The Spider's Roommate

The jumping spider leapt past the threshold just in time before the door shut behind him. He landed on hardwood and jumped away as a rainboot came down, splattering water everywhere. The spider crouched in the corner, its white hairs a dull gray in the dim light, and moved its pedipalps about defensively. His eyes—four enormous black orbs taking up the bulk of his face, with a pair of smaller ones on each side of the head—locked onto the titanic creature in front of him. A human.

The human took off her other rainboot and, dripping water behind her, walked away into the restroom. Each footstep, to the tiny spider, felt like an earthquake, and he retreated further into his little corner. The sound of her shower, not so different from the roar of the rain raging outside, soon filled the apartment.

Eventually, the jumping spider relaxed, figuring that the human would not return for some time. He scuttled around on the hardwood, careful to avoid the drops of water which, to him, were lakes he could drown in. Having made it into the living room, he crawled across the rug and past the couch, and jumped onto the windowsill.

The spider shivered as a flash of lightning lit up the scenery, followed by a thunderclap that shook him to the exoskeleton. He snuggled up closer to the glass. A moth hung beneath a tree leaf just outside the window, shielding its furry wings from the debilitating rain. The spider moved his pedipalps in anticipation for the ambush. It leapt forward, then—bouncing against the invisible wall, fell back down to the windowsill. The moth remained still, undisturbed.

Puzzled, the spider raised its front legs, ready to fight a nonexistent enemy. When no attack came, the spider lowered its guard. It walked up to the window, feeling the invisible wall with the tiny, sharp hairs on its front legs. There was no explaining, no comprehending its existence. And yet the spider had to accept it.

The spider stared at the moth, within one leap’s reach yet completely inaccessible. The moth clung fiercely to the leaf as it bounced up and down with each beating from a raindrop, as the thin branch holding it up sagged lower and lower.

Jules walked out of the restroom with damp hair and in crisp clothes, expecting to feel refreshed. Instead, she grimaced, feeling as though she had stumbled into a giant steamer. She cursed under her breath and speedwalked into the living room to turn on the air conditioner. She always forgot to do that before getting into the shower. Would she ever get used to the humidity?

After a quick dinner of instant noodles, Jules sat herself down at her desk and opened up her laptop and Contracts casebook. What is an Offer? The title of the chapter she was assigned to read asked of her. Something I should never have accepted, Jules thought to herself. She quickly skimmed through the introductory paragraphs before getting started on the first case. Noise from the droning air conditioner and the pelting rain traveled filled her ears. The words on the page, on the other hand, refused to be taken in.

Hours later, Jules lay awake in her bed with the early autumn storm still raging outside. She recalled that the weather had been the same her first night at this apartment, nearly a month ago now. She had never been the superstitious type, but it had made her uneasy that Washington, DC had greeted her in such a manner.

She had fallen asleep then, exhausted from the strain of moving in by herself, before waking up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat. With icy panic coursing through her veins, she had called her parents back in California, freshly grateful for the three-hour time difference. Hoping in vain that the storm would somehow drown out her sobs, she had wept that she hadn’t any idea where she was and why she was there.

“You will,” they had assured her through the night. “Even if you don’t right now, you will.”

“I regret coming to law school,” she had said in response, in between hiccups. “I regret all of it.”

Jules turned on her phone, wincing as the bright light from its screen pierced the darkness and assaulted her retinas. Her thumb hovered over the “call” button next to her mother’s name. After a minute of hesitation, she navigated back to the home screen and pulled up her Google Drive, intending to look up her law school application. Having written her personal statement nearly a year ago, she could not remember what she had said, what her stated reason for applying had been.

But she decided against that as well. She was certain she had written something hopelessly optimistic, that she wanted to help people one way or another. Jules scoffed at the mere thought. She couldn’t even help herself.

Jules turned off her phone and squeezed her eyes shut, with extra force to compensate for the earlier influx of screen light, as if to apologize to her retinas. She tried her best to fall asleep and eventually did so, unaware of the four pairs of tiny eyes that were now in her presence.

The spider jumped to the kitchen, guided by the hairs on his front limbs that had detected the smell of prey. His eyes focused in on a crimson fruit fly, obliviously feasting on a stray orange peel on the counter. Within seconds, the spider had leapt on top of it, gripping it tightly with his legs and pedipalps. He plunged his mouthparts deep into its flesh, pumping it full of venom and killing it instantly. The fly melted from the inside out.

But he had scarcely had time to enjoy his breakfast smoothie when he felt a presence. He looked up to find the resident human staring down at him, holding a large rectangular object. Still clutching the fly carcass with his pedipalps, he raised his front legs high, then swayed his body from side to side. When the human nonetheless approached him, leaning forward for a better look, he jumped away. This elicited a little gasp from her.

Jules observed the little creature as it jumped short distances a few more times. She had never been partial to spiders, but she had just seen it kill a fruit fly, just one of many that had infested her kitchen in the recent humid days. Besides, she had to get to class soon. Perhaps if she left it alone, it would take care of the rest of the flies before she got back. She could decide what to do with it then. She lowered the Contracts casebook she was holding. There was no need to crush the thing, at least for the time being.

So Jules gathered her laptop and casebooks into her backpack and left her apartment, stepping outside where the air was drenched with humidity and dripping with petrichor.

Jumping spider. Jules had looked up these words in the minutes before her class began, and was delighted to find that she had correctly guessed the name of the creature. She tried her best to drown out the conversations around her, though some of them inevitably leaked through.

