“Welcome, welcome!” she said, warmer than I’d ever seen her, twirling around in a circle. “Please use this dwelling as you wish, only do not disturb my arrangements. You may cross through to the backyard during my morning chants, from nine to ten; when I’m temping from one to five in the evening; or during the Descension, occurring in the evening from eight to nine in the spring.”

The level of awkwardness was not yet intolerable. I pulled Aiden and Blithe into my room to explain.

“Okay, I know she’s weird, but when I interviewed people to see if they wanted to share this tiny-ass apartment with me, only a few responded.”

It was hard to speak in my room with the door closed because the S-H’s takeout-and-weed residue formed a thick cloud.

“An artist couple, a neuroscience PhD student with a snake, a perfect quiet ceramicist who bailed on me, a cis white str8 guy who used the word hella, and a baby-boomer divorcée. I think my compatibility test scared away most folks. I asked them about condiment usage and how likely they would be to squirt some of my ketchup onto a bun if they’d run out.

“The crazy thing is, I didn’t even care about condiment usage. It was just because of a story I heard about someone threatening to put laxatives in his ketchup if his roommates kept eating it . . . Okay, you really don’t care.”

Blithe had wandered over to my mood board, and Aiden was scrolling on his phone.

I knew my voice was taking on a high, shaky tone. “But do you understand how I ended up living with the Witch and the S-H?” I couldn’t refrain from asking.

“Hey, we’re not here to evaluate your life choices. I have to pee,” Aiden said, and before I could warn him about the Witch’s cleaning aversion, he was off down the hall.

Blithe and I scanned the photos of hamburgers, “bohemian” living rooms, and geology labs until Aiden came back.

“I’m not comfortable with this,” he said quietly, referring to the bathroom’s green sludge jars, old pubes, dust, poorly tied bundles of burnt sage, the S-H’s cologne, and a Toftbo bath mat that was always left sopping and moldy.

I sighed. “The Witch believes cleaning is a form of violence—”

The door opened. The Witch poked her head into my room.