A high school math team member lent his graphing calculator—a pricey TI-84 he relies on for contests and homework—to a teammate during practice.

But when the teammate left with it, dodged messages, and failed to return it for days, the student finally reported it missing to his coach and the school.

Read on for the story.

AITA for reporting my graphic calculator stolen when a teammate borrowed it during math team practice?

I am on my math team. I own a graphing calculator (TI-84-style) that I bought last year and use for contests and homework.

It’s not cheap and it has some programs and settings I’ve customized over months, it’s legitimately useful for my competitions.

During practice last week, a teammate asked to borrow it to check something quickly for a problem set.

I’m pretty okay lending things when it’s a quick deal, so I handed it to him while the rest of us worked on a different set of problems.

Uh oh…

After a few minutes I realized he had stepped outside to take a call and didn’t bring the calculator back.

I waited 10–15 minutes, messaged him, and then assumed he’s just distracted. Practice ended and people left.

I reached out, twice that night asking when I could get it back. And i got no reply.

The next morning I asked in the team chat and he replied with a vague response, I’ll bring it tomorrow.

He better.

By the end of the day it still hadn’t shown up.

I went to check lost and found and talked to the coach, who said to give it a little more time but to let him know if it was actually missing.

I waited two more days and still nothing. His responses were slow and evasive, and one teammate privately talked to me, he had a history of forgetting borrowed stuff.

At that point I told the coach the calculator was missing and asked them to check the practice room and security cameras (our school hall cameras cover the area).

Sneaky sneaky.

The coach escalated it to the school office as a stolen/missing item so they could review footage and make a formal note.

He got confused when he found out I’d reported it. He alleged me of making a big deal out of nothing and calling him a thief.

The school later found footage showing he’s leaving practice carrying something that looked like my calculator, but the footage was grainy (administration hasn’t made a final determination yet).

Wow.

I know I did the right thing protecting my property right?

I’m not happy about involving the school, but I felt I’d exhausted polite options and I can’t afford to replace it easily.

AITA for reporting my graphing calculator as stolen?

Most people on Reddit agreed that reporting the calculator was the right way to protect his property.

This person says by definition, it was stolen.

This person said this kid had PLENTY of times he could’ve returned it.

And this person said he would just ignore all the rude comments.

Sometimes drawing the line isn’t over math problems—it’s over the tools you need to solve them.

If you thought that was an interesting story, check out what happened when a family gave their in-laws a free place to stay in exchange for babysitting, but things changed when they don’t hold up their end of the bargain.