The Strangers

As Chess and Emma go to the basement to change the cat litter, Finn goes upstairs to look for the cat, Rocket. Under orders from her mother to keep an eye on him, Natalie follows Finn. When he finds Rocket under his mother’s dresser, he also finds her phone charger still plugged in. Even more disturbing, her phone is still attached. As far as Finn knows, she has no way to contact them without it.

Emma and Chess run upstairs when they hear Finn’s cries. Finn asks how their mother could have texted Ms. Morales without her phone. Natalie’s attempts to explain it logically fall on deaf ears. Chess and Emma defend their brother, agreeing with Finn that something is definitely wrong. Their distress breaks through Natalie’s boredom, her demeanor turning into something resembling sympathy, and she agrees to help. Emma, the only one who knows her mother’s passcode, unlocks the phone, and Natalie tries to determine if the text came from a different device. She finds a series of messages, prewritten, set to be sent at various times over the next week. The final message says, “I have to stay away for good, to protect them” (87).