“It was our senior year of college and I rented this place with Ellie and another friend of ours,” Cynthia explains. “But at the last minute, our other friend decided to move in with her boyfriend. I put an ad in the college paper, and a week later, Monica was moving in.”

“And…” I bite my lip. “She was… bad?”

“She was fine for a couple of weeks,” Cynthia says. “And that’s when the crazy started.” She scratches at her knee thoughtfully. “She’d, like, accuse me of finishing her yogurt or something dumb like that. No big deal, right? I hadn’t, by the way—I hate that stupid yogurt that makes you poop. But anyway, she’d get so angry. She’d start sifting through the trash, looking for the containers. And then she’d storm out, leaving the trash all over the floor. Tell me—who does that?”

“Oh, and she’d accuse us of going through her room.” Ellie leans forward, getting into the story. “She put a lock on her door, so how could we, right? But she was convinced. She said she was putting a camera in there, so she’d know if we went in.” She shakes her head. “She’d get so angry over it. I mean, we’d be sitting out here with some friends, and she’d just come out and start screaming at us at the top of her lungs.”

“Not to mention that she called the police on us,” Cynthia adds. “Repeatedly. Like, she thinks we’re being too noisy, so instead of knocking on our door and saying to turn the music down, she’d call the cops and puts in a noise complaint. I almost had a heart attack when the police showed up at our door. More than once!”

“Or the building manager,” Ellie says.

“Right.” Cynthia shudders. “Oh, and she almost got me fired too. She called my boss and told him I was stealing office supplies.”

Ellie grins. “Well, you were stealing office supplies.”

“Yeah, but she didn’t need to tell on me!” She pounds her fist on the coffee table. “Who does that, seriously? I confronted her about it, and she’s all like, ‘Stealing is wrong. You deserved to get caught.’”

“Crazy Monica.”

“Yep, Crazy Monica.” And then Cynthia’s eyes widen. “And what about the smell?”

Ellie gasps. “Right, I totally forgot about that!” She turns back to me. “So here’s the creepiest thing ever. She was dating this guy for a couple of months, but it was a sort of tumultuous relationship—like, they’d always be yelling at each other. We could all hear it through the walls. And then one day, they’re having a really loud fight, and we hear this huge ‘thump’ and the fighting suddenly stops.”