Dear Girls Above Me: Inspired by a True Story by Charles Mcdowell Read Free Book Online Page A

and dog whistles are heard in this kind of awkward silence. Cathy and Claire were there, but I could tell by their unsettling faces that they didn’t recognize me as someone who lived in the building.
    “Umm, hi. I’m your downstairs neighbor,” I said in a voice that a jerk liar might describe as a tremble. All of the girls let out an impressively timed group sigh.
    “Oh my God, come in! Come in!” they said at the same high-frequency pitch. I immediately tried to explain my reason for stopping by, but no one was letting me get a word in. Eight girls guided me into the apartment like an octopus’s tentacles luring its prey. There was nowhere for me to go except deeper and deeper into their cave.
    Due to the abundance of females, there was a moment where I wondered whether the girls above me were involved in some sort of cult. But from my understanding, cults mostly consisted of people who don’t get around to showering very much and who wear one-piece clothing accompanied by all-black Velcro shoes. The prerequisites for this particular cult would have been: at least a C-cup, modest IQ, Christian Louboutin heels, and memorizing the Bible. And by “Bible” I of course mean Fifty Shades of Grey .
    As I walked in, I realized that their apartment had the same exact layout as mine. I had just figured that the main difference would be everything else . In retrospect I’m not sure what I was expecting. Actually, I’m exactly sure what I was expecting. Given the wide range of conversations I was able to overhear, I thought there’d be an Edward Cullen shrine between the kitchen and living room. Maybe some tiny wall space reserved for Team Jacob. (That Claire is a real bandwagonjumper and her “team” allegiances tend to shift just as frequently as Bella’s.) But there was no Twilight memorabilia. I assumed that no matter where you looked, you’d see pink—pink carpet, pink pillows, pink toaster, pink Brita water filter—and I even assumed they’d be listening to the artist Pink. But again, their color choices were normal, dare I say even pleasant. I assumed that I must have interrupted one of their many FMK (F@#k, Marry, Kill) hypothetical conversations. That imaginary game was always a pleasure to hear at four in the morning, especially when you take into account how each scenario always managed to end with their choosing “f@#k” for all three people . I’m not kidding. Even though it’s a theoretical game, impossible to play wrong, they’d manage to play wrong. Every. Time. Always. But alas, no such conversation was taking place. Normal-looking apartment, no Twilight shrine, and no FMK game being played incorrectly. That’s when I realized something.…
    The girls above me behave differently behind closed doors, in their own personal space, than they do in front of other people in their own personal living room. Just when I thought I had them figured out, a curveball. Their little social inconsistencies were twisting my brain like a pretzel. Who were they? In a matter of moments, I went from annoyed to intrigued.
    As I was trying to put this puzzle together, the girls ushered me onto what I’d once overheard them call their “gossip couch.” Then they offered me a fancy kind of wine called “Pinot Grigio,” which I politely declined. “So, what’s your name?” Claire asked.
    “My name? Oh, it’s Charlie.”
    In unison, all of the girls let out an adoring “aww.” How was their timing so impeccable? They weren’t just finishing each other’s sentences, they were each other’s sentences. Maybe my first instinct was right; this was a cult.
    “Well, I’m Cathy, and this is Claire. We both live here. And these are some of our sorority sisters from our college days.” All I could think about was how far Darwinism would be set back if these girls were all actually blood related. I also found it strange that after being out of college for a couple of years adults would still refer to their