Room 229

CW: Themes of predatory behavior and emotional distress

Room 229

Opal Grace didn’t have a real home —not like other girls her age. Her father, a Southern Baptist preacher, moved every year to a new church, chasing a calling he barely understood but obediently followed. This summer, Opal found herself in Lumberton, North Carolina- a small town carved out of red clay and pine trees, where the Lumbee people had lived for generations, and the sawmills sang out lumber like church hymns.

Lumberton wasn’t much on a map, but it was everything for now. A place marked by hard lives and quieter dreams. Around its edges, ancient shipyards dozed beneath a layer of rust, their bones whispering of work long done. Churches stood weather-worn, their paint flaking like old prayers, tended by poor folks and Lumbee Indians who clung fast to family, faith, and the slow-burning fire of tradition.

The Waffle Shop just off the interstate was her summer refuge — a faded aluminum sign blinking tired neon, a place where the air was sticky from syrup and bacon grease. Here, she worked hoping to earn enough money to pay for next semester’s university books. She silently moved through the coffee chatter with a permanent smile.

Opal Grace had learned early how to wear a smile like armor. Moving every year meant she was always the new girl—twice, sometimes three times a year, changing schools, classrooms, hallways filled with strange faces. She had learned to wear a happy mask, to listen more than speak, to say the right thing to make others accept her.

She had no roots in Lumberton. No steady street to call her own. No room with walls she’d decorated or photos she’d hung to remind her of childhood memories or places she had left behind. Just the constant movement of a life that changed more than the seasons, and a heart believing that people were good.

But beneath the quiet manners and easy laughter, there was a space of fear and loneliness that made a home in a secluded corner in her soul.

It was why she worked so hard. To be liked. To be seen. To grasp a fleeting taste of stability in a life always on the move.

Just like breathing, she believed goodness in other people was just there living in everyone. It was in the world. You only had to know how to see it—like she did. The world didn’t always shout its sweetness. You had to look close. Like the wild blueberries that hid low in the hedges and shadow by her grandmother’s weathered porch. Kindness in people didn’t always grow in plain sight.

Yes, she always believed in goodness - until he sat at her Waffle Shop table.

His thin, black hair was slicked back like a wet otter swimming in the Lumbee River. His sunglasses, too dark to wear inside, hid dark thoughts lurking behind black eyes. His used car salesman grin flashed as Opal Grace approached the table.

“Coffee? Orange Juice? I can tell you about today’s specials.”

He ordered coffee and toast while he watched Opal as if she was a fresh spring deer he hoped to track.

“You ever done any modeling?” he asked, slicing his toast in half and covering the crusty, hard surface with butter.

Opal blushed, because that’s what naïve southern girls did when strangers said nice things about their looks. “Only if you count the time, I was homecoming queen back in high school.”

Taking his sunglasses off and looking direct at her. “No, I mean real modeling. Headshots. Portfolio stuff. I own a modeling agency. You’ve got the girl-next-door look we want.”

She blushed again. But she also stood a little straighter, because even girls raised in church pews sometimes dream of stardom and seeing their faces in glossy magazines.

He handed her a flimsy, wrinkled card. It had a name, a phone number, and a sparkling gold star with black lettering that said Fred’s Model Agency.

“We are working out of the Budget Inn just off the next exit. Room 229. Nothing fancy, but me and my partner got our camera set up there. We could do a few test shots for free for you. I think the camera is really going to like you. See how feel and if you don’t like the work, we will still give you the photos for free.”

Opal smiled and tucked the card in her uniform pocket and said she could come over after she finished her shift. Her mind was already knowing what she would wear – the chiffon pink homecoming dress that her dad had asked a congregation member to help pay for. Like a princess fairytale, she was dreaming about billboards, magazines, and how good people helped good people.

Leaving work, she drove with the windows down, even though the air was thick and warm, because the A/C had given up two summers ago. Outside, the interstate flickered with gas stations and tired exits. She thought about how many girls had done this before her. Driven to a hotel through the evening chasing a possibility. She didn’t really believe in miracles even though she grew up hearing about them from teachers and preachers. But she believed in trying. In showing up.

She knocked on the door of Room 229 with hope in her hazel eyes and the soft chiffon dress over her arm.

What she found behind that door would not destroy her. But it would open a long-forgotten wound that reminded her that not everyone is a good person. That some people can carve something out of you and take it as their own.

The room was riverbank beige and brown—beige walls, beige curtains, brown lamps, brown bedspread. A gray camera stood on a black tripod near the sighing window air conditioner. A carpet odor filled the musty air and peeling wallpaper reached out from the wall corners.

