The Prayer Twist

I was the youngest of three sisters, and I hated it. I would watch my two teenaged sisters go out with their friends on their own, and hang out at places like the mall, while I had to come home right after school, because I was “too young” to do those kinds of things. (It’s a good thing I had strong tooth enamel as a kid, otherwise I’d have worn my teeth down from gritting them each time I heard that phrase.) 

It wasn’t that I had anything against my sisters. In fact, I looked up to them. All I wanted to do was hang out with them — but in their friends’ eyes, I was just the tag-along kid sister who hindered their fun. I didn’t want to be a hindrance. I just wanted to have fun with my sisters. But for the most part, I was left alone at home, bored, and with no one to play with while they were out.

So, one night as I was getting ready for bed in my room, I decided to ask the one person I knew had the power to grant me my desire.

“Dear God,” I said in a hushed tone. “Nothing exciting ever happens to me here. My sisters get to go out and have all the fun, but I’m always stuck here alone.”

I shifted my knees, and squeezed my eyelids tighter: “Pleaaaaase let something happen. Anything. It doesn’t matter what… It could be anything! Amen.” There. Now I just had to wait and see what good things lay in store for me.

I turned off the light, clambered into bed, and dozed off to the faint glowing green of glow-in-the-dark stars I had arranged into constellations on the ceiling.

Little did I know that God would grant me my wish the following day in the most peculiar way.

*

The next day nothing much changed out of the ordinary. I got up, went to school, and went through the same old grade-five class routines. The final bell rang and I gathered my textbooks, shoved them into my backpack, and headed over to the kindergarten wing. Every day after school, I would pick up a group of three kids to guide them over to the school bus, and then drop them off at their apartments. We all lived in the same apartment building, and this was my way of being just like the girls in The Baby-sitters Club.

“See you tomorrow!” I waved as I dropped off the last of my kids to his apartment on the fourth floor.

“Bye!” he yelled back, slamming the door shut.

When the elevator reached my floor, the doors parted to reveal a tall, heavyset man standing at the end of the corridor. The light was dim, so I couldn’t make out his features, but I could feel his gaze on me as I turned to the corridor to my right, making my way over to apartment 1510.  

A sense of unease made me stumble as I walked down the hallway. It was strange. The hallway seemed to stretch abnormally long, and my stomach felt like it was on the precipice of rollercoaster peak, about to drop at any moment. I refused to look back and see if the man was watching me. I didn’t have to look back. I just knew.

My brain didn’t even have time to process what was happening, but my intuition told me what my brain couldn’t: Whatever you do, don’t go home, it whispered. He will know. Don’t lead him there.

I walked into the stairwell and paused. Which way should I go? Up or down? There were twenty-four floors in total and my safest bet would be to go down. But this couldn’t be happening. I was just reading too much into the situation.

Then the door creaked opened, and I was no longer alone.

“Little girl, what are you doing in here?” he said, his voice startling me. I instinctively backed away as he stepped onto the landing. 

“N-nothing,” I replied.

He looked down at me, and his eyes gleamed with a hint of amusement, as though I’d said something funny.