They Blocked My Last Rescue

I’ve had a severe addiction to human connection for as long as I can remember. Most newborns just lie in their cribs and cry, but by two weeks old, I was already babbling half the night away to the exhausted mother in the hospital bed next to ours. When I was five, I wandered off at a crowded city plaza. By the time the police finally tracked me down, I was sitting dead center on a park bench, enthusiastically running a speed-dating circle for two dozen senior citizens. By thirteen, I was being returned to the group home by my eleventh foster family. On the drive back, I spent three straight hours chatting up the social worker at the wheel. I got her so distracted she missed seven turns, ultimately pulling up to the facility gates with tears in her eyes. "Corey, sweetie, it’s not that I don't care about you," she sobbed, handing me my duffel bag. "It's just... I couldn't get a single word in edge-wise." Then came the year I turned seventeen. My biological father, David, who had married into the wealthy Whittaker family years ago, suddenly remembered he had a son. The night I arrived, the Whittakers threw a lavish dinner in my honor. But before the first course was even served, my new stepbrother, Justin, burst into quiet, trembling tears. "Corey said that starting today, he's the only real son in this house," Justin whimpered, wiping his eyes. "He told me to pack my things and get out. Maybe I shouldn't eat with you guys tonight... I don't want to make him upset." My stepsister, Claire, slammed her fork down, her eyes flashing cold fire. "Day one in our home and he's already laying down the law? Who the hell does he think he is?" The whole family marched out to confront me in a furious pack—only to find me hanging out in the gated community's security booth. I was leaning over the desk, cracking sunflower seeds with Wanda, the night-shift security guard, actively helping her reverse-scam an online catfish who was trying to break her heart. Justin’s tragic sniffling cut short. Claire stared at me, her face dark. "You're the one trying to take over this house?" I waved my hands dismissively. "Take over? Guys, the main house is so boring. There’s no one to talk to! The guard booth is where it’s at. Eight monitors, six walkie-talkies, and noise complaints from angry neighbors every twenty minutes. It’s a party in here." Wanda squeezed my shoulder, genuinely moved. "Corey says he's taking care of me when I retire." My father’s face turned an uncomfortable shade of green. He dragged me up to the guest room by my elbow and locked the door behind us. Left alone in the quiet, empty room, my skin started to crawl after three minutes. By minute five, the suffocating silence became unbearable. I pulled out my phone and dialed customer service. "Thank you for calling. How can I help you today?" a polite representative answered. Hearing a live voice on the line made the tightness in my chest instantly melt away. "Oh, nothing major! I just wanted to ask... is it pretty hot over where you guys are today?" A brief, bewildered pause. "Sir, do you have an inquiry regarding your account?" "I do. Have you had lunch yet?" Half an hour later, the representative was practically weeping, begging me to leave her a five-star review for listening to her vent about her shift. ... The next morning, I was enrolled in Whitmore Prep, the elite private school funded by the city's old money. My father held my shoulder tightly at the drop-off line, his voice dripping with anxiety. "Corey, please. Just keep a low profile. These kids come from very influential families. Don't go throwing yourself at everyone you see." I gave him a solemn nod. "Understood." Minute one inside the gates: I helped the elderly front-gate guard intercept his ex-wife’s re-marriage bouquet delivery. Minute three: The dean of students and I discovered a mutual obsession with trashy daytime court television. Minute ten: I completely revamped the head cafeteria chef’s son's dating profile. Thirty minutes in, my voice boomed across the entire campus through the PA system. "Testing, testing. Hey everyone, can you hear me? Just a heads-up: the cafeteria doubled the sugar in today's sweet-and-sour chicken. If you're cutting back, maybe skip the line today. And to any faculty watching their glucose—proceed with caution!" The campus exploded. When I stepped out of the AV booth, a crowd had already gathered in the hallway. Kids were asking me for secret cafeteria hacks, inviting me to pickup basketball games, and asking if I could pass love notes to their crushes. Justin stood in the middle of the hall, his face draining of color as the girl standing next to him waved at me excitedly. "Corey! Eat lunch with us today!" Justin’s eyes welled with tears instantly. "She's... she's my best friend." I had an epiphany, stepping forward and clapping a friendly hand onto his