The door creaked open. Harsh white light from the hallway spilled over the neatly labeled shelves: printer toner, badge holders, spare campaign umbrellas. I was sitting cross-legged on the floor in the narrow gap between two filing cabinets, my tablet balanced on my knees, my face feeling contorted and sore. My eyes were wet and saline water was dripping down my face.
I said it too fast: “Shut up, I was not crying.”
Silhouetted in the doorway, Yao said “Didn't say you were.”
He stepped inside, letting the door sigh shut behind him. He held a small cardboard box of badge clips under one arm. The closet felt warmer than it should. Quiet. Sheltered. I closed the Notes app and turned off the screen.
Otherwise I didn't move.
“it's so stupid,” I said, the words just coming out. “I'm not even upset about him. I don't care about Javier. I knew exactly what is was. I didn't even like him that much. It's the fallout. The fucking fallout. The gossip. The eyes watching me. Nicole won't even look me in the eye. The weird silences around the office when I enter a room.”
I rubbed angrily at the wetness on my face.
I has been crying.
“Like I dropped a smoke grenade and walked away not noticing it went off.”
Yao said down across from me, setting the box of lanyards down beside him. “You did notice,” he said, “that’s why you’re in here.
I exhaled. The tablet’s screen has gone dark.
“It felt like I was doing fine,” I said, “Not normal, but... not broken. And now I feel like everyone saw through it. Like you were all being polite and waiting for the moment I slipped, and now you’re relieved because it finally happened.”
Yao looked at me. I resisted the urge to look away, the same flinch from direct eye contact I've had since I can remember.
“You want a data point?” he asked.
I didn't answer.
“This isn't MacArthur’s first run for an office,” Yao said. “last time, a junior policy advisor got caught sleeping with a married Congresswoman. During the campaign. Still got hired by a lobbying firm after. Last year, one of the fundraising team members sexted a donor by mistake. Didn’t lose her job.”
“Were any of those people me?” I asked.
No,” Yao said, shaking his head. “They were less self-aware and a lot more careless. But the point is—it’s a human mess, not a Susan-shaped catastrophe.”
I pressed me hand to my temple. Go away stupid feelings, I thought, just go.
“I didn’t even like him. He sat down next to me. He said some things. And I thought, oh—this is supposed to happen. It felt good. So I said yes. That’s all.”
Yeah,” Yao said. “That’s what happens. That’s how most of this happens.”
He watched me for a moment, then added “You know, half the people here think you’re just mysterious. Like maybe you’re ex-CIA.”
I didn't know what to make of that. “I can’t tell if that’s a compliment or a symptom of terrible workplace communication norms.”
Yao smiled. “Both.”
Then, after a pause, he said “You don’t need to earn your place here with perfect behavior. You already earned it. And Javier? That was a hiccup. Not a betrayal of who you are. Everyone’s had a hiccup. Most of them louder than yours.”
“It didn’t feel small,” I said.
“Because it’s you. But it is small. And temporary. The people who matter already know that.”
I let my hand fall to my lap and looked at him.
“How do you know I’m not going to screw up worse?”
“Because I’ve seen you fix things. And because you’re not hiding in here just because you’re embarrassed. You’re trying to make sense of it.”
“It’s embarrassing that this is what breaks me,” I said. “Not pressure. Not workload. Not failure. But office gossip and emotional disarray. I used to do hard things. I used to…”
“I know,” Yao said, “And now you're doing IT for a political campaign?”
I smiled a little. “I don't have a cat. Anymore.”
Yao paused for a second, obviously calibrating. “This is hard. You’re trying to be a whole person in a place built on impressions and half-spoken signals. And you're doing it with a handicap none of us can see unless we know what to look for.”
He stood up.
“Come on. It’s lunchtime. Let’s get takeout. I’m betting you haven’t eaten anything but caffeine and guilt today.”
I huffed something close to a laugh.
