Free Waiting to Be Heard: A Memoir by Amanda Knox

around.”
    Over a quick breakfast, Raffaele and I talked some more about what I’d seen. “Maybe the toilet is just broken,” he said.
    Even before we’d downed the last sips of our coffee, Filomena called back. “What do you see?” she demanded. Her panic was retriggering my own.
    “Filomena,” I said, as evenly as I could, “we’re just leaving Raffaele’s.”
    Ten minutes later, when we reached the villa, my stomach was knotted with dread. “What if someone was in here?” I said, feeling increasingly creeped out. Raffaele held my free hand while I unlocked the door. I yelled, “Is anyone here?”
    At first nothing seemed amiss. The house was quiet, and the kitchen/living area was immaculate. I poked my head in Laura’s room. It looked fine, too. Then I opened Filomena’s door. I gasped. The window had been shattered and glass was everywhere. Clothes were heaped all over the bed and floor. The drawers and cabinets were open. All I could see was chaos. “Oh my God, someone broke in!” I shouted to Raffaele, who was right behind me. In the next instant, I spotted Filomena’s laptop and digital camera sitting on the desk. I couldn’t get my head around it. “That’s so weird,” I said. “Her things are here. I don’t understand. What could have happened?”
    Just then, my phone rang. It was Filomena. “Someone’s been in your room,” I said. “They smashed your window. But it’s bizarre—it doesn’t look like they took anything.”
    “I’m coming home this second,” she said, her voice constricted.
    Meredith’s door was still closed, just as it had been when I was home earlier. I called out, “Meredith.” She didn’t answer. Could she have spent the night with Giacomo? Or with one of her British girlfriends? Still, at that moment I was more worried about the smashed window in Filomena’s room than about Meredith’s closed door.
    I ran outside and around the house to see if the guys downstairs were home and to see if they’d heard anything during the night. Outside, away from Raffaele, my anxiety soared. My heart started racing again. I pounded on their door and tried to peer through the glass. It looked like no one was home.
    I ran back upstairs and knocked gently on Meredith’s door, calling, “Meredith. Are you in there?” No sound. I called again, louder. I knocked harder. Then I banged. I jiggled the handle. It was locked. Meredith only locks her door when she’s changing clothes , I thought . She can’t be in there or she’d answer. “Why isn’t she answering me?” I asked Raffaele frantically.
    I couldn’t figure out, especially in that moment, why her door would be locked. What if she were inside? Why wouldn’t she respond if she were? Was she sleeping with her earphones in? Was she hurt? At that moment what mattered more than anything was reaching her just to know where she was, to know that she was okay.
    I kneeled on the floor and squinted, trying to peer through the keyhole. I couldn’t see anything. And we had no way of knowing if the door had been locked from the inside or the outside.
    “I’m going outside to see if I can look through her window from the terrace.”
    I climbed over the wrought-iron railing. With my feet on the narrow ledge, I held on to the rail with one hand and leaned out as far as I could, my body at a forty-five-degree angle over the gravel walkway below. Raffaele came out and shouted, “Amanda! Get down. You could fall!”
    That possibility hadn’t occurred to me.
    “Please come in before you get hurt!”
    As soon as we got inside, we went back to Meredith’s closed door. “I can try to kick it down,” Raffaele offered.
    “Try it!”
    He rammed the door with his shoulder, hard. Nothing. He kicked next to the handle. It didn’t budge.
    I called my mom again. “Mom,” I said. “Someone broke into our house, and we can’t find Meredith. What should we do?”
    “Amanda, call the police,” she said.
    My stepfather, Chris,