shoulder. "That’s awesome! From now on, we’re an inseparable trio. You’re the leader, she’s the strategist, and I’m the getaway driver." The girl burst out laughing. Justin’s face went deadly pale, and he turned around, running off down the hall. ... That evening, the Whittaker family convened an emergency meeting. Claire dumped a stack of printed chat logs onto the dining table. "One day at school, and he’s added over four hundred contacts on his phone. Corey, do you honestly think this is normal behavior?" I skimmed the pages. "Claire, you're missing three. You didn't include the principal, the school nurse, or the guy selling hot pretzels outside the gate." Claire opened her mouth, completely rendered speechless. Justin’s shoulders trembled with quiet rage. "He knew those people were my friends. He did it on purpose just to get close to them. He wants to strip away everything I have!" "Not at all," I explained quickly. "What’s yours is yours! At most, I’m just borrowing them for a quick chat. Besides, friends aren’t portable chargers—it’s not like I can just walk off with them in my pocket." My father rubbed his temples, letting out a heavy, exhausted sigh. "Corey... this compulsion of yours really needs to stop." Claire slid a freshly printed sheet of paper across the table. Bold letters flared across the top: 72-HOUR SOCIAL DETOX PROGRAM. "Starting tomorrow morning, no one at school is allowed to speak to you," Claire declared coldly. "Blocked on text, blocked on social media, zero verbal responses in person." The easy smile froze on my face. "Not even a single word?" Claire glared at me. "Nobody ever died from being ignored for three days." Panicked, I grabbed my father's sleeve, searching his face. But he avoided my eyes, staring down at his coffee. "It's for your own good, Corey," he murmured softly. "Get through three days, and maybe you'll learn how to be normal." I slowly lowered my hands and pulled out my phone, setting a 72-hour countdown timer on my screen. Whenever my previous eleven foster families had decided they didn't want me anymore, they would suddenly become very quiet, too. They stopped answering my questions. They stopped looking me in the eye. They never explained what I had done wrong. Usually, three days after the silence started, I was packing my bags. ... At eight o'clock the next morning, a memo was broadcast to the entire student body via the internal app. The lively chatter in the hallways died down instantly. Right in front of my face, classmates pulled out their phones and tapped "Block". Hour one of the social detox: I was managing okay. At least the automated school announcements still talked to me. "All juniors attending the outdoor wilderness retreat, please report to the athletic field at 3:00 PM," the speaker hummed. I looked up at the loudspeaker on the wall. "Copy that. Great vocal tone, by the way—you’ve got a real career in voiceover." The kids standing nearby muffled their laughter, their shoulders shaking, but not a single one dared to speak. Hour two: I tried starting a conversation with the hallway vending machine. "I put in two dollars. Why’d you only drop one water bottle?" The machine remained indifferent and silent. I gave it a gentle pat. "A bit of an introvert, huh? I respect that." Hour three: Claire confiscated my phone. Her excuse was that I had sent a mass text reading "You up?" to over nine hundred contacts in my phonebook. "Is this what you call cooperating with your treatment?" She thrust my phone into her blazer pocket, her face hard as stone. I looked at her pleadingly. "You could just text back 'No.' I’m really not picky." She turned on her heel and walked away. I took two steps to follow her, then stopped. My father had promised that if I made it through these three days obediently, he wouldn't send me away again. I needed to be good. ... That afternoon, during the retreat assembly, our advisor, Mr. Hogan, handed out route color tags to every student. Red, Yellow, Blue. I pulled a red tag, placing me in the same group as Justin for the mid-mountain campsite. Justin looked at the red tag in my hand and offered a faint, unexpected smile. It was the first time he had looked at me directly all day. I immediately trotted over. "You're finally willing to look at me? I knew there was no bad blood between brothers—at worst, just a little miscommunication." He didn't reply. He simply took my route tag and pinned it onto the side mesh of my backpack for me. Deeply touched, I trailed close behind him as we moved toward the staging area. "Hey, do you want some chips? Are you thirsty? Do you think Claire has been acting a little tense lately? She looks super stressed." Justin stopped dead in his tracks. I nearly slammed into his back. He turned around, keeping his voice dangerously low. "Corey, why do you have to smother everyone around you? Can’t you just exist by