On a cold Wednesday in January, I came home late from work. I stopped in the foyer and shed my heavy feather coat, and pushed off my clunky rubber boots. I stepped around the displaced furniture from where the construction workers doing renovations on my house. I made my way up the stairs to my bedroom and began to strip my clothes.
“Meow.”

Riley, my cat,  jumped up onto the bed. I smiled fondly, remembering how afraid he was of jumping that high when he was a kitten. I continued into the bathroom.

I took a long hot shower, and began drying my hair when I thought I heard someone say “Hello”.  I paused.  There shouldn’t have been anyone there with me, I live alone.

I tightened the towel around my body and stepped out into my bedroom. Seeing no one, I picked up my autographed Yankee baseball bat. I crept to my bedroom door, which stood ajar,  and called, “Hello?”

“Hello?”

I froze. Someone had answered.

“Who’s there?”

“Who’s there?”

Now I was confused. What kind of burglar asked who was there in the house they were burgling?

“Uh, what?”

“Uh, what?”

I began to get frustrated.

“Come on.”

“Come on.”

“Stop it!”

“Stop it!”

The voice started to sound familiar.

“Oh my gosh, I’m so stupid.”

“Oh my gosh, I’m so stupid.”

It was me. I was the voice. My own voice was bouncing off the walls of my empty downstairs and echoing back at me. I shook my head and laughed. Boy, was I dumb.

I put on my pajamas and climbed into bed. I thought about my day. How stressful my new promotion was, the cute boy in the fifth floor, my mother sending me endless texts. It wasn’t until I had almost drifted off to sleep that a question popped into my head, a question that had me sitting bolt upright in bed.

If the voice was an echo of my own, who said hello the first time?