a/n: 3 reviews! Squeee!

Not mine.

Chapter Four

BPOV

When I was small girl, before Jake, before the nightmare and long before I grew up, I used to dream of having a small house that was brightly painted, adorned with exotic flowers and plants, where animals would run free. It would be all mine. I would love this house with such a fierce sense of propriety that when I'd try to draw it, and got it wrong, I'd shred the drawing, knowing that my house would always be better.

I used to dream of a house, that in essence, looked loved.

I imagined that it would love me back. In all my dreams, there was love.

And that is how I found myself standing in front of my dream home, on a frosty morning, looking for the missing boy.

A few hours after Jake left, I realized that the TV was still on.

So in my bed, curled into myself I began to stare. Slowly the fog over my eyes began to clear, and that's when I began to watch. And slowly sound came pulsing into the corners of the room, until I saw a photo looping over and over of a man, a boy really that was missing.

Burnt gold hair. Eyes that looked like green beach glass, cloudy in the way that my grandmother's were. Skin so pale, it looked like parchment paper. So like mine. And so young, he looked seventeen. I wondered how old his mother must have been.

When I had first approached the house, I marveled at how empty it all looked. The house, so bright, looked absolutely vacant. The only signs of activity were the footprints in the damp earth, but even they had been worn away by the recent rainfall. The current were shut, like sleeping eyes.

The street was silent.

It chilled me.

What I had expected was to be turned away. I had expected do not cross tape; I had imagined police, reporters, and aid workers, all there handling the situation.

I thought they'd all be here, telling me it was under control. I had expected bustling activity, I had expected noise, and I had expected the impish boy to be sitting on the bench in front of his house.

This was nothing like I expected.

There was no one here.

Stepping softly through the front yard, I realized that this house was already visibly deteriorating, the grass was sticking up in clumps in certain places, and there were flowers mashed into the dirt, their petals fallen and strewn. I saw a window shutter on the left side of the window furthest from me had a small peel in the paint.

With each ripple of the cool May wind, the little piece of paint danced, revealing the dark, natural colour that dwelled below the pretty paint job.

It sounded familiar,

In front of the door I froze, unsure of what to do next. Surely I should knock, but then again they said he wasn't even here. Maybe he wouldn't even answer

I pushed lightly against the door, promising myself if it were locked I would leave.

It opened.

Into the rabbit hole I fell.

I stepped inside, the darkness of the house contrasting with the bright morning light.

My eyes fell dark as I shut the door behind me.

Feeling blindly with the pads of my finger on the wall beside me, I found a light switch and pushed. The light was dim. Inspecting the switch I realized it was a dimmer. A touch dimmer. Tapping impatiently at it, it did nothing. I began to slide my finger and suddenly the dark room was illuminated with dozens of small lights all over the ceiling.

A quick sweep over the room revealed no one.

I was surprisingly disappointed.

I had genuinely been hoping to find this boy.

Looking at the staircase, I wondered just how much not finding him would kill me.

I wondered if I'd gone crazy.

This was by the far the most extreme thing I'd ever done.

Normal people did not enter dark abandoned houses, looking for strange cloudy eyes boys. Normal people did not ruin others the way I had Jake. Normal people craved the closeness to others that created essential human bonds. Normal people didn't awake with clamped teeth and a sore jaw every single morning. Normal people cried.

So I wasn't normal. Maybe I would find happiness in this acceptance.

Being here panicked me in the most delicious way. I felt alive. The blood in my veins was thrumming my heart like that of a hummingbird.

I didn't know what I'd do when I found him, what condition he'd be in, if he'd want anything to do with me, or maybe he really was dead.

I felt sick as my mind ran amuck with possibilities.

The only other place he could be was the upstairs, this house, like mine had no basement.

I started climbing the dark stairs one by one, trying to set a non-threatening pace.

I repeated again and again in my mind, steady, steady.

I didn't want him to think I was here to harm the home.

When I reached the top of the stairs, my weight caused the wooden floor to groan loudly and I swerved sharply at the sound.

If I had looked away a second earlier I would have missed it.

The cord was tucked inside of the ceiling of the back room.

There must be something there.

About to approach it, I stopped when I saw the ceiling beginning to shift above me.

My hands were cold and clammy, I held fast to the doorframe, my heart racing. I couldn't look away.

The ceiling turned into stairs. And there he was.

I couldn't look away.

EPOV

When I heard the creak in the floorboards. I snapped.

This person was alone. This person was most likely here to pillage.

In the days that had passed I had identified three different types of visitors, first the reporter, never alone, always talking conspiratorially with the camera man, hoping to catch an unannounced shot of me; second, the social worker slash good Samaritan they knew my name, and wanted to help me, and third the police, the easiest to identify because they announced themselves.

The fourth I had not heard, but I had been expecting. The thief. Their even footfalls on the steps lead me to believe that they were hoping that if anyone was here they would hear these steps and show themselves or hide. And for the first time in nearly a week I decided to show myself.

He had not shown himself, granting me the peace to mourn in solitude, for that I was thankful.

But before he left, he promised he would be back. I would have thought that this was him, but the he was never one for heavy footfalls.

Using my legs to maneuver myself in sitting position was proving useless. I planted my palms flat against the floor and shifted my legs so they were pointed straight in front of me, the white hot burn in them caused my eyes to water.

Standing took some time as the pins and needles and numbness began to subside.

When I felt sure of my standing, kicking around enough, I decided to face whatever await me.

Giving the stairs a hearty push they began to descend, hoping on the top step I began to walk with a limp down the stairs.

Brown. Everything was brown.

So warm and inviting.

Long brown hair, and wide brown eyes.

And skin… just like me.

So pale.

I was sure that if I took her hand, they would match hand in hand.

She didn't look like a thief, or a good Samaritan (no pamphlets, no fanny pack).

She just stared.

Spots appeared on her chest, like the spotting of cow's skin. Deep red.

Ducking under her low arm that still held to the wall I walked to the bathroom to drink some water. My throat burned.

My voice would be a croak.

When I turned off the tap I found her hovering at the staircase.

"You're in your nightgown." I tried to clear my throat, but it was as much of a croak as I had expected.

"Oh." Her eyebrows shot up, and her mouth made the shape of an "o". She looked down, and the cow spots that had disappeared reappeared.

I hadn't meant to embarrass her.

Then suddenly I realized that she was the one in my house. In her nightgown. Unannounced.

"Why exactly are you here?" I squinted my eyes at her and all her browness.

"I thought you were dead." Her mouth raised into a half smile as she looked at me.

"I'm not." I crossed my arms, suddenly afraid of maybe what a psycho this girl was.

"No, your not." And with that, she revealed two rows of bright white teeth in what appeared to be halfway between a grin and a grimace.