The lights in the building go off. Again.
I hear my mom curse the electricity provider and rummage for candles in the broom closet.
Heat immediately seeps into my room now that the air conditioner's not running. Night has fallen. Everything is dark except for a car passing by outside the window. Headlights illuminate the sultry fog that's fallen across the street, then the car drives on, and the light fades to black.
I turn on my phone and Google 779 Sterling Place again.
I pull up the street view and search the empty lot. I zoom in on the lot's back corners, the piles of trash, the iron fence. Still, nothing about this address looks familiar.
So I try to go over everything that's happened, hoping to piece it all together: First, I saw the guy who molested me on the train, now missing most of his fingers. After that, foggy memories about my disappearance started to return. It started with the sink. And I think I found a human finger in a cigarette box behind it, if it wasn't a dream. Then it was the note with an invitation to 779 Sterling Place that maybe Damon gave me, or maybe not.
But the more I try making sense of everything, the more confused I get, and the more I begin to question my sanity again.
For a moment I think about calling Damon to ask him if he wrote the note. But right away I realize that's a bad idea. If he did write the note, then he may be somehow involved with my sister's death. So he'd be the last person I should call for help. And if he didn't write the note, then he wouldn't know anything about the address anyway.
Once again, I'm left with nothing but a gut understanding that if my sister is alive, I am the only person who can find her.
So, with renewed determination, I hold my phone close and once again search the street view of 779 Sterling Place. I select the 2014 version of the image that's clearest, and I inspect every last blurry leaf and discarded trash bag. Eventually, my eye falls again on the old basketball hoop that someone must have thrown out with the trash. It doesn't spark any memories at all. Still, I zoom in on it, desperate for any clue.
And that's when I see it.
At this resolution, the image is really blurry. But it's there. Behind the basketball hoop's backboard. It's almost totally hidden.
If you Google it, you'll see it too: a hole in the wall.
Just beneath the window, bricks have fallen away and have exposed a space just big enough for someone to crawl through.
And when I see that hole in the brick wall, the memory of everything that happened floods back into my consciousness.
