Note from LuluCalliope: Thanks for all the reviews! Everybody is awesome! :) Here's a Loman chapter!

Chapter Three: Resemblance

Loman Lovat smiled his content as he walked down the path that would take him to his tree house. He had cleaned his room, dusted, fed the fish, cleared the tables, emptied the wastebaskets, and done so much more to help out. He was exhausted, and the tree house would help him escape.

He loved his little hideout so much. His father had built it for him as a birthday present when he was six years old. It was in such a lonely, lovely place, in a large tree on top of a hill. He had a great view of a well. "It's so deep, that if you fell down and looked up, you'd see a sky full of stars in the middle of the day," his dad once told him. Loman hadn't believed him, but Wybie only chuckled. "The human eye is very sharp," he said, tousling his son's already unruly brown hair.

Loman spent all of his free time down there, often reading books and taking photos of absolutely nothing. Sometimes snails crawled into the tree house. He had about a dozen pictures of them, and he had given them all names. There were at least four photos of the well, one during each time of the year. Loman noticed that it wasn't sunny by his tree house, and it was always wet and cloudy, but it never seemed to rain as much as it should have. If it did, there would have been a lot more flowers growing nearby.

He climbed up into the small room and looked around. He decided that today he would make a list of everything that he had inside the tree house. If something went missing, he would be sure to notice it, then. The funny thing was, even Loman didn't know everything about the tree house. His dad did, being the one who built it. But Loman was determined to know just as much as his father did, and what better place to start than here?

One thing that he didn't know was the exact number of books that he kept up in the trees with him. He had read them all at least once, but he never kept track of them. He crawled over to the bookshelf, which was built into the wall, and scooped all of the contents up, in his arms. He then stacked them in a neat tower of paper, and began writing their titles down on a piece of paper. Most of them were cutesy little picture books, the kind that his mom would read to him before he went to bed at night. But there were a few larger books…including one with no title. Had he read this one before? If he had, he certainly couldn't remember doing so. Loman examined it, realizing that it was a photo album. He opened it up, and a small piece of paper fell out. He recovered it and looked at it.

It was a picture of two young girls with adorable braided hair and old-fashioned dresses. One of them cradled a doll in her arms. The picture was labeled Louisa and Lydia Laurence, aged ten. "Great-Grandma Louisa," Loman realized. He never knew she had a twin sister! He eagerly flipped to the first page in the book, only to find that there were baby photos of his father instead, and no more pictures of the twins. And for a while, there were only pictures of Wybie and his grandmother.

Then there were pictures of a moving van outside of the Pink Palace and of his father—probably no more than ten—hanging out with a bluenette girl who all of the labels named Coraline Jones.

Loman dropped the book and scurried backwards, away from it, almost as if he were afraid that the book would bite him. Coraline Jones was the name of the girl that had gone missing, the daughter of Old Mel and Charlie Jones. He knew that, but he never knew that his father actually knew the girl in person.

The next few pages were covered of photos of Wybie and Coraline doing absolutely nothing. Sometimes they'd be playing with banana slugs, other times they'd be punching each other in the shoulder, and in one or two of them they were playing with a scrawny black cat that had no collar.

As time went on, they were joined by another person: Kate, Loman's mother. He noticed that in the pictures with Kate, Coraline's smile seemed to be more forced. She looked happy, but a little annoyed and sad at having a third person present. Eventually, Coraline stopped showing up in the pictures altogether, and Kate and Wybie were the stars, shown going on dates and doing all sorts of sweet, mushy romantic stuff. That was pretty boring, but the first newspaper article in the album wasn't. It announced the disappearance of Coraline Jones, and for a while, Coraline was the star of the book. Loman recognized his father's handwriting on several pages. He had scribbled small notes like, No word from her yet. Had he known where Coraline had vanished to? Why didn't he do anything? Loman wondered, for one awful moment, if his father had been involved in the kidnapping, and then shook his head no. That wasn't possible, not when he was in so many photos of the sweet blue-haired girl. He wouldn't do anything totally bad to his own friend.

And then a new article declared that Coraline had been found, having escaped from the man who had kept her in captivity for nine months. Her description of the kidnapper answered Loman's doubts over his father's role in the girl's disappearance. Coraline had described the man who had kept her in captivity as being "really tall, and kind of thin, with black hair and eyes and a sharp nose and thin lips". She had reunited with her parents. There was a photo of her, Wybie, and Kate standing outside of their high school, all looking despondent over something. Loman noticed that Coraline's body had changed…she looked like she had put on some weight. For a while, she went on with her life, going to school and spending time with Wybie and Kate…but then another clip from a newspaper informed readers that she had gone missing again. Wybie had written on this page in capital letters: DOOR. Loman blinked in confusion. What door was he talking about?

There was nothing more written about Coraline.

And taking up all of one page was his father embracing his mother outside of a church. He was wearing a fine suit; she was covered in frothy white lace and satin. Following that, there were baby photos of Loman. He stopped reading there, and clutched the book to his chest, thinking hard. He had learned so much now…and he didn't know what to do with this knowledge. But one thing seemed clear: his father hadn't built the tree house as a hideout for his son. It had been made to hide his secrets and past away from the world. A part of Loman was angry. Did his father really think that he wouldn't discover this book? This was his tree house. But another part was curious. He had to know more about Coraline's history…

Then he remembered something that Dre, the little girl that he had met in the tunnel yesterday, had said. Her name was Deirdre Beldam-Jones. Was this…the daughter of the missing girl? Loman gasped. Was the missing girl alive and on the other side of the passageway? He shook his head. No, no, that was silly. There had to be a more logical explanation. He would get this all straightened up in no time at all.

He held the book under his arm as he descended from the tree house. He ran with it all the way to his house, and once he got there, he ran up the stairs to his room, slammed the door, and hid the book underneath a messy stack of comic books.

"Loman Lovat, are you slamming doors?" His mother called up crossly.

"Not anymore," he responded, biting his lip with worry. He had to show the book to Dre…somebody had to know about it, and if he couldn't tell his parents, he had to tell Dre. And besides, sharing secrets was part of being a friend.

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