In the Trap

Excerpt

In the Trap
Jessica Cranberry © 2022
All Rights Reserved

Bell-e-fon-taine. We soared past the exit in Aunt Liddy’s old Volvo station wagon, and I couldn’t read the sign any other way. Ohio had a couple of cities spelled one way but pronounced another. Bellefontaine was actually Bell Fountain. In Versailles, west of here, closer to the Indiana border, people called it Ver-sales. I didn’t know why; I wasn’t really from Ohio.

Aunt Liddy’s car was humid, just like outside. We drove a little to the middle and a little to the east. Dark clouds gathered. I could’ve said on the horizon, but Midwestern storms didn’t always work that way unless a tornado was coming. No. The clouds hung close, not a ways off. Their color changed, oppressive ash-gray shifting to ominous lead billows. The sky darkened so hard one might think the whole world was on fire.

With a crack and a flash of silver-white, raindrops fell thick and loud, pounding against the car. The storm’s beating percussion drowned out the sound of Aunt Liddy’s sappy oldies music, so much so she ended up clicking the station off. I cranked up the air conditioning to keep the windows from fogging up.

The windshield wipers went wild, swiping waves of water away as fast as possible. It reminded me of how Dad used to laugh when he told the story about helping Mom learn to drive. They were high-school sweethearts—of course. In the rain, she’d get lost in the tempo of the wipers and automatically steer the wheel to the rhythm. She’d swerve all over the road until he’d scoot in close and steady her hand, instructing her to look farther ahead, past the wiper blades.

“I better slow down,” Aunt Liddy mumbled to herself. Most people talked just to hear their own voices, but especially when they got nervous.

The car’s momentum slackened, but the road and our windshield still blurred with splashing water. I couldn’t see anything in front of us. Out the side-view window, everything was soaked in the deluge, a blurry, slushy mix of greens and grays.

“Should we pull over?” I asked.

Aunt Liddy chewed her lower lip by way of an answer, and the hairy mole on her chin twitched—in a good witch kind of way. She ran her hand through the cropped mop of curls on top of her head; she was in her early fifties and had already accepted a Golden Girls haircut into her life.

I could make out an elongated mound up ahead. “Looks like an underpass. We could pull over underneath.”

In seconds, our car slid under the shelter. The beating of the rain silenced for a moment. But Aunt Liddy didn’t stop; her knuckles turned white as she gripped the wheel, and we kept going.

“We’re not stopping,” she said as if I wasn’t already aware of her steadfast persistence to get me to college.

“There’s no timeline, Aunt Liddy. It’s the weekend. We can show up at the dorm whenever.”

“We made a plan; we stick to the plan.”

This was our screwed-up version of a family motto. I wasn’t sure when or how it originated, but Fischers rarely deviated. We did what we thought we were supposed to do. No matter the warning signs, we pressed on.

The rain subsided a little; its pounding beat softened to a patter, and Aunt Liddy relaxed her shoulders. She punched the radio back on, and the soothing tones of “I Can See Clearly Now” filled the car.

As Aunt Liddy hummed along, I worried a hangnail on my thumb, savoring the little sting of pain. It reminded me who I was, where I was going, and that I was doing it alone. The road stayed slick with water and sounded like its own river as we drove over and through puddles.

Suddenly, a sharp bite stole my breath as I lurched forward in my seat, the seat belt digging into my collarbone and chest. Aunt Liddy put her arm in front of me as if that would be enough to stop my head splitting against the windshield. The dashboard was mere inches from crushing the bridge of my nose.

She stomped the brakes and yelled and cursed. Bright red taillights filled our windshield, sparkling and reflecting in the last of the raindrops that hadn’t been swiped away. The back of our car started to edge around. Back and forth, fishtailing as Aunt Liddy tried to gain control. Her face flushed pink, expression strained.

Life was supposed to flash in front of my eyes, but I hadn’t lived long enough for anything to really show up. I saw my mom smiling and heard my dad laughing, and nothing more. Were they—and everything they’d been through—all my life had amounted to?

Miraculously, Aunt Liddy steadied the car. She laid on the horn. It blared long and loud.

“Did you see him? He cut me off!”

The truck in front of us was massive, with a set of mud flaps showing the curving silhouettes of two naked women. Classy. The truck driver stuck his middle finger out the window.

“Stupid dick.” Aunt Liddy drew in a deep breath. “He’s gonna get someone killed.” She turned to me. “I’m sorry. Are you okay, hun?”

I could barely breathe. My heartbeat pounded in my throat and ears. My eyes watered and felt as though they were barely in their sockets. But sure, I was fine and said as much. That stupid song continued. Its singer insisted life was all clear blue skies and obstacles could be seen from far off, which was a damn lie. Trucks came out of nowhere, and so did bad people. Red flags didn’t look like red flags until after the fact.

By the time we arrived on campus, the storm had passed through the college town, and the sky was a robin-egg blue. Green leaves and twigs dotted the wet roads. Traffic was a real bitch. The air, both in and outside the car, suffocated like a heavy wet blanket of humidity held up against my face. Aunt Liddy cranked up the air conditioning, and I rolled up my window, taking in every little detail about this brand-new place I was supposed to call home.

