Two strangers. One blog.
One writes in the dark, never knowing who reads.
The other reads in silence, never saying who she is.
Mia Michels is a journalism student who hides behind a fake name, spilling her thoughts like confessions at 3 a.m. Her pos...
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Exhausted didn't even begin to cover it. I'd almost called off the trip to the movies that afternoon, though I didn't really want to. I needed that breather with Rhonda and John, those small pockets of air that kept me going when the fatigue piled up. I rubbed at my temples as the subway rattled toward our stop, the last-minute assignment Professor Fernsby, a columnist for The New York Daily News, had conjured out of nowhere. If it turned out well, she'd run it herself.
I kept going over the few scraps of information we'd been given, committing to memory the names of the buildings we needed to visit. When we got off, I stuck close to Jake, in charge of the camera and all the gear, who seemed to know the area better than I did. I'd been to Brooklyn before, sure, but not every corner of it.
"This is it," he murmured, stopping to shift the case to his other hand.
I adjusted the recorder and looked up at the apartment building in front of us. The façade, peeling and worn, looked like it had lost too many battles to too many winters. The windows, dulled by years of wind and dust, didn't let much light through. Jake watched me quietly as I tried to brace myself for what I was about to do. The knot in my throat tightened. The brief was simple enough, a human-focused piece on people displaced in Brooklyn. Nothing in class had prepared me for this.
I took a deep breath and stepped inside, almost bumping into a boy who stopped to stare at me for a second before moving on. I let out a sigh as I climbed the stairs, hearing Jake's footsteps just behind me. On the landing, I approached a door that opened before I could knock, as if they'd been expecting us, though I knew they hadn't.
A woman with tired eyes, dressed plainly, a baby in her arms, looked at me warily.
"Yes?"
"Good afternoon, ma'am. I'm Mia Michels, a journalism student at NYU. We're doing a story on families affected by evictions and..."
I didn't finish. Her eyes filled with tears before I could even raise the mic.
"For what? So people can read it and say 'how sad' while they drink their coffee?" Her voice shook. The baby, sensing her distress, began to cry. She rocked him automatically, the motion weary and instinctive.
"No. So they'll know what's happening. So maybe someone will do something," I said before I could stop myself. I knew it was a raw subject, even if I hadn't lived it myself. If I could put my voice to it, make sure it was heard and maybe reached the right person, I would.
She held my gaze. The baby, now quiet, watched me with the same intensity. I gave him the soft smile I'd given countless strangers at Sweet Smiles Café, where I worked. After a long breath, the baby smiled back, and the woman let us in.
The apartment was almost bare. Boxes stacked against the walls, a mattress on the floor where two children, close in age, played among scattered toys. I struggled to keep my composure when the woman began speaking without my asking.
