I watch, unable to move or speak, as a girl that looks just like me stares up at a boy whose face I can't see. All I can see is a thick mess of black hair and deathly pale skin. I can't hear their voices, but I can feel their pain. He is standing slightly hunched and tears are welling up in her tortured, glassy midnight-blue eyes.

And then he leaves, going a way that still doesn't let me see his face. The girl crumples to the ground, her frilly, lacy dress fanning out around her as she sobs into the vacant night air.

I awake with a gasp, bolting up right in my bed. The TV is still on, some cartoon playing faintly in the background. My digital clock tells me it is 3 in the morning.

I lay back down, but can't seem to go back to sleep. The TV casts odd, distracting, colorful figures across the room as the images on the screen change, but I can't turn it off. I don't want to be left alone in the dark.

What was that dream all about? It looked as if it took place decades ago, back when those types of dresses were common, and the unidentified boy's suit would have been everyday wear. But that girl looked exactly like me. And that flop of black hair...could that have been Alec's?

After 20 minutes of sitting alone with my thoughts and suspicions nagging at me, I finally decide I have to do something. I roll out of bed and tiptoe out of my room, then quietly make my way into the dusty old attic.

My house has been around for generations. It was passed down to my mother by her father, and to him by his father, and so on and so forth. My mother is a priss though and made my father renovate it. Nearly every room in this house has been remodeled and my dad is still paying it all off. But the attic has stayed untouched for decades. Its sort of creepy because I swear this house is haunted and it seems logical that the ghosts of prior owners would like to stay in the one room that is still the same as it was in their day.

I begin sifting through piles of boxes, looking for one in particular. My family tree. It stretches back for many, many generations because Mom found this website that allows you to track all your long-deceased family members.

I finally find the old plastic tub that contains not only the tree, but old family photos and scrapbooks. I slide it open with shaky fingers. Inside is a mess of random scraps of things. A few layers underneath, I find the big green laminated tree my mother put together. It is rolled up because if it were all stretched out, it would be much too long to fit in the box. I take off the rubber-band around it and it flops open, rolling way past me on the floor.

At the very bottom is the name of Esmerelda and I. Above is the name of my mother and father, and all my mother's siblings along with their spouses. Then my grandparent's and my great uncles and aunts, and it just keeps going.

I search through the names going up. Tons of E names, but no Elizabeth. Wow, most of my family members had children at a young age and died young also. My own mother had me when she was barely 20. My finger suddenly freezes as it encounters it. The name. My great great great great grandmother. Born 1875, died 1907. Elizabeth Johnson.

My heart pounding in my chest, I scurry back over to the tub of items and begin wildly tossing through pictures. At the bottom is a stack of old, black-and-white pictures. The color camera wasn't invented until 1907, which is the year Elizabeth died, so these seem promising.

I slide off the black band around them and begin sorting through. At first there is only old men in suits showing off something or other, but halfway through I find it. Her.

A picture of a girl my age with blonde curls piled on top of her head, a dress somewhat like the one from the dream, and really big, light eyes is smiling at the camera, leaning against a house on a sunny day. It might as well have been me dressed up for a play though. Because she looks exactly like me, and that house is like an older version of mine. Elizabeth lived in this house.

I am gasping for air by now, so confused. This is the girl that looked just like me, the one that Alec fell in love with. My logical side says no way, but its what my intuition is telling me. And hadn't I almost heard Alec say he met her one hundred years ago?

Something very wrong is going on here, and I am determined to figure out what.