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someone was breaking in their home.   
    Dresden’s room smelled of cinnamon potpourri and was dimly lit by a doughnut-shaped night light plugged into an outlet located under the gray curtain on the opposite side of the small bedroom.  She tossed her dirty clothes to the wood floor and flipped the light switch as she closed her white wooden door quietly.  Her mother had washed and folded the dirty clothes from the mound that was stacked against the iron footboard of her twin bed before the girl had gone to school that morning.  The small things in life made Dresden smile.  She was overjoyed that her favorite tee shirt was clean again and with no effort on her part.
    The girl disrobed and quickly slipped on undergarments.  She pulled the opening of the plain white tee shirt over her head and smoothed the form fitting cotton over her belly and to where the shirt ended at her hips.  Disorganizing the folded clothes with just one movement, Dresden pulled a clean pair of denim leggings from the pile and wriggled into them.  Her stomach crinkled as she bent over to slip on white cotton anklet socks.  She stood at the end of the bed and gazed around the room in search of her boots.  Her mother was always on her case about tidying up her bedroom; when the deadline passed to get the room cleaned, her mother would come in and straighten up, but Dresden could never easily find any of her belongings.  If she peeked her head out the door to ask her mother where the knee-high brown leather boots were hiding, the question would give away that the teenager was planning to go out.  A single question would lead to her mother asking five hundred of her own questions, and it was likely Dresden’s father would become involved-if he managed to get home at a decent hour.  No, it was better for the girl to scour the room on her own. 
    Her five-minute search paid off and she felt silly that she found her boots in the very last place she ever put them: the three-tiered shoe shelf at the back of her closet.  She stepped into the brown boots and felt taller, even though the boxed wedged heels on the footwear were but one inch high.  She pulled the zippers from her ankles to just below her bony knees and flexed her legs in a futile attempt to loosen the boots from her legs.  Forget running in the footwear; she would simply avoid the need to.  Dresden completed her ensemble by warming her arms under a long-sleeved navy cable-knit cardigan.  Her tee shirt peeked out from the top of the bulky sweater.
    She couldn’t leave the house, not yet.  It wasn’t quite 6:40; she wanted to wait until nine, at least, before she ventured out.  It would give her recording devices time to pick up data, and it would give her a chance to grab some of her mother’s homemade lasagna she smelled in the aroma that floated through the house.  Her mother and father were never up after 8:30, so it also gave her the perfect chance to sneak out the front door.   
    Dresden could hear her mother shouting in response to Pierre’s continued verbal badgering, but she decided not to intervene.  She pushed the pile of clothes as far to the foot her bed as they would possibly move without falling over the edge of the mattress.  She sat on top of the olive and cream quilt made by her recently-departed grandmother and reached to her half-moon pine end table for a compact and a tube of liquid eyeliner.  Dresden opened the canary makeup case and held it in her left hand in front of her face.  She held the eyeliner between her thighs and unscrewed the top with her right hand before drawing the oily brush to her closed right eyelid.  The teenager began applying the black makeup in a straight line as closely to her long eyelashes as she could manage.  A near-sneeze caused her hand to jerk and create an upward-slanted line on half an inch outside of her eyelid.  Instead of heading back to the bathroom to scrub at the water-proof makeup, she worked with her