BOUND TO THE WRONG BROTHER

Nora's POV

I find the envelope the moment I walk through the door.

It is sitting on the kitchen table, and it has already been opened. My mother's handwriting is on the back, two words, underlined twice: Don't panic.

That is how I know it is very, very bad.

My feet still hurt from the six-hour diner shift. My hair smells like fried oil. I have exactly eleven dollars in my pocket, and a geometry test tomorrow, which I have not studied for. I pick up the envelope anyway and pull out the letter and read it standing right there in the dark kitchen without even taking my shoes off.

FINAL NOTICE. OUTSTANDING MEDICAL BALANCE: $42,000. LEGAL ACTION BEGINS IN 30 DAYS.

I read it three times. The number does not get smaller.

Forty-two thousand dollars. My mother has been sick for two years. I knew the bills were bad. I did not know they were this bad. She never let me see the actual numbers. She always said we were handling it. I believed her because I needed to.

I set the letter face down on the table. I press both hands flat against it like I can hold it down. Like, if I push hard enough, it will stop being real.

From the bedroom, the oxygen machine hums. Steady and slow. She is asleep. She worked her half-shift at the pharmacy this morning, even though her doctor told her not to, and now she is asleep at eight-thirty with the machine breathing for her lungs because they cannot always do it themselves.

I go to the doorway and look at her.

She looks smaller every time I look.

I go back to the kitchen. I sit down at the table. I open my notebook, and I do the math: our rent, her medication, my school bus pass, the electricity bill, and the one grocery run we allow ourselves per week. I subtract all of it from what we bring in together.

The number I get at the end is not forty-two thousand.

It is not even close.

I close the notebook. I put my head down on the table. I do not cry. I stopped crying about money when I was thirteen because it never made the numbers change.

My phone buzzes.

It is a text from a number I do not recognize. No name. No greeting. Just one line.

I can make the debt disappear. Meet me tomorrow morning. Whitfield parking lot. Seven-fifteen.

I stare at the message for a long time.

Then I do what any smart person would do. I screenshot it. I look up the number. I try to find a name attached to it.

Nothing comes up.

I type back: Who is this?

Three dots appear. Then they stop. No reply.

I lock my phone and tell myself it is spam. Some scam. Someone who got my number from somewhere and is targeting people in debt, which is probably half the city. I put the phone face down next to the notice, and I go to bed.

I do not sleep.

I am in the parking lot at seven-thirteen anyway.

I hate that about myself.

The morning is cold, and the other students are streaming past in their expensive coats, and I am standing next to my secondhand bike in my diner-shift hoodie, trying to look like I belong here, which is something I have been trying and failing to do at Whitfield Academy for two years. I got in on an academic scholarship. I stayed because leaving would mean admitting I could not handle it. I have never felt like I belong here, and I have made my peace with that.

At seven-fifteen exactly, a black car pulls into the lot.

Everyone notices. Students slow down. Someone whispers. The car parks, the door opens, and Colt Harren steps out.

I know who he is. Everyone knows who he is. He is a senior. He runs the student investment fund that has more money in it than most small businesses. He has a scar that cuts from his left jaw to his cheekbone, and the story behind it changes depending on who is telling it. He does not have friends exactly; he has people who follow him and people who avoid him, and nothing in between.

He walks straight toward me.

My first instinct is to look behind me. Because boys like Colt Harren do not walk toward girls like me with purpose. They just don't.

But there is nobody behind me.

He stops two feet away. He looks at me the way someone looks at a problem they have already solved.

"Nora Voss," he says. Not a question.

"You texted me," I say.

"I did."

"How do you know my name?"

He does not answer that. He reaches into his jacket, pulls out a card, and holds it out to me. "Move into the Harren house. Attend the events my family requires. Play the role when it's needed. In return, the debt is cleared. All of it."

I do not take the card.

"What role," I say.

"Girlfriend." He says it like it's a business term. Like it means nothing. "Nominal. Controlled. Sixty days."

The first bell rings. Students are rushing past us now. A few of them are staring.

"I don't know you," I say.

"You don't need to."

"You don't know me either."

Something moves behind his eyes. Quick. Gone before I can read it. "I know enough."

He sets the card on the seat of my bike because I never took it from his hand. Then he walks back to the car, gets in, and the car pulls away. The whole thing takes less than three minutes.

I pick up the card.

On the front, it has his name and a phone number. Clean. Simple.

I flip it over.

On the back, in small, neat print, is my home address.

My stomach drops.

He already knows where I live. He knew before I showed up. Before I said a single word. Before I had any chance to say no.

I look up at the parking lot exit where his car just disappeared.

He did not ask me to decide. He did not leave space for questions. He handed me a card with my own address on the back and walked away like the answer was already yes.

The card is stiff between my fingers.

I should throw it away.

I should walk into school and act like this morning never happened, and find another way. There is always another way.

Except I have done the math. Three times. In three different notebooks.

There is no other way.

My phone buzzes again.

Same number. One new message.

You have five days, Nora. After that, I find someone else, and the offer disappears. But the debt doesn't.

I read it twice.

Then my phone buzzes a third time, and this message is not from Colt Harren. It is from my mother.

Baby, don't be scared. We'll figure it out together.

She found the letter. She has been awake this whole time. She was lying in that bed with the oxygen machine humming and the letter in her hands while I stood in the kitchen doing math that never added up, and she did not call out to me because she did not want me to see her scared.

My eyes burn.

I will not cry in this parking lot.

I put my phone in my pocket, pick up my bag, and walk toward the school doors.

But right before I go inside, I look at the card one more time.

His name. His number. My address.

This boy knew about my life before I ever said a word to him.

The question that hits me then, the one that stops me cold on the steps,

It

is not whether Colt Harren can make the debt disappear.

It is how long he has been watching me, and why.