The Stolen Beach House

As the miles accumulated, the pristine coastal scenery of upscale student housing and manicured lawns dissolved into industrial grey and dilapidated infrastructure. The GPS voice calmly directed me off the main highway and into a part of the city I didn't recognize—a sprawling district of aging apartment complexes with peeling paint, flickering streetlights, and narrow parking lots choked with overflowing dumpsters.

My stomach twisted into a hard, painful knot. This wasn't college territory. This was survival territory.

I pulled the rental car into the gravel lot of a decrepit, three-story brick building known as the Oakridge Apartments. The paint on the exterior walls was chalky and stained, and several windows on the ground floor were covered with makeshift plastic sheeting instead of glass. I parked near a rusted metal staircase that looked like it hadn't seen a fresh coat of paint in twenty years.

This was the address Oliver had given me.

I sat in the car for a moment, letting the engine idle, trying to process the sheer absurdity and cruelty of it all. I had paid cash for a four-bedroom beach house with an ocean view, yet my eighteen-year-old son was supposedly living in this crumbling cinderblock box.

I grabbed my purse, pushed open the car door, and stepped out into the damp afternoon air. The atmosphere reeked of stale exhaust fumes and damp concrete. I walked briskly toward the stairwell, climbing the creaking metal steps to the second floor until I found apartment 204.

Before I could even raise my hand to knock, the wooden door swung open an inch.

Oliver stood in the crack of the doorway. He looked thinner than he had when I last saw him a month ago, his shoulders slightly rounded, dark purple shadows bruised beneath his eyes. He wore an oversized gray hoodie that swallowed his frame.