My phone felt heavy in my pocket.
I had hoped I would never need what was on it.
Two weeks earlier, things had started moving in my bedroom.
At first I thought I was imagining it.
A drawer left slightly open.
The lid of my mother’s keepsake box turned the wrong direction.
A sweater folded differently.
My desk chair moved two feet closer to the closet.
Then a photograph disappeared.
It was a small picture of my mother holding me when I was a baby.
Three days later it reappeared under a stack of notebooks.
I asked my stepmother whether she had been in my room.
She said no.
I asked again.
She laughed.
So I bought a small camera.
Nothing dramatic.
A cheap indoor security camera from an electronics store, the kind people used to watch pets.
I placed it high on the bookshelf facing the door and backpack hook.
I never told anyone.
That afternoon, while I was at school, it recorded my stepmother entering my bedroom.
She stayed for four minutes.
I had watched the footage on the bus ride home.
I watched her open my closet.
I watched her search my desk.
I watched her pick up the blue backpack.
And I watched her take something from the pocket of her burgundy blouse.
I had zoomed in.
Gold.
A green stone.
The necklace.
I had been sitting on that evidence for less than an hour when she called my father and announced that something valuable had disappeared.
Now she was standing in front of me pretending to discover it.
I took out my phone.
My stepmother’s eyes flicked toward it.
“What are you doing?”
I unlocked the screen.
“Showing Dad something.”
She moved toward me.
“You’ve done enough.”
I stepped away.
My father frowned.
“What is it?”
I opened the saved video.
Then I turned my phone sideways and held it up.
“Then explain why my camera shows you putting it there.”
My stepmother froze.
For the first time since I had known her, I saw her lose control of her face.
It lasted less than a second.
But it was enough.
My father crossed the room.
“What camera?”
I pressed play.
The video showed my empty bedroom.
Timestamp in the corner.
Then the door opened.
My stepmother entered.
Same burgundy blouse.
Same black pants.
Same hair.
She walked directly toward my desk.
Opened a drawer.
Closed it.
Turned toward the backpack.