My Prince

You are told on multiple accounts to never accept a ride from a stranger as a child. It is one of those imperatives that you simply agree with growing up and never question.

I was a 24-year-old graduate student the first time I broke this rule. Before you cast the first stone, and think I’m a reckless idiot, allow me to say things in my defense.

That morning, I was ridiculously hungover and very sans-umbrella. It was pouring rain, and my apartment building was the furthest one back of the whole complex. My morning trek to the bus station was a decent 10-minute walk.

I was starting to taste the taste of my pomade streaking down my jawlines when a somewhat attractive fellow pulled up next to me in a somewhat attractive sports car.

“Hop in! I’ll drop you off at the bus station,” he bellowed out of his automatic window that was rolled down.

I quickly glanced at him and somehow acquiesced, like under a spell. The next thing I knew, I was awkwardly scrolling through my Instagram feed in his passenger seat.

“You don’t even have an umbrella in this damn weather,” he laughed and said.

“What school you go to?” he asked as he was cranking up the volume of his radio as if he already knew the answer to the question he just asked.

“School? Right! UT,” I nervously uttered.

He smiled and drove past my bus stop.

“I’ll just take you there. It’s on my way.”

I politely nodded to show my appreciation, although I was starting to wonder if I would ever make it to my final destination or be alive in a few hours.

“Where are you going?” I asked.

He started laughing.

“San Antonio.”

I had only lived in Texas for a few months by then but knew enough about Texas geography to know that San Antonio was in the complete opposite direction of where I was going.

“That’s southbound,” I chuckled, half-amused, half scared-to-death.

He just kept driving.

“My school is northbound,” I added.

He repeated what I said, mimicking my facial expressions, and started accelerating into the northbound filler road onto I-35. At least he was going in the right direction.

“What’s ya name?” he asked as he put on a pair of sunglasses although it was still pouring rain outside.

“Sam,” I responded, already disappointed in myself for revealing my real name.

He started giggling and repeated my name multiple times. This guy was definitely odd.

“What’s yours?

You can call me Prince”.

He popped the console open, reached over with his right hand, and handed me a card.

“This has everything. Name. Digits. Facebook. IG. Snapchat. Vine. Oh, I’m a huge deal on Vine.”

I awkwardly giggled. This ride to school was off the shelves going to be the craziest encounter I had had in a while.

“I got a huge following, see, back home, I’m a prince.”

My prince removed his sunglasses to watch my reaction as if this piece of information would have a massive impression on me. I feigned being impressed.

“I make millions every hour, just being me.”

I literally had nothing to add to the conversation; I just sat there hating myself for getting in his car.

He grabbed his phone and tapped his way onto the “add a contact” page.

“Whatcha number Sam?”

I hesitated for a second. I had given a fake number out to so many guys in the past.

My prince started laughing and then took a severe tone.

“And don’t give me no fake, show me your screen; I want to see my digits pop on that pretty little screen of yours.”

I proceeded to give him my actual number; I could always block him later.

He grinned.

“See, it matches that pretty little face of yours.”

After we exchanged numbers, he started to focus on the road. We were halfway towards UT when he started speeding, speeding, and speeding some more.

“I’m in no rush,” I nervously uttered as to get him to slow down, “my class only starts at 9, and I’m going to get there way early since I was going to take the bus and this ride with you is so much faster.

He ignored what I said and proceeded to drive as if we were amidst a Grand Theft Auto mission.

My heart started to race a bit faster, I wasn’t petrified until now, but his reckless behavior was beginning to get to me. When we got to the part of the drive where I usually got stuck in traffic, things took a turn for the worst.

As the interstate became a parking lot, he honked his horn repeatedly, yelled at other drivers, and constantly hit his brakes aggressively. Naturally plagued with social anxiety, I avoided the looks from other drivers and fidgeted nervously, waiting for him to calm down. The car next to us became annoyed with his behavior and rolled down his window.

“Tell your friend to calm down,” the driver next to us yelled at me, “this is I-35, this is the same story every morning, y’all need to chill out.”

My prince reacted so fast I could not believe what was happening. In the middle lane of the interstate, he changed the gear to park, stormed out of the car, and walked up to the car next to us. A normal person would never do this. The flow of traffic could have picked up any second: we were on an interstate!

“You don’t get to talk to Sam that way,” he yelled at our newly made archnemesis.

