I shoved my key in the lock to our front door and turned it. It stuck and I spent about five minutes trying to unlock the door before I realized it was already unlocked. My twin sister, Dalia, must've gotten home before me. Okay, she usually got home before me. I was just being the idiotic klutz that I was.
As I kicked off my shoes, I could hear Dalia bustling about upstairs. She sounded really busy, like Mom had sounded when we had guests. Dalia hadn't told me about guests. Maybe she had started a fire up there.
I slung my workbag onto a chair and headed towards the basement. Our basement was unfinished, and we mostly just kept junk down there. We also did our laundry in the basement, and that's what I was doing now.
There was a light switch for the basement outside the door that opened to the steps, and another one at the bottom of the stairs. I always forgot the first one and tripped on the stairs in the dark. Like I said before, I was an idiotic klutz. I forgot the light again this time, and slipped down the stairs quietly. I wasn't trying to be quiet. If I didn't trip or do something clumsy, I was naturally silent. A silent, clumsy, idiot; that was me.
I flicked on the light when I reached the bottom of the stairs. A girl screamed and tried to run past me. "Woah," I said, and grabbed her arm. When she saw my face, she looked confused for a moment, then relieved. "You're Dalia's brother!" She laughed. "Twin," I specified, then asked, "Are you one of Dalia's friends?" I'd met most of her friends; she'd tried to set me up with every single female between the ages of sixteen and thirty-five that she knew.
The girl opened her mouth to speak, but Dalia appeared at the top of the stairs with a basket full of laundry. "Oh, J." She said, "I see you've...met Isabelle."
I realized I was still holding onto the girl's arm and let go quickly with a sheepish grin. "J," Dalia whispered in my ear, "I'd like to talk to you. Go sit on the couch upstairs."
I knew that tone of voice. It meant either I was in trouble, or we had to discuss something serious. Like, really serious. In fact, the last time I'd heard it for the second cause was when Dalia told me Mom had died. She'd been sick for a while, really sick, and when Dalia went to check on her, she had fallen asleep, never to wake again.
On that happy note, I figured I was in trouble. But for what? I'd done laundry in the past week. I hadn't done anything at work. Anything bad, that is. Did I eat all the cookies? No, I'd only eaten half the package...what was it then?
Dalia came back up from the basement and sat next to me on the couch. "J," she said quietly, "You remember that news report about the group of Christian girls taken captive by terrorists?"
"Yeah..." I was confused now. Dalia didn't usually begin lectures by reminding me of the news. She usually put her hands on her hips, stood glaring down at me, and prefaced a long talk with my full name, "Dalphus Jonathan Brimstone!" I didn't like my first name.
"Why?" I asked her now. She looked kind of scared, like she did when we had a serious talk, not a lecture. "She's one."
I didn't know what she meant at first. Then I realized what she meant. Isabelle was one of the girls. I couldn't think of anything to say, so I finally blurted out, "How'd she get away?"
"She didn't give me many specifics," Dalia said, "But she says they do a head count every night."
A head count. So, at tonight at the latest, they'd realize Isabelle was gone. And they'd probably come looking for her. And if they found her in our basement, well...
"Right." I said.
