The Crossroads Read online

small forest surrounding Faraday Lane and Lincoln Street was a lot more threatening right now.

  Angela was not one to scare easily, so she remained remarkably unmoved when she waited for someone to drive by and rescue her from a cold night outside. The worst thing that could happen - that she could think of - was her having to spend an entire night outside or having to walk home. If only she was wearing more comfortable shoes, she probably would have made it. But in these high heels? No way.

  Her hopes went up when she heard the engine of a car in the distance. She jumped up, took the universal hitch-hiker’s pose and waited for the car to drive by. But when it eventually did, it was filled with drunk people coming from the party, who could think of nothing else but to throw some obscene remarks her way. Angela sighed, put her hands in the pockets of her hoodie, and sat back down. Maybe she’d have more luck next time. These roads weren’t particularly well-travelled, but with most party-goers needing to go in the same direction as her, chances were steep at least one of them would be sober enough to pull over and rescue a damsel in distress.

  Suddenly, Angela noticed something. Or rather, someone. Unfortunately, that someone was on foot as well, and looked just as stranded and unlucky as Angela did. The latter narrowed her eyes to take a better look at the person she just spotted. She was standing on the other side of the crossroads. Although Angela’s couldn’t see her that well in the darkness, it was obvious the person was a woman.

  “Hey there!” Angela yelled, without really thinking about it. “Hey!” She yelled again, got up and started walking across the street. The woman remained unmoved. Only when Angela was almost next her, did she slowly turn her face from looking at the street, and did her eyes meet Angela’s.

  “Hello”, the unfamiliar woman greeted back, nodding her head politely. “Are you stranded here as well?”

  “Yes,” Angela replied confused. On the one hand she was glad to meet someone out here, so she wouldn’t have to wait on her own, but on the other hand she felt sorry for this woman to be stranded out here as well. “My boyfriend cheated on me with my ex-best friend,” she blurted out.

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” the woman replied. Her voice sounded remarkably calm for someone outside at a deserted crossroad around midnight on a surprisingly cold night. Although she said she was sorry, it obvious didn’t sound like that in her voice. Her voice seemed detached, odd and distant.

  “My name is Angela,” the young woman introduced herself.

  “Nice to meet you, Angela,” the other woman replied, with a politeness that seemed almost just as foreign and strange as the woman herself. “My name is Carol Ann.”

  “Nice to meet you too, Carol Ann,” Angela remarked, choosing to ignore how strange the woman was. Angela felt inclined to trust the woman. She may have never seen her before, but that didn’t mean anything. The town was big enough that not everyone knew everyone, and she had always been happy for that. She didn’t want to live in one of those obscure little villages where everyone knew all there was to know about everyone else and gossip spread like wildfire.

  With a sigh, Angela sat down on the ground. The grass was wet, and this would probably ruin her jeans, but she couldn’t care less.

  “And then,” she continued her story, “we got into an argument, I got out of the car, and he drove off, leaving me here. Just like that. I was stupid enough to forget my phone in his car, so I can’t even call anyone to drive me home.”

  “That’s unfortunate,” Carol Ann replied in the same detached, emotionless voice.

  Angela suspected that she was going to say something more when both of them heard the obvious sound of a car coming closer. The young woman jumped up from the ground and eagerly awaited to see the car.

  When the car appeared in sight, the woman dryly remarked: “Never mind. It's a woman driving.” The comment made Angela raise her eyebrows, but she temporarily forgot about the woman’s strange loathing against female drivers, when she noticed the woman driver in question was none other than Abigail Thornton, her ex-best friend. The latter looked at Angela with a look that could only be interpreted as regret and sadness. But Angela wasn’t ready to give in just yet. Abigail had severed the last bonds of their friendship when she had made out with Ang’s boyfriend in the middle of the party, publicly humiliation her in the process. That Angela was stranded here at night was Abigail’s fault. Shooting her the most uncaring look she could muster, Angela turned away from Abigail’s car, and gazed off in the distance of the abandoned street. She vaguely heard Abby’s car gaining speed. Abigail had been driving by very slowly, probably to talk to Angela or something. She may have even picked her up and brought her home if Angela herself hadn’t been so stubborn as to basically ignore her. Angela regretted her decision of ignoring Abby the moment she made it, but it was too late to do something about that now.