yourself for five minutes?" I thought about it seriously. "I can be by myself. It’s just... whenever people stop talking to me, I start thinking they’re in a room somewhere figuring out how to get rid of me." Justin blinked, momentarily stunned. Taking advantage of the pause, I gestured toward a nearby bench. "Want to sit and talk about it? It’s a pretty long story—I can start with my first foster home." The flicker of sympathy on his face vanished instantly. "Forget it." He turned and picked up his pace, leaving me behind in the crowd. Before we boarded, Claire dropped off a jacket for Justin. I pulled out my handwritten 'Friendship Notebook' to show her the prep notes I had compiled for the trail, but she yanked the notebook out of my hands. Inside, pages were filled with my cramped handwriting, detailed with personal notes on everyone: "Mrs. Griffith (cafeteria staff): bad lower back, make sure she has a cushioned chair on rainy days." "Dave (facilities): son is 22, single, likes girls with short hair." "Kayla (Junior): severe peanut allergy, emergency EpiPen kept in the right pocket of her backpack." Claire’s expression darkened as she flipped through the pages. "You’re even keeping track of people’s medical conditions? What are you trying to pull?" "I’m just making friends," I answered matter-of-factly. "If something goes wrong, I want to be useful." Justin’s eyes welled up again. "Claire, look—he even documented my friends' family backgrounds. This isn't making friends. It's surveillance." Claire ripped the notebook in half, sending loose pages fluttering onto the dirt. I dropped to my knees, scrambling to gather the torn sheets. "Claire, you can tear up my notes... but please don't throw away Kayla’s page. She really can’t eat peanuts." Claire let out a sharp, dismissive laugh. "They all did just fine before you showed up, Corey. Stop making yourself out to be so important." I stuffed the torn paper into my bag and went quiet. She wasn't wrong. Those eleven foster families had all moved on fine without me. I was the only one who ever ended up crying like my world was ending every time I was dropped off at a new front door. ... When the buses pulled out, my phone was finally returned to me. The screen was terrifyingly quiet—no notifications, no alerts. I snapped a picture of the bus interior and texted it to my father. A harsh red exclamation point popped up right next to the message. He had blocked me, too. I stared at that little red circle for a long time. My fifth foster father had done the exact same thing when he decided he was done with me. He told me his phone was broken, which was why he wasn't getting my calls. Later, I realized his phone worked just fine. He just wasn't getting "mine". The buses arrived at the base of the mountain, and Mr. Hogan called out instructions. "Red tags go left up the main trail, Blue tags go right down the lower ridge, Yellow tags stay with me!" I glanced down at my backpack. The red route tag pinned to my bag earlier had somehow been replaced with a blue one. I looked up, trying to find Justin to ask him about it, but he was already walking away with the red group along the main path. I shouted his name once. He didn't turn around. No one else around me acknowledged my voice either. The blue trail was far quieter than I expected. After twenty minutes of hiking, I hadn't spotted a single soul. I opened the class group chat. No one was dropping location pins, and no one was talking about the rendezvous point. I typed out a message: "Hey Blue Team, did you guys activate an invisibility cloak or something?" "Message failed to send." Red exclamation mark. Left with no choice, I turned to a pine tree beside the trail. "Excuse me, do you know which way leads to the campsite?" The tree remained motionless. "Fair enough," I sighed. "At least you're more polite than my stepsister. You didn't call me insane." Then, the rain started. The unpaved trail quickly turned into slick, mud-soaked sludge. I hugged the trees along the ridge, shuffling forward step by step. As I rounded a rusted, collapsed guardrail, the ground beneath my right foot suddenly gave way. Mud flooded down my collar as I tumbled down a steep, rocky ravine, crashing heavily against a shattered concrete slab at the bottom. Pain blazed through my vision, turning everything pitch black for a few seconds. When the dust settled, I reached down and felt my left leg. My lower calf was pinned firmly inside a narrow stone crevice. I couldn't budge. My phone screen was cracked straight down the middle, but by some miracle, I still had two bars of signal. I called Claire first. It rang three times before going straight to voicemail. On my second attempt, it went straight to automated recording. Panicking, I hammered out a text: "Claire, I think I took a wrong turn. My leg is stuck. Can you get a supervisor to come down and help me?" "Red