My boyfriend and I recently moved in together. Ever since, things started disappearing and then reappearing one day later in the same place they were missing from. I’m talking about documents, small household items, and food. I installed the nanny cam and saw…

…someone walking through our living room in the middle of the night. Not my boyfriend. Someone shorter, slower, and barefoot.

At first, I thought I was imagining it. The footage was grainy because I didn’t spring for the HD version, and the figure was just a dark shape at 2:37 a.m., moving from the hallway to the kitchen. It looked like they opened the fridge, paused, then walked off with what looked like the little bag of sliced cheese I swore had vanished the day before.

The next morning, I showed it to Omar—my boyfriend. He laughed nervously and said it was probably a glitch. “Maybe it’s me? I probably got up for a snack.”

He’s 6’3″. The figure wasn’t.

Still, I let it go. Kind of. I didn’t want to be the paranoid girlfriend just a month into living together. We’d already had a few hiccups adjusting—how he always left the bathroom light on, how I liked the windows open and he liked the place sealed up like a submarine.

But then a week later, I watched the footage again. Same time. Same figure. This time, they picked up my keys from the little tray near the door, turned them over in their hand, then placed them back—exactly how I’d found them that morning after swearing they were gone the night before.

I didn’t say anything to Omar right away. Instead, I called our building manager.

“Nope,” he said. “No break-ins, no spare keys issued. You two are the only tenants in 3C. You sure you didn’t misplace stuff?”

I was sure. So the next night, I stayed up.

I sat on the couch with the lights off and a blanket over me. I even turned off my phone light so there wouldn’t be any glow. Around 2:40 a.m., I heard something. Not footsteps exactly—more like the soft squeak of old wood. Our hallway floor always creaked in the same spots.

And then, right before my eyes, the hallway closet opened.

A small figure stepped out. Wearing socks. Hoodie pulled over their head. They turned toward the kitchen, and I couldn’t breathe.

I flipped on the light and screamed.

The person froze. So did I.

Then they pulled their hood down.

It was a girl. Maybe 13 or 14, tops. She had messy black curls and looked just as scared as I felt. She said nothing. Just looked down like a kid caught sneaking cookies.

Omar came running out of the bedroom in boxers. The girl tried to dart back into the closet, but he blocked her path. She curled up on the floor and started crying.

We ended up sitting her down at the table and giving her water while she sniffled and clutched the sleeves of her hoodie like armor. Her name was Isela. She didn’t say much that night, but what we figured out in pieces over the next few days knocked the wind out of me.

She’d been hiding in the crawlspace above the laundry room.

Apparently, our building had this weird layout—some of the vents and duct access points could lead from one unit’s utility closet to the top of another’s. When the cleaning crew left a ceiling tile off in the laundry room downstairs, she’d found her way in and had been hiding out ever since.

Two weeks. She’d been there before we even moved in.

She wasn’t homeless, exactly. Her mom lived in the next building over—building B. I actually knew her by sight. Always sitting outside with a cigarette and a Bluetooth speaker, yelling at someone on FaceTime.

Isela said she’d run away but didn’t want to go far. Just far enough to not be there.

I asked why she chose our apartment.

“You guys didn’t yell,” she mumbled.

That part broke me a little.

She’d sneak in at night when she was sure we were asleep. Eat a little. Take a shower. Sometimes just sit under the heater vent because it was warm and she felt safe. That’s how my scarf ended up in the shower that one time. I thought I was losing my mind.

I didn’t know what to do. Call the cops? Tell her mom?

Omar thought we should report it. “She can’t just live here. What if something happens? We could get blamed.”

He had a point. But it didn’t sit right with me.

So I asked Isela if she’d be willing to go home—if I walked her there. She looked at me like I’d asked her to stick her hand in a fire.

“I’ll go back to the crawlspace,” she said. “Just let me stay till school starts.”

I hadn’t even thought about school.

I asked her where she went, and she told me she hadn’t been since April. It was now mid-July. I asked if her mom knew. She shrugged.

“She’s busy with her boyfriend.”

I recognized the guy. Always outside polishing his Camaro and yelling at people to stay off “his” sidewalk.

That night, I didn’t sleep.

The next morning, I called in sick. I called the school district, too, pretending to be a concerned neighbor. They said she was marked “truant with unknown whereabouts.” If she missed the first day of school in August, it would trigger a welfare check.

I decided to buy some time.

I cleared out a little corner in the hall closet and gave her a blanket and some food. I knew it was insane. Illegal, probably. But I kept thinking about how terrified she looked when we caught her, and how she said we didn’t yell.

For the next few days, she came and went quietly. She’d wait until we were at work, then nap or watch shows on the tablet I gave her. I’d leave out fruit and clean clothes I bought from the thrift store. It felt like I had a ghost roommate.

Then Omar found out.

He came home early one afternoon and saw her eating cereal on the couch.

He lost it. Not at her—at me.

“We’re harboring a runaway now? Are you serious, Daria?”

I tried to explain. That she wasn’t dangerous. That she was a kid. That she just needed a safe place until school started.

“She’s not your responsibility,” he said. “You’re letting her live here like this is some Lifetime movie.”

He said if I didn’t tell someone, he would.

And then she heard us arguing. She left that night.

I thought she just went back to her mom’s. But the next morning, when I checked the crawlspace, I found her hoodie folded on top of the heater vent. Like a goodbye.

I walked around the complex looking for her. Her mom was outside with her Bluetooth speaker, smoking. I asked if Isela was home.

“She’s not my problem right now,” she muttered.

I checked the park, the school steps, even the gas station on the corner. No sign.

Three days passed. Then four.

On the fifth day, I got a call from a local diner across town. I’d given Isela my number—wrote it on a sticky note and tucked it in her hoodie pocket, just in case.

“Some girl left this number,” the cashier said. “Said you might come get her?”

She was sitting at a booth with an empty hot chocolate cup. Dark circles under her eyes. Hoodie gone. Just a t-shirt that didn’t quite fit.

She stood up like she was bracing to get yelled at.

I just hugged her.

I didn’t know what else to do.

This time, I called a counselor I knew from a community program I used to volunteer with. Explained everything. She said she’d help—no judgment, no police, just a quiet place to stay while they figured things out.

Isela agreed, slowly. She didn’t want to go back to her mom, but she also didn’t want to keep hiding.

We took her there that afternoon.

She’s still there now, actually. Getting meals, a bed, some therapy. She even started talking about trying out for track when school starts up again.

Omar and I didn’t make it.

He moved out a few weeks after all that happened. Said it was “too much,” that we weren’t on the same page about boundaries and real-world consequences.

He wasn’t wrong. But I don’t regret helping her.

Sometimes life drops someone into your path, and you don’t get to decide whether it’s convenient. You just get to decide whether you’ll show up or walk away.

Looking back, all the little things that went missing—my scarf, the cheese, my keys—they were nothing compared to the part of me that woke up. The part that remembered what it feels like to be young and scared and unsure if anyone sees you.

She’s not invisible anymore.

And I’ll never ignore that creak in the hallway again.

If this story moved you, give it a like or share it with someone who needs a little reminder—sometimes showing up quietly can change everything.