“You’re weirdly good at this,” I said. “Emotional hostage negotiation. Is this just natural talent or did you grow up around high-strung campaign operatives?”
Yao grinned at me. Not just a smile, a flexing of the Orbicularis oculi muscles around his eyes. It reached his whole face. “My brother. Trained me young.”
“Older or younger?” I asked.
“Two years older,” Yao said. “Brilliant guy. Writes code like Jack White plays guitar. Broke into a university server at fifteen to fix a professor’s simulation model. Not because he wanted to prove anything. Just because the error annoyed him.”
“I’m familiar with that urge,” I said.
“He’s... not great with people. Arrogant, intense. Gets details exactly right and misses every cue in the room. Sometimes makes you feel like you're just noise interfering with his signal.”
“Is he single?” I said. It just came out.
Yao blinked, then laughed.
“Nope,” he said, “Married six years now. And I’ve got two nephews so far. Number three’s due after the midterms.”
I froze, then looked down. That hit me somewhere I hadn't expected, like a pressure behind my breastbone.
“Oh,” I said.
“He didn’t get less autistic,” he said. “He just found someone who wanted exactly who he was. And she’s as stubborn as he is, so it works.”
I nodded slowly. Something inside me rearranged a little. A Bayesian prior updated by new evidence.
一
I kept the lights off. The apartment was pale again, faintly blue from the parking lot sodium vapor lamps leaking through the blinds.
I dropped my keys in the metal bowel by the door. The sound was louder than I expected. Waves propagating through the air without anything to distort them. Pure reflections.
I stood in the center of the living room, still in my campaign shirt and jeans, not quite ready to sit down. My laptop glowed faintly on the coffee table. Notifications stacked like drifted snow. I didn’t check them
I walked to the bedroom.
I dropped to my knees beside the bed, lifted the duvet that was hanging down nearly to the floor.
There was a plastic container I hadn't touched in years — opaque white, on which I'd once labeled in Sharpie: “WINTER CLOTHES.” I hadn't owned winter clothes since moving to California for school.
I dragged it out.
The latch stuck. I forced it. Inside: a mix of old t-shirts, a broken Nintendo DS, and underneath, wrapped in a sweatshirt, the journals.
Five of them, each a different color. I remembered choosing them with care from the stationary store at the mall near my parents house. Paper that held gel ink without bleeding. Unlined pages. A tactile spine that didn’t crumple under stress.
I flipped one open.
The handwriting surprised me — not just because it was mine, but because it was careful. Like I was writing for someone. Not a reader, but maybe me when I understood things better, when I could look back at this as a phase.
> Dr. Schlumberger says to name the mood. I said ‘gray.’ She said gray isn’t a mood, it’s a weather condition. I said that was exactly right.
I smiled.
I turned another page.
> I talked to Ben on the phone for 40 minutes. I didn’t tell him that I felt happy all day after. That feels like cheating. He should earn it somehow?
And another:
> Maybe if I write down the feelings every day, they’ll stop feeling so shapeless. Maybe they’ll get house-trained.
I closed the journal, suddenly overwhelmed.
I wasn’t crying. Not then. I’d emptied that part of myself in the supply closet already. But I felt something - a heat behind my ribs, the weight of my own former self, watching me like a ghost. But I realized I was more like the ghost of her.
I wasn’t always lost. I knew how to do this once. And it wasn’t even magic. It was just... writing it down.
I pulled the red softcover notebook from the bottom of the stack. Still blank. The sixth one. Bought but never used. I held it a while.
Then, without turning on the light, I got a pen from the kitchen drawer and opened to the first page.
And wrote:
> I’m not sure what the weather is. I think it rained earlier, but I was inside the whole time. It’s not dry, though. Not really.
I stopped. Breathed.
Then:
> I talked to Nicole. She didn’t forgive me. But she didn’t hate me either. That’s more than I thought I deserved.
I didn’t know what to write next.
That was okay.
The page was open.