The Pool of Lost Things

Miranda stood at the edge of the apartment complex pool at 2 AM, clutching a half-eaten papaya she'd stolen from the communal kitchen. The chlorine smell reminded her of summer camp, back when the worst thing that could happen was a skinned knee and your mother finding out you'd smoked behind the boathouse.

The water reflected the moon like a bruised eye. She should be sleeping. Instead, she was here, because she'd watched her colleague Tom—fox-faced, sharp-tongued Tom who'd strategically positioned himself for the promotion she'd been working toward for three years—walk out with her boss's daughter at the holiday party. And somehow, in her gutted state, she'd ended up at the pool with a piece of tropical fruit rotting in her hand.

"You're going to eat that?" a voice said from the shadows.

Her neighbor's cat—a ragged orange thing that spent its days judging everyone from the balcony—sat beside a man she'd never seen before. He was maybe thirty-five, with zombie-pale skin and dark circles that suggested he'd been chewing through life instead of living it.

"It's probably going to kill me," she said. "And honestly? That seems fine."

"My mother loved papaya," he said, sitting on the lounge chair beside her. "She died in March."

"I'm sorry."

"Don't be. She was a fox like Tom—sounds like you know a Tom." He gestured to the empty chair. "What did your Tom do?"

"Everything I was supposed to do. Better."

The cat jumped onto her lap, purring like a small engine. She stroked its fur, thinking about how easily she'd become someone else's backup plan, how thirty years of careful ambition had dissolved into standing poolside at 2 AM with a stranger's neighbor's cat.

"We're all zombies," he said, reading her mind. "Walking around like our lives haven't already happened to someone else."

She threw the papaya into the pool. It made a small splash, then sank.

"Want to get coffee tomorrow?" he asked.

"Yes," she said, surprising herself. "Yes, I do."

The cat purred louder. Behind them, something rustled in the darkness—maybe a fox, maybe just the wind. For the first time in months, Miranda didn't feel like she was already dead.