Jules scrolled through online images of jumping spiders, ignoring her classmates’ recountings of their weekend adventures and the latest gossip. She decided that jumping spiders were somewhat cute—the large, iridescent eyes, the boxy bodies. Perhaps she would take a closer look at the one at her apartment when she got back, if she could find it again.

She traded the spider photos for her notes on her laptop as the professor walked in and began the lecture. Several eager hands shot up around the classroom with every question from the professor. Jules kept her eyes glued to her laptop screen, hoping that none would be asked of her. She could not comprehend this bizarre space she found herself in, nor why she had sought out to be here. She could not accept that this was where she was.

Jules returned to her apartment in the late afternoon. She searched the tiny studio for a few minutes before locating the spider on her living room windowsill. The sun, well on its way down, flooded the room with a soft golden light. The spider’s white hairs seemed to shine. It turned in Jules’s direction at the sound of her approach.

“Well, hello,” Jules muttered, feeling a little silly. She slowly crouched down so that her chin was nearly level with the windowsill. The spider looked much like the ones she had seen online, although it looked to be on the larger side, nearly the size of her thumb.

After some hesitation, Jules gently placed an open palm next to the spider. The spider, seemingly taken aback, swayed its body again and dug at the air with its pedipalps. Eventually, however, the spider did leap onto her palm. She slowly brought her hand up to her eye level, straining her arm as she did so, and the two looked at each other. Jules found herself plunging into the spider’s eyes, each an obsidian orb encasing a tiny universe. The spider crawled down her palm, closer to her face. She chuckled.

“Wanna keep me company while I read?” she asked. She walked over to her desk and rested the back of her hand upon it. The spider jumped onto the surface, and stayed there as she read her assigned cases. The words gracefully floated up and into her mind, as though Jules herself had eight eyes with which to capture them.

“Jules,” her Contracts professor said, pulling her out of her half-trance. Flustered, Jules sat up straight and switched tabs away from an article about jumping spider lifespans, pulling up her notes. “Could you tell us a bit about this case? What was Pop’s Cones so upset about?”

“Uh, it was…” Jules stammered, her eyes frantically darting around her notes. “Yeah, so Resorts International kept promising Pop’s Cones a new lease for six months, and even knew that Pop’s Cones had moved out of its old location because of it. Pop’s Cones sued when Resorts International pulled out at the last minute.”

“Right,” the professor nodded. “And who did the court side with?”

“Pop’s Cones, because it relied on Resorts International in a detrimental and foreseeable manner.”

“Very good. Thank you, Jules.” The professor smiled, and moved on to question someone else. Jules breathed a sigh of relief and made a mental note to herself: she would finally build that open-air enclosure she had been promising the spider for weeks.

One day, Jules came home to find the dry, translucent shell of the spider lying motionless on the kitchen table. Horrified, she delicately took hold of the shell with trembling fingers, painfully aware of the pounding of her own heart. The shell had a sizable circular hole in its back.

Succumbing to a sinking sensation, Jules was about to fetch her phone to look up what could possibly have caused this when she turned around to find the spider alive and well on the kitchen counter. He was vigorously dining on yet another fruit fly. Memories of an article about spider molting that she had read came flooding back to Jules. Her shoulders relaxed with relief. With a laugh, Jules threw the molt in the bin.

When the spider finished his meal, Jules set down her open palm next to him, and he leapt onto it. She carried him to his enclosure, a glass Tupperware container filled with dirt, leaves, and stones. He dove down and scuttled beneath the leaves.

Jules returned to the kitchen to make her own dinner. As she did, she made a mental note to herself to finally work up the courage to approach the student who sat in front of her in Contracts, the one who was always reading a book before the start of class. Finals were looming, and the formation of a study partnership was as good an excuse as any to speak to a stranger. I can talk to a spider, Jules reassured herself. This is no big deal.

“Yeah, it’s going good,” Jules told her parents during her first phone call with them since the start of the semester. “Yeah. I’m not too worried about finals. I have a study partner. Her name’s Em—short for Emily. She’s an international student from Hong Kong. Yeah, she’s really smart.

“My favorite class?” She paused, giving this question some thought. “Um, probably Contracts. It’s interesting that we have laws about what we owe to each other.

“Oh, also, I kind of have a roommate,” she said, suppressing a smile. “He’s a… he’s a spider. I know, I know. He’s actually really cute. No, you don’t get it. He’s a jumping spider. Look it up. I’ll send you some pictures later. Oh. His name?” Jules turned red, embarrassed that she had never thought to come up with one. “Uh, Frog. Yeah, ‘cause he—‘cause he jumps a lot. And he eats flies, so. I think Frog is a really good name, actually.”

She glanced over at the enclosure. The jumping spider—Frog—was staring at her through its glass wall. He was used to invisible walls by now. Jules waved at him, as though by instinct, and Frog raised his front leg.

“Anyway, Em is coming over soon so I’m gonna run. Yeah, she knows about the spider. She’s cool with it. Okay, love you, miss you. See you soon. Okay. Okay, bye.”

After setting down her phone, Jules looked out the window. The humidity had long been flushed out of the air, and the crisp late autumn breeze now tickled reddening trees. Pink and purple clouds dotted an indigo sky, a telltale sign of an impending sunset. She still had not gone back to review what reason she had given for applying to law school in her personal statement. She did not need to, because she had another answer now, at least one that would do for the time being. She wanted to help others belong.

And, Jules thought with ominous amusement, unlike on the upcoming exams, she could change her answer at any time in the next three years, or in the remainder of her life.