The Very Hungry Couch

It smelled like fresh French fries and 2008 in the car as we were making the six-hour trip up north. We were singing along to a playlist of songs we used to dance to in middle school and laughing about the things I kept finding rolling around in Ami's car.

"A roll of toilet paper?" I laughed, holding it up in front of her. "Why?"

"You never know when you gotta go," Ami shrugged, not taking her eyes off the road.

I tossed it into the back seat where it belonged.

For the first few hours, the highway heading north felt like my head was being held underwater. I didn't want to see anyone I was about to. Ami was trying to keep my mind off of the impending doom by asking me questions. We were talking about the future, about the guy in Texas who made my chest feel light instead of tight, and about the impossible, beautiful reality that I was finally free.

Seven years of my life had been left up on that mountain. Seven years that started when I was a foolish fourteen-year-old and he was twenty. It was a lifetime spent six hours away from everyone and everything I knew, trapped on a peak where I wasn't allowed to drive or work without permission. I had escaped months ago with nothing but a trash bag of clothes, my two cats, and a bunny. Today was about reclaiming the rest of what I had been forced to leave behind. All of my sentimental things had been left when I found a way out. It was the material evidence of proof I had existed before him and the mountain swallowed me.

The road started to tilt upward as the car climbed, and the fun playlist ended. The music felt less like a celebration and more like a distraction as the pine trees thickened and the sky turned gray.

By the time we hit the security gate at Camp Tawonga, the air was freezing. The few staff members who lived there year-round recognized me, but the warmth I never expected was definitely not there. The moment they realized I was only there to pick up my things and not to reconcile, things got ugly. My ex's sister stood in front of the door, giving me the weirdest look ever. This girl used to be my best friend, but she was looking at me like I was a stranger she didn't want to know anything about. His parents weren't home, and we were told we needed to leave. We weren't allowed to remove anything from the house without permission, even though they were things I had brought into the relationship myself.

"You need to leave the property," they told us, as if I hadn't spent nearly a decade living right alongside them.

We traveled a few miles up the road to the only place I knew to go on that mountain to wait, the Evergreen Lodge. We were going to sit and wait for his parents to return. It felt weird. The staff there (people I used to laugh and work with) stared at me like I was a criminal. The mountain rumor mill had been busy since I escaped, obviously. In their story, I was the villain. I had broken the heart of gold they admired so much. I was the cheater, the liar, the everything. Which was the exact opposite of how things had played out.

Yet, they kept approaching us, lobbing backhanded compliments wrapped in deeply uncomfortable, prying questions. Ami sat next to me on a wooden bench, side-eyeing them all and cracking jokes about my "Barstow Diet" when people commented on my obvious weight loss. Cocaine, by the way... that was the diet she was implying. They wanted me to be the bad guy, so I figured I'd play the part. Of course, I was on drugs. Obviously. I kept sniffing and rubbing my nose dramatically to give them a show.

Outside, the first flakes of Yosemite snow began to fall.

When his parents finally rolled up, the rescue mission evolved into a rushed and blurry circus. The sky was threatening to open up and dump white powder thicker than the coke they thought I was snorting all over us. Anyone who knows Yosemite knows Priest Grade. If you don't know it, it's a steep, treacherous, twisting ribbon of asphalt that has been a main ingredient in many fatal car accidents, even in the best weather. In a snowstorm, without tire chains, it's a total death trap.

I had packed everything nicely before leaving the first time, under the guise of my now-ex and I getting a place together and not staying with his parents anymore. I wanted to be ready. That's what I told him, anyways. The plan was always to come and get my stuff as soon as I was able, if I was able.

But when we got inside, my stuff was thrown all over the place. My boxes were empty and broken, and everything had been carelessly thrown into big black garbage bags. We grabbed what we could and shoved it into Ami's tiny car. My hands were shaking with anger as I grabbed the black bags and tossed them in. It seemed like so much more stuff than I remembered having, but I didn't have time to think. My ex’s father watched us with a mixed expression of what seemed like pity and confusion.

"Your stuff isn't going anywhere, Sara," he said, stepping into my path to wrap me in a heavy, suffocating hug that smelled like B.O. and cigarettes. "It will be fine. Come get it another day. We’ll keep it safe. We’ll always love you."

