The first time I came out to ask them to keep it down, I tried to be polite. I tried to be the reasonable one, because that was the role I’d been trained to play.
“Hey,” I said, standing in the doorway in my pajamas. “I have work in the morning. Can you guys keep it down?”
Vanessa’s friends looked at me like I was a landlord. Vanessa smiled at them, a little smirk, and then turned to me.
“Yeah, sure,” she said.
The volume lowered for ten minutes. Then it rose again, like a tide returning.
After two weeks of sleep deprivation, my body started to feel brittle. My patience thinned. My temples ached constantly. I snapped at coworkers. I forgot small things. I began to dread coming home, because home was no longer relief. It was another place I had to manage.
One morning, or rather one noon, Vanessa finally emerged from her room while I sat at the kitchen table with my coffee, exhausted.
