One winter morning, on our way to the nearby diner, we walked backward into the freezing wind. Every now and then Sam would bring his mitten to his mouth and expel a curling cloud of vapor from his balled hand. He looked like something out of a children’s storybook when he vaped—like a dragon who made wheezing sounds and slept in a cave. Some princely pet.

Stepping through his own personal haze was like walking through a curtain of beads. There was a strange intimacy about it. We ordered eggs and a stack of pancakes for the table. The pancakes stuck somewhere between our stomachs and our throat and made us feel fabricated, like Beanie Babies.

Look, I said to Sam, gesturing across the street. Look at those two people. Aren’t they cute? They look in love.

I don’t see, said Sam, his mouth full.

That man who’s taking a picture of his girlfriend in front of her house, I told him. He looked at where I pointed through the window.

That’s not a woman, he said. That’s just an old coat someone has draped over the fence. Oh, I noted. So it is.

In the mornings we turned on the radio and listened to the sound of bad news. Mornings took on a new guilty feeling for me because phones had begun to sneak into my dreams. First it started with one interruptive ping — the sound of an incoming text. Then there were entire nights where I was just scrolling. The other day I was behind two women who were using their phones to navigate through the park and one of them said to the other: it wants us to go this way.

It wants us to go this way, I relayed to Sam later. He rolled his eyes.

Everybody knows these things aren’t good for you, he told me. That’s beside the point.

There were three meals that we made and ate on a regular basis. We roasted chickpeas in the oven and ate them in big bowls that rested on our bellies. We put yogurt and a fried egg on top of them. Some days Sam made me a porridge his grandmother taught him to make. It was cream-of-wheat with toasted mustard seeds and curry leaves and cashews. We ate it with big swirls of melted butter. I baked functional, stodgy cakes. They made the apartment smell fantastic, but we ate them begrudgingly. They were heavy with intention. I like them, Sam told me. But I think he ate them out of politeness, the same impulse that led me to bake them each week. At night we lay in bed like mummies, our arms pressed up against our sides or crossed at our chest.

I’m not your friend, I told him. What are you then? He asked.

I don’t know, I confessed. Then, quietly, embarrassingly: Your lover.

I started to eat foods he didn’t know about. Sleeves of Ritz crackers. Smucker’s Uncrustables I ate still-frozen. A watery mess of tuna salad on top of which I crumbled potato chip crumbs. Sandwiches glued shut with the tarnished broil of melted American cheese. The foods were how I talked to myself (reminded me of myself). Had a conversation with myself. A how are you doing today sort of thing. My favorite was something sweet and cold, like an ice cream cone. The man in the ice cream truck blew me a big kiss as he drove away.

What’s on your shoes? Sam asked. There were neon splotches where the sprinkles had melted onto the tops of my sneakers.

I don’t know, I said. It must’ve just been something in the atmosphere. Sam raised his eyebrows. We left it at that.

We lived in a small bedroom across from a vacant lot, a lobster farm, a sign factory, and an industrial bakery. The air always smelled like bread. At all hours of the night there were bakers coming and going. Their baggy white uniforms made them look like top-secret government scientists. In the morning they would leave out big dumpsters full of flour tortillas. When Sam and I walked past we always peeked into a great big room where they kept plastic-wrapped buns. Birds were always fighting on our block, hopping around angrily with shreds of spinach wraps in their beaks. The bakery sat on the edge of a great big cemetery. Our landlord’s toddler, who lived below us, frequently claimed she was talking to the dead. I made sure to write down all my dreams in case I was visited by ghosts and they told me secrets about the future.

Last night I dreamt you came home after a long time away, I told Sam, and we embraced like brothers.

I thought we weren’t friends, he said. That’s right, I told him. Brothers.

One night, a ghost did visit me. He came in on the same billowing cloud of smoke that often escaped Sam’s mouth. The ghost didn’t have a shape. A boyfriend? I thought at first.

Who else could he have been to me?

My ghost boyfriend brought with him a basket that was full of the little snack packets you could find on airplanes. We ate those sitting on the floor along with plastic cups of yogurt.

What is it you wanted to tell me, I asked the ghost. Whatever it is I’ll write it down. The ghost smiled wanly and offered me a Pringle. The food of the future.

