessed his lifestyle and wondered why he was living in a shitty apartment without a girlfriend or a social life, he thought about his family. Something about the way they lacked connection influenced a disconnect from himself and his emotions. "Well shit, can't change what doesn't exist." He shook himself from another one of his trances, not able to pack his suitcase and think at the same time. He wondered for a moment how girls can think about all of the deepest shit and yet manage to cook and clean and shave their legs at the same time. "Maybe it's because multi-tasking is like... connecting, it's the opposite of separating."

Separating was his skill.

So was piling luggage into a beat-up sedan after half-crashing down the three-story stairwell from his apartment to his car with a bad hangover.

"These are skills men need to have in this day and age..." Part of him wanted to laugh, the other part wanted to lock the laughing part into an asylum and hope for the best. Before he could do either of those things, he was interrupted by another phone call. The same number he'd ignored the last four times it rang. He braced himself to take the call, straightening his posture, lifting his head, and holding his breath. It was dark, and humid, and creepy in the parking lot, but what better place to handle something so difficult?

He took the call.

"Hey, mom. Sorry, I was busy, um, doing laundry and sh*-and such." He corrected himself, "What's up?" Tracy breathed lightly on the opposite line for a brief moment. "Andrew, I hope you're not planning on going anywhere this week."

"Why would you think that, mom?"

"Well, because we've got a situation that needs handling. Also, you rarely do your laundry unless you're planning on bumming out across the country like a drunken dissatisfied unemployed 20 year-old." Andy flinched, "I'm 24, mom. I'm not unemployed, they just took some time off my schedule-" "-Andrew, we've got a situation." She interrupted, uninterested in his defensive statements. He hated when she used that phrase. "We have a situation." It was her under-exaggerated way of telling someone there was a huge problem. In her eyes, there was nothing bigger then what her paycheck could handle, and it could handle a lot of things.

"What's the... situation?"

"You're sister is coming to stay with you."

"Wait, uh, ...what?" His brow furrowed, and he circled around his car, staring up at his apartment window as he waited for an explanation. "No, I know, you don't have a sister, but you do now. I've got a client who's in a situation that's over my head, and there's no way I can do my job without getting my hands dirty. I'd rather get dirty then get them tied. The money involved is-"

"Mom, Okay, Wait, the-fuck are you talking about?"
"I shouldn't be explaining the details over the phone, why don't I stop by tomorrow? I really need to go-"
"Uh Jesus, mom, for once in your life can you bring yourself down a level and actually tell me what you want?"
Andy's frustration was boiling under his self-control. His mom sighed on the other line, "Andy, I need you to take a girl in, just for a few nights. She's in a court-case that we're trying to keep under raps from the press. I can't give you too much of a back-story without breaking policy here, but she's trying to emancipate herself and her father is fighting with all the money he's got. She's valuable goods apparently, her little teenaged footsteps seem to be unwittingly threatening an entire law-firm with security leaks."

"Son of a bitch, mom. I'm not getting involved in your drama at work, especially not espionage or kidnapping a mafia daughter of some fucking shit."

"This isn't drama at work, Andy, this is my work entirely. This is what's currently covering your college debt, and the last few months rent on your apartment. Don't be ridiculous, she's not from the mafia, and this isn't...kidnapping. Look, I'm gonna' have trouble on my hands if I don't handle this. The girl needs a place to stay, end of story. You'll get paid, too."  

"You're still not explaining what's actually going on!" His voice broke, and he started crawling around inside his car, digging under seats and into pockets until he found his box of pall malls.
To further his frustration, his lighter was out of fluid. His mother was rambling in detail, refusing to reveal the big picture. It's not that she wasn't a big-picture thinker, she just didn't have the patience to explain herself.

"Mom, I'm leaving for a few weeks, I've got things I need to do...I can't just take someone in." Andy braced himself to say the words he'd long to spit at her years ago, "It's not my responsibility." He snapped, letting the sarcasm roll off of his tongue like a sweet drink. After years of her saying the very same thing whenever he asked her for advice, he finally got the satisfaction of throwing it back at her. They shared a moment of silence that could blow-out a stereo system.

Finally she broke the ice, her tone calmer, controlled, and on the edge of desperate. It made him feel uncomfortable, and for once, afraid. "Andy...my life is on the line, I'm sorry that I'm asking this of you, I'm sorry for the inconvenience. I know I haven't been able to be a very focused mother, but I've been a mother. Your mother. I wouldn't ask something like this of you if it wasn't an emergency."

He started playing with the door handle of his car, peeling at the small edges of paint underneath the handle. The thought of having someone he didn't know in his apartment, eating his food, using his shower, and worst of all, sharing his TV, made his skin itch. He wondered if she'd steal from him, or if she had money. Andy pictured a teenaged-girl, hair pulled back with one of those stupid head-bands around her small skull, trudging up his back steps in uggs. She'd looked around his apartment and wrinkle her feminine nose, find the place disgusting, and walk out. Or maybe she'd be wearing one of those half-a-shirts, with I-hate-my-parents piercings. Maybe she's this his apartment would make a fun fix-up project. "What's she look like?" He let go of his frustration, now strangely curious. Maybe he'd share his TV if she looked like Sasha Grey.

"Andy...She's a young woman, she looks like a young woman, I know what your thinking and it's not -hold on, I've got another call, just...have the place cleaned up by Monday. And remember, if anyone asks, she's your sister." Andy straightened his posture and pressed his face closer to the phone, his body tense. "Monday?! This Monday? This soon? When? Mom, Mom? Mom answer me!" He exclaimed. A grey streak of feline fur raced across the parking lot, turning on the motion-sensitive porch light of the downstairs neighbor's apartment.

He ran his hands through his messy dark hair, and glanced over his shoulder for a moment, hoping that the neighbors windows were closed. He could see the flashes of a TV through their curtains. No one was outside listening, he knew he was acting paranoid.  No one cared about a stranger coming to stay with him for a few days, and in fact, no one would notice. It was a desolate apartment complex on that poor side of town where no one had the free time to gossip. Andy was thankful that he called Jeran earlier. If his friends thought he was out of town, they wouldn't stop over. No one would know. It would only be for a few days. All he wanted to do was avoid it, leave anyway, pissed off. What he couldn't admit though, was that he was actually scared. Something like deeply creeped out and sickeningly anxious. Tracy never asked him for help before. It wasn't in her nature. It was wrong, it was new, and it didn't make any sense.

He fucking despised anything that didn't make sense.