John swears he feels someone watching him. When he wakes up, he's alone, but his skin feels clammy, and he has trouble falling back asleep.
Every time he closes his eyes, he sees those pale blue eyes—watching, watching, watching.
"Did you come in my room last night?" John asks Mike the next morning, although he knows it wasn't Mike's eyes he felt and saw.
Mike is fixing tea. "Oh, yeah, my pen ran outta ink. I borrowed one of yours."
John glares at the floor.
On Monday night, it snows, and by Tuesday morning, the ground is covered. John's and Mike's morning classes are cancelled. They spend the time outside with a few of the other students whose lectures were called off. It's beginning to snow again. John brushes the flakes from the blonde girl's hair, and she smiles. "Your shoelace isn't untied this time," she says, then offers her hand to John. "Mary."
John takes it. "John."
Mike throws a snowball at John's head. John and Mary team up, and end up winning when Mike is unable to see through his glasses. Mary throws her arms around John, and John hesitantly hugs her back.
John spends the rest of the day inside. As Mike busies himself with making them hot chocolate, John tries to weasel his way into getting some answers about the people who live in the flat at the end of the hall.
"Have you seen them at all?" John asks Molly, one of his biology classmates.
Molly twirls the frilly ends of her scarf with a finger. "No, I didn't even know we had new neighbors."
"I think I've seen that girl around," Mary says, shrugging. "She didn't look… okay."
Mike returns, passing out mugs of hot chocolate. "John thinks the man is abusing the poor girl."
John scowls and throws Mike a betrayed look. He grabs his mug and takes a big drink, ignoring the way it burns on the way down his throat.
Molly, fingers still twisted in the ends of her scarf, has her attention on the door at the end of the hall. At their spot on the floor by John and Mike's unit, they're in clear view of whoever decides to walk out. Molly's lips press together. "Maybe we shouldn't talk about them? I think they can hear us."
Mary stands, dusting herself off with a hand. "Let's move, then."
They're sitting in front of Mary's room now. The door is locked, and Mary forgot her key. "I'm sure Janine will be back any minute. Where were we? Oh, that's right, abuse." She winks at John. John wishes he could shrink three sizes and disappear in the confinements of his coat.
"John reckons he's not letting her go anywhere he doesn't allow," Mike says, "and he might not be letting her eat."
"I know what I heard, and I know what I saw." John holds out a finger. "I can hear them from my bedroom—the walls are thin—and he was getting upset with her for, for leaving the building for that drugs bust. And, and then, when I offered her some food a few nights after that, she got really… Well, she said she couldn't eat it, and then she just leaps up and dashes off." John is holding up two fingers, but quickly drops them when he runs out of evidence. "It's all very odd."
Everybody agrees. They all drink in silence.
"You never thank me."
"Thank you for keeping me alive."
John looks at the ceiling and tries to think of a reason behind this conversation, other than the abuse route.
After ten minutes of trying to fabricate, John goes back to sleep.
"Wait, he told her that?"
John rubs his eyes with the heels of his palms. "Yeah, what do you s'pose it could mean? Other than the whole—"
"Abusing-Her-Thing? No idea."
John sighs.
John meets Mary's roommate, Janine, on Friday night. It's late, pushing midnight, and she is tipsy and the happiest person John's ever met. "Well, don't you look like a doll?!" She claps her hands and presses a loud kiss to John's cheek. With laughter edging her voice, she claps again. "You smell like a peach, too! Here, here… I'll get you something to drink."
Despite being the first to get wasted, Janine is the last to pass out. She's staying strong, keeping track of everybody like a mother hen. Her heels click against the ground when she walks by John, who is lounging on the sofa with an arm tossed over his eyes. "Oi," she whispers. As John peels away his arm, Janine is crouched beside him, setting a Rubik's Cube in his outstretched palm. "I heard you gotta figure out the corner bits first." She winks and leaves John to reapply her lip gloss.
John blinks, stuffs the toy in his coat pocket, and goes back to sleep.
He's out of it until Sunday night, and by then, Mike has dragged John back to their place, and has already gone out himself. Mike didn't write a note, so John can only assume he won't be gone for long. Rather than staying in bed and recovering some more, as Mike surely thinks he should do, John laces his shoes and goes outside. It's cold, but that's expected. John pulls up his coat collar and shoves his hands into his pockets. Before he can find a pair of gloves, he touches something cool, something sleek, and then he remembers the bloody Rubik's Cube from the night before. He sits on a picnic table and twists and turns the toy.
