I rub my eyes again. My head is making things up.

I lift it close to my face.

No, the name and address hasn’t changed.

Mr. Theodore Janes. 17 Pinchkiss Circle.

The magazine belongs to Telly.

I look at the door. At the walls. At the ceiling. The sink. The toilet.

And it hits me. Almost knocks me backward. I hold my aching head. Too much piling in at once.

I want to go home.

You are home.

MAISY

It was dark down there. I listened hard but all I could hear was a windy sound. A breeze went on my ankles. I stepped down and kept my eyes open big, but only black got in. The dark was so thick it was hard to breathe. On the bottom step I pulled the string and the light came on.

I saw a box full of cans on the floor. That might be different, but the black couch was the same and the cupboards were still open with the winter coats inside. The same huge fan was still on the floor, and Chicken raced right past me to the bathroom door. Like he did last time. His long fur whipped all around from the fan. I took more steps. Chicken had pushed away a blanket and now he was pawing at the bottom of the door. He got something white out from there. I think it was one of Telly’s old T-shirts. I blinked a lot. My mouth and legs and arms were full of static.

Everything was weird because it was already all in my mind. It was the exact movie I saw last night.

I swallowed.

I didn’t want to get too close. Chicken barked and the fan whished, but I still heard something from behind the door. It was someone laughing or someone crying. My skin got goose bumps. “Chicken!” it said. “Hey, Chicken. Hey!”

Then, in the tiny, tiny space under the door, the dirty fingers pushed out. I pinched my arm real hard. Tears came in my eyes. I could feel the hurt. Feel it a lot.

Those fingers were real.

And I knew who owned them.

I stopped breathing. I sat down on the floor. All my body went cold. This wasn’t my awful habit. I found Rowan. I found him. He wasn’t grabbed from under the bridge, or stuck in the trash on the bottom of the lake. He was hiding in our house. My middle felt sick and excited.

Chicken pawed and licked the fingers. He spun in circles and pawed at them again. I didn’t understand how Rowan could be hiding there all this time. How could nobody know?

I lay down and I moved my face up close to the door. There was black stuff on the other side. I couldn’t see in. He sounded far away like there was wind in there, too. A noisy wind.