College

Sometime later, Remy hears his parents talking about a boy Remy's age that was murdered. He hears that it happened in an area about half an hour away from where he lives. His parents are worried because the killer hasn't been found, and they urge Remy to be careful and cautious anytime he leaves the house. He just acts as if he's surprised by the "tragic" news and tries to look as if he feels sorry for that boy.

A few weeks go by as Remy continues trying to access the phone. He thinks that as time goes by, his curiosity will diminish, but he really just gets more anxious. With every wrong password, he can feel himself getting closer to finding them. And he absolutely needs to find them.

He can no longer concentrate on anything. His mind always ends up drifting off to that conversation between Landon and Renee, and of course, what happened after that. Each day, he is renewed with a new urge to find them. For some reason, he can't seem to allow himself to give up on this task.

Finally, on what will be remembered as the holy day of June 29th, Remy got into the phone with the password of 0-5-2-6. He almost didn't recognize what he had done, being used to failing it every single day. But after a few seconds, he realized.

"What?" He actually said out loud, "No fucking way!"

He was about to go on a bike ride with a few friends, assuming he'd get the password wrong, but now that he got it, he immediately texts his friends to let them know he can't make it.

He sits there staring at the home screen for a while. Here it is. What he's been looking for for weeks. Right in front of him.

The home screen, which is a picture of Landon and Renee, contains all the normal things a phone has, although there are lots of unread texts and missed calls. After that first time, Remy had no interest in answering the phone. There had been many calls from the phone over the last few weeks, but Remy just declined all of them.

The first thing he did was look at the texts. There were a few from his dad wondering where he was, dating back to that night, May 27th. There were a bunch from random people who Remy assumed to be his friends. But what was most interesting was his conversation with Renee. Of course, the first thing he saw were her frantic messages asking Landon where he was. But their earlier conversations were the most interesting. One from May 26th stuck out:

L: Happy Birthday Ree!!!

R: Thx :)

L: So what r u doing today

R: Idk not rly feeling up

to doing anything. Sorry

L: Totally fine. But what

about doing something

small?

R: Ya maybe. Did u have

anything in mind

L: There's the summer start

festival that's going on

tomorrow. We could go

to that. And it'd just be

the 2 of us

R: That actually sounds

a lot better than anything

I was thinking. It's a date

:)

I guess that adds up, Remy thinks, but how the hell did it escalate to murder?

The next thing Remy looks at is his Instagram. He's posted a few new things since he lost his phone. Each is a picture with him and Renee, and in each one, Remy recognizes the background as a place near where he lives. They must live very close, and he's just never seen them around. Or maybe they just never stuck out to him.

After that, he finds Renee's account (very easily as Landon is following her and has liked all her pictures). She had actually posted something just yesterday. She was with Landon in a place that definitely wasn't anywhere near Remy. They were standing in front of a college. The caption was:

"So excited to be going to UB with my best friend/boyfriend!!!"

After looking it up, Remy discovered that UB was the University of Bronxville. His mind flashes back to them talking about getting out of the state, and apparently they're going to New York. Remy had never been there before, but he was now prepared to do whatever it takes to get into that college. He never really had any plans after high school anyway, so maybe he'd figure out what he wanted to do here. He had never applied to any colleges, unsure of what he was going to do with his life. He was planning on taking the year to figure it out, but it looks like two strangers had led him down a new path.