He woke early, a real stroke of luck considering his phone’s abused battery had given up overnight. He set it up to charge in a cubby behind the check-in station and took off downstairs to fill his unexpected excess of time with a brain-clearing walk around the neighborhood.

The bakery at the end of the block had been open for at least an hour by that point, but there had still been plenty of biscuits the size of his palm to take as snacking accompaniment to his stroll. Motion and munching, those were reliable ways to distract a mind.

By the time he returned, the usual flow of chaos had crested the dam and flooded the common area. There were at least as many bulging frame backpacks as there were people crunched around the picnic tables and the jumble of voices and of Costco cutlery on donated plates in all shapes and materials was an assault.

For the first time in a long time, Ari saw the value in Blake’s assertion that this living situation was stupid. He hadn't stayed to eat, or to chat with anybody, and had instead excused himself to catch another shower. He didn’t feel like being available in any sense of the word until it was time for the guests to leave and for him to work.

Now, several hours later, the effects of his shower entirely erased by time spent emptying every trash bin in the building and beating out the rugs that insulated guests's feet in the hallways that ran between the banks of bunk rooms, Ari found himself struck by an uncomfortable realization: For weeks on end now, he had been avoiding talking to anyone in the hostel. 

Anyone at all.

It wasn't that he disliked anybody.

Ari pitched the two black 40-gallon bags he'd been dragging into the open Dumpster in a big underhanded swing that made them bounce off the rim and into the void. It was easy to do that, now. He'd developed muscles in the time he'd lived on his own. 

Maybe this was the guy he was going to turn into, just a modestly beefy guy who didn't talk to anyone and didn't spend money and didn't actually make anything. There had already been plenty of guys like that all around him in school. Maybe he was just a late-blooming boring guy.

"Ari!"

His head swiveled to find Noah - one of three other twenty-somethings employed at the hostel - up on the second floor balcony that hung over the parking lot the back end of the hostel shared with a few adjacent businesses. He was waving so hard his entire body swayed. His white dude dreads made him looks like an albino palm tree in a typhoon.

"What's up?"

Noah kept right on waving and swaying. He was probably pumped up on energy drinks after a night spent on check-in duty. "Your brother's blowing up your phone. Come on, it's driving us all nuts."

Ari hit the stairs up to the balcony the staff used as their smoking room so hard the first impact of his sandal on the weather-beaten wood threatened to strip it right off his foot. He blew past Noah and into the hostel's store room. 

Blake didn't call him, as a general rule, and he definitely didn't call anybody on Saturdays. The last time Ari had gotten a weekend call from Blake or Mom, he'd been on a plane the next morning to go see Dad in the hospital.

By the time he skidded around the corner to the guest service counter, a lump of something had backed up into his throat. He had to choke it down before he picked the call up on his bleating phone.

He had to sound detached. Which would be difficult.

It was easier to sound annoyed.

"Shalom. What do you want?"

A beat worth of silence. Then, a long exhalation.

"Thank God. What's this Zoe is telling me about you going home with some weird guy?"

"Thank-?" Ari's face flamed and he cast a glance around the corner, hunting for eavesdroppers. "That's nuts, I didn't go home with anybody."

"I'm only repeating what I heard and checking to see if you got dumped in the lake or something."

Ari held his phone at arm's length for a second just to glower down the line at Blake’s name on his screen. "That's all, huh?"

"That's all. But you did meet some guy."

That was not all.

"Yes," Ari said, summoning up all the patience he could manage on little sleep and much stress. "For a few minutes."

"Is he someone I would know?"

"He's a friend of mine from school, so no." Ari embraced Wyn's lie for the moment, hoping the disparity in his and Blake's ages would save him. Blake had always been just old enough to be disgusted at any suggestion he acknowledge Ari's friends.

"What's his name?"

"Wyn."

Blake made a sound of faint interest. “That sounds right. For a guy, that's a cute name."

"There's nothing cute about him." 

"I thought he was your friend?"

"I don't have cute friends." Ari was trying to avert his eyes, as if the phone itself could scrutinize him. "All my friends are bums and burnouts and weirdos, you know this."

"It wasn't always like that."

"No."

This wasn't fair.

“Well, I'm glad to hear you met somebody from the old days. Maybe he'll be a good influence."

Ari very much doubted this.

"Wouldn't that be nice?" A soft, sticky crinkling caught Ari's attention and turned his gaze sharply to the right, where Noah was trying to very quietly unfurl the hose to the hostel's geriatric vacuum cleaner. He offered Ari a thumbs up and a not-at-all-reassuring grin. How long had he been there? "But yeah. Anyway. Good talk. Please don't do that thing you do."

