Mom Hung Up on My Call for Help to Toast My Cousin, So I Vanished novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: What Tyler Brought

Tyler and Nate drive to Chicago to take her home, and her bank app shows her savings gone.

My brother found me the next evening.

I was in the lounge of the summer residence hall, eating pasta from the dining hall at a table by the window.

Six visiting students were around me, playing cards and arguing about a movie.

Tyler walked in with Nate behind him, and the card game stopped.

"There she is," Tyler said, loud enough for the whole room. "Cass. We've been driving since noon."

"How did you find me?"

"Brynn." He said it like it was nothing. "She figured out the school from your emails. Then the location thing showed you on a bus to Chicago, before you turned it off."

So she had watched me until the last second.

"Mom's a wreck," Tyler said. "She hasn't eaten. Dad's pacing the yard. Get your stuff, we're driving back tonight."

"No."

"Cass."

"Did Mom cry when she hung up on me?" I asked.

Tyler stopped.

"What?"

"On Saturday night. I called her from the bathroom floor, and I said, I need help. She said, not now, we're doing the toast."

"She didn't know it was serious."

"I couldn't breathe, Tyler."

"You called 911, though. You were fine."

"I was fine because I called 911 myself."

Tyler glanced around at the six strangers watching him.

He lowered his voice, which meant he was embarrassed, not sorry. "Brynn didn't know the dessert had anything in it. That was a catering mistake."

I took out my phone and set it on the table between us.

"Look at the picture."

He looked.

It showed Brynn's white dress turned inside out on the dryer, and my EpiPen lying next to it, with my name on the label.

"I found that in her pocket on Sunday," I said. "My pen was in my bag at lunch on Saturday. It was in her pocket when I was on the bathroom floor."

Tyler stared at it.

Then he laughed, short and tight.

"So she borrowed your pen, jeez. Brynn borrows everything. She probably put it in there so it wouldn't get lost in the crowd."

"She put it in a pocket."

"You're acting like she hid it on purpose."

"I'm not acting like anything. I'm telling you where it was."

Nate hadn't said anything yet.

He stood by the door in his old letterman jacket, with his hands in the pockets, and he kept looking at the photo.

"Cass," he said. "Why would it be in her pocket?"

It was the first time anyone from home had asked me a real question.

I looked at him.

"Why did you hand me the plate, Nate?"

His face went red from his collar up.

"She said it was nut-free. It had the sticker. You were being weird about it, and she was crying, and Brynn said you'd been making everything about you all week."

"You told me not to ruin her night."

"I didn't know."

"I told you I was okay. You held it out to me anyway."

He didn't answer.

Tyler picked up my duffel from the floor by the couch.

"Okay, that's enough. Everybody's tired. We're going."

"Put it down."

"Cass, stop being dramatic."

"Put it down, Tyler."

He didn't.

A girl at the card table stood up. She was tall, with a lanyard around her neck and a scholars' name tag still stuck on her shirt.

"She said put it down," the girl said.

Tyler looked around the lounge again.

Seven people were watching him, not one of them smiling.

He set the duffel on the floor.

"Fine," he said. "Mom is going to lose it, you know. You're breaking her heart."

"She broke mine on Saturday," I said. "I'll call her when I'm ready."

Tyler walked out. I heard him in the hallway, yelling something at the elevator.

Nate stayed one more second.

He took something out of his jacket pocket and set it on the table next to my pasta.

It was half a candy bar, in its wrapper.

"I'm sorry," he said, and left.

I looked at it for a long time.

Then I pushed it to the edge of the table, where I couldn't reach it.

The girl with the lanyard sat down across from me.

"Want me to throw that out?" she asked.

"Yes."

She did.

I got up for a bottle of water, and I walked to the vending machine at the end of the hall, and I tapped my debit card.

DECLINED.

I tried again.

DECLINED.

I opened my banking app, standing there with the machine humming.

Checking: $0.00.

Savings: $0.00.

Under recent activity, there was one line, dated Monday morning at 9:14.

Transfer out, $3,860.00. To: Laurel Hartwell.

Memo: Kellerman deposit, Brynn.

It was every cent of three years of tutoring money.

← Chapter 2 · All chapters · Chapter 4 →

Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend