Robbers

ten

// ten //

        Ryan and Ella were only ten minutes from her house when Ella finally decided to check her phone.

            She’d been laughing at some cheeky joke Ryan had made when she pulled it out of her back pocket, but the grin melted off her face nearly as soon as she clicked on the screen. Ella had six missed calls from her father, thirteen from her mother, and two text messages from each in her inbox. Her phone had somehow been turned onto silent.

            Cold panic bloomed in her stomach, and Ryan’s voice faded to nothing as Ella swiped a shaky finger across the screen. Her phone opened to the messages from her mother and, with her palms already starting to sweat, she hastily read them.

            Mom: Ella answer your phone

            Mom: Rosie goes on in twenty minutes. where are you?

            The slim phone slipped through Ella’s fingers and bounced onto her thighs. She had completely forgotten about Rosie’s dance recital. That couldn’t be tonight, she could have sworn it was next week –

            “You okay?” Ryan asked, and when Ella looked over at him with wide eyes, she saw that he still had a lazy half-grin on his lips. He saw her panicked expression and hesitated, adding with more concern, “What’s wrong?”

            “Is it the 29th?” Ella interrupted as though she hadn’t heard him, feeling the horror slowly beginning to grow inside her chest like a deathly disease. “Tell me it’s not the 29th.”

            “…what? I – I don’t know, maybe?”

            Ella wasn’t paying attention, her fingers scrambling to grasp her phone again to see. The breath caught in her throat, the little white numbers with the date Thursday, September 29thglaring up at her through the darkness. The time was directly above it, and Ella’s voice rose several octaves higher without her permission. “It’s after nine?”

            “Will you tell me what’s going on?” Ryan snapped. His expression had turned serious in just the past few seconds, and the soft light in his eyes that came from kissing Ella had disappeared as though someone had extinguished it. “Why are you – ?”

            “We have to turn around,” Ella interrupted, eyes burning. Her stomach hurt, and she hated herself. “I forgot about my sister’s dance recital. What the fuck is wrong with me?”

            Ryan had opened his mouth to say something, but he was already pressing the brake and spinning the wheel to make a u-turn. The atmosphere inside the truck had gone from warm and impossibly elated to a cold sort of panic, and Ella knew she was on the verge of tears. How could she have forgotten? There had been no one to remind Ella about it since she had spent the entire afternoon with Ryan, but that was no excuse.

            “Where is it?” he asked, both of them jolting in their seats as the right tire bumped over the curb. A pale yellow van honked loudly when Ryan veered around back into the road, but neither of them seemed to hear it. “Do I turn right up here?”

            “No, take a left,” Ella said breathlessly, and she gripped the door handle as Ryan whipped past the stop sign. “It’s at the middle school. She’s going on in fifteen minutes, fuck – ”

            “Ella,” Ryan interrupted in a low voice, the engine squealing as he sped through a yellow light, “just relax. That’s how long it takes to get there. We’ll make it.”