Four Of A Kind

Chapter 146: [3.48] Unknown Number

The phone vibrated against my nightstand at 6:23 AM.

Still dark outside. The apartment was quiet except for the faint sound of Mrs. Delgado’s television filtering through the walls. I’d gotten maybe four hours of sleep after Iris finally let me crash around two. My eyes felt like someone had replaced them with sandpaper.

I grabbed the phone without opening my eyes. Probably Felix with some emergency about finding the perfect tie for the festival. Or Vivienne with another seventeen-point agenda for the day. Or Harlow asking if I’d seen a video of a cat doing something objectively unremarkable but somehow deeply important to her worldview.

UNKNOWN NUMBER

The message preview made my stomach drop six floors.

hey. how are you doing?

My brain kicked into survival mode. The kind of hyperawareness that came from growing up in Kensington where not knowing who was texting you could mean walking into something bad. Someone had gotten my number. Through research. Through digging. Through whatever investigative bullshit Monchamp Media was running on me and Cassidy.

I sat up. The couch springs groaned under my weight.

My fingers moved before my brain caught up.

who is this?

The response came back in under ten seconds.

wow. so you don’t even save your own mother’s number?

I stared at the screen.

The words remained there. Black letters against white screen. Twenty pixels of text that had cost me four hours of sleep I’d already lost. They didn’t move. Didn’t change. Didn’t become something less than what they were.

Diana Angelo.

The woman who’d sent a text two months back about California and some man whose name I’d forgotten the moment I read it. Who’d walked out of our apartment with three hundred dollars that was supposed to keep the lights on if something went wrong. Who’d decided her children were old enough to handle themselves because I’d been handling things since I was ten anyway. Who’d left while I was at work and Iris was at school so she wouldn’t have to see our faces when we realized she wasn’t coming back.

That particular human being.

The one who hadn’t sent another message since that day. Hadn’t dialed either of our numbers to confirm we were still breathing. Hadn’t wondered if Iris was doing her homework or if I’d figured out how to stretch my last paycheck far enough to cover groceries and rent and the gas bill that came in higher than expected because winter didn’t care that we were two people short in the apartment now.

My hand reached out without consulting my brain first. The phone went face down against the coffee table surface. The screen made contact with fake wood grain that cost thirty dollars at a thrift store three years ago.

Left it there.

I walked to the bathroom and turned on the shower. The water would run cold for fifteen minutes before the heater kicked in. I had twelve.

The phone buzzed twice while I was in there.

I left it on the counter.

The drive to Hartwell stretched longer than normal despite the Benz making the actual distance shorter.

Manhattan morning traffic didn’t care what you drove. Cabs still cut you off. Horns still echoed between buildings like urban war drums. The sun hadn’t come up yet. Just that flat gray light that made the whole city look like someone had turned down the saturation slider on reality.

My phone sat in the cupholder.

Silent.

I’d checked it once after getting dressed. Three total messages from Unknown Number. The notification badges glowed red against the lock screen. I hadn’t opened any of them. Didn’t need to. The first one told me everything I needed to know about where this conversation would go.

My grip on the steering wheel was tighter than it needed to be. The leather felt cold even after ten minutes of holding it.

There should’ve been something happening inside my chest right now. Some kind of reaction to the woman who gave birth to me deciding two months of radio silence was long enough. Anger would make sense. Or hurt. The raw kind that makes people do stupid dramatic things in movies.

What I got instead was emptiness.

Like someone had scooped out my insides and forgot to put anything back.

Maybe that was worse. To feel nothing at all. No anger at the intrusion, no pain from the reminder of abandonment. Just this void where stronger emotions should’ve been sitting.

The parking lot at Hartwell was already filling up by the time I pulled in at 7:41. A Porsche three spaces down from me. A Range Rover taking up two spots because apparently money bought you the right to be an asshole about parking. A Tesla that probably cost more than my entire existence up until three weeks ago.

I parked. Killed the engine. Sat there staring at the dashboard for thirty seconds without moving.

My phone buzzed again.

I turned it face down on the passenger seat without looking at the screen.

Felix found me at my locker before homeroom.

“Dude.”

I didn’t respond right away. Just grabbed my calculus textbook from the top shelf and closed the locker harder than I meant to. The metal bang echoed down the hallway loud enough to make a few people glance over.

“Okay, so.” Felix backed up half a step when I turned around. “Not to be dramatic or anything, but you look like you’re about to murder someone. Just putting that out there for the record.”

“I’m fine.”

“That’s what people say right before they snap and become a true crime documentary. You know that, right?”

I shouldered my bag and started walking toward homeroom without another word. Felix fell into step beside me after a second’s hesitation, which meant he’d decided to ignore all survival instincts in favor of being nosy.

“Did something happen?” he pressed after we’d made it halfway down the hall. “Because you’ve got this whole dark aura thing going on right now. Like, anime villain energy. The kind where the music gets all ominous. It’s unsettling.”

“Nothing happened.”

“Cool. Cool cool cool.” He nodded several times. “So when you say nothing, you mean something definitely happened and you’re repressing it like a fucking champion.”

I stopped walking mid-stride. Turned my head to look at Felix directly.

He actually flinched backward.

“Sorry,” he said quickly. Both hands came up in surrender. “Personal space acknowledged. I’m backing off now. Consider me backed.”

I stared at him for another few seconds.

“Felix.”

“Yeah?”

“Drop it.”