Chapter 2

After deciding I would distance myself from my parents from then on, I cooked Thanksgiving dinner myself the next day.

It was supposed to be a family dinner. For me, it was also a farewell dinner.

We had barely started eating when Mom’s phone sounded an emergency alert.

Nellie had triggered the SOS on the family safety app.

Mom immediately called her back, but all she heard was silence.

“Nellie? What’s wrong? Talk to me!”

The call suddenly disconnected.

Mom shot to her feet. Her complexion went pale. “Something happened to Nellie. I know something happened! She triggered the SOS and now she won’t answer. Something’s wrong. Come on, we have to find her!”

Dad, who had been listed as her backup emergency contact, had received the same alert with Nellie’s live location.

“Here! I’ve got her location!”

Without another word, they both rushed for the door.

I grabbed my car keys and followed them. “I’ll drive.”

In the car, Mom kept calling Nellie over and over, but every time, she got the same automated message saying the call could not be completed.

She was crying so hard she could barely speak as she urged me on. “Drive faster! If anything happens to Nellie, it’ll kill me!”

When we still could not reach her, I told Dad to call an ambulance.

As soon as we reached the restaurant shown on the app, I rushed inside and asked one of the staff what had happened.

The server looked completely confused. “Nothing...”

Mom could not wait another second. She pushed past me and hurried toward the private dining room.

The three of us froze outside the door.

Even through it, we could hear loud laughter and voices from inside.

I opened the door.

Nellie was sitting in the middle of the group with a drink raised in her hand, perfectly fine.

The second she saw us, Nellie’s face lit up. “Mom, Dad, you actually came!”

Mom stared at her. “Nellie, what...?”

“It was a dare!” Nellie laughed and threw an arm around Mom. “Since I picked dare, I had to trigger my SOS alert and see if anyone would show up within thirty minutes. I can’t believe you guys got here in fifteen minutes!”

She turned to her friends with a smug grin. “See? Told you my parents love me. I didn’t even have to say a word, and they were all here in fifteen minutes!”

My parents just laughed it off and exchanged a few friendly words with her friends.

The ambulance pulled up just then.

All the adrenaline seemed to drain out of me at once. I walked outside on shaky legs and explained to the paramedics that it had been a false alarm and that my sister had triggered the alert as part of a stupid dare.

I paid the call-out fee and apologized to the crew for wasting their time.

On the drive home, Mom and Dad chatted easily about Nellie as if nothing had happened.

I did not say a word.

By the time we got home, the food on the table had gone cold and congealed.

My parents started reheating everything and ate dinner like nothing happened.

I had completely lost my appetite.

Nellie did not get home until midnight.

I had held my tongue earlier because I did not want to embarrass her in front of her friends. Since we were home, I finally let her have it.

“Nellie, we called an ambulance on the way there. The paramedics rushed across town thinking there was a real emergency. Do you have any idea how many people you dragged into this over some stupid dare?

“Mom was so scared she nearly had a heart attack! The SOS feature is for emergencies, not for you to mess around with!”

Nellie immediately turned to Mom with a wounded look. “Mom, why is Kate yelling at me? It was just a game. I didn’t mean any harm.”

Mom pulled her into her arms at once. “It’s okay, sweetheart. Kate was in a little car accident yesterday. The impact triggered her SOS alert. We missed it, and she has been upset about it ever since.

“Kate, don’t yell at Nellie!”

Nellie rolled her eyes at me.

“Mom and Dad were off for Thanksgiving, so I knew it was a good time to trigger the alert. You, on the other hand, got a few scrapes and still bothered them while they were at work.

“So, tell me, which one of us is actually being inconsiderate here? Which one of us is making everyone drop everything?”

Dad immediately backed her up. “The important thing is that Nellie is safe.”

Mom nodded. “What else are emergency contacts for? If she needs us, we show up. It’s that simple. You take everything way too seriously.

“Even if this happened again and someone told me straight away it was just a game, I would still go.

“I wouldn’t be able to relax until I saw with my own eyes that Nellie was safe.”

What they were saying at that moment could not have been more different from what they had told me the night before.

The contrast was so suffocating it felt like something was tightening around my chest.

When it came down to it, Nellie’s life simply mattered more to them than mine.

It was already the middle of the night, but I grabbed my bag and walked out anyway.