It felt like being hugged by a Venus fly trap. Ami caught my eye over his shoulder.

"Sara, we gotta go," she said. "Now. I don't have chains."

We fled down the mountain. The drive was a silent and anxious nightmare. Ami’s hands were clamped tight against the steering wheel as the car slid a bit around the sharpest bends of the grade. My heart didn't stop pounding until we made it safely to the bottom. It was getting dark by then, and Ami pulled into the first hotel we saw.

We checked into a nice room. We had actually stopped and gotten the stuff to make mimosas to celebrate (a drink I'd never even had before) and the room even had a hot tub inside. It was desperately needed after the day we had.

The moment the door closed, I sank to the floor and cried. I wasn't sad... I was just overcome with everything. I had a beautiful future unfolding in front of me in Texas, and I was just trying to close this nightmare chapter up for good. The tears flowed and my muscles finally began unclenching from the six-hour panic attack.

Then, my phone rang in my pocket. It was a blocked number, and my dumb ass answered it before I could think.

It was him. The voice that had dictated the parameters of my existence for seven years blasted through the speaker, loud enough for Ami to hear across the room. He was furious and screaming like a psychopath. A storm of unhinged, territorial rage.

"Why the hell were you there?! Why didn't you tell me you were coming?!"

And then came the grand, ridiculous crescendo of his fury, "You BETTER not have taken the Wii!"

I stared at the wall of the hotel room. The Wii. The video game console I had bought with my own damn money. That was the hill he was choosing to die on.

"I didn't touch the stupid Wii," I said, my voice shockingly level. "Don't ever call me again."

I hung up and tossed the phone. It felt like the final exhale of a long, ugly chapter. The monster had revealed himself to be incredibly small, yelling about a Nintendo in a snowstorm.

I was exhausted. Ami looked back at me, her eyes wide with the sheer absurdity of the last twelve hours. The hotel room featured a metal-framed fold-out sofa bed that had already been pulled out by the staff. It looked sad, but it looked better than my ex and anything he had ever given me.

"I'm dead," I breathed, and plopped myself down onto the mattress. Ami, equally exhausted, dropped down right beside me.

We hit the mattress with the synchronized weight of two utterly defeated human beings. Apparently, we hit the exact sweet spot of the bed's locking mechanism.

The moment our bodies touched the fabric, the middle of the bed buckled inward. With a loud, metallic CLANG, the foot of the bed and the head of the bed snapped upward like a piranha plant from Mario Bros. The mattress folded completely in half, swallowing us whole.

We were trapped in a dark taco of foam and springs. My knees were smashed against my chin. Ami’s elbow was wedged directly into my ribs.

For a solid three seconds, there was absolute silence inside the darkness of the folded bed. Then, Ami coughed and started to wiggle a bit.

"Are we... are we being eaten by a couch?" she whispered.

That was it. I started laughing so hard my stomach cramped against my knees. Ami caught the contagion, shrieking with laughter as we kicked frantically against the metal frame, trying to find leverage. The more we fought, the more the springs groaned, trapping us tighter in our fabric prison.

To anyone looking in through the window, it would have looked pathetic... two grown women trapped inside a piece of hotel furniture, kicking their legs out of the sides like overturned beetles.

Imagining it, you might laugh, but you wouldn't really get it. You didn't see the snow on Priest Grade or feel the skin crawling hug of a man trying to convince me to keep my life locked in a shed. You didn't hear a grown man scream and cry like a two year old over a Wii.

We spent about five minutes laughing in the dark, gasping for air, completely stuck, before we finally managed to kick the mechanism free and tumble out onto the carpet in a disheveled heap. We laid on the floor, staring up at the ceiling, tears streaming down our faces. The mountain was behind us and my ex was gone. Also, the Wii was safe, thank God.

It would be another day of so before I finally opened those black garbage bags. I would pull out a handful of oversized t-shirts and size 11 shoes. I'd find a collection of random junk that didn't belong to me and the truth would make me develop a slight eye twitch. After all of that, I still wouldn't have my stuff. Through everything... the snow, the rumors, the tears, and the hungry couch, I had still lost it all.

But, for now, we looked at the mimosa ingredients waiting by the hot tub, and we just started laughing all over again.