“Yikes, got him!” Val pauses her game to scoop the cat up into her arms, just as he tries to jump. “Oh no, you don’t! Nice try, bichito.”

Burrito, at five years old, is now a massive male cat. But when my friends first got him, he was “about the size of a burrito.” Thus, the name.

“Plus, we read this article once about this cat named Burrito who got tragically eaten by a Florida man’s pet python,” Val also told me. “Kiara named our Burrito in honor of that Burrito, too. So that in this life, Burrito the Cat can live a long, happy life.”

I personally love both reasons because they’re very much Val and Kiara.

Val sets Burrito back down on the ground and says, “There’s still some pizza left if you want some. I got carried away and ordered too much.”

“Thanks.” After gladly grabbing a slice of pepperoni, I sit on Clementine to eat. The excitement I felt on the train is gone now, and without the adrenaline, I feel disconnected from my body. I can barely taste anything. But my hands are visibly shaking from fatigue and hunger, and it feels like I have a gaping hole in my stomach. So I grab another piece.

When I finish eating, I gently nudge Burrito aside to grab my toiletries and pajamas from my box in the corner of the room.

Like many apartments in San Francisco, my friends’ place is expensive yet tiny, and their closets were already full with their own stuff. So I got myself a new, dry box where I could temporarily store my things. Sure, living out of a literal box gets annoying sometimes, but I haven’t found any real reason to complain yet, especially since my friends are letting me stay at their place rent-free. I tried paying them, but Kiara and Val wouldn’t allow it.

“Collecting rent from someone who’s already at rock bottom is what a predatory landlord does,” Kiara had said. “And that’s not who we are at all. Besides, you don’t even have your own room! Just a couch. Save the money for the deposit at your new place. We already paid rent for the month of November anyway, so if you want to, you can pay us whatever you can manage next month, if you haven’t found somewhere else to live by then.”

I get in the shower and make the water as hot as I can without burning myself. Only then does some of the numbness go away. By the time I get into my pajamas, my entire body is flushed red from the heat, but in a way that actually feels nice.