Chapter 24: Chapter 24

"This is your apartment?"

I grab a dirty T-shirt off the couch and stuff it behind a cushion. "Yes."

"Someone actually lives here?"

"Of course someone actually lives here. I live here! What's wrong with my apartment?" I scan my apartment, trying to see it through Jarrod's eyes. It's a small studio. A double bed is pushed up against the wall with a poster of Einstein as its headboard. The kitchenette is clean and tidy, but the table and two chairs next to it are covered in dirty cereal bowls and coffee mugs.

Most of the studio is filled up by my desk, a giant wood plank perched on cinder blocks. The desk is piled high with papers and reference books. Somewhere in the mess is my laptop. There's nothing out of the ordinary. It's a typical apartment of any Ph.D. student.

"It's just that it doesn't seem like an actual apartment. It looks like a broom closet," Jarrod says.

"I don't know what you're talking about. I don't even own a broom."