I mean, her legal guardian and mom knew, the grandparents just chose not to ask her and call the police instead

She just commented that my message was close to accurate, minus that the temporary guardianship was done via paperwork

Wait I'm sorry, did you say they're charging you rent? Your mother, sure, they can make her pay rent, but I'm pretty sure you can't charge a minor rent

edit: turns out it depends on the state, if you have the means to contribute they can charge rent... Though not all states.

Sounds like mom went to rehab and she stayed with her parents as OP's de facto legal guardian (not court ordered), if mom is 6-8 mo sober and a court hasn't given grandparents legal guardianship, they don't have any rights to report OP missing without contacting OP'S LEGAL GUARDIAN, her mom.

My phone is on silent at night because I don't want to be disturbed by the non-stop spam calls everyone gets nowadays. Or the fact that she was just at work beforehand and had it on silent. This is not unusual, and certainly not the problem in this story. The fact that they didn't even ask her mom if she knew where she was means this was entirely about controlling her, if they actually cared they would've woken her mom to check but they just wanted to bully OP for staying at her boyfriends (which they probably assumed and didn't like).

Your suggestion of appeasing people who are being unreasonable and arguably abusive is not a suggestion that will fix things in the long term.

Yeah that sucks. When I first started dating my girlfriend freshmen year of college (at a college 4 hours away from her parents and we both lived in the dorms) she texted her parents that she was going golfing with a friend, she came back to the dorm, left her phone in her golf bag, came over to my room and she fell asleep on the couch for like an hour and a half, then went to her phone and saw like 10 missed calls and a million texts of her mom freaking out over her not responding to her. For not even 5 hours. On a weekend. At college. She called her and she was crying and saying how she was about to call the police in our town, over her 18 year old daughter not responding to texts, for not even 5 hours. On a weekend. At college.

Godspeed on getting the fuck away from your crazy grandparents. You'll feel so much better when you do.