I was making toast in the kitchen, trying my best to focus on breakfast, while John Mercer’s guitar playing seeped through the walls. He had been practicing all morning, or at least it felt that way. It might have only been twenty minutes, but once someone starts playing the same chord progression over and over again, time loses all meaning. Across the table, Pandora sat with a notebook open in front of her, completely unfazed by the noise. She was scribbling away with an intensity that suggested she was either solving a profound mystery or deciding where to put a bookshelf.
As I reached for the butter, something immediately struck me as wrong. The butter knife was in the second drawer. It belonged in the top compartment of the utensil organizer. Everyone knew that. It wasn’t written down anywhere, but it was one of those unspoken household rules that quietly held civilization together. Yet there it was, sitting in the wrong place as though it had every right to be there.
I stared at it longer than any reasonable person should stare at a butter knife.
Pandora continued writing. John continued playing guitar. Mr. Whiskers remained asleep in a patch of sunlight near the window. The world carried on as if nothing had happened, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was off. The knife had been moved, and I couldn’t remember moving it myself.
Trying to dismiss the thought, I buttered my toast and sat down across from Pandora. Three bites later, I was still thinking about the knife. Who had moved it? More importantly, why had they moved it? The fact that I was asking myself these questions should probably have been a warning sign, but instead it only encouraged me.
My attention drifted to Pandora’s notebook. She had been carrying that thing everywhere lately. It appeared at breakfast, in the living room, on the balcony, and even on grocery trips. Whenever she wasn’t actively doing something else, she seemed to be writing in it. I had assumed it was related to one of her art projects, but suddenly I wasn’t so sure.
The timing felt suspicious.
The butter knife appeared in the wrong drawer. Pandora started spending more time with the notebook. John Mercer had somehow decided he was destined for musical greatness. Individually, none of these things meant anything. Together, however, they formed a pattern. Admittedly, it was a pattern that existed entirely inside my own head, but that had never stopped a conspiracy theory before.
Mr. Whiskers opened one eye and looked directly at me. It wasn’t a casual glance. It was the sort of look that made me feel as though I had interrupted an important meeting without realizing it. After a moment, he closed his eye again and returned to sleep.
Naturally, I interpreted this as confirmation.
“What’s in the notebook?” I asked.
Pandora didn’t even look up from the page.
“Notes.”
I frowned. That was exactly the sort of answer someone would give if they were trying to avoid answering the question.
“Notes about what?”
“Things.”
Her pencil never stopped moving.
I leaned back in my chair and studied her carefully. The notebook remained open, but she angled it just enough that I couldn’t see what she was writing. John struck another dramatic chord in the other room. Mr. Whiskers twitched an ear in his sleep. Somewhere in the distance, a car door slammed.
Everyone seemed perfectly normal.
Which, under the circumstances, only made them seem more suspicious.