I could tell Brianna wasn’t home as soon as I stepped through my front door.

It’s not like I’m psychic or anything—empty homes just have a certain feeling to them; a hollowness. When people are around, there’s always some indication. You’ll hear the muted hum of a television or the distant clattering of a keyboard. The air isn’t quite so still, and it’s mixed with the smells of an opened refrigerator or an afternoon snack. Shoes and coats will lie discarded on furniture near the door, and the plumbing in the walls will hiss restlessly from turned faucets. It might seem weird to notice such small things, but I’m unusually sensitive to them.

Or rather, the lack of them, which is what I immediately noticed.

My hands tightened on my keys, and I felt my pulse and breathing quicken. All these years later and it still happens. I don’t like empty houses. Brianna knows that.

And yet.

I whipped my phone out and slid past the lock screen, searching for messages as I ditched my tie and loosened the collar of my button-down shirt. No notifications, no texts. It was 6:48pm. She should have been home hours ago—I should have been home already too, but I can’t always control when work needs me to stay late. I’d sent her a text at 4:30 to let her know I’d be home a little later than usual and asked her to get dinner started, but of course she hadn’t responded.

Why does she do this? I wondered. She knows how mad I get when she goes quiet on me.

My mind spun with possibilities as a mix of frustration, anger, and fear stirred in my chest, and a series of unpleasant images flashed through my mind: Brianna kidnapped, bound and gagged in the back of a van. Brianna in the hospital, comatose and hooked up to a heart monitor. Brianna in a car accident, mangled on the side of the highway.

Then I forced myself to calm down and take a few deep breaths. I was being ridiculous, and there was no point in getting myself all worked up. If something really serious had happened, the police would have called me.

[Where are you? Not cool, Bri] I texted her, but then I realized that was dumb. She always texted me if she was visiting with a friend or going to the library. Since she hadn’t, it meant she was avoiding me, and that it was no accident that she wasn’t here right now. I wouldn’t get a reply.

That made me almost as angry as stepping into a silent, empty home.

I’d worked through lunch today and was starving for some dinner, but I knew that the tight, constricted feeling in my chest wouldn’t go away until I found her. Fortunately, I had a pretty good idea of where she might be.

I turned on my heel and left, slamming the front door of our small house behind me and heading back to the car I’d left in the driveway only moments before. My 2006 Ford Taurus—forest green and badly in need of a wash—wouldn’t have ever been my first choice of vehicle (or even in my top ten), but it did a fine job of ferrying me from point A to point B. Choosing it had been a matter of necessity rather than preference: it was reliable, cheap to maintain, and most importantly, available with an affordable payment schedule. At 131,000 miles it still ran fine thanks to my routine good care of it, but right now I wasn’t thinking about maintaining the condition of my car.

The tires squealed as I reversed out of my driveway and practically floored it, blowing through two red lights along the way to my destination. It’s not like me to be that reckless unless I’m extraordinarily angry, and I felt more than a little guilty about that, but when it comes to my little sister, I have trouble hanging onto my usual, cool-headed stoicism. That goes double when I’m worried about her.

If Brianna wasn’t at home, the library, or a friend’s house, she’d almost certainly be at the only other place she liked to go: our town shopping mall. I knew just what part of it, too.

I screeched to a halt in an enormous lot that looked way too big for the small collection of cars parked there. The red brick exterior of Northfield Way loomed over me, a sad, faded shadow of the mall it was a decade or two ago. I couldn’t help pausing to stare at it for a moment with a slight lump in my throat as I stepped out of my car. I remember how busy it used to be in the 90s, with its throngs of milling teenagers and adults with their arms bowing low under the weight of their plastic bags. My parents would take me shopping sometimes at the GameStop or the bookstore, and other times we’d go to the movie theater to see whatever blockbuster science fiction hit was playing at the time. The mall’s theater is especially nostalgic for me: sticky floors, faded, threadbare seats, and the stale popcorn odor that permeated the whole place make a fondly recalled jumble in my mind. I saw so many of my favorite films for the first time at that place: the Lord of the Rings trilogy, Star Wars episodes 1-3—pan them all you want, but they were my childhood Star Wars movies—, The Fifth Element, The Matrix.

One of my favorite memories is from the summer Jurassic Park came out. I was only four, which was obviously way too young to see it at the time, and I remember that my mom told my dad “absolutely not” even though I begged and begged to go. He took me to the mall to see Dennis the Menace instead, and I sulked the whole time while he bought us tickets and popcorn, keenly resentful of being kept away from the awesome dinosaur movie. At the last minute, he crouched down so he was eye level to me and asked if I could keep a secret. When I nodded, he winked and steered me into another theater.

I loved every terrifying moment of Jurassic Park, even though it turned out I couldn’t keep it a secret to save my life. I had nightmares about raptors stalking me through my dreams and would wake up crying and screaming for months afterward. My dad got in so much trouble for that outing, but it made him a hero in my book, and he always said it was worth it for the look on my face.

But I wasn’t at the mall to reminisce. I was here to retrieve my little sister, and I didn’t think I’d find her at the movie theater. I shook my head and stormed through the tinted glass entrance doors, making a beeline for Brianna’s likely location.

These days, Northfield Way felt like a ghost town. The movie theater went out of business along with the GameStop and half a dozen other stores around the time of my high school graduation, and no one ever moved in to take their places. Almost a third of the retail spaces I walked past stood dark and empty, like grim heralds of the fate awaiting the handful of businesses that still managed to limp along on a tenth of the foot traffic this place saw in better times. Seeing the faded, brown-stained outlines of the lettering once belonging to the B. Dalton Bookseller where I’d bought Magic: The Gathering cards and fantasy novels as a child didn’t help lighten my mood, either. I hated coming here now, because it all just reminded me of how things used to be.

