About nine years later…

“Well that can’t be good.” My roommate, Trina, had a real gift for understatement. We were both staring at the steady trickle of water coming out of our ceiling fan. It wasn’t dripping, either. It was flowing around the lit lightbulb. “That definitely can’t be good,” she repeated, pushing her glasses up her nose and squinting like maybe it was just a trick of the light. “What do we do?”

She’s asking me? I shrugged at her. We were both broke nineteen-year-old college students. This was not exactly a situation either of us were well equipped to deal with. Especially me.

Worst. Birthday. Present. Ever.

I doubted I could even hang a picture without a YouTube video and a lot of encouragement. The last time I’d tried to change a lightbulb, I fell off a ladder and broke my wrist. I told people I broke it in a climbing accident—which was technically not a lie. The point is that I’m basically the polar opposite of handy. Unless I could fix this situation by singing at it (and something told me that wouldn’t do the trick), we needed help. Professional help. Water plus electricity wasn’t safe. Even I knew that.

“Well, um, I already called the landlord,” I replied haltingly when she stared. She looked even more helpless than I felt. I shifted from foot to foot uncomfortably, looking at the pans I had set to catch the water. They were almost full again. It had only been a few minutes. At this rate, we’d have to change them every five minutes. “The lady said it might be a couple of days before they get to our apartment. Apparently, the guy upstairs went on a vacation—”

“Sasquatch?” Trina asked. Her voice was dripping with disdain. I nodded in annoyance. We didn’t know Sasquatch’s real name or even what he looked like. We just knew that he liked stomping around like he was playing Dance Dance Revolution in the middle of the night and listening to EDM at deafening volumes. We’d left a few polite but increasingly passive-aggressive notes on his door, and they’d done nothing but make things worse. And now, he’d done this.

“Yeah. The one. The only. Our Sasquatch. He left some incense burning and it ignited something? That’s what the property manager said when he opened up his apartment. The smoke triggered the automatic sprinklers, which have now been running continuously for two days. I guess his whole living room is full of water, and it’s worked its way down. His apartment is trashed. Ours is just collateral damage.”

A few feet away, one of the can lights in our ceiling shorted out and began to leak. A moment later, another followed suit. Then the kitchen light sputtered out. We were now down to a single dry, working ceiling light.

“Fucking Sasquatch and his fucking incense,” Trina grumbled. “Well, I mean, we can’t stay here, right?”

“Right.” There was just no way. I mean, it was raining in our home. I was distantly proud that I didn’t sound too whiny. “We need to get out of here pronto. I don’t think it’s even safe for us to be in here.” Nothing I owned, except maybe my guitar, was worth getting electrocuted over.

“Well… I’m gonna go to Chris’ place,” Trina replied after a moment. She and her boyfriend Chris practically lived together as it was. More and more, this apartment was mostly just where Trina’s shoes, leftovers, and homework lived. As much as I liked Chris, I knew I couldn’t stay with them. There was just no way. Chris lived in a five hundred square foot studio apartment, and even in this apartment where we had separate bedrooms, listening to the two of them have their super-loud sex had been a source of conflict and sleeplessness for a while until they started staying at his place. “Did you call your dad?” Trina asked carefully.

I nodded and looked down, feeling defeated. My plan to cut that particular cord—the one that bound me financially to a father who’d been mostly absent during my childhood and only really reemerged after I reached age eighteen—had lasted less than four months. So much for my precious independence.

My dad was controlling with a capital “C”, which was why my mom left him in the first place, despite his wealth, charm, and wild success as a lawyer in LA. Their romance had run hot and cold—mostly the latter. And when it finally came to a frosty, angry end, she packed up baby me and moved us both across the country. She even turned down alimony and child support if it meant freedom from him. Better poor than under his thumb, she’d told me.

I hadn’t understood at the time. I was an infant. All I knew was that by the time I was old enough to ask questions, my dad, whom I adored, was gone except for summer visits. Naturally, I’d blamed my mom.

Trina was still waiting for an answer. I took a deep breath before confessing my sin. “I called him,” I choked out. “He said he’s sending someone ASAP. I know he’ll take care of it.” I was pouting. My ceiling was raining and now my controlling father had yet another way to dig his hooks into me.

“Are you ok?” Trina’s tone was gentle. She knew how difficult my relationship with my father was. She’d been my roommate freshman year, and present for some of our more explosive phone calls.

I felt my eyes fill up with frustrated tears, and Trina threw her arms around my neck wordlessly. She knew what making that little phone call had cost my pride.

My dad’s offer to fund my education had come with a lot of strings, which was why my sophomore year was being entirely funded by student loans rather than by him. My mom had warned me about him, of course, but I thought it would be different now. I was his one and only child. I’d been so excited about reconnecting with him, and he’d seemed the same. And in his way, he was. He doted on and spoiled me rotten. He loved me. Unfortunately, he seemed fixated on controlling every single aspect of my life, too. I should have known.

A loud, decisive knock on the door made us both jump out of our hug. We looked at one another sheepishly and then giggled.

“I’ll get it,” I told her, knowing it was probably for me.

Dad’s help was nothing if not prompt. It was bound to be one of his lackeys, and he probably had a car waiting to take me to a lovely, safe, dry hotel room. A cage. A gilded cage for a little songbird.

Trina nodded, reading the tension on my face and looking both frustrated on my behalf and relieved on hers. “I’ll go pack bags for both of us,” she said. She gave me another quick embrace and headed toward the bedrooms.

I swung open the door looking through the peephole for just long enough to see a man in a suit, vest, and tie. Yep, this would be the help my dad help had promised. All of my dad’s help seemed to arrive in three-piece suits. And in less than thirty minutes, too.

How punctual.

My opening volley was grumpy: “I take it you’re here to rescue me from my watery grave?”