“What do you think, Hazel?” Aunt Liddy tapped her fingers along the steering wheel. “Are ya excited?”

Did I tell her what she wanted to hear? The truth was I’d gone right ahead and stepped into this preapproved, family-planned future, and—fingers crossed—it wouldn’t turn to shit.

College. This was the plan, had been the plan since the day I was born, and my parents had started saving. College was supposed to be the ticket. To what though? The expectation was a teaching career, like many a Fischer before me, including my aunt. But nobody had ever asked me, and I wasn’t so sure what I wanted for my life yet.

“It’ll be cool to start something new.” I’d moved in with Aunt Liddy in high school, and no one had known a single thing about me. So I already knew starting over brought some freedom. Anonymity equaled a certain kind of power.

“Good, hun. And remember, I’m only a phone call away. Any time—day or night—you call me when you need me. Got it?” Aunt Liddy inched the car into the drop-off zone and shifted into park.

I didn’t have time to respond. We were bombarded by volunteers, yanking open doors and hustling me out of the car. They immediately tossed my stuff into a cart on wheels and were busy barking instructions to Aunt Liddy. Once my cart was filled, one of the volunteers took my registration printout and started rolling my stuff away.

“I’ll be right back!” Aunt Liddy yelled, and she drove away.

“No, she won’t.” My escort was a tall, lanky guy with sandy-blond hair pulled into a low ponytail at the nape of his neck. “It’ll take at least an hour to find a parking spot. You’ll probably be unpacked by the time she gets back up here.”

“Busy, huh?” I didn’t know what to say.

“Ya think?”

I decided to drop the small talk; I loathed it anyway.

The guy wheeled my stuff near a brick building labeled Robin Hall and left with nothing more than a “Good luck!”

“Thanks,” I murmured, pushing my cart inside.

People—families—filled the dorm lobby. Teary moms and proud dads. Younger siblings sat on worn couches with their noses in Game Boys, probably pretending their lives weren’t changing too.

“Can I help you?” A cheery voice came from behind a counter set up like a check-in desk at a motel.

“Uh, yeah.” My papers were still crumpled in my hand. “I have these.” I handed over the forms, mildly embarrassed they were damp with sweat. She rattled off directions—down the hall, take the elevator…

My nerves piled into a lump in my throat, and I moved through the hallway as though in a dream. Fluorescent lights strobed inconsistently as I strolled by a long line of open doors. I tried not to peek, not to spy on these snippets of life as I made my way to my room, but it was impossible not to overhear the kids blowing off their parents’ final attempts at nurturing.

At the elevator, I blew out a breath and pressed the button. My dorm room was on the second floor. The names of my suitemates had been mailed to me—printed on the same registration papers sticking out of my back pocket—but that was all I knew about who waited for me in Room 222.

Same as all the others, the door was propped open, and a few people milled about in the hall, simultaneously trying to both help and get out of the way.

“Excuse me,” I said to an older woman, leaning against the wall. She seemed around the same age as my mom would have been.

“Is this your room too?” Her hair was styled in an angled bob, and a lot of pink makeup decorated her cheeks.

“Yeah, I’m Hazel.” I wiped my sweaty palm on my pant leg and held it out to her like a legit grown-up.

“Nice to meet you. I’m Trish’s mom.”

“Mom, have you seen my— Oh, hi!” Trish was loud and bouncy and gave off an overly friendly energy. “You must be Hazel. Everyone else is already here.”

“Hi. Yeah, I am.” We shook hands too.

Trish stepped aside to talk with her mom, and I left my stuff in the hall, entering our new room. One small loveseat and four desks lined the walls. I set my bag on one of the two desks next to the windows and checked out the view. Below us, sidewalks and mature trees punctuated a small courtyard. How pleasant.

Beyond a heavy curtain separating the living space from the bedroom, two sets of bunk beds took up the majority of space in the second room. One of the bottom bunks seemed unclaimed, which was fine by me. I wasn’t the type of person who insisted on being on top, so I dropped my backpack on the bare mattress.

Rolling the giant cart into the room proved futile. Even if I’d been able to maneuver it through the too-small doorway, everyone else’s stuff cluttered and overtook the whole room. So I left my things parked in the hallway—next to Trish’s mom, who kept rolling her lips and picking at her cuticles—and unpacked my stuff, piece by piece.

Trish and another roommate, Kim, had known each other in high school and were busy stringing Christmas lights everywhere. There didn’t seem to be a plan or pattern to what they were doing. They tacked twinkling strands along the perimeters of their desks and formed an abstract figure on the wall above the loveseat. The lights cast a soft pink glow around the room.

I went back to the bedroom, unzipped a new pack of sheets, and started making my bed.

“Hey,” a smoky voice said.

I stepped out from under the bunk and looked up at a face—a pretty one, heart-shaped with olive-toned skin and big brown eyes—atop the railing. “Hi,” I said.

“I’m Maeve Drakos. Greek dad, Irish mom.”

“Hazel Fischer. A little bit of everything?”

“People sometimes ask because of my name.”

I wasn’t sure I would have—asked about her name, I mean. Her name was beautiful, movie-star quality, but its origins probably wouldn’t have been the first thing I wondered about when it came to Maeve Drakos.