The door creaks as Marisa pushes it open. She steps into the apartment, empty as always. Darkness hangs heavy, carrying the scent of someone else’s life – faded furniture, damp fur, and perfume long since gone. The place feels frozen in time, a stranger’s space that never became home.

 She doesn’t turn on the light and walks to the living room. Her "room" is just a small sofa by the window and a modest wooden table in the corner. No posters, no photos – only blank patches on the old paint. Nothing here is actually theirs. The only thing truly hers is a worn laptop on the table, a prize she won in a drawing contest years ago. The keys are faded, but it still works. Late at night, when the city hums outside, she draws quietly, secretly. Drawing is her escape, her little power, though her parents never saw the point.

She sets her school bag by the table, arranging everything in place. In a space this tight, even a little mess feels like disaster. She glances at the sofa that is, in a way, her home within a home, and a wave of exhaustion hits – the kind that sleep doesn’t fix, that stacks up not from lessons, but from life.

 In the kitchen, there’s a faint smell of yesterday’s food. The single overhead bulb casts a cold, dim light, making the walls look even paler. Marisa opens the old fridge, hoping for something edible. Inside, there are a few half-empty containers, a chunk of cheese, a bottle of water. Nothing that would really satisfy hunger.

 With a sigh, she grabs a box of mac & cheese. She doesn’t love it, but what choice does she have? She fills a pot with water and drops in the pasta. She cooks enough for her parents too, hoping to leave something for them when they finally get home from work. Her dad, Theodore, hauls goods at a big electronics store; her mom, Emily, works at the same place as a cashier. Their schedules are brutal: early morning to late night, no breaks, no weekends. There’s barely time for Marisa.

 While the water heats, she sits at the old table and traces circles in the dust with her finger. Her thoughts grow heavier as twilight seeps through the window. Sometimes, a question pops up that she’s too afraid to voice, even to herself: why did they ever decide to have a child?

 The pot bubbles. She turns off the stove and scoops the macaroni onto a cracked, chipped plate. She eats slowly, without appetite, staring into space. Outside, darkness thickens. Inside, the apartment grows cold. And so does she. Just another night nobody will remember, gone like it never happened.

 After washing her plate and carefully leaving the pot of mac & cheese on the stove for her parents, Marisa drags herself to her corner – the small table in the living room.

She pulls out her old laptop. The screen flickers to life with a familiar buzzing sound.

Opening a simple drawing program, she begins to move the mouse, sketching lines, shapes, shadows. In her mind, a vivid picture unfolds: a huge field of flowers under a golden sky, a world she could escape to from this cold room, a world where her heart feels lighter.

 Drawing gives her a few minutes to forget everything: the chill, the silence, the loneliness. But reality comes back quickly.

A glance at the clock in the corner of the screen makes her sigh, and she closes the program.

 Time to face the worst part – homework. And not just any homework – mathematics.

She recently failed a test. Without a good grade, she might lose the scholarship that is her only chance at a prestigious university.

 Normally, Marisa is a good student. She knows knowledge is her only ticket to a better future. But math has always been her nightmare. Now, with all the logarithms, derivatives, and trigonometry nonsense, it feels ten times worse.

"Who even invented this?" she thinks in despair. "Why do I even need it?"

 Tired, she reaches into her bag, hoping to find her math notebook.

She unzips it – and freezes. Inside, it’s not her things.

 Instead of neatly stacked notebooks and organized notes, there’s chaos: crumpled sheets, a few capless pens, a piece of gum in a wrapper, a physics textbook with cartoons scribbled on the cover.

 Pulling out one notebook, she sees messy, clumsy handwriting. Definitely a boy.

 Worse, her math notes aren’t there.

 Panic tightens its grip. She clutches the unfamiliar bag, trying to recall how this even happened. Then fragments of today start to surface – the bus, the crowd, someone else’s bag next to hers…

 She runs through the faces of classmates and older students from the bus:

The guy from 10-A with a backpack of a rapper.

The eleventh grader always blasting music in giant headphones.

A girl with a bright pink backpack – no, definitely not her.

The boy from 8-B with a baseball glove sticking out of his bag.

 But none of them had a simple gray bag like hers.

 What now? How can she find the owner? And more importantly – how to get back her things, especially her math notes?