"So, what did she say?"

Quinn asks as she sits at the foot of his bed. Clive leaned up against the headboard. His head lowered as his thumbnails scraped against one another.

"What was she supposed to say? I freaked out. She did her best. I mean, I sounded crazy no matter what. I am losing control, and now the whole thing is obvious to her. To me, to everyone, really. I lose these massive chunks of time and somehow forget how I go from place to place. Conversations start from the middle. Days begin from the end," Clive says as he tries to pick his head up as he speaks.

"Tell me, you don't think this sounds paranoid to you? Escalating it to make yourself more anxious and scared than you would have been normally? What makes more sense to you? You could easily have your days bleed into each other because so much of your day is based on routine. You never leave this house, so maybe you occasionally forget how you get from moment to moment. So when you finally wake up, in these interactions, maybe what frightens you is how much you live on autopilot?"

Quinn tries to smile, to ease him through the topic. Clive looks up at the ceiling. He can see the leftover glue from his old glow-in-the-dark stickies above him. The harsh light bothers him, hit by the sun from the window to his left.

"I-"

Clive hesitates before throwing the towel completely.

"Wish it were that easy," he says as he slides further into the covers.

~

Over the next few days, Clive tries to be more present. He starts to draw more. However, Clive finds himself fixating on a single subject. Falling into a familiar pattern, he has nailed down the schedule for the girl next door. He knows when she returns from school and how many times a night she steps out onto her porch.

Thrusting the lead back and forth from his page. Clive looks back at her, sitting there on her porch. The girl across the street is oblivious to Clive. Or at least maybe she is not bothered enough to care. A passing rush of guilt and shame crawls up his spine. He softly brushes his pencil against the page. Trying to accurately convey the smoke from the cigarette the girl was smoking on her porch. She catches his gaze again. This time, Clive presses on, continuing with his drawing. She begins speaking to someone in the car parked right outside her house. Clive thinks back and remembers what she called him, Harper.

Clive sets his sketchpad down. His eyes feel heavy, burdened by his lack of sleep. Clive had fought to minimize the hours he spent in slumber. He hoped that the more time he spent consciously, the more likely he could control his perception. Still, even as his eyelids droop forcibly into submission, Clive daydreams of the stranger from across the way. Too familiar with his own patterns, Clive hopes some sleep will give him just enough separation to gauge how real she is.

He sinks into his bed, yet his mind continues to race. The silence in the room is interrupted by creaking pressure across his floorboards. Clive buries his head under his covers, forcing his eyelids into a tighter seal. The sounds become louder, a shifting presence in his room.

Go away.

Clive thinks to himself as he tries to calm his panic.

Please. Clive repeated the words in thought. Mouthing them to negate the effect the noise had on his sleep.

Please.

Please. It softened.

Please.

Please. It becomes a song.

Ple-

~

A loud smacking noise wakes Clive from his sleep. He shifts his position in bed to face the bedroom window. Thum. An object slammed against his window. He pulled himself from the forceful embrace of his covers and slid himself across the surface of his bed. He sat at the edge and wiped the crust from his eyes. He slowly approached the glass and flinched from the impact, Thum. Clive looked over and saw a rock sitting by the window sill. He looked closer and saw someone standing outside. Clive pulled the screen open and stuck his head out to greet them.

"Hey," she said as she stumbled in her step, placing the lit cigarette in her mouth. Clive can barely make her out. Most of the lights were off on the houses around the block. Clive awkwardly waves his hand and smiles as if he got caught with his hand in the cookie jar.

"Hey, so do you do this whole watch-from-afar thing with all your neighbors or just me? If you wanted to say hi, all you had to do was come down. I promise not one to bite."

Her body swayed back and forth. Clive could tell by how hard she fought to avoid slurring that she had a few drinks.

"I can't go down," Clive responds sheepishly, trying to avoid a commotion.

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"What do you mean you can't?" she asks as she tries to lean and finds nothing to support her weight.

"I physically cannot leave my house," Clive responds.

"You're kinda old to be grounded aren't you?" she teases. "I haven't seen you in school. I haven't seen you anywhere, actually. Which begs the question, were you ever gonna say hi?"

"I'm sorry," Clive retorts, retreating further from the opening. He begins to shrink in size relative to the window. Standing on the large platform, an ant compared to his neighbor.

"I don't want you to apologize, I'm just curious."

She looks up at Clive. She forcefully pulls another drag from her cigarette, waiting for his explanation.

"I'm agoraphobic," Clive relents.

"Like you can't leave your house?" she responds, tilting her head.

"Like, I get extremely anxious leaving my comfort zone to the point of panic. So, in a way, yes."

She smiles at his answer and shuffles around the house, looking for something. Her expression seemed determined as she tugged with both arms on the fencing beside the house.

"What are you doing?" Clive asks as he hears her messing with the trash cans out of sight.

"What do you think I'm doing? I'm- uh- Trying to find a way to climb," she says as she grunts from her exertion.

"What! No, get down. You are gonna hurt yourself." Clive angrily responds in a loud whisper.

"Shhh, don't worry, I got this," Clive can hear excitement and stifled laughter in her voice.