exclamation mark." I dialed my father. No answer. Desperate, I opened Justin’s chat window. To my shock, the text actually went through. "Justin, did you give me the wrong route tag by mistake? I fell into a pit down off the blue trail. Please tell Mr. Hogan. Text back if you see this!" A moment later, the top banner displayed: "Typing..." My heart leaped. As long as someone was talking to me, things could still be fixed. A second later, his reply arrived: "Haven't you played enough games?" Before I could even type a reply, the red exclamation mark appeared next to my sent message. He had blocked me. I sat frozen in the mud for a long time. Then, I pulled up my full contact list and started dialing down the line, one by one. Classmates. Teachers. The school nurse. The bus driver. The front-gate guard. Thirty-seven calls. Not a single person picked up. They were following the rules so meticulously. They couldn't even spare a single punctuation mark for me. Rainwater funneled down the ravine, rising over my shoes. I held my phone up high, recording a short video for my father. "Dad, I'm really not lying," I said, my voice shaky as I angled the camera down. "See? My leg is stuck between these rocks. Just send someone to pull me out, I promise I'll go back and finish the social detox properly." After hitting send—and watching it fail—I glanced at the time in the top corner. There were still fifty-one hours left on the 72-hour countdown. I could make it. I had to. When my third foster family locked me in the storage closet, I had been stuck in the dark for two days. Back then, I kept pounding on the door, screaming until my voice gave out. Eventually, my foster father got tired of the noise and pushed a heavy dresser against the door to muffle me. I learned a lesson that day: when you're begging people for help, you can't be too loud. If you make too much noise, people just dislike you more. ... Up on the main trail, the Red Team had successfully reached the campsite. Mr. Hogan did a quick headcount, his brow furrowing. "Are we short one student?" Justin was taking a photo of the scenery, not looking up. "Corey said he wasn't feeling well and went back to the bus early." A classmate nearby frowned, speaking up instinctively. "Wait, but I thought I saw him heading down the lower ridge toward the blue line—" Claire cut in, her voice cold as ice. "We are in the middle of a detox program. No one is to discuss him. His favorite trick is using fake disappearances to get attention. The more you feed into it, the worse he’ll get." The classmate swallowed hard and clamped his mouth shut. By six in the evening, the groups gathered at the parking lot to load onto the buses. Wanda, who was driving the lead bus for the retreat, counted the heads as students filed past her. "We're missing one." Mr. Hogan turned to Justin. Justin’s expression didn't flicker. "Corey took an earlier ride back with another group. He has friends everywhere—it's not hard for him to catch a ride." Everyone found that completely believable. After all, this was Corey. You could drop him in the middle of the Sahara Desert and he'd end up adopted by a herd of camels within an hour. Still, Wanda felt an uneasy tug in her gut. She pulled out her phone and dialed my number. Deep in the ravine, as the ringtone echoed off the damp stone walls, I was using my shoelaces to tie a crude tourniquet around my bleeding leg. When my phone buzzed with an incoming call, my hands shook so violently I almost dropped it. I swiped answer—but before I could utter a sound, someone on the other end snatched the phone away. Claire’s sharp voice came through the speaker. "I said "no one" is allowed to answer his calls!" "Click." The line went dead. I stared at the black screen, petrified, not daring to move. They knew I was calling. They just didn't want to answer. ... On the first night, I sent forty-two messages. Zero replies. By the second morning, my battery had dropped to twenty percent. I stopped making calls, rationing my power to drop a GPS pin every hour. "Dad, I'm still down here." "Claire, the rain stopped, but the water level is rising." "Mr. Hogan, I didn't skip out. I really can't get back up." "Justin, if you're still mad at me, I'm sorry." Red exclamation marks down the line. Only the texts sent to Justin didn't bounce, but he never replied. At noon, back in the city, the Whittakers were at a restaurant celebrating Justin’s successful trip. My father looked at the empty seat at the table and asked casually, "Corey isn't back yet?" Claire sliced a piece of cake for Justin, her expression detached. "He’s probably hiding out at some friend’s house. Ignore him. He’s just trying to manipulate us into ending the detox early." My father hesitated. "But he hasn't been home since yesterday..." Justin’s eyes turned red instantly. "Dad... do you regret taking my side? Corey is so