The girl in the photo on her wall blinked. Trudy stopped dead in her tracks. She was headed out the door to school when she glanced over at the old photograph that had hung on her grandmother's wall for as long as she could remember. She stared at it pointedly for a minute, holding her breath, hoping she just imagined it. 

       To her absolute horror, the girl in the photo was now facing her, beginning to get out of the chair she had sat in backwards for decades with her arms hanging over the back. Trudy unintentionally dropped her backpack on the floor and it made a loud thud. She was home alone, and scared to death. Truthfully she did not even know who the woman in the photograph was. 

       She stood very still, watching the girl as she walked right up to the glass between the photo and Trudy. Her breath fogged up the curved glass a little and she wiped it off with her hand before she began speaking. Trudy couldn't actually hear her, but the words formed loudly in the back of her mind as she watched, unable to move. 

       “Don't get in the car,” said the girl, staring Trudy straight in the eyes. What did she mean “car?” Trudy always walked to school. She looked down at her backpack that was now spilled on the floor. She looked back up and the girl was back in her chair, arms draped casually over the back of it, with only the side profile of her face visible just as it had always been. 

        Trudy hurriedly shoved everything in her backpack, pointedly avoided looking at the picture again, and ran out the door, slamming it behind her. She began her walk to school a little faster than normal, trying to process what had just happened. Deep in thought, she did not notice the black SUV driving up slowly behind her. It followed her all the way to school without her ever realizing it was there. 

         She did not tell anyone about what had happened. She struggled enough to keep her place in the pecking order here without adding anything crazy to her persona. She was quiet. She could not concentrate in any of her classes, thinking about what the girl had said. 

      When she left school that afternoon, she didn't realize the black SUV was following her slowly yet again, a few car lengths behind. Something in her gut suddenly felt like she was being watched. She quickly looked around and took stock of her environment, but still did not yet realize the SUV was actually following her. 

      She started to turn down her street when an unexpected wave of fear set in, thinking about having to pass by that photograph again when she came in the door. She didn't turn. Instead she kept walking, but this time when she looked around she recognized the SUV from earlier and panic started to set in. 

She turned down a wrong road and watched as the SUV slowly turned also, following just behind her. Her first instinct was to run, but she kept purposefully calm even though fear was gripping her heart like a vise. 

      She kept walking at a normal pace, but then silently the SUV slid right up next to her and the window rolled down. It was a man in a business suit, handsome, somewhat classy even. “I am with the New Hampton Police Department, and I need for you to come with me right now,” he said firmly. 

      Trudy remembered the girl's words. “Don't get in the car.”  She picked up her step a bit. She did not speak to the man. She kept walking. He became more insistent. “Get in the car now,” he said, louder this time. Trudy looked ahead and kept walking. She knew the actual police department was only about a block away. Something about the man was off, and he did not seem at all like a police officer. 

      She rounded the corner onto a main street where he would have to be in more traffic, but she was also getting closer to the police station. Quickly, the SUV sped up ahead of her and pulled diagonally in front of her, attempting to block her path. She got right up into the lawn of the house she was passing, going around him. Infuriated, he pulled back on the road and kept following, yelling things out his window about how her parents had sent him to pick her up and bring her to the station. 

     Now she knew for sure that she was in direct danger. Both her parents were killed in a car accident 9 years ago, that's why she lived with her grandmother. She walked faster. As she made her way into the parking lot of the police station, the man quickly sped off and merged into traffic, clearly angry she had led him unwittingly right to the actual police department.  

     She went in the big metal doors and asked to speak with an officer.  Soon, a young man with glasses and a kind smile came out to talk to her. She told him about the SUV and how it had followed her, and how the man inside pretended to be an officer to get her in the vehicle. He wrote all the details she could remember onto his notepad. Then he asked her if she could identify the man from a picture. She thought she probably could. 

      In just a few minutes, the officer had gone and gotten a file with a paper in it that had the mugshots and photos of about 20 men on it. She looked carefully at each one. When she got to the second to the last row, she immediately recognized him. She pointed him out and said, “This is him.” 

The officer asked if she was 100% sure. She said she was. He told her to wait right there. 

      Within just a few minutes, things had taken a confusing turn when dozens of police cars began leaving the station, sirens blaring and lights flashing. She sat fixed in her chair, unsure of what was happening. 

The officer that had taken her information down came back out to sit with her. He told her that the man was actually wanted for human trafficking and had several warrants out for his arrest. She felt her whole body go clammy and sweaty. He told her that if she had gotten in the car, there was no telling what he would have done with her, as 14 other girls were missing and thought to be related to his crimes. 

      Trudy sat in shocked silence. The officer could see she was visibly shaken, and offered to take her home. She agreed, and when she got inside she looked at the picture. It was as it always had been, just an old, sepia photograph in an oval frame, the glass curved outwards. She quickly went past it and into the kitchen where her grandmother was preparing dinner. 

     “Grandma who is that girl in the photograph by the door?” She asked, still shaken. 

      “That is my older sister, Olivia. Soon after that picture was taken, she disappeared without a trace and no one knows what happened to her. Back then, police detectives were not as good as they are now. The only thing they ever found was just one of her shoes, along the road she walked from home to her job at the bakery. Everyone assumed she had been kidnapped, but no ransom requests ever arrived, no correspondence at all, and back then, they just didn't have the tools to search for her. We never did find out what happened to her. It was very sad,” her grandmother finished. 

      Trudy sat and processed this information. If that girl had not told her “Don't get in the car,” she might have believed that man was actually a police officer and gotten in the vehicle with him. She weighed telling her grandmother what had happened, but decided not to upset her. 

      That night on the news, she heard the story told again from the detectives who had caught up with him and arrested him. She walked over to the old sepia photograph in the oval frame. “Thank you,” she whispered into it. The girl in the photograph never moved, or blinked again as long as Trudy lived there with her grandmother. 

     Later on, when Trudy was living in her own apartment, her grandmother passed away. A box of things from her house was given to Trudy, and as she looked through it, to her surprise, there was the oval frame, and familiar photograph. She didn't feel scared of it anymore, she felt grateful. She hung it right in her entryway, guarding the door. She said thank you to her great aunt Olivia every time she left the apartment. Sometimes, Olivia would look at her niece as she left, making sure not to catch her attention. She took her job as Trudy's Guardian Angel very seriously, and continued to protect her niece the rest of her life.