Obviously that could only mean he was right, but why had nothing happened until now? Why would someone spend a full 2 years following a kid, just to kidnap him? After two years of hearing the same old story and not believing a word of it, something finally happened to simultaneously prove his innocence and and remove someone else’s, but whose?

I’ve always known the follower as a man, but what did James say he looked like? I wish I hadn’t ignored him. I’d imagine he’s a scruffy, short, muscly man, driving around in a old blue Toyota. But what if he’s tall, and follows him in some shiny black car with tinted windows? I don’t know and I can’t know. Maybe he wrote it down somewhere…

I start searching his room for papers and notebooks he might have hidden about the place. It’s a surprisingly clean room for a boy of 11, with dark blue walls, his pyjamas from last night are thrown onto the Ben 10 bedspread in a complimenting green. The wooden legs of his little desk dig into the plush cream carpet as I open the drawer under the white desktop, smudged with grey pencil markings. The contents of the drawer aren’t quite as organised as the rest of the room, so I tip it out on the floor with a rattle and a crash.

Mum calls out from downstairs “Are you alright, Sasha?”

I call back “Yep! Just looking for something!” hoping she won’t notice the intense panic in my voice. But as I dreaded, she opens the hallway door and walks quickly towards James’ room.

“What are you doing?!” She bursts out, both shocked and upset at the state of my brother’s drawer. “Would you like it if James went through your stuff while you weren’t here?”

Before I can half-heartedly admit, “No,” she has my upper arm in her firm grip and pulls me off the floor back to my own room, closing the door to make a point.

She returns to the drawer to clean it up. As I press my forehead and scrunched fist to the back of the door, I hear her put it back together in tears, one half-used pen at a time. And through gritted teeth and teary eyes I mumble, “I was just trying to help.”