Breaking and entering sounded so ugly, so vulgar, something done by criminals and malcontents. Jill wasn’t like that; she’d never even gotten a traffic ticket. She would also never deign to call what she was doing a B&E, even though, yes, she was squatting at the back door of a house she did not live in, trying to unlock it, and when she did, she planned to go inside. But nobody was home, and it’s not like she would be stealing anything. All she wanted was a few moments in someone else’s life. No harm, no foul. She felt that her particular situation fell outside the boundaries of the law.

The lockpick slid into place and she heard the glorious click. She stepped inside, shut the door behind her, and breathed deeply into her diaphragm. There was a certain smell of a house that had been unoccupied for a few hours or days, a soft sort of staleness she’d become addicted to—dusty and sour and ancient—and when she broke into houses, she always stood right inside the door for a moment, not just to make sure she really was alone but to take several inhalations and feel the knot of tension in her stomach unravel.

She waited in the stillness for her eyes to adjust to the dark. The door she entered through led directly into the living room. The halogen streetlamps shone in through the windows, ghostly dust motes dancing in their light.

She stepped deeper in and surveyed the house. For people who could afford a McMansion, the décor left something to be desired. Even in the shadows, the place looked like the world’s saddest West Elm catalog. Generic. Inoffensive. Blah. The living room didn’t even have a TV, just a dark-colored love seat and a side table. No art on the walls, no family photos.

The downstairs had two bedrooms, a bathroom, and a kitchen that connected to the garage. A standard-issue mid-aughts suburban planned community special, probably replicated dozens of times on this street alone. All the rooms were barely furnished, with nothing in the closets or pantries. Just one or two pieces of large furniture. Almost like the inhabitants had just moved in.

Except there were no moving boxes. How odd. A tingle—whether fear or excitement, she wasn’t sure—flooded the base of her spine.

Jill’s feet sank into the plush carpeting as she walked through the first floor. When she came to the stairs, she climbed them, trailing her fingers lightly on the banister. The biggest suite would be up here, so much better to lord over the neighbors. A myopic pissing contest, like who had the latest and greatest grill in their backyard. But more importantly, the upstairs might provide more clues about the people who lived here. The life Jill was trying to steal for a night.

When Jill was growing up, she was, as her mother liked to put it after having too many Bud Lights, unexceptional in every way. Solid B-minus. No sports, no activities at all except for running the lights for the drama club’s spring performance exactly one time, and that was only because she’d had an unrequited crush on the girl who played the lead. It continued into adulthood. A couple of friends. A few relationships. She was the median strip in the highway of life, offering little more than a measuring stick that split the population in half.

It continued through today, where she was a junior manager in a middling company in a far suburb of a second-tier metropolitan area. No boyfriend or girlfriend at the moment, few social obligations. A forgettable human version of beige paint.

But even the most boring people were entitled to their secrets.

Stealing into houses was her one quirk, the thing that made her days shine ever since fifth grade. The older couple next door once asked her to housesit while they went down to Boca for a week. Even though she was invited into their house, she preferred to leave the lights off and slink along the walls and edges, use the cover of darkness to pick through drawers and closets, trying on clothes and perfume by the streetlight floating through the window. By the time her job ended, she’d figured out which houses on her block left their back doors unlocked, which couples went out on Saturday nights, which didn’t have security systems or a big dog in the backyard. She drifted in and out of their lives without leaving a trace. It was like watching TV, participating in a life she could never have, the multiverse of who she could have been.

An old retired woman.

A young influencer.

A middle-aged, stay-at-home dad.

A divorcée who had a lot of flings.

A cam girl who still had a pile of stuffed animals on her bed.

In those homes, she was invincible, an anthropologist through the tiny worlds of middle-class suburbia.

All she had to do was wait. Turns out, when you blend into the background, people will share information about themselves without even thinking. All it took was overhearing one remark to a cashier in the supermarket or a mention to friends at a coffee shop, then following the car home and staking out the place until it was obvious the people had left. Jill might be boring and invisible, but invisibility gave her power over people’s memories, so they couldn’t remember her driving up and down a street she didn’t live on day after day.

Upstairs, her uneasiness, which she thought she’d brushed off, ratcheted up again. The large suite at the top only had a bed; no nightstand, no dresser. It wasn’t a we’re-in-the-middle-of-unpacking kind of emptiness. She felt like she was in a half-finished model home, four walls and a roof pretending to be inhabited by humans.

The en suite bathroom was likewise empty of personal effects. Not even a toothbrush.

You’re overreacting, she told herself. You heard the lady say she would be out of town. Of course their toothbrush isn’t going to be here. And so the decorating around here would make the staunchest minimalist gag. Who cared? They bought the house, they can decorate it however they like. Maybe they were waiting on a delivery from CB2.

She backed out of the bathroom. The only thing left to explore here was the main bedroom’s closet, which could be a treasure trove of lives unlived if there was anything in it. Jill walked over, fuming about the emptiness of the house, how she wasted her evening on a total dud, and opened the closet door.

It was full, all right.

Bulky lumps rustled on hangers. She reached her hand in, hoping to find a leather coat or silky blouse, but yanked it back when it found what she was pretty sure was human hair. Without even thinking of the danger, she clicked her phone’s flashlight on, and stared until what she saw finally unscrambled in her brain.

The suits were human shaped, lined up on hangers in a row like any other piece of clothing. Where there was supposed to be bones and squishy innards, there was only empty space—a gaping maw surrounded by a tiny zipper up one side. All skin tones, all dress codes. A repository of the various shapes of humanity, tucked away in a closet in suburbia with no one the wiser. It was like being in a serial killer’s wet dream.