  Only when Angela turned around and looked at the strange woman again, did she wonder what the latter had meant with her earlier comment.

  “What did you mean with ‘it's a woman, don’t bother’?” Angela asked her, walking towards her newfound friend sitting back down on the ground.

  “You should only accept when a man stops to pick you up,” Carol Ann explained in a matter-of-fact tone of voice. “Never when a woman stops. You shouldn’t hurt them. Eventually they’ll all be put through the same kind of pain we’ve been put through.”

  “I’m not sure I know what you mean,” Angela told the woman. “I don’t care if it’s a man or a woman, as long as they take me home.”

  The strange woman shrugged. “Alright then, if that’s what you want.” It was obvious that she wasn’t very pleased with Angela’s reaction, although her tone of voice didn’t change one bit. Her eyes looked darker though, more threatening and less friendly than just minutes ago. For the first time, Angela started wondering what exactly this woman is doing here, late at night.

  “And how did you end up here?” she asked, trying to keep her tone light and casual. She wasn’t a good actress, but the woman doesn’t seem to realize the suspicion in the teenager’s voice.

  “I’ve been here for a while,” Carol Ann answered. For the first time, Angela actually heard emotion in the woman’s voice.

  “My husband…” she began, “I loved him so much. And I’m confident that, in the beginning at least, he loved me as well. But then, things changed. He had to work more for the same wage, and we barely made it through the month with his income alone. We had two kids go, two little boys, twins, so it wasn’t like I could find a job as well. He loved them so much, those two little boys. Jonathan and William.” She looked so sad when she regarded Angela while speaking, that the letter felt like hugging her. She knew instinctively that this story did not have a happy ending.

  “Anyway,” Carol Ann continued. “My husband began to stay away from home all night long. At first, I thought it was the economy, the extra hours he had to work. But then, I began to suspect something. So one day, I followed him.” She sighed deeply. “Turns out he had been cheating on me for a while. I…I lost it. I don’t even remember how I got home that day. And then…the children. They reminded me of him. I couldn’t stand to look at them anymore.” She shot a meaningful look at Angela, but the latter had no clue what the woman was talking about, so she just nodded briefly. Putting things in perspective, Angela’s sob story of how her boyfriend of one month cheated on her with her ex-best friend seemed like a cheap alternative for Carol Ann’s, which was an actual heartbreaking story. Angela couldn’t even imagine how it must feel like to find out your husband, with whom you have two children, is cheating on you. Devastating, probably.

  “So then,” Carol Ann continued, “I couldn’t stand to be in my house any longer. I ended up here. It's not so bad here. Lonely, quiet. I enjoy it here.”

  “Sure,” Angela replied. “But I’d like to get home eventually, you know. Especially considering that it's night. And God knows what’s out there in those woods,” she added, n
odding in the direction of the forest across the street.

  “Nothing for you to worry about,” Carol Ann remarked. “And don’t worry about getting home. I’ll help you pull over a car, and then you can let them drive you as far as you can go.” She smiled friendly at the young woman. Angela smiled back, although she thought the comment ‘as far as you can go’ was sort of weird. Didn’t she mean as far as the driver would go, or something like that?

  At first, Angela had considered herself remarkably lucky to run into another stranded person here in the dead of night. But the more she looked at Carol Ann and her behavior, although seemingly friendly at first, she began to question how lucky she actually was. She was out here, in the middle of night, at a deserted crossroad, with a curious woman who seemed nice enough but occasionally made remarks that made her sound like she walked straight out of a lunatic’s asylum. Granted, Waverley Hills, the local asylum, was a fair amount of miles away from here, but that didn’t mean a thing. Maybe she was a lunatic on the run who had been hitch-hiking her way to here, and who saw a potential victim in Angela.

  For instance, take Carol Ann’s dress. She wore a long, beige dress. But it was stained and filthy, like she had gone through a terrible