Brianna hadn’t bothered to return my text by the time I arrived at the dingy arcade in the back corner of the mall, and I was furious. If I had been a cartoon character, little stormclouds would have been circling my head. If I was a Final Fantasy character, my status would have been “Berserk.” I was ready to unleash hell on that girl.

I made a quick circuit of the dim, noisy interior and spotted my sister before she saw me. Sure enough, she was right where I’d expected her to be, but it was who she was with that caught me by surprise. Brianna stood with her back to me in front of an oversized fighting game in a black tank top and dark jeans that were way tighter than I was comfortable with. The game was Soul Calibur II, a favorite of ours, and her pink-streaked long pigtails bobbled in the air as she slammed the analog stick through a complicated series of movements that kept Cassandra—her favorite character—dancing and feinting out of the reach of Astaroth’s wide, clumsy swings. Even from a distance I could see that she was way better than her opponent.

Normally I’d have felt a small surge of pride at that. I was the one who taught her to play, after all. But I recognized the guy she was playing against as Bradley Harris, a Junior who was two grades ahead of her. I’d gone to school with his older brother Jason, who was best known in my graduating class for his extensive list of sexual conquests among the 2005 Freshman and Sophomore girls. It might have been impressive if he hadn’t been such a colossal douche about it—his Senior quote in our yearbook had literally been “Tapped that!”, which made it into print only because our entire faculty had been too old and clueless to understand what it meant. Of course, what should we expect from the same teachers who had given their unanimous and enthusiastic endorsement to “Here’s to the Night” as our prom theme song?

Despite all of her dancing around the SCII arena, Bri brought her character a little too close to a ledge, and Brad suddenly rushed forward, sweeping Astaroth’s axe in a vicious cross-slice. Brianna hit the guard button a fraction of a second too slowly, and Cassandra went flying out of the ring, winning Brad the match.

Bri broke out into giggling laughter and slipped her hand through Bradley’s arm, bumping her body against him playfully as she congratulated him on the win. But as soon as he saw me, he pulled his arm away and took a quick step back, eyes widening. He cleared his throat and nodded in my direction.

“Bri… your, uh, older brother is here.”

Brianna spun around, breathing a very unladylike curse word, and her smile dropped away.

“We’re leaving,” I said gruffly. “Now.”

I seized her by the wrist and started to yank her out of the arcade.

“Ow, Michael, ow! Stop it! You’re hurting me,” she whined, dragging her feet against the stained patterned carpeting and tugging against my grip.

“You’re supposed to be at home right now,” I growled.

Bri’s complaints seemed to help Bradley find his courage, because he suddenly piped up: “Hey, man. Knock it off. She’s almost an adult. She can go where she wants, okay?”

I froze in mid-step. Then I let go of Brianna’s hand and turned to face Bradley. He was like a miniature version of Jason, seventeen and a little scrawnier than his brother had been at that age, but with the same blue eyes, strong chin, and lightly curling dark hair that had inexplicably made up for Jason’s garbage personality to dozens of the girls whose panties he’d collected like trophies. What was Bri doing with a guy like this? I had the sudden urge to punch mini-Jason right in his stupid face. I glared at him harshly enough that he visibly flinched, but he didn’t take another step back.

“Michael,” Bri hissed, rubbing her wrist. “Stop. Don’t. You’re embarrassing me!”

Instead I jammed my finger into Bradley’s chest and bit my words off one sharp syllable at a time. “She’s not an adult. She’s fifteen years old, which in case you weren’t aware, means that she’s a minor. A minor that I’m in charge of. So if I say she’s supposed to be home, then that’s where I expect her to be. And if I ever see you with her again, I’m going to pound your face in. Do you understand me?”

Now, I’m not a huge guy. Maybe 5’11” on a good day and 175 pounds of what I like to tell myself is mostly muscle, although if I’m being honest the weight isn’t as much muscle as it used to be. I ran varsity track back in high school, and while I won’t break any records these days, I do sometimes still lift weights and run on an old treadmill in my garage to stay fit.

Brad was at least my height, maybe even a little taller, and I could see the primal calculations running behind his eyes. At 28 years old, I had over a decade of experience and twenty pounds on the kid. I didn’t think of myself as an alpha male, exactly, but I could get rough when I had to—and I certainly wasn’t about to take guff from a tough-talking teenager. Brad didn’t seem like a dummy, and I could see that he recognized all that. But now that he’d called me out in front of Brianna, he couldn’t just back down without looking like a coward in front of a girl.

That was right where I wanted him. Most guys will avoid girls they’ve been embarrassed in front of. If he walked away now, I doubted Bri would see him again whether she wanted to or not.

Or I could just kick his ass, if he pushed his luck. Whatever. Especially given the unique circumstances of our household, the worst I’d get in our small town would be a slap on the wrist.

Brad stared me down for a solid beat, trying to decide how he wanted this to play out, but then common sense won. He shoved his hands deep into his pockets, grumbled something under his breath, and stalked away from us with a darkened expression.

“Good choice,” I muttered.

“I’m sorry, Brad!” Brianna said. “I’ll see you tomorrow!”

“She’d better not,” I called after him. “Remember what I told you.”

Bradley Harris slinked off and disappeared into the depths of the arcade without looking over his shoulder.