The apartment building looked different from his memories — a fresh coat of paint, different plants in the garden bed — but it was still the same. The same weight of the door when he pushed it, the same concrete stairs inside, the same numbers on the doors as he counted his way up to apartment 205.

A different person who answered the door.

Charlie hadn’t been expecting his mum. Not really. He hadn’t been expecting this woman, either, her curly dark hair or her flowery pyjamas.

She hadn’t been expecting him, either. “Um… can I help you?”

Charlie didn’t realise he’d taken a step forward until she took a step back, and once she was no longer blocking the doorway it felt natural to walk inside. It was the same mix of different and the same in here, too. The sofa was different, but exactly where their old one had been. The TV was bigger, newer. The walls were a slightly different colour, Charlie was fairly sure, and the kitchen area in the corner looked almost exactly as Charlie remembered it besides a few small appliances.

The woman was behind him, and she was saying things, but that didn’t matter just then. Charlie headed down the hall and poked his head into his bedroom, now her bedroom. It looked completely different, though in truth much better. He envied the fairy lights she’d weaved through her bedframe. On the other side of the hall, his mum’s room was now a study.

Charlie headed back into the living room and finally looked at the woman again. She looked angry, or scared, or both. She was holding a broom in front of her in a defensive stance. It hadn’t occurred to Charlie that anyone might ever see him as dangerous. Charlie sat down on the sofa in the hopes of showing her he was no threat, then lay down because he desperately needed to. He rolled over to face the back of the sofa and buried his face against a fluffy pink cushion.

With everything else blocked out it was easier to listen to what the woman was saying, but she wasn’t talking to him now. After a few confused moments, Charlie realised she was on the phone.

“Yeah, uh, this guy just walked into my apartment.” She paused, listening to whoever was on the other end. “No, I don’t know him, he just knocked on the door and walked in. And now he’s taking a nap on my couch. I think he might be on drugs.”

Charlie wanted to tell her that he was not on drugs, that he never used drugs ever, but he knew any attempt at words just then would come out a garbled mess and then maybe he’d cry.

“I mean, I don’t think he’s like… dangerous. He’s got his feet dangling off the couch so he doesn’t get his shoes on it. Just send someone to get him out of my apartment, please?”

Charlie knew he should probably leave now so that nobody had to come and move him, but even unburying his face and confronting the brightness of the room felt like too much. Besides, if he left, where would he go? He’d wanted so badly to go home, but home wasn’t here anymore because home was his mum and she wasn’t coming back. She couldn’t. He could still remember how cold her cheek had felt against the palm of him hand.

The knock on the door was too loud, and Charlie wished he still had his music to drown the world out. He needed more batteries. If he knew the night was going to drag out so long he would have brought spares.

The sound of voices after the woman opened the front door was abrasively loud, but at the same time somehow too quiet for Charlie to figure out what was actually being said until they moved closer. There was a male voice now and another woman.

“I think he’s just confused,” the woman whose apartment Charlie was in said. “He went and looked around before he lay down. I think he just walked into the wrong apartment or something.”

“That happens a lot,” the male voice assured her. “We’ll get him out of your hair and figure out where he belongs.”

“Hey, kid, come on,” the new female voice said from directly behind Charlie. “Let’s get you home.”

Home sounded good. Charlie rolled over to look up at her, got a brief glimpse of a police uniform, then squinted away and pressed the crook of his arm over his face as the brightness of the room assaulted his eyes.

The sounds of fabric brushing against fabric told him that the female officer had crouched down next to him, and then her hand was on his arm gently pulling it back. When she spoke, her voice was gentler. “Come on. Let me see your eyes.”

Charlie allowed her to move his arm, but he couldn’t help squeezing his eyes shut against the light. Slowly he managed to relax, then blink them open, but he could feel the grimace on his face.

“Pupils look normal.” She was looking at Charlie, but he got the impression she was talking to the other officer behind her. She had short, auburn hair. Charlie liked it. “What’s your name, kid?”

