Frustrated that this shopping trip proved fruitless, I slam my car door, which I like to imagine is still my sleek, deep red Aston Martin Vantage rather than a 2003 Chevrolet Impala in bird-poop white.

I ignore the stoplight since nobody’s here to see me run a red, thinking about how utterly rude it is that I peaked at twenty-four and didn’t even appreciate it, because I thought the money would keep flowing forever. I leveraged my name to broker deals for a fragrance line, a clothing line, a jewelry line, one right after the other under bad advisement, a horde of yes-men bleeding me dry without my knowledge, because I trusted anyone who said they believed in my creative vision. With ten million dollars in the bank, I began spending like an idiot, assuming that every year I’d double those millions. I bought a top-of-the-line car. A Hawaiian villa. I invested in all my friends’ loose-threaded start-ups, all high promises, no substance.

I was sitting in one of the most expensive restaurants on Melrose Avenue, celebrating my rise to the Top Thirty Entrepreneurs under Thirty, when I got the call that I was broke. The restaurant declined my credit card.

Halfway up a mountain at the north end of Old Homestead Road, a big, shuddersome house gazes down at me like a beady-eyed crow, tracking my progress to the opposite side of town. Even though that house and its occupants don’t know I’ve been hiding out in Teller City for the last several months, I feel it watching me all the time. It’s why I do all my shopping in nearby Springhedge. Needing to keep a low profile means I can’t risk trying to make any friends here, so I sit alone on the couch night after night, dreaming of the good old days.

I scurry like a beetle back into my rotting log, a small dwelling on the wooded outskirts of town with no cable, where the electricity and Wi-Fi are unwittingly being powered by one of the neighbors. (I run an extension cord from their outdoor outlet.) I stopped paying the water bill, so I’ve been waiting on that to dry up: my future holds either getting a job or showering at the YMCA in Springhedge and doing my toilet business unspeakably. I subsist on frozen pizza and peanut butter sandwiches. And Evian bottled water, of course. I’m not a pleb.

Once inside, I collapse onto the couch to feel sorry for myself. “Why couldn’t you have lived somewhere else?” I moan to Eileen. “Or had a bigger television?” This one is twenty-four inches.

Eileen doesn’t respond, as she is very busy being dead in Florida. She was only supposed to be in Florida for a three-week vacation last February, but the ninety-year-old lady snuffed it at Disney World during week two. I had needed money and a place to stay, and found her advertisement asking for someone to water her plants at a time when the situation was dire (I had been staying with a woman I’d just met, who said I could take her sofa if I acted as lookout whenever she was doing illegal tattooing). My three-week stay has grown into nearly a year. Every single day, I am terrified a cop is going to show up and arrest me for squatting, or a long-lost relative will come to claim Eileen’s house and belongings. I can’t believe no one’s kicked me out yet.