The Spot the Camera Misses

i can't sleep so i do this thing where i sit at the window with the light off and watch the parking lot. it's calmer than my phone. cars come home, lights go off, the lot empties out the way it does every night. i know which spot is whose by now. that's how bored 2am me is.

there's a car that isn't anyone's. silver, parked across two spaces near the back, where the camera doesn't reach — i know it doesn't reach because i complained about it once. it's been there since a little after midnight. no lights. but every so often the brake lights tap on for a second and go off again, like someone shifting their foot. so someone's in it. just sitting.

i told myself a hundred ordinary things. waiting for a ride. on the phone. a fight, a cry, the kind of thing you do in a car so the apartment doesn't hear it. i've done it myself. i believed all of it until about ten minutes ago.

the interior light came on for a second. someone reached up and turned it off. you don't kill your own light unless you've decided you'd rather not be seen. i'm three floors up, mine's been off for an hour. and the thing keeping me at this window: in that one second the light was on, they were turned around in the seat. facing the building. counting windows, maybe. the way you do when you're bored at 2am.