Chapter 1
The plate was white with a thin gold rim and it shouldn't have been on the floor. That's what I kept looking at. Emily had set it down right in front of the white vent near the baseboard where the glossy wood showed every footprint, two slices of white bread stacked neatly like she did every morning when she thought no one was watching. The hallway was so bright it hurt my eyes. Sun came hard through the windows and hit the white wainscoting and made the floor shine, and that shine made the dark behind the vent look darker.
My dad was at his peak and he didn't know I was there yet. He came down that hallway in his dark navy suit and white collared shirt, brown hair combed, moving fast, the way he moved when he was about to leave for something important and someone had gotten in the way. Sarah was right behind him in her cream blouse with the tie at the neck, her long blonde hair swinging, her hand already up near her chest like she knew she was going to need it.
My name is Mia. I was six and I had lived eleven days behind that wall.
It was Saturday around ten thirty and the house smelled like coffee and wood polish. I heard Emily's socks before I saw her plate. She crouched down in her light blue sweater, her back to the bright hall, and pushed the plate forward until the gold rim almost touched the screws on the vent cover. I had my knees pulled up to my chest in the cavity where the drywall was torn and the studs were rough and splintered, and the air smelled like dust and old wood. I didn't breathe loud. I never breathed loud. I reached one small hand through the lower slat where the gap was biggest, just my fingertips into the light, because Emily always let me take the bread myself so I could feel like I did something.
Then Dad's shoes stopped. I saw them through the slats first, dark and polished, then his knees as he dropped. He didn't ask Emily what she was doing. He just stared at the plate and then at the vent and then at the tiny pale fingers sticking out from the dark. Sarah made a sound behind him, a soft inhale, and her footsteps stopped a few feet back. Dad's hand went to the vent. His fingers found the screws, then the edge of the white louvered cover, and he pulled. The metal rattled.
He had to brace his other hand on the floor and yank, and the whole panel came away with a scrape and a puff of drywall dust. Light fell into my hiding place for the first time since he put me there. It cut across my dirty light pink dress with the puff sleeves, across my long light brown hair stuck to my cheeks, across my bare legs tucked under me on the cold wood inside the wall. I squinted. I couldn't help but look up. His face was suddenly there where the vent had been, close enough that I could see the stubble on his chin and the white of his collar and the way his mouth was open like he'd forgotten how to close it.
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I should have stayed still. I had been good at staying still. For eleven days I had sat in that narrow space and listened to the house through the vent and waited for Emily's plate and folded my dress under me when it got dirty and tried not to cry loud. But when he stared at me, his brown hair falling forward because he was kneeling, his eyes wide and wet and fixed on mine, I didn't see the man who had told me to be quiet and stay put. I just saw my dad. My hand was already out, so I lifted it a little more. I reached toward his cheek. My fingers hovered in the air between the dark and the bright, not quite touching him, shaking a little because I hadn't eaten much. I could see the dust on my own skin. I could see his breath stop.
Sarah was frozen behind him, both hands now at her chest, her mouth open in shock. Emily was still crouched by the plate, looking between me and Dad, her small shoulders up by her ears. Dad didn't move. He stayed leaned into the broken wall, his hands braced on the rough studs, his face inches from my hand. He was going to have to say something. He was going to have to say my name or tell me to go back.
