I can't take it anymore.

I get up and feel my way through the dark apartment toward the broom closet, where I hope there are still candles left over from the last blackout. Fumbling blindly through the shelves, I find one, half burnt, and I light it at the stove.

For a long time I just sit cross-legged on the bathroom floor in the candle light. I mean, I really must be crazy: it's just a bathroom sink. I don't understand why I can't stop staring at it. But I can't take my eyes from the basin and the cabinet doors beneath.

The flame flickers. The candlestick is no longer than my thumb now, almost burned out.

With nothing better to do, I open the cabinet doors and look inside. I take out all the cleaning products and toilet paper rolls, keeping as quiet as possible so as not to wake my mom.

In the back of the cabinet, behind the plumbing, there's a hole in the plaster wall.

I'd totally forgotten about it until now, but when I was a little girl I used to hide my "treasures" in the wall here. Suddenly it all comes back to me: whenever I'd get some Happy Meal toy or win a carnival prize that I didn't want my sister to find, I'd sneak into the bathroom and hide it in the wall.

I hold the candle stub close. Careful not to burn myself, I reach into the hole.

Mostly I feel a bunch of dust and loose plaster, but finally my fingers graze something that feels like hair. I recoil at this, but I remind myself that at worst it could be a dead mouse. And I'm really curious about what it is. Whatever obsession was drawing me to the sink now seems to be drawing me to whatever's inside the wall behind it.

I take a breath, pinch the tuft of hair between my fingers, and pull whatever it is out from the wall.