Latest / Stories from the dark web / Never sleep over the new kids house

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Never sleep over the new kids house · Stories from the dark web

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: This first one is Grant's story in his own words.
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: The first night he stayed over at his girlfriend's house,
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: her daughter's baby monitor started to sing. I was 32,
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: and I'd been dating Tess for about four months. She
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: was a nurse, divorced, with a four-year-old daughter named Lily.
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: Tess was careful about Lily. I'd met her a handful
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: of times, at the park and for pancakes. but I
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: had never stayed the night. Tess wanted to take it slow,
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: and I respected that. Then one Friday in March, she
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: called me at work and asked if I'd come over
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: and stay. Not for romance. She said that for two weeks,
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: she'd been hearing a man's voice on Lily's baby monitor.
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: They lived in a little rental house on a quiet street,
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: the kind with chain-link fences and and the same three
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: floor plans over and over. Lily was too old for
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: a monitor, really. But she'd had nightmares since the divorce,
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: and Tess slept better when she could hear her breathing.
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: The first time, Tess said, she woke up at two
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: in the morning to a man humming through the speaker.
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: Low and soft, she ran to Lily's room, and Lily
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: was asleep, alone, with the window locked. She told herself
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: it was a dream. Then it happened again four nights later,
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: and this time, it wasn't humming.
• 1:38
  Speaker 2: He was singing.
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: I'll be honest with you. My first thought wasn't ghosts.
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: It was that some creep had gotten into that house.
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: So that night, I checked every window and door myself.
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: Everyone was locked, and none of the screens had been touched.
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: I even went up into the little attic with a flashlight, insulation,
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: mouse droppings, and nothing else. We watched a movie on
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: the couch, and Tess fell asleep on my shoulder. I
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: kept the monitor on the coffee table next to me,
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: turned all the way up. The house smelled like Lily's
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: strawberry shampoo and the popcorn we'd burned. Around 1.30, I
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: dozed off too. At 2.10... The monitor started to sing.
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: It was a man's voice, so close to the microphone
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: that I could hear him breathe between the words. Hush,
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: little baby. Don't say a word. Slow and gentle, like
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: a dad who'd done it a hundred times. I was
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: down that hallway before Tess was even awake. I flipped
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: on Lily's light. She was asleep on her side with
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: her stuffed rabbit. The window was locked. The closet was
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: full of little dresses and nothing else. I looked under
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: the bed.
• 3:03
  Speaker 2: Nobody.
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: And behind me, from the living room, that voice was
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: still coming out of the monitor, still singing. Then the
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: singing stopped, and the voice said, very softly, Good night, Lily.
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: I stood in her doorway and listened, and I understood
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: something that made the hair on my arm stand up.
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: Nobody in that room was singing. The voice was coming
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: through the monitor, but it wasn't coming from Lily's room.
• 3:34
  Speaker 2: Tess called 911.
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: Two officers came, and they walked the house, the yard,
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: and the alley with flashlights. The older one picked up
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: the monitor and turned it over in his hand, and
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: he asked how old it was. Then he told us
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: something I didn't know. Those cheap old monitors are just
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: little radios. If somebody nearby has the same model on
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: the same channel, you can hear their nursery and they
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: can hear yours. The voice was in some other room
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: close by, singing into a monitor of its own. Tess said,
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: but none of our neighbors have babies, and the officer
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: wrote that down. The younger officer asked if anyone had
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: a reason to watch her daughter. Tess said her ex-husband
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: lived in Oregon with his new wife and had never
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: once asked for a visit. She said it out loud,
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: and then she sat down on the hallway floor like
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: her legs had just stopped working. I sat down next
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: to her, and neither of us went back to sleep.
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: They went door to door the next morning. The houses
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: on either side had retired couples. Across the street, there
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: was a family with teenagers, and behind us, on the
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: other side of the chain-link fence, was a house that
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: had been empty since Christmas, with a FOR RENT sign
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: in the yard. The back door of that house had
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: been jimmied open. Inside, the officers found the second bedroom
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: made up like a nursery, There was a crib with
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: a pink blanket, a little lamp shaped like a moon,
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: and on the dresser, a white baby monitor, the same
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: model as Tess's, set to the same channel. Taped to
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: the wall above the crib, there were photographs of Lily.
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: Lily in the backyard. Lily on her swing. Lily asleep
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: in her own bed, taken from right outside her bedroom window.
