The Prison (Trapped)

A Story by Natalie

I am trapped. The prison walls of my bedroom threaten to crush me. My broken leg lies propped up on a pillow, my shackle that keeps me contained. Bed rest could not end sooner. My mom refuses to let me go to school for a couple of days while I get accustomed to a full leg cast. I will gladly take the days off school, but I need to run and be free.

I have had a few nice breaks from my prison life over the past couple of days. My friends came yesterday to give me a card they all signed and a couple of balloons. My track team gave me a card they all signed as well. These are nice respites from my sentence behind bars, but life drones on.

My mom feeds me meals in bed. She sits by my feet as I munch on a turkey sandwich or slurp tomato soup and attempts to ask my about my uneventful day but forgets I am trapped here. Soon enough she gives up and leaves to do laundry or pick up my younger brother from the middle school.

As she is going downstairs one day, I hear the doorbell ring, then a faint, “Coming!” The door opens and a male voice speaks. I barely make out, “…for your daughter.” Steps come up the stairs, one following the other, and then stop at my door. My mom’s head peaks in.

“Leslie, you have a visitor.” She beams with knowledge that was once a secret. She always asks if I have any boys in my life and now she thinks she has proof. But the guy I really like would never come through the front door.

She opens the door wider and in comes Lucas holding a bouquet of flowers. I almost burst into laughter. Lucas is my gay best friend.

“Hey, Lucas,” I smile as my mother leaves, glad he came to visit me. “How’s life at school?”

“Sad without you. When are you coming back?” he asks as he places the flowers in my hands. I sniff them gratefully.

“Whenever my prison guard lets me,” I growl, annoyed at my mother. “Anything interesting happen while I’ve been gone?”

He pauses and thinks. “Not really.” Ironically, my gay best friend never was one for gossip. “Oh,” he remembers. “You’re boyfriend hasn’t been at school at all the past three days. Everyone assumed he was with you but I knew your mother would never allow it.”

“Travis? He’s missing?”

“You don’t know where he is?”

“No, he hasn’t come to visit at all…which, now that I think about it, is kind of strange…” I stare across my room, considering everything he could be doing. Maybe his alcoholic mom finally left her run-down shack and he went with her and did not bother to say goodbye. She was always crazy when she drank too much, which was almost every night. Maybe he ran off with some other girl. Maybe some creepy guy kidnapped him and his face will end up on the nightly news. I can see it now: “17-year-old Travis Reeves was found dead this afternoon, brutally beat to death by a crazy lunatic who is currently at large.”

“Leslie. Leslie!” Lucas snaps his fingers in my face, yanking me out of my pessimistic imagination. “I’m sure he’s alright. He plays hooky every other day. I’m sure there is probably a logical reason why he hasn’t come to visit. Everything is okay.” He pauses and studies my face, which still stares across my room in a daze. “You alright?”

I pull my head over to look at him sitting next to me. “Yeah.” He gives me a questioning look. “I promise.”

“If you need to call me, I’m here for you.”

“Thanks, Lucas.”

He gets up to leave. “I have to jet. We have a test tomorrow in math. You’re lucky you get to miss it.” Math was always my strong subject, not his.

“Good luck,” I tell him. I listen in silence as he walks down and says goodbye to my mother in an especially feminine voice to throw off her false suspicion that we are in a relationship. I laugh to myself.

But soon the troubling news that he brought overcomes my mind. Travis has not been in school all week and he has not once come to visit me. Where could he be? I wish he would get a cell phone so he could text me. I consider driving to his house to see if he is home, but then I remember my cast, my shackle. I shake in frustration and stare at my window, his normal entrance into my house. Time crawls faster than I realize and soon it is near dark.

Unexpectedly, my bedroom door begins to slowly creek open. My head jerks towards it, thinking it must be Travis, but as it opens more I see it is Billy, the boy that cannot take no for an answer. His greasy hair is slicked back in a way that would have been perfect in Grease the musical but is disgusting in my bedroom.

“Billy,” I exclaim, annoyed that he insists on persisting. “What are you doing here?”

He quiets me frantically, his arms flailing. “Your mother doesn’t know I’m here,” he whispers harshly.

“What?’ I angrily whisper back, not wanting to risk my mother’s suspicions again. “You snuck into my house?”