Charlie’s lips moved, but the idea of trying to speak just then made him deeply uncomfortable. He pulled his walkman out of his pocket and pointed to the faded letter stickers he’d arranged on the front to spell his name.

“Charlie,” she read. She smiled at him, but Charlie saw it slide off her face as she turned to speak to her partner. “I don’t know about drugs. Maybe an intellectual disability. Can you call in and check if anyone’s called him in missing? White male, brown hair, blue eyes, looks around mid-teens, goes by Charlie.”

Charlie did not have an intellectual disability, he was not on drugs, and his dad would never have reported him missing to the police. He could tell her none of this, though, so he just sat up and pulled his hood up so that he had some protection from the intensity of the world.

“Okay Charlie, I’m Constable Katherine Bradley. You can call me Kate,” Kate said, as though Charlie was likely to be verbally addressing her in any way. “My partner over there is Constable Lukas Lau. You can call him Luke.”

Luke was an asian man with hair shaved military short. Charlie wanted to touch it, but you could probably get arrested for that.

“Now, can you answer some questions by nodding or shaking your head?”

Charlie considered that. Yes, just then he could both process what was being said to him and respond nonverbally. He nodded.

Kate smiled. “Good. Have you had any pills or alcohol or anything like that tonight?”

Charlie shook his head. He wanted her to ask if he had an intellectual impairment, too, so that he could shake his head again, but she moved onto a different topic.

“Do you live in this apartment building?”

Charlie hesitated. He had, but that wasn’t the question. He shook his head again.

“Do you know anyone who does?” her partner cut in from behind her.

The unexpected voice in the mix distracted Charlie for a moment, and he had to run the words back through his mind a couple of times before they made sense. Did he know anyone who lived here? He had, but how was he supposed to know if they still did? Charlie gave an awkward shrug.

“You’re not sure?” Kate asked.

Charlie nodded.

“You’re not sure if you’re in the right apartment building, or you’re not sure if they still live here?”

That wasn’t a yes or no question, so it didn’t work with their response method. Charlie shook his head and then nodded it in an attempt to adapt.

Kate smiled. “Sorry. You’re not sure if they still live here?”

Charlie nodded.

“Did you think they lived in this apartment?”

Charlie shook his head. He was starting to feel even tireder than he had before and it was becoming harder and harder to focus on the questions he was being asked. He just wanted to go home.

“Can you show us where you think they might live?” Kate asked.

Charlie nodded and got up off the couch. It wasn’t far, just next door, where the old lady who used to babysit him had lived. Helen. Charlie hadn’t liked most people, but he’d liked her. She’d knitted him toys and let him watch his favourite movies on her little TV whenever he came over. But she’d been old, and it had been six years, and nothing seemed to stay the same for that long.

The lighting was dimmer, out in the hallway. Gentler on his eyes. He knocked on her door and then sat down on the floor in front of it.

The image Charlie had of Helen in his mind was vague and indistinct, almost forgotten, but somehow he still recognised her as soon as she opened the door. Her eyes found the two officers behind him first, then drifted down to Charlie and squinted in confusion. There was no recognition in them.

“Sorry to bother you so late, ma’am,” Luke said. “You don’t recognise this kid at all, do you? He’s a bit lost and we’re trying to figure out where he’s come from.”

The veins on her legs were big and purple and her skin looked loose and thin. When he was ten, she’d let him touch the protruding veins on the backs of her hands. He’d like the way they felt.

“Oh, that is a worry,” Helen said, her voice weak and scratchy. “I’m afraid I don’t really get out much these days. There are some college boys two doors down who might have seen him around.”

Kate thanked her for her time and apologised again for bothering her as Luke bent down towards Charlie.

Luke’s fingers wrapped around Charlie’s arm and tried to pull him up, but he made himself into a passive, immoveable weight. When the door in front of him began to shut, he kicked his foot out to block it.

“Kid…” Luke said, and tugged Charlie’s arm more firmly. If he’d used his full strength he probably could have moved Charlie easily, but he was still trying to be gentle. Was refusing to stand up when a police officer told you to illegal? “Charlie, come on.”