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: Some of them were from that week. One of them
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: was from that night. Lily asleep with her rabbit and
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: her light on and me frozen in her doorway in
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: my socks right after the singing stopped. Her window faced
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: that chain-link fence. He'd said goodnight and walked straight over
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: to watch. He'd been right outside the glass while I
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: was in that room. If I'd turned toward that window...
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: All I would have seen was my own reflection. They
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: caught him two weeks later. He'd rented that house years before,
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: when he had a little girl of his own, and
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: he'd lost custody of her when she was four. He
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: never came inside Tess's house. He never touched her doors
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: or her locks. He never had to. He'd bought the
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: same monitor so he could listen to Lily sleep. This
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: next one is Marcus's story from a backyard tent the
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: summer he turned 10. My best friend Danny had a
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: birthday sleepover every July, and it was always the same.
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: His dad set up a big canvas tent in the
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: backyard by the woods, and four of us slept out
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: there with flashlights and too much candy. The yard ran
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: down to a creek and and the only rule was
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: that nobody went near the creek after dark. That year,
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: it was me, Danny, and two brothers from our street,
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: Jamal and Theo. We told scary stories until Theo cried,
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: and then we told dumb jokes until he stopped. The
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: tent smelled like bug spray and wet grass, and the
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: citronella candle Danny's mom made us keep outside the flap.
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: Sometime after midnight, I woke up because somebody was sitting
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: by my feet. I clicked on my flashlight. It was
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: a skinny kid about our age in a striped shirt
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: and a yellow pirate's cap, sitting cross-legged with his knees
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: all scraped up. He put a finger to his lips
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: and smiled like we were in on something together. I
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: figured he was a cousin Danny had invited. He Danny
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: had a lot of cousins. The kid whispered that his
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: name was Petey, and he asked if I wanted to
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: know a secret. Then he told me the creek was
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: deeper than it looked by the big rock, and the
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: bottom was soft, and it pulls your sneakers down. He
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: said it like it was the most important thing in
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: the world. He made me promise I'd never go in
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: by the big rock.
• 8:36
  Speaker 2: I promised.
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: Then he lay down across the bottom of the tent,
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: on top of everybody's feet, and I fell back asleep.
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: In the morning, he wasn't there. Danny didn't know any Petey.
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: Jamal and Theo hadn't seen him, and the tent flap
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: was still zipped from the inside, the way we'd zipped
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: it when Danny's dad said goodnight at eleven. When we
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: rolled up the sleeping bags, the canvas floor at the
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: bottom of the tent was wet, not damp. Soaked through,
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: in a patch about as long as a kid, right
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: where he'd been lying across our feet. It hadn't rained.
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: Theo said it was dew. Nobody believed him, including Theo.
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: We went in for pancakes, and I asked Danny's dad
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: if there was a kid named Petey on the street.
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: He stopped flipping. He asked me what the boy looked like.
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: I told him, striped shirt, yellow pirate's cap, scraped knees.
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: He went into the den and came back with a
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: picture in a frame. Two boys in front of the
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: same canvas tent, in the same backyard, both about ten.
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: One of them was Danny's dad. The other one was skinny,
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: in a striped shirt. and a yellow pirate's cap. It
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: was his little brother, Peter. He drowned in that creek
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: in the summer of 1981, the night of a birthday campout,
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: by the big rock. Danny's dad sat down at the
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: table holding that frame. And for a long time, he
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: didn't say anything. Then he said, nobody ever warned him
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: about that rock. He looked at me with tears running
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: down into his mustache. And he said, I guess he
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: made sure somebody warned you. This next one is Eli's story.
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: From the weekend, his parents finally left him home alone.
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: I was 16. and my parents were the most overprotective
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: people in our whole town. I couldn't ride my bike
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: past the gas station until I was 14. I didn't
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: get a phone until I was 15, and I had
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: never once, in my entire life, been home without one
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: of them in the house. So when they had to
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: fly to my grandmother's funeral in Arizona, it was a
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: whole negotiation. In the end, My mom agreed I could stay,
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: as long as my best friend Jake slept over both nights.
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: I texted her every two hours, and I didn't open
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: the door for anyone. She made me repeat that last
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: part back to her twice. Friday was perfect. Frozen pizza,
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: horror movies, way too much soda. We stayed up until
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: four and slept on the living room floor. Nothing happened.
