The Girl in Apartment 1203

Excerpt #1:   Gossip Girls

  “That’s her. No, don’t stare.”
  “What’s her story?”
  “I don’t know. Marcey just calls her the girl in apartment 1203. She used to live on nine in that big corner apartment. We used to joke that it must be nice to have mommy and daddy footing the bills for this place, but her roommate moved out at the end of the term and rumor has it that she married the man we thought was her daddy.”
  “Wow! How do you and Marcey find this stuff out?”
  “Get your nose out of the books sometimes and hang out with us when folks come over. You would know these things too. You know nobody’s seen her with anyone except the hot older dude who lives on her floor. Ron and Chris both got shot down when they asked her out.”
  Ding. The doors opened on eleven and those two heifers had the nerve to exit and then turn back and wave. Keila wouldn’t give them the satisfaction of knowing she’d heard their petty gossip or was at all affected by it. She smiled, waved back, and immediately smashed the door close button so hard the pressure shot through hand and up her wrist. When the doors opened on her floor Keila turned left to her side of the building then sprinted left and down the hall grateful for the carpeting that covered the hallway from the elevators down both ends of the hall on either side. The building had kept the elevator bank marble which matched the lobby, but would have made her rapidly falling footsteps echo like thunder with the chunky heel she was rocking. They weren’t really uncomfortable, once she managed to walk further than the car to her chair, but they would never be as easy as her ballet flats. According to Brianna though no one would take her seriously at her internship if she looked all of fifteen years old.
  Shutting the door behind her and turning both locks finally gave her a reason to exhale and quieted the voices still reverberating in her head of the girls from the elevator. Keila knew it was foolish to let silly building gossip break her down. Michael, Brianna, and especially Jack had all told her that the first night they’d all been together again, once Jack was all moved into his own place across the hall and the happy couple had returned from their honeymoon.