Lady

When I was a sophomore in college (2018-2019), I still lived on campus. I loved living on campus mostly as I had quick access to food and was only a block away from downtown. Yet, it had its downsides. My college is medium sized with a good portion of the students commuter students. On Saturdays only chickfila and Starbucks are open and on Sundays, only Starbucks.

The Starbucks is located in one of the main hangout buildings. On Sundays, all the doors to the building are locked except the back door that opens into the Starbucks.

One Sunday I arrived maybe 20 minutes after opening. Only one barista was working and the only other student there was some guy sitting in the way back with headphones on studying.

I'm placing my order when this older lady walks in. She's nondescript and looks like your typical college mom except there wasn't a student with her.

She doesn't really get in line but hovers near the display case and starts talking to me. She makes remarks about the weather among other things. Nothing too interesting, but I'm a very cautious person and tried to drop subtle hints that I wanted to end the conversation.

She proceeds to talk about not having money so I offer to buy her a drink but she declines. Our friendly banter continues until the barista hands me my drink. I sit down to mix in the sugar when the lady cuts to the chase.

"Are you busy? I need a ride," she says.

"Uh.. I'm actually pretty busy," I say. I wasn't. What's there to do on a Sunday? But I wasn't going to tell her this. She keeps pushing about how it won't take long.

"What's the address?" I ask. I run a map and it's some church about 40 minutes away.

It started to feel really weird. The church was located in a rural area. The church website almost looked staged. It's hard to explain. Nothing about church services. No pictures or anything.

And it had taken me some digging to even find that information. It didn't have a Facebook page or anything. And it was kinda far away... not really a quick ride.

She kept trying to convince me, and I did debate it. She seemed ordinary and nice. Like the only strange things were the distance, the website and her pushiness.

I offered to pay an Uber for her and she declined. And I offered to call a friend of hers to come get her, she declined that as well.

The thing is, why would she come to an almost entirely closed college campus when downtown is only a block away? Plenty of people chilling in the park or leaving restaurants. She could've easily asked any of them. Yet, every year we do get warnings from the campus police department about shady people asking for rides or people trying to convince students to get in their cars.

Heck, someone could've been waiting in the church parking lot to take me away. I thought it through. It was a Sunday. I lived on campus. I had my own room. I had no expectations. It would've taken at least 24 hours before people noticed I was gone should I have vanished. If not even longer.

After she finished talking to me, she sat outside and waited. Maybe for another student. But no one came and she eventually wandered off. I took a different way back to my dorm just to be safe.

Something about it felt odd. She spent 10 minutes building some connection with me and I took me telling her "No" about 10-15 times. And she was so pushy. Uh. There would've only been one witness to it all, the barista who wasn't really paying attention.