The Last Lesson Was Losing Me novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: The Code

Jo changes her door code, tells Wylie through the chain that she is done, and then sees he moved her $11,400 out of her savings overnight.

At 7:40 the next morning the keypad on my door beeped three times and flashed red.

I was standing on the other side of it with a roll of packing tape in my hand.

I had changed the code at one in the morning, after the cab, after Lindy's forty dollars arrived on my phone with the message: Get out. I'll explain how tomorrow.

The keypad beeped again.

"Jo?" Wylie said through the wood. "Your lock is broken."

"It isn't."

"Open the door. I brought breakfast from Marchetti's."

I put the chain on and opened the door four inches.

He stood in the hall in a clean shirt, holding a paper bag and an iced coffee with my name on the lid.

There was no apology on his face, only patience, the face he used when he trained new tellers.

"You didn't answer any of my texts," he said. "Fifteen of them."

"I read them."

"Then you know the debrief was supposed to happen yesterday at the park. You walked out before the best part. Bailey had a whole slide deck."

Across the hall, my neighbor opened her door in a bathrobe and pretended to look for her newspaper.

"Wylie, did you know what day my real exam was?"

"Of course I knew. That was the point. You had a whole year to learn there was one day that mattered, and you still handed your card to the first person who offered to help."

"Bailey."

"Bailey is family. That's why it worked." He lifted the bag a little. "Cinnamon twist. Your favorite. Let me in and we'll talk about what you missed."

"What I missed was the exam."

"You can sit it in April."

"The funded seat is awarded on the October and April scores together. I have one of those scores, and it's zero."

He frowned, and for the first time he looked like he was doing arithmetic.

"Then you'll just have to score higher in April," he said. "You're smart enough. You were smart enough to notice section three."

"Section three was the only reason I noticed anything."

"Exactly," he said. "That's what I'm telling you."

My neighbor had stopped pretending to look for her newspaper.

A man came up the stairs behind Wylie with a ring of keys, the landlord, who was there about a leak in 3B.

He stopped and looked at the two of us, the chain, the bag.

"I'm done, Wylie," I said. "Not with the lesson. With you."

Wylie laughed.

It was a short, kind laugh, and it was the worst thing he'd done since the park.

"Jo. You have no job and eleven thousand dollars you can't keep track of. You'll be back by Wednesday."

"Then Wednesday can teach me something."

I closed the door, took off the chain, and opened it again just enough to push out his gym bag, his razor kit and the spare shirt he kept in my closet.

I set them on the mat in a row.

He looked at them and at me.

"You're making a scene in front of the landlord," he said quietly.

"I'm moving a gym bag."

"I'll call you tonight."

"I'll be asleep. I have to catch up on a year."

He set the cinnamon twist on top of the gym bag, where he knew I would see it, and went down the stairs.

My neighbor waited until his footsteps faded.

Then she crossed the hall, picked the pastry off the bag, and took a large bite.

"He looked like the type," she said.

I laughed, which surprised me, and the laugh turned into something wetter, and I leaned on the doorframe until it passed.

When I could see again I picked up my phone to call Lindy back.

There was a banking notification at the top of the screen.

It had arrived at 12:15 a.m., while I was in the cab.

Transfer complete. Safe Keeping Account to G. Calverley, Savings. $11,400.00. Memo: Trip fund.

Safe Keeping was the account Wylie had opened for my savings in our second year.

He'd said a fraud investigator's name on the account was the best protection I could have.

I opened the app and watched the balance load.

Zero dollars.

I was a woman with no exam score, no job, and a boyfriend who thought that was a lesson.

I had my phone, my rent for the month, and twelve dollars.

I called Lindy.

"I need to borrow a train ticket," I said.

"Done," Lindy said. "Before you tell me why, I'm going to say one thing and you're going to let me."

"Go ahead."

"I told you so. Loudly. With my whole chest."

"Okay."

"Okay. Now tell me where he works."

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