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: Then on Saturday night, at about a quarter after one,
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: the doorbell rang. We have one of those doorbell cameras,
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: so I pulled up the app on my phone. There
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: was a man on the porch, maybe 50, in a
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: tan jacket, clean-shaven, with neat gray hair. He was holding
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: a white paper bag from the 24-hour donut place by
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: the highway. He smiled straight into the camera. like he
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: knew exactly where it was. I talked to him through
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: the app and asked if I could help him. He said,
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: hey bud, is that Eli? Your dad asked me to
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: swing by and check on you guys. I brought donuts.
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: He held up the bag. Chocolate glazed, right? Your favorite.
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: Chocolate glazed is my favorite and my dad does have
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: friends I've never met. But my dad had texted me
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: goodnight an hour earlier from a hotel in Phoenix, and
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: he hadn't said a word about anybody coming over. I
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: told the man thanks, but we were fine, and my
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: mom said not to open the door. He nodded like
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: that was a great answer. He said, smart, she raised
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: you right. Then he set the bag down on the
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: porch and walked back to the street, but he didn't leave.
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: He got into a silver car parked across from our house,
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: turned off the engine, and just sat there. Jake said
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: maybe it really was one of my dad's friends, and
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: he was just making sure we were okay. I wanted
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: that to be true so badly. But a friend of
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: my dad's would have texted my dad, and a friend
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: of my dad's wouldn't know where the camera was. I
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: texted my dad, then I called him, It went straight
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: to voicemail because it was late in Phoenix and he
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: slept like a rock. So I called my mom. She
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: picked up on the second ring and when I described
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: the man, she went quiet for so long that I
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: thought the call had dropped. Then she said, very calmly, Eli,
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: I need you to hang up and call 911. Lock
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: the back door. Do not go outside for any reason
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: Do not let Jake go outside.
• 14:12
  Speaker 2: I love you. And she hung up. My mom never
• 14:16
  Speaker 2: hung up on anybody.
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: I called the police, and then Jake and I sat
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: on the stairs in the dark with the phone between us.
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: Every couple of minutes, one of us crept to the
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: front window and looked out. The silver car was still there.
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: The man was sitting in the driver's seat with the
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: dome light on, looking at our house. He wasn't on
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: his phone. He wasn't doing anything. He was just looking.
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: At about 1.40, the dome.
• 14:47
  Speaker 2: Light went off. When Jake looked again, the driver's seat
• 14:51
  Speaker 2: was empty.
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: 30 seconds later, the motion light in our backyard clicked on,
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: and we heard the latch on the side gate. Then
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: footsteps on the back deck, slow and heavy, and the
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: handle of the back door turning suddenly. Gently, one way
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: and then the other. I'd locked it, like my mom said.
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: The handle stopped. And through the door, in that same
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: friendly voice, the man said, Happy birthday, buddy. I'll see
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: you soon. Then the footsteps went back across the deck.
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: And a minute later, the dome light came back on
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: in the silver car. The police took 20 minutes. The
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: second their lights turned onto our street... The silver car
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: pulled away. Not fast. He even used his blinker at
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: the corner. The officer took our statements on the porch.
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: He picked up the donut bag with a glove and
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: looked inside. There were two chocolate-glazed donuts. And folded underneath them,
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: there was a birthday card. It had a cartoon bear
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: on the front. The kind you'd give a little kid. Inside...
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: In neat handwriting, it said, Happy 16th, buddy. Not long now.
• 16:13
  Speaker 2: Love, Dad.
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: My birthday had been three weeks before. My parents caught
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: the first flight home. They sat me down at the
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: kitchen table, and my mom held my hand, and my dad,
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: the only dad I had ever known, told me what
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: they'd been keeping from me for 13 years. He was
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: my stepfather. My mom married him when I was two.
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: My biological father had tried to take me when I
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: was three, right out of a daycare parking lot, and
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: he'd made it two states away before the police caught
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: up with him. He went to prison. His release date
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: was supposed to be the following year. He got out early,
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: and the letter from the parole board went to our
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: old address. My parents found out the same night I
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: did That's why I couldn't ride past the gas station.
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: That's why I didn't get a phone. They weren't overprotective.
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: They were waiting for him. He's never rung our doorbell again.
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: There's a restraining order now, and my mom put cameras
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: on every side of the house. But on my 17th birthday,
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: a white bag from that donut place showed up on
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: our porch. Two chocolate glazed. No card this time. Just
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: the bag. I turn 18 in May, and this last
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: one is Sam's story. He was 10 when he slept
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: over at the new kid's house, and he spent 20
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: years trying to understand what happened there. In the fall
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: of fourth grade, a new kid showed up in our class.
