“Where would I hide a key?” I ask Cadence. That question had seemed like such an easy one five days ago, but after tearing apart my bedroom and searching all sorts of hiding places in the house, I still haven’t found it.

“Key for what?” He asks, pausing his computer game. I hold the yellow journal up and tap the lock. It’s not one of those typical diary locks that any sort of skeleton key could open, but a custom lock. He glances at the book for a moment and then his eyes widen, and he jumps up.

Perdita, who was lounging at his feet, walks off with a twitch of her tail, showing her displeasure at being disturbed.

“You found it?” He asks, eyes darting from me to the book.

“Yeah, it was in the utility closet in a light bulb box, weird right?” He chuckles, sitting back down in his seat.

“Yup, sounds exactly like you. I think you hid it in a new place every week too. I read it once, and you never trusted any of us after that. Even though that was when you were like ten.”

“So, any ideas of where I hid the key?” Cadence sits pondering for a moment.

“Well, where all have you looked?” He asks.

He opens up a Word document and begins listing the places as I say them. The first day I’d checked all over my room, tearing clothes from my closet and rifling through my cluttered desk.

When I came up empty I searched all through the house, back to the utility closet, in the kitchen and living room, even the little bowl where spare keys were kept by the door, that one was a long shot.

The cats must’ve thought I was crazy because I even looked in their cat tree. I also looked in Godzilla’s giant dog bed that he only uses when we’re in the living room. When I’m finished Cadence muses over the list before swiveling his chair around and leaping up.

“So basically, you’ve only looked in the obvious places.” He says walking out of the room with me at his heels.

“I’ll have you know I even checked inside the fridge and kitchen cabinets, and under the litterboxes.” He’s laughing again.

“Yeah, but you looked in plain sight, didn’t you? Except maybe under the litterboxes, that’s a rather unique place. I take it you didn’t find anything?”

“Actually, there was a plastic bag with a wad of money in an envelope labeled L’s Emergency Fund.”

“Seriously?” Cadence laughs when I pull the envelope out of my pocket.

“I counted it, there’s two hundred and fifty dollars in here.”

“You were always saving your birthday money, I wouldn’t be surprised if you had a few more stashes of cash hidden in the house. So, aside from that… you have to realize that you...” He trails off to look at me, I can see concern knitting his eyebrows. He’s probably worried he’ll offend me.

“Don’t stop, tell me.” He nods. We come to my bedroom and he crosses over to my mussed-up desk.

“You were obsessed with detective stuff, murder mysteries. You said you wanted to be a spy when we were little.” He holds up the magnifying glass off my desk and holds it in front of one of his eyes.

“You never read any mysteries, but you watched them all the time,” he looks thoughtful a moment. “Well, now that you’re reading I’ve got some great murder mysteries you might like, but anyway the point is you would never have hidden anything in plain sight or in the obvious places, but knowing you, you would’ve kept it somewhere in your room.”

“But by that description doesn’t the desk seem like the most unlikely choice.” Cadence gives a noncommittal shrug and begins pulling the drawers out of my desk.

He sets them on the bed and then pulls up a flashlight app on his phone to look at the inside of the desk. I hadn’t even thought of pulling the drawers out, he crawls out from under the desk and passes the flashlight on the underside of the attached table. He stands back up.

“Well, that didn’t work… uh maybe try looking at the back of your pictures?” I move around the room as he starts putting the drawers back. But no key. We begin moving around the room checking hiding spots I hadn’t thought to look at before.

Godzilla, laying in front of my door like normal, gets up and walks away, as if our movements are disturbing him.

Cadence looks under my rug and I move to my bookshelf, it’s filled with mainly DVDs and CDs, but I start rifling through the few books, even though I did that on day three. I open up each DVD and CD, seeing if there’s anything in the cases besides what’s supposed to be there. After about 15 minutes, and surprisingly finding twenty dollars hidden with the movie Dracula, my room is even more of a disaster than before.

“I was pretty good at hiding things, wasn’t I?”

Cadence flops down on my bed and begins tossing a stuffed bumblebee up and down in the air.

“Yeah, we never could find any Christmas gifts you hid. Mom and Dad made you officially in charge of hiding them when you turned six. Something about you being the only one that they could trust not to open them.” I laugh.