“Yes, I had to see you,” he says with a creepy, obsessively adoring expression on his face.

“What for? I don’t want to see you. Get out of my house.” I forcefully gesture, not able to physically push him out the door. He sits next to me on my bed. His nasty cologne wafts towards me and my poor nose cringes in disgust. Why will he not leave? Why will he not take the hint?

“I’m sorry you’re acting like this. It is tragic that you deny our love.” He suddenly and awkwardly begins to stroke the back of my head. My fist lashes out with lightning speed to meet his face. He keels over in pain, clutching his jaw. Adrenaline pours through my body and I breath heavily. I watch the heaving body on the floor and slowly realize it is crying silently. Its face flashes up at me with a frightening, angry, tearful expression.

“It’s your fault. You led me on,” he hisses. “Y-you were nice to me…you joked around…you even flirted with me…,” he remembers distantly with a painful look.

“Flirted? I never flirted with you. I was nice to you because I felt sorry for you. You need to get out of my house.” He flashes a tragic, heated glare at me and runs out of my room. Luckily, my mom lies reading in her bed, a safe, silent distance from Billy tearing out of the house.

Hopefully the creep is gone for good. He took his obsession too far and I think I finally burst his pestering fantasy. Ironically, Travis never tried that hard to make me like him. But I love him and he loves me, or at least I thought he loved me. Where could he be? I worry about his safety but also about the safety of our relationship. He likes to live on the edge and that often means he does crazy, unexpected things. Did he get bored with me? Did he find another girl? I would not blame him. I like to live within the confines of society compared to him.

I remember Lucas told me to relax, so I attempt to get some rest. Images of Travis with another girl flash into my mind as I nod off. He sits on a motorcycle with a leather-clad, piercing-studded chick who smacks her gum. Then he sits in a bar with this chick, laughing and planning to elope. Suddenly he leans over and kisses the ring-covered mouth. He never once mentions me.

A noise startles me to consciousness. My bedside clock reads 3:12AM. The window rattles. Groggily, I look over and see a figure in the window. Travis! I quickly hobble out of bed, nearly forgetting I have a cast. I fumble with the lock as I rush to open the window. A cold breeze blows in but has no effect on me as I embrace my lost love.

“Where have you been? I’ve been so worried,” I whisper, close to tears of joy as he crawls through into my room and helps me back onto my bed. I observe his big backpack.

“I ran away. I could not handle Clara anymore.” His mother sometimes beat him in her drunken rages. He lifts up his forearm to show me several circular marks on his arm. “She decided to take up smoking.”

Tears of sadness pour down my face, mixed with the tears of joy upon his return. I hug him tighter than I have ever hugged him, my tears staining his navy sweatshirt.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t come sooner. I wasn’t sure what to do at first. I tried staying home and avoiding Clara but she kept drinking and she kept smoking and she always found me. I began to pack my things but…she wouldn’t let me go.” His eyes focus in front of him, replaying the moment in his mind. “She saw that I was packing some of my things and grabbed me.” He motions her grabbing him with his hands. “She grabbed me so tight it left marks…but then she collapsed. She just fell to the floor.” He stares at an imaginary unconscious body on the floor. “I picked up her body and put in it her bed. I could feel her whiskey-tainted breath on my face so I knew she was still breathing. I grabbed my things and left.” He slowly comes out his daze and looks at me. “This was all a couple hours ago. I came here as soon as I could.”

A breath escapes me as I sob into his shoulder. I selfishly assumed he was abandoning me for another girl. I never once considered he still cared about me. But I was terribly wrong, and I feel a horrible guilt.

“Do you need a place to sleep?” I ask as my sobs lessen.

“Oh, yeah. I do.” I begin to cry more as I realize he came to me before he considered where he will sleep. I reach for my purse and grab my keys. I hand them to him as well as a pillow and a blanket from the end of my bed.

“Sleep in my car. If you need another blanket let me know.”

“Thanks.” He stares at me and starts to head towards the window, thinking I wanted him to leave. But he cannot leave. Not yet. Not now that I know he is safe. I need to know he is still here. I reach for him and he comes rushing back, wanting to be in my presence as well. He crawls into my bed with me and we lie together, listening to each other breathing, knowing the other is safe and alive.