My Guest in Apartment 10B

The Mystery of the Eggs

Eggs should always be on one's shopping list.

Eggs have the uncanny ability to make liquid mixtures more solid, and solid mixtures more liquid. It helps bind things that scientifically should not combine at all. Without eggs, mayonnaise would be a sad sloppy mess of vinegar and oil. Without eggs, cake would feel like an eraser bouncing between teeth rather than the soft crumbly masterpiece that it usually is.

Most importantly, she wouldn't be able to make cupcakes without eggs. Arabella had always made cupcakes when she was feeling feelings. And there were so many feelings going through her right now, as she struggled to understand what was going on for her. Her mind cramped with mixed emotions, but she knew that her cupcakes would clue her in and capture exactly how she felt.

Chocolate cupcakes? She was probably feeling a bit in love.

Lemon cupcakes? Definitely embarrassed.

Vanilla rainbow cupcakes? Obviously bored.

What flavor would be the perfect fit for a recently moved-in ball of nerves? What cupcake screamed: I'm overjoyed to have moved into Manhattan and been given a chance at a fresh start, but I'm terrified beyond words?

What could be—

Her thoughts were interrupted by the sudden jostling of the yellow vehicle that carried her from the grocer to her new home. The driver had run over an empty basket on the road and it now lay in shreds on the cold asphalt ground.

"Sorry 'bout that. Which did you say it was? 42nd or 32nd street?" the driver asked in a rough bullish accent, as he made a sharp turn from the main street.

"It's—"

She was cut off by the sudden movement, her whole body swaying to one side as she braced herself for another turn. "14th street, sir."

They made eye contact in the rear-view mirror, his steely dark eyes meeting her glossy hazel orbs. The driver's confusion was apparent in his scrunched-up expression. His bushy eyebrows met in the middle, forming a straight line as his nose wrinkled in annoyance.

Arabella looked down, embarrassed at what had transpired.

His irritation with her and perplexed expression was quite understandable, as she had realized that she had given him the wrong address.

The apartment on 22nd street was the first apartment she had viewed, but in her daze, she had completely forgotten that she had chosen the one on 14th street instead.

Arabella Washington had just moved from an obscure Northern countryside town to the busy streets of the Lower East Side in Manhattan this morning. Glancing down at her phone and lifting the screen to face her, the light revealed the time to be four in the afternoon. So much time had been wasted by small wrong decisions made here and there.

She should've just asked around or walked around a block to look for a store. Maybe there was a store nearby that would not have required her to take this 15-minute cab ride home.

She finished unpacking a little after noon and had intended to buy eggs at the nearest grocery, but the cab she hailed had other plans. Twenty minutes later, she was transported to a large supermarket blocks or possibly towns away from her apartment.

With butter and eggs in tow, Arabella was now back in a cab waiting for the meter to stop turning and finally be home so that she could start on those cupcakes.

If only she had set up her new sim card with internet data access as her mom had suggested before she moved, she wouldn't have been in this predicament. Like everything else in her life, she had put off some important errands in favor of doing the easier ones, until finally, it was time to move, and her phone was now without a sim card.