Jill stroked one of the arms, which had a stack of bangles resting on top of skin the color of cinnamon. It was soft and warm. She lifted up an arm and traced up a lightly haired bicep, and then, without thinking, she sniffed the armpit. It smelled of lilacs and talcum powder. It was like the model for every woman in a tampon commercial.

Jill slid it off the hanger and, sitting on the bed, kicked off her shoes and put her feet into its high heels. It was warmer than expected, soothing, like dipping a toe into a foot bath. She slid herself into the rest of the suit, tucked her head in, and zipped it up. The suit sucked itself to her body to where she felt like it was her own skin. The suit was taller than her, and she could swear she felt her bones and skin stretch to fit her new reality. She walked over to the mirror.

Looking back at her was a supermodel. Well, no, not really. An approachable type of beauty. Someone who, in a small town, would constantly be asked if she was modeling in New York, but in New York would be just one of a million prettier-than-average girls. She pranced around the bedroom and sashayed on an imaginary runway. It was a dream, and Jill sulked momentarily that she was unable to go out for a night in it.

But there were so many other options to go through. She tried on one that looked like a little girl dressed in overalls and remembered how it felt to be three feet tall. Then came a businessman suit; she even unzipped its pants to see if it was anatomically correct (it was; having external genitalia felt weird, and she was glad to slide it off). Then came some sort of yoga mom, and a frat boy with a popped collar on his polo shirt. She became larger and smaller, thinner and fatter, younger and older. She danced around in front of a mirror in a house that didn’t belong to her, and for a moment she was back in her childhood, picking through her dress-up box and making magic in the shadows of the streetlamps.

But it was getting late, and she had to leave soon. Knowing when people were out of town was all fine and good, but there was no way for Jill to tell if they had overly nosy neighbors. She laced up her sneakers, sad to leave and wondering how to learn if anyone else had discovered something like this.

She had her hand on the bedroom doorknob when she heard the front door open.

Jill threw herself back and scanned the room. No matter what she thought about her right to sneak around a house, she wasn’t stupid enough to think the owners would agree. Escape escape escape ran through her head. The window wouldn’t work; she wasn’t sure how high the drop would be or how much noise she would make. The bathroom’s linen closet was too small, and the shower was glassed in. The closet, though. The meat suit closet. She opened the slatted door and shoved herself to the right, squishing herself next to a very hirsute and funky-smelling suit all the way at the back. She tried to rearrange its legs to hide her better, releasing a waft of heinous ball sweat.

The doors opened and the lights switched on; she listened for footsteps. They were soft, a small pattering on the carpeted floor. She tried to angle herself to where she could see through the crack in the slats.

A shadow, a black high-heeled shoe. The thing, whatever it was, walked over to the closet and opened the door.

Be very still, was all she could think, even though she wanted to throw up all over this nastiness. A single droplet of sweat traced its way down her cleavage. She clamped her hand over her mouth to stifle the sounds of her breathing.

There was a rustling, and then a zipping and the sound of a hanger being removed and put back. Then the closet door closed again, and Jill was alone in the darkness.

She peeked out through the slats again. The creature was tall and thin and gray, and so like the aliens crazy people had written about she almost thought it was a hoax. A single-eyed version of E.T. She always hated that movie for trying to make her sympathize with a hairless wrinkled weasel.

Breathe, Jill thought to herself, then silently gagged as the stench hit her again. She realized her entire body was shaking, making the hangers rustle slightly. She bit down on her lip until her eyes teared and her trembling stopped.

The lights went out and she heard the door to the bedroom close. She started breathing in and out quickly through her mouth. She didn’t know where in the house that thing was; she had no way of escape.

Ever so slowly, when enough time had passed, she crept out of the closet into the pitch-black bedroom. Now the darkness didn’t feel comforting. It seemed sinister, as if something invisible lurked only inches away. She flipped on the light switch and sat down on the bed, shivering, trying to collect her thoughts. It was foolhardy, but she needed the light to comfort her. No sounds came from the other side of the door, so she figured she must be safe for now. She hadn’t closed the closet door behind her, and she stared at all the costumes, the different lives promised by each one. Her mouth practically salivated at the thought of all these people just waiting to be taken out into the world.

These suits were full of possibilities, unlike her life, the one that involved Roger, the creepy IT guy who hit on all the girls at the company holiday party, who she knew would try to fondle her in December. She thought of her job, of the two percent cost-of-living increase they had given her, not because she went above and beyond, but because she’d been there so long and they knew she didn’t have any better options. She thought of her apartment, a tiny studio close to work, and the gutters that were so clogged they made the roof leak when it rained, and how the landlord had been promising her for months to fix it, but didn’t because he knew she wouldn’t move out. Where would she go? What would she do? Nothing. And everyone around her was aware of that. The enormity of the embarrassment washed over her and left her feeling strangely calm. There was nothing left for her outside this room except a repeat of thousands of days just like the thousands before. Somewhere along the way, she’d given up imagining a better life for herself. She wanted that back. She wanted hope. The knowledge of a new beginning every single day.

What was the purpose of the creature? Was it alone? Why was it here? Did any of that even matter? Not to Jill. Some people might have focused on what this meant for the planet, or maybe most were like her, only concerned with how things affected them specifically. She wanted to talk to it, tell it that it had what she desired. Maybe they could make some sort of trade if she asked nicely. Maybe it would take Jill with it when it went back to wherever it came from. Or maybe the creature would decide to kill her. But if it did…well, that was fine too. She’d have a grand adventure either way.

She gathered the suits one by one and walked across the room to the bed, laying them on top of the duvet with the tenderness usually only seen in parents putting their baby in a crib. When all of them were piled up, Jill gave one final caress, looking at all of them, all the unfinished futures waiting to be written.

She laid on top of them, curled her knees to her chest, and waited, a Sleeping Beauty on a raft of possibilities.