There is a girl on the screen, blonde hair, blue eyes and a smile that shatters everyone because it is innocent and she is missing. Her parents are crying where their words are muffled from their sniffles, “come back home Rachel,” they say.

There is harsh knocking on my front door, making me turn off the tv. I walk to the door but I see my reflection in the mirror I pass, where I let my fingers break apart hair that is tangled together so I look more presentable. Then I open the door to see a hooded figure whose face is bowed down to the floor. “Are you Nova?” Their voice asks in a slight quiver.

“Yes,” I say tightening my eyebrows together and my nostrils flare, confusion wraps around me as this figure walks in to my own home.

“Johnny said that I could always come to you if I was ever in danger,” they say again without revealing their identity to me, just a stranger in my own home. “Is there a place in here that’s secret?”

“Yes, follow me.” From what I have learned in the past, it is better not to question someone if their intention is uncertain. I take the person upstairs to the attic that no one knows exists in my house and it is derelict, abandoned, so there’s spider webs everywhere and dust that is sneaking through my nostrils making me cough. “Will this do?” I ask but no response.

Turning around to see the girl from the screen due to the lack of talking, the silence in this attic is deadly. “Rachel?” I say using the name her parents call her.

“I need your help,” she says where she is trying to gasp for some air as if someone has taken her oxygen, keeping her hostage. “Someone is trying to kill me, and I need you to lock me in here so that I cannot escape and no one can enter. Is that clear?”

I nod.