ADSactly Short Story - Misplaced

THE GIRL woke at 07:30 am, having slept very late. She was starving. She checked her cupboard for cereal and snacks, but there was nothing left. She went to the full length mirror hanging beside the window on the far side of the entrance to the room and, looked at her image. Standing before her was a puffy-eyed girl with spongy, dishevelled hair. The sunbeam streamed in through the part of the window not completely covered by the old curtain her mom gave her when she was coming to school. Through the beam, she could spot specks of dust floating through the room which would not have been visible without the sunbeam. She considered the image in front of her. I am still a beautiful girl, she decided.

^{Source: Free Image from DeviantArt}

"But a beautiful girl still gotta eat," she said aloud.

Her roommate Comfort had travelled, and she was all alone but, she was glad that her second-semester exams were finally over and she looked forward to returning home to her parents as soon as possible. She counted the things she needed to do before leaving: braid her hair, pack luggage, eat, and of course cook. She slipped out of her pyjamas and wore her t-shirt which read I Don't Do Mornings. She often wondered what that meant. She went to her purse to take out her debit card so she could withdraw cash at the ATM and make the payments she needed to make. She could not find the card. She emptied her purse and confirmed her fear: someone had got hold of her debit card. Pat had never experienced the level of panic that seized her at that moment. She picked up her phone and logged on to her account on the Internet, and everything she was afraid of was confirmed.

One week earlier, someone used her debit card to do a cash back transaction at Mountain Villa Retailers, a shop. She checked her transaction history and found three withdrawals: fifteen thousand, ten thousand and another fifteen thousand Naira. She had only four thousand left in her account. When she thought about the cost of fixing just her hair, she felt devastated and alone in the world. When she recovered a little from the shock, she began to think about the last time she saw the card. It was two days before the card was used. She used it to make a withdrawal of three thousand on Sunday, by 1:38 pm. With her roommate being gone, only one other person had been in her room, and that was Ken. Ken had been asking Pat out for a while, and her insistence that she had a boyfriend did nothing to dampen his enthusiasm. So he dropped by as usual to say hello and check of Pat.

Pat could not think straight as the tears flowed freely. After two hours she got a hold of herself and called the bank to put a block on her debit card. The logical thing to have done was report to the police, but she knew that she could not afford to do that. Reporting a crime or lost property should have been the best approach but she knew a friend who went to report a theft, and she had to pay more than five thousand for "police report" and "investigation". She knew that it was not possible to go to the police without money and even if she did, they would just take the report and file it.

Most people that report crimes to the police and have it prosecuted usually present the suspect to them and such suspects are taken into custody without any further investigation. They would be questioned and intimidated until they either uncover the truth or their loved ones investigate, uncover and present alternative facts to the police. Pat did not have any suspects, and the ones she did have were her friends. She could not bear to subject them to the treatment the police have for anyone that was reported to them.

The first of Pat's friend that she needed to ask about the card was Chino. On two occasions, Pat had told Chino her PIN and asked her to make withdrawals with the debit card on her behalf. They had been friends for seven months but, Chino had never given Pat any reason not to trust her. But as Pat thought about her relationship with Chino, she also realised that Chino had not given her any reasons to trust her either. The last time she saw Chino was on Monday, the day before the withdrawals were made. They had both met in school to attend a musical performance. After the performance, they walked home from school together with a third girl, Mandy, another friend of Pat's. As they walked, Pat confronted Chino for telling some other person something she had told Chino in privacy and they both had a quarrel. But that was characteristic of both girls, so the fight was not enough for them to part ways. They had walked past the gate when Mandy complained about feeling a bit too light.

"What do you mean by 'too light'?" Pat asked Mandy.

"Nothing. It is just like I feel odd, holding nothing since I did not come out with my purse," she replied.

"But that's a bag slung over your shoulder. Isn't that enough weight?" Pat wanted to know.

"It is not the same as a clutch purse. Duh!" Mandy retorted.

"Here you go. You can hold mine," Pat said, handing over her purse in which her debit card and other personal effects were. The girls continued to talk. Before Pat arrived at the junction where she had to part with her friends, the residual anger from her quarrel with her friend had dissipated. They all hugged and went their separate ways.

Thinking about that day, Pat realised just how lame it sounded for someone, anyone to say that they needed to hold something in their hands. Sure, she knew that if one scoured the medical dictionaries, one is bound to find a condition that would require or force someone to crave holding something in their hands but, she was not in any mood to imagine or think it plausible. Now that her debit card was lost and all her savings wiped out, she began to realise just how lame it was that Mandy said she wanted to hold her purse that day. She was inclined to think that Mandy took her card that day. Pat and Mandy were not as close as Pat and Chino so she could not say if it were possible that she would do that to her.

There was only one problem with assuming that Mandy took the card and made the withdrawals. The nature of those withdrawals was such that, to make a successful transaction, the card user must present the card and enter a correct PIN. Mandy had the opportunity to take the card, but she did not have the PIN. Chino once had the card and had memorised the PIN, but she did not have a chance to take the card and make the withdrawals. Pat called Chino to ascertain if she had given someone else her PIN but, she assured her that she did not provide the PIN to any person and that Mandy did not see her enter the PIN at any time. Pat's hope of pinning the theft to Mandy and solving the mystery was shattered to a million pieces. She had one last move to find who took her life savings.

The transaction description on her account showed that the transactions were done on Mountain Villa Retail stores. There were four branches of those stores in the town. She started with the closest office. She identified the person in charge of cash back transactions and approached him. He was a shy young man. She asked him if he could remember either of her friends whose pictures she showed him on her phone. He had no records of those transactions, and he did not recall seeing those girls. Pat went to two other branches with no better luck.

^{Source: Free Image from Pixabay}
Her luck improved when she visited the last branch. As soon as she mentioned the transactions and the amounts, the lady there remembered the transactions because she thought it was odd that someone would do three different transactions on a single account when she could have done one. She recalled the girl that did all three transactions on the morning of Tuesday the week before. Unfortunately, she could not identify either of the two girls as the culprit even though she was certain that she would recognise the person who made those withdrawals if she saw her.

Pat was out of options and out of ideas. Her money was lost, and there was nothing she could do about it. She asked her parents to send her some money so that she could return home but she learned a valuable lesson: Trust is not given, it is earned, and a misplaced trust can never be found.

Authored by: @churchboy

Click on the coin to join our Discord Chat

---

Vote @adsactly-witness for Steem witness!
Witness proposal is here:

Witness Proposal
Witness Proposal Update

Go To Steem Witness Page
In the bottom of the page type: adsactly-witness and press vote.

Use small letters and no "@" sign. Or, click here to vote directly!
Thank you!

---