Legs swinging, John manages to get one side all one color—yellow. He remembers having one of these when he was a child, but he never was able to get any further than this. Frustrated, John goes to put the cube back into his coat. As he turns to shove the object inside his pocket, he meets blue eyes—the girl. She takes the seat next to John, her legs swinging, as well. The snow on the ground is no more disturbed than before, when John trekked through, so John wonders what time she arrived. He wants to assume she just appeared, but she has a thin layer of snow already on her frame and in her hair, which is better maintained today. It's swept behind and off her face, brushed and washed. She is wearing new clothes tonight—a gray turtleneck and blue jeans. "Do I smell better?" she asks. In her attempt at trying to tidy herself, she forgets shoes. Her bare toes wiggle.
Tentatively, John leans in, gives her a sniff. "Yeah, much better." Though, there's something else, hidden underneath all that clothing—almost like iron. John goes back to pushing the Rubik's Cube back into his coat, but her eyes fall to it, and he draws it out again, holding it toward her. "It's a Rubik's Cube," he says when she screws up her face in befuddlement. "Have you ever played with one?"
She stares at it, at the one side John managed to complete. "No, how do you play with one?"
"Well, you get all the sides one color. I, uh, heard you gotta do the corner bits first." John swipes his tongue over his lips and holds out the toy for her to take. "Here, you can try."
It feels like a decade passes before she reaches over and wraps her fingers around the cube. She holds it in one hand, holds it in two. It creaks and groans as she turns it. John can tell it's one of the knock-offs, then, not one of the brand-name Rubik's Cubes. Her nails are dirty, black embedded underneath. John quickly looks away, down at their legs. He stops swinging his, but she is still going. "You can, uh, keep that," John says, "if you want. I mean, it isn't really mine, but I think it is, but it doesn't matter. You can keep it, if you want." He's licking his lips again, his cheeks pink from stumbling over his words.
"I don't know," she says, her voice thick with that accent John is still unable to decipher. "When do you want it back?"
John blinks. "I don't care. Um, tomorrow?" She seems smart. If he is right about that man keeping her from going wherever and whenever she wants, then she should be able to solve the puzzle fairly quick.
She completes a side. Her fingers tap against it in an arrhythmic manner. "I may not be here tomorrow."
John furrows his brow. "The day after tomorrow."
"I may not be here the day after tomorrow."
"Whenever you want, then," John says, at a loss for words. Her situation might be worse than he once thought. A light from the apartments behind them turns on, causing John's attention to turn toward it. When he realizes the light is from the room at the end of the fourth story, John's face pales; and when he figures out the silhouette pushing back what seems to be a curtain is the man, John jumps from the table, much to the girl's dismay. She stares at him, frowning, her fingertips still dancing across the edges of the toy without looking at them. "I think, uh, I think you're needed inside." Why is he so scared? Why is he shaking? John watches her.
She rotates and sees what John sees. Soon, the man moves, the cover ghosting back over the window and exiling all light. Her shoulders drop. John can read reluctance in her posture. "Walk me back," she says, and she looks at John, and John finds it difficult to reject her.
The door to her unit is already open by the time they reach the fourth floor. The man is standing outside the door, arms rigid at his sides. He's wearing another suit, looking like he has somewhere to be that isn't here. He doesn't move until the girl sweeps through the door, head down, not meeting his eye. The man says, "You can come in," before he catches the sight of the Rubik's Cube in her hands, but if he disapproves, he is silent about it. Instead, he's thanking John. His face is full of disdain, as if the act of thanking someone gives him great pain.
"No problem," John says, narrowing his eyes.
Getting the impression a simple "thank you" will not suffice, the man continues, "My brother tends to… attract the company of dangerous men. I am grateful you are not one of them… on first impression." And then, he's walking back inside the unit, John absently following him, eyes automatically glued to the curtain he saw the man stand at earlier. However, it isn't a curtain; it's newspaper. The newspaper on the floor, from before, is now spread across the walls, the windows, in some form of wallpaper. John sees the girl—the boy?—sitting on the floor, in front of the refrigerator, playing with the Rubik's Cube, preoccupied, smiling.
The man closes the door in John's face.
"She's a boy," John says the following morning. "The man she—he—lives with called her—him—'my brother'. That must mean she—he—is a boy, right?"
Mike walks back into his room.