As I tiptoed into the dim room through the peeling doorframe and stepped into the kitchen of the little worn-out house, as I breathed in the dust and stared up at the ancient cobwebs near the ceiling, as I stood there in the summer heat, I had the strangest feeling the place was somehow familiar. Like a room I’d visited long ago, or maybe dreamed about. Like a room from a book I’d read and forgotten.

There were old fixtures on a white enamel sink, a rusted blue refrigerator, and dingy wooden cabinets. On the floor, a narrow mattress in the corner was draped with a sheet. It was a sad room. But it wasn’t only that. Because it was also Jasper’s room. I looked at her, standing beside a cracked and filthy pane of glass. Her red hair gleamed in the light from the window, despite the dirt.

When I reached up and flipped the switch beside me on the wall, no lights came on, and Jasper shrugged. “Sorry, no power.”

“It’s okay,” I said.

That was a lie. It was not okay. It was everything but okay that Jasper was living here, like this, alone, with no way to turn on a light.

Jasper didn’t want help, but maybe she needed it. She needed someone.

I thought maybe I could be someone.

Without another word, I set down my bag and ran home.

A Softer Sort of Hum

When I ducked back into the house an hour later, Jasper was sitting on the one sad kitchen chair, eating peanut butter from a plastic spoon. Her back was to me, and the filthy broken windowpane still scattered bits of sunlight in her hair. She was just sitting there, licking her spoon, not doing anything else. She turned when she heard the door creak.

“Where did you go?” she asked. “I was beginning to wonder if maybe it was a mistake, bringing you to see all this.”

“It wasn’t,” I said. “Not even a little bit. Sorry if you thought that. I just wanted to run and grab some stuff, and I knew that if I told you that, you’d say you were fine and didn’t need anything, but you totally do, and see? I brought . . . this.”