My favorite nights were the ones where my sleep was interrupted because Sam and I were reaching for each other, unconscious and urgent, as if someone else had told us to do it, and we were forced to comply. Sometimes I thought the ghost made me do it. I couldn’t tell if he was a conspirator, or a co-conspirator, and that bothered me. And what was the difference? EVERYTHING HAPPENS FOR A REASON was something I had once read on a greeting card, in the bereavement section. All I knew was that on those nights, the reaching nights, I fell asleep with my head on Sam’s chest.

The ghost said to get to higher ground when the water comes, I told Sam in the morning. The two of us were peeling bananas over the gurgle of the coffee maker. He says we shouldn’t have a family. He says the world’s no place for children. Too hot for children. Sam frowned.

I thought he didn’t talk. I thought you guys just ate snacks together, he said. I was quiet. I didn’t remember telling Sam that.

Hey, I said to Sam that evening. We were lying like mummies and the lights were still on. I just want you to know that I have no interest in sleeping.

Alright, said Sam. You go first.

People eating muffins like apples, I said.

People who fly in their dreams by flapping their arms really hard, he said.

That face people make when they do VR, I said.

The face Sam makes when he accidentally bites into a popsicle, the ghost said. Like a dog eating a hot potato. I smiled. How did he know about that?

At some point in the spring I decided to spend all my money. What was the point of saving it? Once the boxes started coming they started coming very quickly. They stacked up in a pile so high that our downstairs neighbors couldn’t access their front door. I bought a surfboard. I bought a very expensive blender.

What the hell is all this stuff? Sam asked.

Provisions, I told him. For when we need them.

How did you buy them? He asked. With what money?

Oh, Sam, I said with a derisive chuckle. Do you really think we’re really going to need money in a couple of years? Now Sam looked like the worried one. What about therapy, he said. I already go to therapy, I told him. A new therapist, he said. I did want a therapist who was meaner to me, I explained, but those were much more expensive. Ping went his phone. I flinched. Can you turn your phone off? I asked him.

That night I went to sleep and waited for the ghost. I wanted to tell him I was ready. I had a packet of graham crackers beneath the bed as an offering. But I woke up before he came for me. Somewhere around three in the morning, Sam’s arms reached for me and I reached back.

Sam Sam Sam Sam, I sang loudly, as we biked to the movie theater. Sam my friend Sam my friend Sam.

My mother called me. Something’s not right with you, she said. Sam called us and told us what’s going on. You’re having an Annie Hall moment. The universe is expanding sort of thing.

Mom, I told her. We don’t use that as a reference anymore.

There’s my daughter, she said. That’s how I know it’s still you. You’ve still got it in you to criticize me. She was joking, but I could sense real relief in her voice.

When I was little my mother used to cut my hair at the kitchen counter. Here’s how she did it: She would take a handful of chocolate chips and a handful of raisins and scatter them across the marble surface of the counter. I would bend my head down to pick out the chocolate from the raisins, and she would cut the hair at the base of my neck.

I love you, my mom said over the phone. I want you to be at ease.

Ok mom, I told her. Try not to worry about me.

I was biking back from the grocery store and stopped at a red light when a man in sandals came up to me and said Can you wait here with me? I’ve called an ambulance, but I need someone here in case I pass out. Of course, I said. Looking at him you couldn’t tell anything was wrong. We sat on the bench outside a wine store called PINOT PALETTE. The sun was warm and flooding both of our faces. His eyes filled with tears. This is so embarrassing, he said. It happens to everyone, I lied. He called 911 again. I’m hanging on by a thread here, he told the dispatcher, his voice breaking. Do you want me to call anyone else, I asked. No, he said. I have some snacks in my bag, I offered. No thank you, he said, polite. I heard the blurts of the siren and flagged the ambulance over. It’s going to be fine, I said to the man, the same way you might say it doesn’t look like it’s going to rain today. The man ambled over to the side of the curb. He stopped and to my surprise he gave me a loose hug. Then he climbed into the back and the ambulance sped away.

