The Unknown

xxviii.

We separated evenly into four groups of three, and I was glad that Jessie stuck with me and Jade. As we dispersed into the surrounding neighborhoods, I gazed back at the facility we'd emerged from. It was an ordinary stout brick building. At a glance, you'd never guess there was a massive underground complex beneath it.

I looked away, but a vague twinge of recognition made me turn back again. The sign on the building read "Walsh Insurance." An old memory rang in my mind, and I stopped in my tracks. Jessie and Jade halted and turned to stare at me in exasperation. I motioned them into a sparsely wooded area so we could confer without being seen. We hid behind the curtain of leaves hanging from a large weeping willow. 

"I know where we are," I explained in a rush. "The building we came out of—I used to pass it every day on my way to school. We're near where I lived."

"Great, so...what, we'll head to your old house and you'll introduce us to your parents?" Jessie joked, leaning casually against the tree's trunk. 

My stomach dropped at his words. We were so close to my home. But surely we couldn't—

"Actually, that might be a good idea," Jade commented. "We can trust them not to turn you in, right, Tess?"

"I . . . uh . . . I guess," I stammered.

We took advantage of the receding blackness of dawn to sneak into the neighborhood I grew up in. My parent's cars were still there, parked in the driveway, just as if I'd never left. My heart thudded loudly in my ears as we crept closer, scaling a fence and slipping behind the overgrown bushes in my old backyard (my mother had always been a hopeless gardener). We crouched there in wait until, finally, my parents' cars both motored out of the driveway and disappeared down the street.

I opened the backdoor using the key still hidden under the mat. Then, ignoring the sense of dread in my heart, I stepped cautiously through the threshold.

Suddenly, there was a low, menacing growl in the other room. It approached rapidly until a face, indistinct in the dark house, peered at us around the corner of the kitchen.

"Sophie!" I exclaimed.

My dog—an old rottweiler—bolted toward us and launched into the air. Her paws landed on my shoulders, knocking me into Jessie as she furiously licked my face. I laughed uncontrollably as I tried and failed to push her off. "I feel like this is the first time I've heard you laugh in a year, Tess," Jade remarked.

Struggling to regain composure, I stood up and announced, "Okay, I think our first priority is to get out of these awful hospital gowns."

I darted toward my room, only to pause when I reached the doorway, peering inside with amazement. My bedroom was entirely unchanged. Had my parents waited years, hoping I would someday return?

I heard clanging from the kitchen, and Jessie exclaimed with his mouth full, "Correction: the first priority is always food."

"Now my parents will definitely notice we were here," I muttered to Jade, who had followed close behind me.

"We need to make it clear it was you," she suggested, "or they might report it as a burglary."

I stared at her, my stomach lurching. Something about this felt very wrong—even though it had once been my home, I was now an intruder.

But I swallowed my doubts and stepped into my room warily, as if I were navigating a minefield. "What do we need to take?" I wondered aloud, my eyes flickering about.

Jade was always organized and focused—someone you could count on. Meanwhile, I felt useless. A barrage of emotions warred for dominance over my mind, with no clear winner ever seeming to assert itself.