Dishes piled high in the sink, making leaning towers in stacks that spread throughout the entirety of the kitchen. I could almost see my ex-roommate in the corner, grimacing at the sight in an eye-twitching way. So, maybe I wasn’t the cleanliest person on Earth, but I told myself that tomorrow I would get right to it with yellow elbow-length gloves and the most bubbly soap ever invented (so I could make myself a beard and scare my roommate half to death, of course). Until then, I would have to watch the plates and bowls grow a little higher, wobbling a bit more precariously than before and feel the death stares from Ellen wherever I went. A clean kitchen meant a happy roommate, but an unmotivated teenager meant a messy atmosphere. I sat there, looking at the dishes unenthusiastically, thinking that maybe I could force myself into at least washing the clump of forks at the bottom of the sink, but that would require a lot of digging and I wasn’t up to get messy right now. I heard Ellen on the phone; she didn’t even try to hide her disgust with me. “Yeah, I know. She’s filled up the sink with her same old shit again and I’m supposed to have Jake over for dinner and I mean, I would do it but it’s her problem. It’s been a week!” I felt a tinge of guilt and irresponsibility and decided that just a few cups and spoons would do for now. Just as I was trying to slither my arm down in the sink to reach a bowl full of remnants of cake batter, someone knocked at the door. “I’ll get it!” I yelled before Ellen could even breathe, and ended up slipping in a puddle of orange juice the size of Texas that I had obviously not seen before. “Ouch,” I whimpered, rubbing my back. Ellen walked past me smoothly, proudly, and answered the door maturely. I pouted on the floor, hating how she put herself so above me and made me feel like an infant. Maybe it was an older-sister thing. Maybe, she was just a bitch. Who knows? I was now soppy and bummed. I heard footsteps retreating from the front door and Ellen appeared. “It’s for you,” she said in that scary monotone of hers and tossed a package at me. I caught it even though she purposely tossed it awkwardly, and congratulated myself on that small achievement. “Who is it from?” I asked aloud, more to myself. “How the hell am I supposed to know?” Ellen answered, which was a shocker. Usually she was content on ignoring my existence, but she seemed almost curious. “Hmm,” I took my time, flipping the box over, rattling it, pressing my ear up to it as if it was a seashell, weighing it between my hands. I was dragging it out, making Ellen suffer. Oh, the little things we did to annoy each other; nothing big, but enough to drive the other person completely insane. Two more months, two more months, I always repeated like a mantra in the back of my mind when I felt as if I was a time bomb about to explode within our small apartment room. There wasn’t a return address on the box and it felt light as air. I grabbed a dirty knife out of the sink and cut into the box, opening it, and spilling its contents out onto the floor. Ellen leaned over my shoulder, trying to get a better view. What laid strewn across the floor like spaghetti was a necklace, a map and two keys. Before I could investigate more, the phone rang, interrupting the silence. Ellen and I both looked at it, then at each other, then at the phone again. Since we moved in, the phone hasn’t rang once. We never gave out our apartment number, but preferred to use our cell phones instead. “You pick it up,” I said. Ellen squirmed, “No, you.” This continued for awhile until it was approaching the last ring when Ellen raced into the next room and snatched the phone from its holder, then just sat there in silence with the earpiece pressed to her ear. “Hullo?” she eventually breathed into the receiver. I heard a muffled voice on the other end and pretend to be occupied with the objects in front of me while eavesdropping. “Yes….Yes….Okay…” Ellen spoke, and she seemed uneasy, a strange quality that she had never possessed. This only intrigued me more. I crept around the corner on my hands and knees.