Isabelle Magliari

My first Brooklyn apartment was a walkup in Midwood so cramped that a single renter would have felt smothered. Unfortunately, I had three roommates to contend with. My friend, Lindsay, and I lived on top of one another in a ten-by-ten room, while Arthur and Lula, a couple we barely knew, shared the bedroom next to ours.

At first, I survived the claustrophobia by taking solace in the fact that our apartment couldn’t possibly get any more crowded. How naive I was.