I was sitting on a bench in the park alongside Sam eating out of a Tupperware full of watermelon we’d brought from home. I had sprinkled the melon with salt and lime, and we were spearing it with toothpicks we had found in his car. There were two families picnicking nearby. The children were running wildly about, and one of them tripped on a root and landed hard on his face. There was a rock right where he fell. I saw it out of the corner of my eye. Then the child was wailing, and the mothers leapt up and were attending to him, shushing him, soothing him, smoothing his curls. He stopped crying. There was a terrible egg-shaped welt above his eye. Suddenly, I was hysterical. I was wailing. Hey, said Sam. Hey. But I couldn’t stop, I was sobbing, and the ghost was next to me sobbing too. The child looked up from his mother’s breast and saw me and grew scared and began crying anew. The mothers looked alarmed. They walked to the opposite side of the park, where I couldn’t see them.

The thing I haven’t lost sight of yet, I assured my too-nice therapist, is that I am a fundamentally happy person who likes my life.

After that the stealing started. First, Whole Foods, where I stole a tub of olives and a hunk of cheddar cheese. Then, Sephora. Sephora was where I really hit my stride. It turned out I was very good at stealing. I swiped all sorts of face masks and lip stains and fake eyelashes and what I would describe as different types of general goo that would hypothetically make my skin as dewy as a newborn’s. But it made me feel very guilty, and in a pitiful moment I confessed. Come here, I told Sam. Come here and see this, what I have done. I opened the bags and I explained.

What the fuck, said Sam.

I’m sorry, Sam, I told him. I wrapped my arms tight around him, as if he were a tree.

You’re so spoiled, he said. His face was twisted into a grimace as he said it. He hated to be mean to me—it pained him. But I was spoiled.

You don’t even wear makeup, Sam said.

Sam, I said to him. You have been so, so helpful to me. Really. You put me at ease better than anybody else, and I love you. You’ve been such a balm during these troubled times. I know when things get really bad and it all falls apart, we will return to each other once again and embrace like brothers.

Oh god, said Sam.

He left soon after he opened the closet where we kept the air mattress only to discover it was stuffed full of plastic-wrapped buns I’d pilfered in the middle of the night from the bakery’s covert bun room. The buns had collapsed into one another and formed themselves anew in the shape of the closet. There were hundreds of them.

We might need them one day, I explained to Sam. You never know.

Please, said Sam. But I didn’t know what he was asking. By morning he was gone.

After Sam left, it was just me and my vapor ghost boyfriend. We ate bowls of frozen grapes and popcorn dusted with MSG. We watched a lot of television. Shows about makeovers. Shows about home renovations. Shows about child-rearing. I started collecting flashlights and red Gatorade. I waited for the ping of my phone to jolt me out of my reverie. I waited for the screen to light up and cast an otherworldly glow on the walls of my bedroom. But it was silent silent silent. So we just sat in the dark.

My dreams were phone-free now. That felt like progress.

I miss Sam, I told the ghost. But the ghost was so unhelpful. He just hovered above me, blubbering. It was starting to get on my nerves.

Then it was winter again. The nights were painfully clear. My boots filled with water. The city dampened. It quieted. I left one night when it was very cold. I brought all the buns with me in a garbage bag I slung across my shoulder like Santa. I put my phone in my pocket. The ghost trailed behind me. I had an empty can of chickpeas in my backpack. I had two peach pits and a six-pack of off-brand vanilla crème sandwich cookies. I hopped the fence into the graveyard. It was easy. The ghost and I roamed. We buried the can and the peach pits and the sandwich cookies. We buried the phone. We practiced grief. We practiced crying, tearing our hair, beating our chests. The ghost was good at it, but it all felt very unnatural to me. I began thumping the ground instead. That felt right. It was rhythmic, it settled me. It was hard to feel my fingers in the chill—only when I struck the ground did they make themselves known.

From the graveyard’s hump of a hill we could see where the water lapped at the edges of Brooklyn. There were lights on throughout the city, and the air smelled like Snapple and trash. People were still up, they were still moving, they were still all around. I wondered where Sam was. I reached for him. The ghost could sense my distress and he gathered himself around me. Then I was in a wispy cloud, a growing fog. I wished he wouldn’t. It was getting harder to see what was up ahead.