Chapter 500 | Frozen, Too

Chapter 500: 500 | Frozen, Too

The pump said SEE CASHIER, which was a lie, because the cashier said the same thing the pump did.

"Declined," the kid behind the counter told Cameron Mitchell at 1:52 PM, in the Chevron on PCH, under a rack of beef jerky. "You want to try another one?"

Cameron wanted to try another one. He took out the Visa, the one tied to the trust, the one that had never once in his life said anything but yes, and slid it across the counter with two fingers like a tip.

The machine thought about it.

"Declined," the kid said again, and this time he looked at the blazer.

Cameron laughed. It came out right, easy and loud, the laugh that made a room decide whatever had happened was funny. "Bank’s being weird. Fraud thing. I got gas in Irvine yesterday, they freak out." He tapped his phone against the reader. Apple Pay. The same card, wearing a hat.

Declined.

"Okay," Cameron said. "Okay. Yeah. Fraud thing."

He walked back out to the car. The BMW sat at pump six with the nozzle still in it and a quarter tank, white paint, plate MITCH 1, the most honest thing he owned. He stood beside it and called the number on the back of the Visa, and a recorded woman told him his account had been restricted at the request of the account holder.

The account holder.

His phone buzzed while she was still talking.

Dad: Pruitt called. Conduct review. Lawyer’s bill. You’re done.

Dad: Trust paused until 25.

That was it. Two texts. No question marks. His father didn’t write questions. His father wrote terms.

Cameron called. It rang four times and went to voicemail, the clipped recorded Richard Mitchell that sounded exactly like the live one. He called again. Voicemail. He called his mother, which he hadn’t done since Christmas, and it rang until it stopped. Elaine Mitchell had never once in Cameron’s life picked a side at the dinner table, and she wasn’t going to start on a Tuesday.

He typed dad come on and deleted it. He typed it wasn’t my fault the TA and deleted that. He typed I can fix this and looked at it for a long time and deleted that too, because it sounded like something Whitney would never have to say.

At 2:31 a black Tahoe pulled into the Chevron and parked behind the BMW.

A man got out in khakis and a navy polo with a small white logo on the chest. MG. Fifties, sunglasses, the posture of someone who drove other people’s cars for a living and had never once wanted one.

"Cameron?" Pleasant. "Mr. Mitchell asked me to bring the car in."

"It’s my car."

"It’s titled to the company." The man said it kindly, which was worse. "I’ll need the key."

Cameron thought about saying no. He thought about getting in and driving away, and how far he’d get on a quarter tank with no card, and how it would look on the Instagram of whoever was filming from pump three. Somebody was always filming from pump three.

He handed over the key.

The man pulled the nozzle, hung it up, and got in. A second guy came around from the Tahoe’s passenger side and got behind its wheel. The BMW backed out of pump six and turned onto PCH, and Cameron watched the plate go, MITCH 1, past the In-N-Out and the light at Jamboree, until it was just a white car among white cars.

By Friday it would be detailed in some company lot in Irvine and handed to a VP’s kid who would never know whose seat it had been. That was what the name was for, too. It could take things back without saying anything.

He stood there with his phone and the blazer and nothing in his wallet but a gym card and a Sigma ID.

He called Brayden.

"Bro." Brayden picked up on the first ring, chewing. "How’d it go, you crush it?"

"Come get me."

"Where’s your car?"

"Come get me, man. Chevron on PCH. Come get me."

Brayden didn’t ask again. That was the thing about Brayden. He asked once and then he did what you said, which was the only reason anybody kept him.

His Jeep smelled like protein powder and wet cleats. Cameron sat in the passenger seat with his knee going and the phone face up on his thigh. Brayden talked about the Lakers. Cameron said "yeah" at the right places.

Once Brayden started to ask about the hearing, and Cameron reached over and turned the radio up, and Brayden went back to the Lakers like he’d never left.

At 3:38 the phone lit up.

Lexi: babe are u ok?? heard about the thing

Lexi: ok unrelated but LOOK

It was a screenshot of a story. Charlotte somebody, one of Alexis Van Der Berg’s girls: a flat white against a eucalyptus arrangement, and behind it, out of focus, an empty corner booth. Lexi had circled the booth in red.

Lexi: alexis’s cards got DECLINED at maison. like in front of everyone. her mom froze her

Lexi: and then she called McKNIGHT????

Lexi: he picked her up behind the building. two people saw. she’s literally living at his place now i’m calling it

Cameron read it twice. Then he screenshotted the whole thread.

The same day. The exact same day. Some god up there was keeping a ledger, and it had put his name and Van Der Berg’s in the same column, and McKnight had driven up in his stupid white Honda and collected her like a delivery.

He started laughing. Really laughing, the kind that made Brayden glance over and laugh too without knowing why, because Brayden laughed when other people did.

"What?"

"Nothing. Nothing, man. Nothing."

Another text slid in under Lexi’s. No name. A 714 number.

Ten days, college.

The laughing stopped.

He looked out the window at the Back Bay going by, the expensive houses on the bluff, a Mitchell Group strip center on the corner with a nail salon and a Chipotle and his last name in brushed steel on the monument sign. His father had bought it the year Cameron started high school. He’d taken Cameron to the ribbon cutting and told him This is what the name is for.

"Can I crash tonight," Cameron said.

"Couch is yours, bro."

"Just tonight."

"Yeah, man. Totally."

Brayden’s apartment was a two-bedroom off Campus Drive with a sectional that had been a gift from someone’s parents and a TV large enough to have its own weather. Brayden put on a game. Cameron sat on the far end of the couch and opened his laptop, which was the only thing he’d had in the car that was in his name.

The folder was still there. McKNIGHT. Lexi had made it, back when it was a joke. Now it was his. He dropped the screenshot of her texts into it, beside the photo of the Lofts, and renamed it living at McKnight’s.

He didn’t open the videos. He didn’t need to. He knew what was in them, the masked clips and the streak and the hum, and the girl from the stream who sang with her face out, and the side-by-side that made it simple. He opened his Notes app instead, and the number he’d written there on a Wednesday.

$40k.

He opened a blank message and started typing.

He typed it slow, and fixed it, and typed it again. The amount. The day. The time. Friday, 8 PM. The places it would go if the money didn’t come. He kept it short. Short sounded like someone who meant it.

He read it through four times, the way his father read a lease.

Then he put the cursor at the end, after the period, and let it blink.

Brayden whooped at something on the TV. Out the window, the light went orange over the parking lot.

McKnight was out there right now with a Van Der Berg in his passenger seat and a girl at home who sang for strangers on the internet, having the best week of his life. Cameron could feel it from here, like heat off a grill.

He saved the draft.

"Tomorrow," he said, to nobody. "Let him have one more good day."