El Paso, Texas [Wednesday evening]

Jaime was bent over his desk putting the last screw back into his phone. He'd managed to repair it. What normally would be a really interesting exercise was just a chore that Jaime felt he had to do. Because he needed his phone. There were people to call.

He hadn't even gotten started until an hour before, either.

Lying to his mother, even something as small as telling her that he'd eaten already so that he could go hide in his room, had been hard, but he'd done it anyway. And been locked in since.

He hadn't really done a lot of thinking since last night. Hadn't been able to.

But now his phone was fixed. And that meant he didn't have any more excuses not to... do something. Which meant figuring out where to start.

That part, at least, was easy. Momoko was gone. He needed to call Dinah. But what would he tell her?

So... voicemail first. But there weren't any. So, no more putting it off. Dinah.

That familiar neutral voice explaining the number he'd dialed did not exist sent his newly-repaired phone flying across the room again. Fortunately (he supposed) it didn't break this time. There wasn't any energy in the throw.

It was going to be a lot harder to lie to his mom when she stuck her head in to check on him in an hour or so and found him crying silently at his desk.

[Open for calls, etc. if anyone's around to make them.]