The Suitcase They Threw Out, The Ticket I Bought To Leave Chapter 03

The Suitcase They Threw Out, The Ticket I Bought To Leave Chapter 03

The drive to Duke took six hours. Hunter barely acknowledged I existed, glued to his phone, texting Nadia.

One second he was laughing out loud, the next his ears turned pink.

I’d known Hunter for eighteen years. I’d never seen him so alive, so radiant.

I mindlessly scrolled through short videos, my thoughts drifting far away.

Then a hard tap landed on my arm. “Hey, Wallace! Look at Nadia’s Instagram. Doesn’t the second photo look like a gorilla? She keeps arguing it doesn’t. Tell me what you think!”

I closed my app and opened Nadia’s profile. My fingers froze.

Her posts were hidden. She’d blocked me.

I backed out and checked my parents’ profiles too. Same thing. Nothing at all.

A sharp ache burned behind my nose.

“You see it?” Hunter pressed.

“My… connection’s slow,” I mumbled, fighting back tears.

He glanced at my cracked old phone. “Didn’t your dad get you and Nadia new phones? Why are you still using that thing?”

Dad had talked about buying me one. Mom shut it down fast. “We can’t afford it. Wallace can just use Nana’s hand-me-down.”

Most families gave younger kids their older sibling’s old stuff. In this house, I got all of Nadia’s cast-off clothes, her old phone, her rejected suitcase.

I had no answer for him. Hunter didn’t push. “Look at mine.”

I leaned over. Our shoulders brushed. The skin on his neck was flushed. “She parades around in those frilly dresses, red-faced from the heat and refuses to change, all for perfect photos. Once we’re on campus, I’ll take photos for you too.”

I said nothing, staring at his screen.

Nadia’s caption read: 99th tourist spot with Mom and Dad.

In the photo, a waterfall crashed down, rainbows shimmering through its spray. Nadia posed with my parents, doing trendy social-media poses.

Scrolling down, post ninety-eight showed baobab trees overseas.

Every post had hundreds upon hundreds of likes. Everyone envied Nadia for her doting parents.

[Everyone else is buried under studying, and Nana gets to travel non-stop all break.]

[Where do I sign up for parents this supportive!]

It hit me slowly. Every school vacation, I worked part-time or buried myself in libraries. When I got home late, the whole house was dark.

I’d thought everyone went to bed early, moving as quietly as I could. I never made myself dinner, just lay there through stomach cramps until I fell asleep.

All that time, Mom, Dad and Nadia were out visiting landmarks. Ninety-nine trips, and they’d never once thought to bring me.

I typed angry messages in my chat boxes, deleting every single one before hitting send. I unpinned my parents and Nadia from my pinned contacts.

I replied to my Cornell advisor: [I will arrive for check-in tomorrow.]

I would grab my belongings, then go where I truly belonged.