“I was a good kid.” Cadence rolls up to look at me.

“You still are.” He bounces up. “Come on, there has to be another place to look.” I shake my head and sit at my desk, swiveling back and forth in my chair. My eyes cut back to the drawers.

“I think it’s probably gone for good… or wait a minute.” We’d thought to look behind the drawers, but… I start pulling the drawers out of the desk again.

“Already did that Leary.” I turn the drawers over dumping out the contents in a heap as I look at the bottoms of the drawers. I gesture to one of them and Cadence follows my lead. I turn it over and then upon seeing nothing on the underside, flip it back and begin running my hands over the bottom of the wood.

“Look for indents or something… maybe I thought to make a false bottom? And don’t forget to turn it over and look underneath.” There’s nothing, though, and Cadence turns up nothing as well. I lean back against my desk eying the mess of rolling pens, rubber bands, and scraps of paper surrounding me.

One piece catches my eye, with A Midsummer Night’s Dream on the top and a list of audition times along with the address of The Rising Eclipse Theater. I’d circled one of them.

“Check this out.” I gesture to Cadence, pointing at the paper. “I mean I was told I auditioned and everything but it’s one thing to be told, and then to see the proof.”

“Hmm, I remember that day. You and Evan made up this really lame excuse as to why you needed to borrow the car, but no one even questioned it. I mean, it was an obvious lie, something about needing to go and buy sunscreen.”

Cadence gets a faraway look in his eyes, staring at the drawer in his hands.

“When the two of you had a treasure hunt, or were trying to find ghosts, or were chasing one of your mysteries you would sometimes get all secretive like that. You both liked telling the story at the end, so everyone could be surprised. I just assumed it was another one of your adventures.”

I make a mental note to ask more about that later and turn to take in more of my demolished room. There’s piles of clothes everywhere and my rugs and pillows are in heaps, stacks of books, CDs, and DVD’s litter the floor. Hopefully, I can convince Cadence to help me clean.

Cadence flops down on the floor. Godzilla musters up the courage to come in the room and lays his large body beside him, putting his head on Cadence’s chest and nudging at him until he starts scratching behind his ears.

“Seriously, you are way too good at this. You might want to consider a career in witness protection.” I lay back too, closing my eyes and trying to think of hiding places.

“I think I might just need to give up on this.”

“No… finding the key to your journal could be good for you. It’s one thing to hear stories about yourself from us… but to read them in your own writing, maybe that could jog your...” He trails off. “Sorry.”

“No need to apologize… I was thinking the same thing.” I sit up and grab one of the escaping pens and a pad of paper and begin listing the places I’ve looked. “Logically there has to be some sort of solution. You’re sure it would be hidden in my room, right?” Cadence nods. “Ok, so we’ve already ruled all the obvious and a few of the not as obvious places...”

I take in the furniture in the room. A twin bed, bookshelf, two nightstands, and a dresser. I don’t really feel like checking all the other drawers, and I can see Cadence eying them with a resigned expression.

“So, before we tear all the drawers out let’s rationalize this. I doubt I would’ve hid a key anywhere not easily accessible, and if I kept it in here, it would probably be near the bed and desk, which are the most likely places to write.”

Cadence moves to check one of the nightstands and I check the other. After that turns up nothing, I scan my messy room again.

This is getting old but it’s impossible to stop now. I’ve been obsessing over the location of this key for days, and this is perhaps the closest I’ve felt to finding it.

Now would be the perfect time for Evan to show up and help me. And that’s the other thing, I’ve been so distracted with finding the key that I haven’t had time to complete my séance, and I haven’t seen Evan since the last time he was in my room.

My eyes dart back to my desk sliding over the assortment of notebooks, pencil cups, pictures, the little calendar with puppies on it that’s two years old, and a cute little tape dispenser that looks like a cat. Every bit of it I’ve already checked, my eyes slip to the empty space where the drawers are supposed to be.

Logically I know it’s not there, but for some reason I keep getting a nagging feeling that I’m missing something. Cadence plops down on my desk chair and starts swiveling around.

“Oh my gosh! Cadence you’re a genius!” I say as it hits me.

I know where the key is.