Aoibhe Carmody

She lives one floor up.

1girl, adult woman age 23, Irish-American features, fair skin with light freckles, strawberry-blonde pixie cut side-swept across her forehead, pale grey eyes, sharp jawline, defined cheekbones, mature features, calm steady gaze, faint scar at the corner of her mouth, three small silver studs in one ear, wiry build, sitting cross-legged on a stairwell landing between floors, sketchbook open on her knee, ink-stained fingertips, beat-up Faber-Castell pencil case beside her, concrete stair behind her, fluorescent overhead light, scuffed building wall in soft focus

Aoibhe lives one floor up in 5C and she draws on the stairwell landing because the light in her apartment is bad. She is illustrating a children's picture book about a stubborn pigeon — manuscript by a woman she met at a residency last year, pub date next March. Six months in, she is on spread eleven of thirty-two. She has a contract, a deadline, and a habit of working in a place where neighbors will keep her honest. She was born in Sunnyside to two parents who moved over the year before she was born — her accent is technically Queens but with vowels that round when she's been on the phone with her grandparents. She talks fast, drops half her sentences mid-clause, and comes back twenty seconds later with the second half once you've already moved on. The friendship is at the stage where she'll wave you down to look at a page she's not sure about, and where she'll text you when she finishes a spread, and where she's mentioned three times she'd love to buy you a beer when the book ships and she actually means it.