"What thing?"

"The thing where you gather intel and run back to Mom with it."

"Oh, don't be a drama queen. Besides, she'd probably be happy one of your old friends lives nearby."

"Too bad, he doesn't." This was partly a guess, partly a lie, and partly wishful thinking.

"Nearby enough that he comes by Starsong pretty often." There went that wish. “He’s the sweater guy.”

What a benign association to make with a guy who carries around a binder full of dead people.

"Yeah, that sounds like him," Ari said. He was desperately groping for an end to the conversation. "Anyway, I have some stuff to finish up. Don't forget what I told you."

"That he's some guy from school."

"No gossiping with Mom is what I told you."

"Well," Blake said, his voice projecting a confidence Ari didn't like. "I only called in the first place because Mom thought it would be best."

"You-" Ari's jaw tightened and he held the phone out to swipe the call away. "I'm hanging up."

Noah was keeping his hands and ears full with the task of vacuuming the common area, but Ari could sense the lurking presences of others in soft, slippered footfalls. Ari couldn't recall exactly who else was on the schedule for the day, but each and every potential candidate would eavesdrop if offered the opportunity.

Even Noah might have been tuning in on some level, because he killed the power on the vacuum when Ari started to retreat down the hallway toward the guest rooms.

"You good?"

Ari waved him off. "I'm just heated. I'm taking a breather."

"Good policy." 

The vacuuming resumed and Ari took the opportunity to hurry down the hall before anyone else could poke out from a doorway and start asking for details.

The hallway was full of doorways, after all: The two wings of bathrooms and shower stalls, the three banks of guest bunks, the managerial office, the official-linen-use-only laundry room, the door up to the attic storeroom at the far end. The office had a ‘real’ door. The rest were separated from the common areas with light-blocking curtains in various Bohemian shades and patterns. 

Ari's own room - which was not a room - was carved out of a corner in one of the two co-ed rooms, far in the back, away from the light. His arrangement as a live-in worker guaranteed him a bunk, bottom level, with curtains. And something like privacy.

He had the place set up in much the same way as most of the long term guests set up their own bunks. A storage net full of clothes and books hung over him as he crawled into the blanket fort that was his answer to Blake's offer of a room at his apartment. His backpack, when it was dry, hung out beside his pillow. Anything of particular value lived on his person, in his employee locker in the store room or, at management's discretion, behind the check-in desk.

Ari swished the curtains shut around him, but the hairline crack of concentrated light where the curtain met the wall made it hard to create the illusion of aloneness he wanted. 

Lying there in the half-dark, he struggled to rationalize the choice to do live-in work. The best he could come up with was that it was weak compromise between his warring priorities. The pay was fine for the hours it demanded. It left him abundant free time. It was close to Blake, which went a long way toward relaxing their parents. It settled the outcry over him having nowhere but his car to sleep.

It occurred to him in that moment that he'd done something very stupid in tying every element of his livelihood to this arrangement. He'd constructed a very precarious life for himself, he realized, which made his next course of action feel as foolish as it did unavoidable. 

He slipped out from his bunk and padded into the common area, where Noah was still taking his time tidying. 

"Hey, I gotta go." It was always better to make it sound urgent right away. People didn't want to fight you then.

Noah popped one earbud out and regarded him with more curiosity than concern. "What's up?"

To keep the air of urgency thick, Ari hurried to his locker and fumbled the tumblers until it sprang open and produced his wallet. "It's probably nothing, but my brother's going through a breakup and he's acting really weird."

"Oh. Yeah." Noah let the words hang in the air for a second. "Trade you two hours of desk for finishing your chores?"

Ari was already pulling his freshly dried sneakers on. "That'd be great. Thanks, Noah."

"Any time, man."

On his way down the groaning flight of stairs that connected the hostel to the ground floor, Ari already had his phone out again. He was punching in the number he could read off his stored mental image of the sweater guy's card. As a new contact, not as an active call. 

Placing this call on a cellphone at the same place he went to sleep at night felt... not dangerous, he tried to assure himself. But it didn't feel like something he wanted to do either.

I’m amped to see you still reading! Just a reminder that if you’re reading this during launch week (April 6 2026-April 10 2026) this once-daily schedule is launch week only. Starting next week, regular updates will drop every Tuesday and Thursday until this case concludes in a few months. I hope you’ll stick around.