Renting Ginny

I awoke with a nervous start the next morning until I realized I was safe and sound and back at home in my own bed. I listened for sounds within the house but didn’t hear anything. After I used the bathroom, I headed downstairs. “Mom?” No answer. “Dad?” No answer. I went into the kitchen to make some coffee, and that’s when I noticed the note on the dry-erase board written in Mom’s delicate scrawl, saying that she and Dad would be back by lunchtime and not to open the door for anyone under any circumstances. Not even the mailman or any other delivery service. I looked at the clock and was dismayed to see just how many hours away lunchtime was. The thought of being alone for even a few minutes unnerved me. “Don’t be a sissy,” I told myself harshly. But that was easier said than done, and going through what I’d recently gone through and knowing the sick bitch that was responsible for it was still at large, actually made me somewhat eligible for Club Sissyhood, didn’t it? I downed my coffee and hit the shower. Then, after a tense few hours of nearly jumping out of my skin at just about every single sound I heard from airplanes to chirping birds and back to the neighbor’s lawnmower, my parents returned. After I greeted them, I was quick to ask my Dad if he’d spoken to Christoff. “I did,” he said. “We’ve got good news for you and we’ve got bad news,” said my Mom. “Actually, make that good news and strange news.” “Give me the good news first,” I said. “You have no court case pending whatsoever.” My brows rose in surprise. “Wow, that is good news. But it is weird, too.” “That’s where the strange part comes in,” my Dad contributed. “There’s not only no record of your arrest and bail, but there’s no record of the supposed offense at all. Nor is there any such person named Anina Hahn.” “Oh, my God,” I moaned with shock and dismay. “Then who in the world was she?” “We don’t know. That’s why you’re going to have to tell the police the whole story if we’re to stand a chance of finding out and catching her before she harms anyone else.” I hesitated. I wanted her caught, of course, but I hated to see anything happen to the guys who had saved me. “I know you’re worried about those boys,” my Dad said, realizing what I was thinking, “but you’re more important than they are, and so is getting this lunatic off the streets. There are other escort services out there. You don’t want this to happen to anyone else, do you?” “No. No, of course not. So, what do we do then? Call the police, go to the police station or what?” “We were thinking it would be best if you took us by the place where you were held,” Dad said. “I know it may not bring back pleasant memories for you, but it’s the best place to start. I looked up the street on the map. You said it was a condo and not a house?” “Right. There were condos and houses mixed in seemingly all over that area, but she was in a condo.” I headed out with just my dad, not long afterward. There really wasn’t any point in Mom coming along, so she stayed back and caught up on some sewing she wanted to do. “Sit back and relax, kiddo. This lunatic lives quite a ways away.” “Good,” I said, flipping on the radio. “The further the better.” The interior of the van filled with the sound of John Mayer singing and playing the guitar better than just about anyone I’d ever heard play the guitar in my entire life. He wasn’t the greatest singer, but his songs contained interesting lyrics about life, which most people could relate to. My heartbeat sped up a bit when we approached the street the psycho’s condo was on, despite being with my Dad. My hand fluttered shakily to my chest. “Remember the number by any chance?” I shook my head, completely mystified by what I saw. “Are you sure the cross street was Oak?” asked my Dad. I nodded, still dumbfounded. “What in the world is going on?” “You must be mistaken about the street names, Ginny.” I glanced around me from left to right to straight ahead. Gone were the modern homes and condos with their immaculate lawns and flowerbeds. Instead, there was nothing but old, rundown apartment buildings, some of which were boarded up. Many old dwellings were condemned, dangerous, and deemed unfit for habitation. People loitered on stoops and street corners with tattered clothes and somber expressions. “I swear those were the street names,” I insisted. “I walked right up to the street signs myself that night you were supposed to have gotten the call from that old man you never got, and that was probably just as crazy as she was. But I swear it said Woodsy and Oak. I swear!” “Okay, relax, hun. Don’t get all worked up over it. Instead, do you remember where the boy’s aunt lived?” “No, but it didn’t seem that far from here. It seemed like it took the woman about twenty minutes to drive me home.” Should I tell them I had Barbara’s number? I silently asked myself. I was afraid to, fearing that I’d only return home to find she’d never really given me her number, or that the number was bogus. Or maybe I would find the note she’d written on, the number would be for real, but she would tell me something ludicrous and claim to have never met me before. “Do you remember the woman’s full name?” I shook my head and said, “Barbara never told me her last name.” “You said she taught German at a university. Which university?” “I don’t know,” I said on the verge of tears. Was I losing my mind?! “Hang in there, sweetie. We’ll figure this out,” my handsome Dad said with a soothing smile. “What if we’re not meant to?” “Huh?” he said, lowering the volume on the radio. “What if we’re not meant to figure it out? I mean, maybe the best thing to do is just be glad I survived this maniac and that I have no legal issues to deal with on account of her. It isn’t that I don’t want her caught and that I don’t worry she might hurt someone else, but if the streets I know I read correctly only took us to a whole different world than I remember actually being in, how are the cops going to buy my story about what happened?” My Dad seemed to mull this idea over in his mind for a while. “Well,” he finally said, “if that’s what you want and what you think is best, I guess we can let it go.” “I hate to just let it go. Really, I do, Dad. But it’s like life and the world as I knew it no longer seems to exist for me. If I can’t tell left from right and up from down these days, how will the cops?” “But if we contact this Barbara, whatever-her-name-is, and if she can lead us to the guys, the guys may be able to lead us to this woman’s identity and whereabouts.” “That’s true,” I said. After a moment of my thoughts swirling around frantically in my head, I added with frustration, “I just don’t know what to do! If we find someone that the police can’t find, we’re going to look like total idiots. Normally, I don’t care how I come off to people, Dad, but in this case, I think I would mind it very much.” We headed back to the house in silence, save for an old Beatles tune playing on the radio. After a minute or two, I reached for the radio’s station seeker. “Oh, come on,” Dad moaned. “That was better than that gangster rap crap you listened to after John Mayer.” I almost smiled for the first time since escaping the madwoman. Almost. “But I like some of that gangster rap crap.” Dad laughed and I let him have some more of his golden oldies. I silently gazed out the window, confused, anxious and totally unsure of myself and what the next step should be. “You okay?” “No,” I said, shaking my head. “I’m really not. I’m either losing it or something very strange is going on. I just don’t know where to go from here. The boys didn’t know this woman; they only broke me out of her place. Therefore, I don’t see how they could possibly be of any help to us.” “Well,” Dad cleared his throat, “let’s just go home and take a day or two to sit on the matter and really think about it for a while. Then we’ll decide what, if anything, to do from there.” I shrugged. “I guess that’s all we can do.” We returned to the house with more questions than answers. “How’d it go?” Mom asked. “It didn’t,” I said, shaking my head sadly. Mom frowned. “What do you mean?” “If someone can tell me that, I’m more than ready to hear it,” I said, and with that, I headed up the stairs, my worried parents looking after me as I retreated to the secluded safety of my bedroom. The woman I knew as Anina Hahn continued to haunt my dreams. She seemed to be reaching out to me with promises of unfinished business between us, and it was in a very menacing and threatening way. Her fury and obsession seemed almost tangible, as if they physically lingered in the air of my bedroom when I would awaken in the mornings. I told myself over and over again, like a broken record, that dreams couldn’t predict the future. They couldn’t warn us of impending danger. Or could they?