Much to my dismay (and embarrassment), he ripped off his soaked shirt revealing a smooth muscular chest that was so chiseled I couldn’t help but wonder if it was due to hard work or if he had the help of steroids. My glance moved over to his perfectly sculpted waistline, and my brief episode of Stockholm syndrome ended when I noticed a pistol stuffed into his low-hanging jeans. He then started punching the guy’s door to dent it.

“You’re crazy, I’m calling the cops,” the guy in the car next to us uttered as he rolled down his window and grabbed his phone to record my prince’s viral-video-worth behavior. No wonder he had a huge following: the man was nuts! I was now scared to look him up on Vine.

My prince proceeded to run back inside the car when he saw traffic was starting to move a bit. All the cars around us were honking as this entertainment was blocking three lanes of the interstate. I was beyond embarrassed.

My driver quickly fastened his seatbelt, put his foot on the gas pedal, and the car door shut itself. He kept mumbling as he was nervously petting his gun with his other hand, sweat sliding down his naked chest. By then, I was petrified.

“I am just trying to take Sam to school. What is their goddamn problem?”.

As he passed the next few exits, I started considering many aftermaths in my head. What if he never took me to school? What if he was going to take me someplace, rape me, slice me up in pieces, and serve me to a garbage can for dinner? I could never fight this guy, and I could never defend myself. He was stronger than me, and he had a gun. I was dead meat.

Then I considered the gravity of what I had recklessly done. The sound of his windshield wipers hitting the torrential rain just added to my anxiety. This guy had picked me up, right in front of my apartment building. He knew where I lived, and he had my number. What had I gotten myself into? I would be stuck with this guy. What if he started stalking me?

Police sirens started wailing. They were coming for him. There were so many witnesses, and there was no way he would get away with the rage incident that had just happened and the reckless driving.

At first, I was pained, thinking of how cumbersome it would be to make a statement, to tell the officers I didn’t know this guy, would I be an accomplice? I had never dealt with law enforcement before. Would they believe me? Would I get in trouble? Or perhaps would it be my way out? After all, I hadn’t done anything wrong.

These thoughts raced through my head as fast as the three police cars drove past us in the left lane, splashing our vehicle to the point of blinding our view of the road. They were obviously on a call much more important than my potential kidnapping.

I decided to calm down and accept my fate, whatever it might be. When we started to hit the first few exits for the University of Texas, my prince had calmed down and was singing along the obnoxiously loud music he was playing. I pulled the little courage I had left in me to ask him a question.

“Can you drop me off near the football stadium?”

He laughed.

“Imma do just that, kind sir.”

When he signaled to take the right exit, I found hope within me again for the first time since I got inside his car. Maybe my head wouldn’t end up in a trash can after all.

“I will text you this weekend, he uttered. “See what’s good. Maybe get you a nice little dinner.”

I painfully grinned.

“That sounds great.”

By the time he took my exit and got on campus, I had grown impervious to his reckless driving and was just looking forward to one thing, getting out of his car. I had never looked this much forward to my Research Methods class.

The next part is a blur. I remember my prince almost hitting five pedestrians and driving through a few stop signs on campus. I was still wondering how we had escaped law enforcement until now.

We finally got to the front of the football stadium where the bus usually dropped me off. My prince hit the curb and the bumper of the car in front of him before finally parking his sports car. With all the built-up adrenaline within me, I quickly uttered a thank you and disembarked his car as fast as I possibly could. Without looking back, I started walking straight onto the sidewalk towards my school building when I heard my name shouted out repeatedly from a distance. I decided to keep ignoring it; I was in survival mode. I had made it to my destination alive.

I heard tires screech and the sound of my prince’s obnoxious horn. He had driven up closer to me and parked.

Faced with no choice but to acknowledge him, I stopped my walk and turned towards him. He rolled down the passenger window and threw an object in my direction: it was a water bottle.

I gave my prince one last look as I grabbed the bottle he had thrown at me.

“People don’t drink enough water, man! Have a good day at school, brother”.

Completely destabilized, I stared at him, driving away in the distance, incapable of fathoming what I had just experienced.

I didn’t hear from my prince after this very peculiar incident. One night, he texted me “what’s good” but never got a nice dinner for ‘this pretty little face.’

For the following weeks, I always looked behind me when I walked towards my bus stop in the morning, but I never saw his car around my apartment complex again.

I never accepted a ride from another stranger again. The end.