The door pulled open again and Helen stared down at him. “...Charlie?”

Charlie couldn’t put a name to the emotion on her face, but there definitely was one. She knew who he was now. He tucked his knee back against his chest.

“You do know him?” Kate asked.

“I—” Helen hesitated, then nodded. “I didn’t recognise him. It’s been… oh, let’s see…”

Charlie held up six fingers.

The laugh Helen let out sounded fragile. “Yes, it would have been about six years. He lived next door with his mum, and then…” She paused, took a shaky breath. “Everyone thought his father had probably taken him, but the police couldn’t find him. Is that what happened, Charlie?”

Charlie twisted the cords on his hoodie together. He knew better than to give out any information about his dad in front of the police.

“So his mother is—” Kate began to say, then abruptly stopped. Charlie could see Helen shaking her head vigorously out of the corner of his eye. “Do you know if he has other family?”

“Yes, his grandparents on his mother’s side. They were very worried about him.”

Charlie popped the knotted end of one of the cords on his hoodie in his mouth and bit down on it. His grandparents? Even before he’d gone to live with his dad he hadn’t seen them for a couple of years. As far as Charlie knew, they’d never even liked him. They’d been so incompatible with him that they had barely known him as anything more than a screaming mess.

A couple more exchanges passed between the police and Helen before Charlie even noticed he wasn’t listening anymore. He tried, briefly, to tune back in again, but promptly gave up. It was their job to solve this problem now. He wasn’t needed anymore.

It wasn’t long before Kate gently encouraged him to his feet and led him down the cement stairs, out of the apartment building. He didn’t like the feel of the light touch of her hand against his elbow, but he did like how it directed him so that he didn’t really have to think. She got him into a police car and sat with him in the back.

She talked to him and asked him questions, but Charlie wasn’t listening. His brain kept trying to fill in the blanks of what would come next, but he had no answers. He knew they wouldn’t be taking him back to his dad.

They ended up at a hospital, which made no sense at all. Charlie wasn’t sick and his only injuries were a few bruises nobody had even seen. Hospitals were bright and busy. Things went beep and a baby was crying. Every sheltered nook they passed called out to Charlie to crawl into it and hide himself away.

He ended up in a room with a female doctor and with Kate. The doctor tried to get him to take a tablet, but when he pressed his lips firmly shut and leant away from her she didn’t push him.

The doctor made him take off most of his clothes and looked him over carefully, pausing to take pictures of bruises and scars. It was cold. She didn’t touch him much, but every bit of contact made him want to hit or bite. He would have when he was ten, before his dad had taught him consequences. Now he just imagined himself doing it.

While the doctor examined a scrape on Charlie’s knee that Charlie couldn’t even remember acquiring, Kate bent down and picked up his jeans. She must have seen one of the notes poking out, because she went straight for his pocket. She held the money up for him to see. “Is this yours?”

She didn’t sound accusatory, but she was a police officer and the money had come from his dad selling drugs. Charlie pretended not to have heard her even though he was looking right at her.

“Okay. I’ll keep hold of it for you until we can figure things out, then.”

Charlie chewed at the inside of his cheek, but he didn’t respond. He knew he might never see his dad again, but that didn’t stop him panicking about how angry his dad was going to be when he found out the money was gone and that a police officer had taken it. The lights in the room seemed brighter than they had been a minute ago.

Charlie didn’t notice his teeth digging into the back of his arm until the doctor and Kate both saying his name pulled him back into the present. There were teeth marks in his skin when he pulled away, but nothing that wouldn’t fade soon enough.

Less than a minute later Charlie was allowed to put his clothes back on and Kate led him to a small waiting area with some chairs. Nobody else was there, but it was still too bright and even the more distant sounds of activity made Charlie’s brain itch. He wanted to be at home, in his bed, buried deep under blankets with music in his ears. He wanted this to all be a dream, and could almost believe it was one. It definitely didn’t feel real.