They Left Me Out Of The Picture So I Created My Own Chapter 08
At dinner that night, Leo took a sip of soup and slid his phone across the table.
“My mom sends me, like, three messages a day asking if I’m dressed warmly enough, complete with screenshots of the weather forecast. The temperature drops one degree here and she thinks I’m about to freeze to death.”
I lowered my head and drank my soup. The steam clouded my vision for a moment.
A month after I arrived at RISD, I charged my old phone for the first time.
The moment it powered on, dozens of notifications flooded the screen. Ads, billing reminders, old emails from my high school.
There were only three personal texts.
The first was sent five days after I left home.
Dad: Avery, the Sonos isn’t connecting to the Wi-Fi. Any idea what’s wrong?
On the sixth day, he sent another.
I called—why didn’t you answer?
The seventh day brought the last one.
Lauren says some of your things are gone. Are you staying at a friend’s house? Be back before the weekend. We need you to take pictures at Owen’s birthday party.
Not, Where are you?
Not, Are you safe?
Just a broken speaker, a disrupted schedule, and a birthday party that was missing its photographer.
After that, nothing.
It had taken them a full week to realize I was gone. I’m not sure what finally tipped them off. Maybe the Wi-Fi went out again, and there was no one there to fix it.
I stared at the screen for a few seconds, then put the phone down without replying.
I took out the SIM card, snapped it in half with the small metal ejector pin, and dropped the pieces in the trash.
After a factory reset, I left the phone in the donation box in the dorm lobby.
When the screen went dark for the last time, the final flicker of hope inside me went dark with it.
This time, I wasn’t sad.
I was just finally done waiting for them to see me.