• 17:58
  Speaker 2: Wesley. Wesley.
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: He was small and quiet, with a bad haircut that
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: looked like somebody had done it at the kitchen table.
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: He didn't talk unless the teacher made him. At recess,
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: he stood by the fence and watched everybody, like he
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: was memorizing us. Nobody was mean to him, exactly. Nobody
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: was anything to him, but I sat next to him
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: in art. And one day I saw that he'd drawn
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: a perfect Charizard on the back of his worksheet, and
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: I said so. The next day, he gave it to me.
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: He'd signed it in the corner, very small, and it
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: wasn't his name. I asked him who that was. He
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: looked at the door. Then he took my pencil and
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: erased it, hard. And he said, nobody. It's nobody. That
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: was it. That's all it takes when you're 10. We
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: were friends. His family lived out past the edge of
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: town in a gray farmhouse at the end of a
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: long dirt driveway with no other houses around. His parents
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: picked him up from school every single day, both of
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: them in an old blue van. They never got out.
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: His mom would wave at me through the windshield with
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: this huge smile. In November, Wesley asked me to sleep over. Actually,
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: he didn't ask. His mom did. She came into the
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: school office and called my mom from there, and she
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: was so sweet about it that my mom said yes
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: on the spot. My mom worked nights at the hospital.
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: One less night of me sleeping at my aunt's was
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: a gift. The house smelled like bleach and cinnamon. Everything
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: was very clean and very empty. There was a TV
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: with no cable, a couch with plastic still on it,
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: and on the fridge, a lot of photos of kids.
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: A lot of different kids. Wesley's mom saw me looking
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: and said they were cousins. We have a big family.
• 20:10
  Speaker 2: She said. His parents were nice. Really nice.
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: His dad grilled hot dogs even though it was cold out.
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: And his mom asked me a hundred questions. What grade
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: was I in? Who were my friends? Did my dad
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: live with us? What time did my mom get home
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: from work in the morning? I answered everyone. Why wouldn't I?
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: Wesley didn't say much at dinner. He watched his plate.
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: At one point, his mom reached over and fixed his
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: hair with her fingers, and he went completely still, the
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: way a dog goes still when it thinks it's about
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: to get swatted. We slept on the floor of his
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: room in sleeping bags. His room had a bed and
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: a dresser and nothing else. No posters, no toys, no
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: Pokemon cards, even though he could draw every single one
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: from memory. I asked him where all his stuff was,
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: and he said they moved a lot. Around midnight, I
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: got up to pee. The bathroom was at the end
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: of the hall by the kitchen, and the kitchen light
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: was on. His dad was on the phone, talking low,
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: with his back to me. I stopped, because I heard
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: my name.
• 21:34
  Speaker 2: He said,' No, Sam's perfect. Same age.
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: Mother works nights, no father in the picture. She won't
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: know till morning. Then he listened for a while and
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: he said, Wednesday then, we'll be gone by Thursday. I
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: didn't understand it. I want to be clear about that.
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: I was 10. I didn't think the word kidnapping. I
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: just thought it was weird and the way he said
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: perfect made my stomach hurt. I went back to Wesley's
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: room without peeing and got back in my sleeping bag.
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: Wesley was awake. He was lying on his side, facing me,
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: with his eyes wide open in the dark. He whispered,
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: You heard him. I nodded, and then Wesley did something
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: I've never forgotten. He reached over and took my hand,
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: and squeezed it really hard, and he whispered, Tomorrow, when
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: your mom comes, you go. Don't come back here. Don't
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: let her bring you back.
• 22:41
  Speaker 2: Promise. I promised.
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: I asked him why. He just turned over and faced
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: the wall. After a while, I could tell he was crying.
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: The quiet kind, where you try not to move. In
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: the morning, everything was normal.
• 22:59
  Speaker 2: Pancakes. His mom humming.
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: When my mom's car came up that long driveway at tens,
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: His mom walked me out with her hand on my shoulder,
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: leaned into the car window, and told my mom what
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: a joy I'd been. Then she asked if I could
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: come over again on Wednesday after school. They were having
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: a little birthday party for Wesley. My mom said, of course.
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: I looked back at the house as we drove away.
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: Wesley was standing at his bedroom window. He didn't wave.
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: I didn't tell my mom. That's the part I still
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: can't forgive myself for. I didn't know how to say it,
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: and I was afraid it would sound stupid, and Wesley's
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: mom had been so nice.