"Seriously, you are gonna fall," Clive remarks.

"Listen, princess, this isn't the first time I've climbed some castle walls. Just be quiet and let me concentrate." The rattling sounds of trash cans toppling over cause Clive to get alarmed. He can hear shuffling on the part of the roofing attached to the second floor. The scraping sounds of her shoes trying to get a grip on the roofing and the thud from her body rolling onto the platform. Her head quickly pops out from the side of the window, a smile covering a large part of her face.

"Your majesty," She says, laughing a little between each deep breath.

"Kind of a workout, not gonna lie to you. Need to work on my upper arm strength a little," she says as she swings her arms wildly in the air, trying to shake off the burn. She leans down and sits just outside his view along the other side of his bedroom walls. Her hair is the only thing that seems clearly visible to him.

"If you don't mind, I'm gonna have a seat. I think I worked out enough for today," A bit of silence follows as they both collect themselves.

"I wanted to apologize for the other night," she says. "You know, when we were moving in. We made a lot of noise, mostly me. I saw that we kinda woke you up. I was hoping to catch you outside one of these days. Obviously, that didn't happen. So here we are," she says, chuckling to herself.

"You don't have to apologize. If anything, I'm sorry if I've been kinda nosy. I didn't mean to be a creep about it," Clive responds as he leans into the window sill with his elbows to get closer.

"I'd be lying if I said it wasn't a little weird, but with the whole agoraphobia thing, it kinda makes more sense now."

"Thanks, so how do you like the neighborhood?" Clive asks. She laughs a bit and sighs before answering.

"My dad loves it. It is exactly what he wanted. A nice house in the suburbs. What could scream more suburbs than a house in a cul-de-sac."

"You don't seem too thrilled," Clive responds.

"It's a house. It's got more room for my little sister. Mostly, I think he just wanted to commemorate his promotion. So, Agoraphobia, how is that?"

"Uh, I'm supposed to have a crippling fear of leaving this house," Clive responds.

"You don't?" She answers.

"Not really, I'm getting tired of these walls."

"So, what you're saying is, you don't believe you're agoraphobic?" she asks.

"I don't know, I'm frustrated. With both my lack of progress and the fact that most of my diagnosis feels foreign to the way I feel about the outside world. I just feel trapped," Clive responds.

"Have you tried leaving?" she asks, turning her head sideways to get a look at his expression.

"It's been a while since I tried," Clive responds.

"Then maybe you should, right?"

"Yeah, maybe I should," Clive responds.

"Well, I think that's my cue, It was nice meeting you uh-" She responds as she pulls herself up from her seat. Her mind blanks, realizing they never exchanged names.

"Clive," he responds.

"It was nice meeting you, Clive." She says as she collects herself and her things from the roof.

"You too-" Clive responds, waiting for her name.

"Margo."

"Nice to meet you, Margo."

"Don't be a stranger," she says as she readies herself to climb down.

"You sure you're gonna be okay to get down?" Clive asks with genuine concern.

"Yeah, yeah. Should be a piece of cake compared to climbing up."

She leans over the edge to look for ways to drop. Clive turns around to switch off his lights and hears a thud as she hits the ground.

"See, it wasn't so bad! Much easier than climbing up," she says. Clive looks down to see her brushing herself off after her landing.

~

"Everything alright?" His father's gruff voice penetrates his train of thought. The plate rattles slightly on the table after just having landed. Eggs, bacon, a glass of orange juice, and the signs that his father was leaving for his day.

"Yeah, I'm fine. Sorry I just got lost in thought," Clive responded.

"You've been doing that a lot recently. I'm just worried about you. Feels like you're drifting off somewhere half the time. I have no idea where you're going," his father retorts as he grabs his coat from the rack and slides his arms through the sleeves.

"Me? I'm not going anywhere. Where are you going?" Clive jokingly asks.

"Gotta go to work early. It might be a long day. I don't expect to be home til late. Are you going to be okay with me going?" His father asks as he grabs his car keys from the little bowl by the shoe rack in the foyer.

"Aren't I always? Don't worry Dad, I'm not going anywhere, remember? Where am I going to go?"

"Right, I'll see you later. Have a good day." He shuts the door behind him. Clive stands there, staring at the closed door. He thinks back on the conversation he had with Margo. Looks back at the table, at his plate. He sits and takes a few bites of his sandwich, but the door is too big of a distraction now to finish.

Maybe you should try.

Clive pulls the chair from the table and stands up. He walks carefully toward the door. His hand touches the cold exterior of the doorknob. He begins to turn it slowly. As he pulls the door, the bright light from outside blinds him to its details. Then nothing. Swallowed into a dark nothing. He can see nothing. The sound is so removed that it sounds like a hum. A deep hum. Underwater. Drifting, floating, he can hear a voice but only faintly. It sounds like a thing swallowing water as it speaks. A yell, but so absorbed it barely registers as a whisper.

No.

Then, a haunting and prolonged yell follows. Clive can hear the water overtaking its lungs as it bellows out this cry. Bubbling intermittently throughout its forced pronunciation. He hears it clearly, but not as a yell. They're all drowning together.

Waaaaaaaaake uuuuuuuuuup!