popular, he has people looking out for him wherever he goes. What could possibly happen to him? I... I only have you guys." My father immediately softened, patting Justin’s hand. "I’m not blaming you, son. Corey has been spoiled and reckless. He needs to learn a lesson this time." ... I didn't know they were eating cake. I was holding my cracked phone, recording my seventy-third video message for my father. "Dad... it’s getting pretty cold down here," I whispered into the mic. "You don't have to write a long text back. Just send a period. A single dot. I just... I just want to know you're getting these." "Sending failed." I deleted the video and recorded a second take, forcing a bright, natural smile onto my face. "Hey, ignore that! I was just messing with you. I handle the cold great. Remember how drafty the group home was in the winter? I used to stay up all night talking to the kid in the next bunk!" Battery: 10%. I couldn't bring myself to hit send. ... That afternoon, Wanda went to clean out the back of the bus and found my torn Friendship Notebook under a rear seat. She spent an hour carefully taping the ripped pages back together, eventually reaching the page dedicated to her: "Wanda: herniated disc, can’t lift heavy luggage." "Son works out of state—remind her to call him on the 15th of every month." "If a head count comes up short on a field trip, she will always count three times to be sure." Wanda stared at the last line, her face turning pale. She bolted straight into the administrative office. "How many students actually made it off the mountain yesterday?!" she demanded. Mr. Hogan looked up, startled. "Everyone came back." "Did you personally count them?!" "Justin said Corey took a ride back with someone else—" Wanda slammed her palm onto his desk. "I’ve been driving school buses for fifteen years! You think I don't know which kid steps onto my bus?!" The administration immediately pulled up security footage from the mountain trailheads. On screen, streams of students followed the designated Red and Yellow routes. Only one figure—wearing a blue tag pinned to his pack—walked alone toward the barricaded, abandoned path. Mr. Hogan’s face turned ghastly white. That path had been decommissioned ten years ago. It led directly into an old, flooded concrete bunker network from the mid-century. ... When the school finally contacted my family, the 72-hour countdown timer had exactly ten minutes left. Inside the Whittaker living room, my father’s phone began buzzing incessantly on the coffee table. He picked it up with a frown. "Who is calling at this hour?" The caller spoke a single sentence. The mug in my father's hand shattered across the hardwood floor. Claire stood up abruptly. "What happened?" My father’s lips trembled uncontrollably. "The school... the school says Corey has been missing for two days." The color drained completely from Justin’s face. Claire, however, recovered her composure quickly. "That’s impossible. He’s hiding. Corey can survive anywhere as long as there are people around—why would he let himself get lost?" Just as the words left her mouth, the 72-hour countdown timer hit zero. The school-wide block system automatically disengaged. My father’s phone began to vibrate violently in his hand, buzzing continuously like a live wire. Forty-two missed alerts. Seventy-three unsent logs. Ninety-nine location pings. A tidal wave of emergency notifications flooded the screen. Simultaneously, the phones belonging to Claire, Mr. Hogan, and dozens of classmates began chiming uncontrollably. With trembling fingers, Claire tapped on the very last voice message I had recorded. The audio played through the quiet living room. For a long time, there was only the sound of heavy, shallow breathing and dripping water. Then, my quiet, raspy voice broke through the silence. "Claire... I don't think I can get out of here." "...But you were right. Nobody ever died from being ignored." "I'm just... a little scared." "If I don't make it back this time, please don't be mad at me. I think I finally cured my social addiction." "I won't... bother any of you ever again." The message cut off. Silence heavy as lead descended on the room. No one dared to breathe. Outside, the harsh screech of tires echoed down the driveway. Wanda burst through the front door alongside three police officers, throwing the faded blue route tag violently onto the table in front of Justin. "Who put this tag on his bag?!" she roared. Justin stumbled backward, trembling. As Claire stepped forward to defend him, the lead officer’s phone rang. She answered, listened for three seconds, and her expression turned grave. "We located his last active signal," the officer announced, her voice grim. "Fifteen meters underground, near the flooded concrete shaft." She paused, looking at my father. "Thermal imaging isn't picking up any vital signs. Prepare yourselves."