Lost & Found

If Happy Ever After Did Exist...

Dani's POV

    I was laying on my bed when I heard a click. I had been waiting for hours for that click. It signaled that at least one of my parents had gone to bed. I opened my door and saw that all the lights downstairs were off.

    Perfect, I thought. I opened my door a little more, worried that the old hinges would squeak. I checked under my parents' bedroom door to make sure that their light was actually off. It was. I grinned.

    Using my phone as a light, I carefully began my trek to the basement, acutely aware of the possibility that the wood floor would make noise. Each step made me more anxious. Each step took me farther from the safety of my bedroom. That's why my plan was to get in and get out. Simple.

    When I got to the door, my hope plummeted. It was closed. What if there was a lock? I don't have a key. I wouldn't know where my parents would hide a key. And even if it came down to it, I sure as heck am not sneaking into their bedroom.

    I sighed and put my hand on the knob. It might not even have a lock. Who knows? All I know is that I need my notebook back. I might even get to see what's down there before I get caught. If I get caught.

    There was no resistance as I turned the knob but I still prepared to hide if things went awry. The door squeaked open. I tensed. No alarm went off. So far, so good. I opened it a little more and my notebook lay at the bottom of the first flight of stairs. I put my bare foot on the first step. The wood was cold beneath my toes.

    I went down to retrieve it and was pleasantly surprised when no booby trap came to chop my head off. When I bent down to pick up my notebook, the only reason why I risked this, my eye caught faint light down another set of stairs.

    There was a faint voice in the back of my head telling me to just go back upstairs and not worry about it. Of course, I didn't listen.

    At the bottom of about four short flights of stairs, I found an odd scene. On one side of the room it actually looked like a cozy den. An almost exact replica of what we had directly upstairs. A slightly dustier duplicate of our couch, our TV cabinet, and our coffee table. Only this one had several tall stacks of magazines, newspapers, and articles that had been printed out off probably dozens of different websites. Experimentally, I opened the cabinet and was shocked at the sight. There were about twenty different pictures on a single large screen. Wait; no, they're videos. Of five different people.

    Each little icon showed something different. Several were of things like kitchens, bedrooms, yards, and some looked like the insides of cars. There were a handful of classrooms sprinkled in too. They looked familiar. I looked closer and noticed that I had been inside some of those rooms; those were classrooms at my school!

    Why do Mom and Dad have cameras at my school? Isn't that a bit overprotective? I shifted my focus to the one above it. A lamp was on giving it a clearer picture. It was a girl, probably around my age, with long, dark brown hair. The girl looks up, seemingly straight at the camera that she probably doesn't know is there. She looks familiar. Oh, wait; that's Lauren Cavallo! She's two grades ahead of me; a senior.

    Why do Mom and Dad have a camera in her room? That's really creepy and just downright stalker-ish. Not to mention privacy invading. I observed some of the other images. There were four other girls. All of them looked familiar, but I don't know why. Besides Lauren, they all seemed to be in their twenties. I turned away from the cameras and examined the stacks on the coffee table. One of the newspapers caught my eye.

'The Cimorelli Girls Missing from the Scene!'

    Cimorelli? That's my last name. Girls? I don't have any sisters. My eyes wandered to the picture accompanying the article.