“My partner stepped out to get something to drink. He’ll be right back.” Glancing at the homecoming dress he smiled, “You have great taste. A perfect look for us. Bathroom is there. Take your time changing and we’ll get started.”

Opal smiled because she was raised to be polite, assume good intentions, and say sorry even if something was not her fault. She was the girl who taught little children Bible School in the summer and always gave up her seat when anyone – young or old - was standing.

Practicing her smile in the hotel mirror and looking at the pale face sprinkled with honey-colored freckles, Opal slipped on the formal gown and remembered the night she was crowned homecoming queen at East High School. She knew she was selected not for her popularity or beauty, but because she was shy, quiet, and did not pose a threat to anyone. Voted “Most Quiet” in high school, she had learned to move softly through halls and homes, to say the right things, to never speak louder than necessary. Sometimes the silence around her felt safer than any words she might say because at an early age the harsh discipline of a belt or switch taught her that “children should be seen and not heard."

Practicing her smile one last time, Opal stepped back into the dingy hotel room knowing that underneath the flowing gown was a girl who wanted nothing more than to be loved, to have roots that grow deep, and to feel safe.

He smiled. “You look beautiful. Just stand there.”

The camera flashed, and Opal smiled the way she’d learned while handing out church bulletins and practicing in front of mirrors. He started taking photos without telling her to pose. Click. Click. Click. But soon, something felt wrong. The man’s gaze changed. The light in the room dimmed, the brown carpet floor shifted, and she felt the first stomach moths fluttering their white wings warning of danger and doubt. You are flying too close to the light.

Memories flooded in as she remembered the way adult voices had thundered when she was small, the bruises she hid from teachers, and the fear that had taught her to be quiet and to make herself as small as possible.

“I think…I need to go,” she said softly.

He questioned. “What? We are just starting. You haven’t met my partner.”

She stepped back and while still trying to be polite she lied. “Thank you, but I need to get home. I forgot about something I promised to help my dad with at the church.”

He moved toward her. Not touching, not threatening, but nearer. Close enough to remind her of all the Sunday sermons about wolves in sheep’s clothing and the Devil prowling the earth like a lion seeking those he can devour.

She hadn’t been harmed, not in the way the news warned young woman about.

He just looked at her too long. Then, he smiled again. “Your call.”

She turned. Opened the door. The humid hallway air hit her like a raptured second chance.

Outside, the world was still the same, but she was not. Something had shifted. Something returned from her childhood, not violently, but with quiet adrenaline fear.

Opal still believed in goodness. She would always believe in kindness. She would search for it in everyone she encountered. But she knew the truth that some people weren’t good and kind. The man in room 229 wasn’t cruel. But he wasn’t kind, either. Not really.

As she walked across the charcoal-colored parking lot to her car she let go of the dream of becoming a model – of having her face in a glossy magazine – of earning enough money to buy her mom the white Cadillac she always dreamed of driving. She buried the thoughts that she was pretty enough to be accepted and loved.

She still believed in goodness. Despite numerous future emotional and physical challenges, she would always believe in kindness. She would search for it in everyone she encountered. But she knew the truth - that goodness and kindness are not in everyone.

Something had gently shifted within her in room 229. Some innocence had been chiseled away, not violently, but with quiet, exacting pressure. Some parts of the world were no longer cotton-soft and reassuring mountain hymn-sung.

And in that moment, Opal Grace, daughter of Reverend Michael Grace, former Miss Homecoming, kid’s bible schoolteacher, Waffle House waitress, felt something unsettling and reawake in her soul like a Blue Ridge bear coming out of his winter cave.

She knew — the world of coffee shop smiles and Sunday morning church hugs, of “yes sir” and “God bless you” and chiffon dresses — had opened a thin crack. She could hear it. Like the first groan of ice breaking beneath a frozen mountain lake.

She didn’t cry until she pulled into her parent’s driveway. Just a few salty, quiet embarrassing tears that rolled down her cheeks and leaked from her eyes like summer rain off the eaves.

She went inside. Her mother was mending socks at a weathered kitchen table. Her father, sleeping in an easy chair with a Bible in his lap and a sermon half-written in his dreams.

In the small side room, she used as a place to sleep, Opal gently dropped to her knees and prayed. “Forgive me for going to that hotel home. I should have known better, but I really thought he was going to help me. Forgive me for being so dumb and naïve. I really thought he was a kind person.”