The Dragon Lady Story, part 2

... continued

I sent the contract to the apartment, asking them to sign it and return it to a PO Box (which just so happened to belong to my brother... but they didn't know that). They got the contract and went crazy. (haha... the Crazies went crazy... :)) They immediately signed it, but didn't stick it in the mail because they wanted to write Dragon Lady a letter thanking him or her for the great fun they'd had.

Meanwhile, I tried to figure out a great way to reveal myself. After all of that, it had to be big. After talking to my mom, I decided to invite them all to dinner. I called up my aunt in Lindon and explained the situation to her, then asked if we could host the dinner at her house. She readily agreed. I made a tentative invitation to dinner, and, like the genius that I am, left it on the living room floor along with my Hebrew homework and final. And then I forgot about it until the next day when I walked in the apartment to see that it had been cleaned... and the invitation was sitting on the counter. I about died. I turned to Desdemona, who was sitting on the couch, and whispered, "How did that get there?!" She was shocked—she thought I had left it on the living room floor on purpose. My roommates were amazed, "How did Jack and JB get into our apartment and leave this here without us noticing?!" Suddenly, the tentative date and time were solidified. I was also a little nervous—it had been sitting with my Hebrew homework and final. Surely they would be smart enough to put two and two together. Speaking of... where was my final? It took me several days to get brave enough to ask them if they had seen it so that I could actually take the final.

That evening was spent recreating the invitation on my computer and printing it out to give to all of the other people involved: the boys' apartment that was basically the other half of mine, the boys that were being blamed, a girl that may as well have been a roommate (in fact, she took my spot when I moved out), and another guy in the ward—just to throw them off. I then set my alarm clock for 3 am so I could go around and tape them to doors. I don't know if I was dreaming or if it was reality, but when my alarm went off at 3, I was convinced that my roommates had stayed up late and had only gone to bed within the last half hour to an hour. I greatly feared that if I left, they would hear the door shut and look out the window to see me out taping up invitations. My cover would be ruined. So I stayed in bed, in and out of sleep until 5 am. During that time, I had all sorts of dreams of one of my roommates blackmailing me. She knew my identity and wanted me to invite some of her friends to the dinner or she was going to expose me for who I really was. When I finally woke up again at 5 am, heart pounding, I realized it was just a bad dream and that I really needed to get those invitations delivered while it was still dark.

As you go down the stairs of my building, off to the left is a hole surrounded by a short cement wall. As I passed it, I saw something move, so I looked over there. My heart stopped beating when a woman in a dark coat actually jumped out of the hole towards me. I probably would have screamed had she not immediately turned and started washing the windows of the rec room. Petrified, I quickened my step, knowing that if she was some crazy psychopath, I would be safe once I made it to the stairwell of the boys' building. I'm not sure how that would keep me safe since it was 5 am, all the doors were locked, and it's a college town—no one thinks twice about hearing a scream. But I was only half awake. What did you expect? I finally made it to the boys' building, breathed a sigh of relief, taped up the invitations, only to have to go around and tape more up to apartments in other stairwells. I kept a close eye out, but didn't see her again until I was almost back to my apartment. I glanced inside the rec room, and there she was—rifling through the cleaning supplies closet. I quickly trotted back up to my apartment and fell swiftly back to sleep.

Dream: I was at some sort of ward activity, then ended up at my FHE brother's house. (He didn't really live in a house, but he did in my dream.) He sat there lecturing me: "You have to be careful. It's all over the news—homeless hobos living in apartment basements, then coming up when everyone is asleep and doing crazy things. I know your apartment has a basement (it doesn't really, but hey—this is a dream, remember?), so please... be careful." I promised I would. I went home and went to bed. I got up to deliver the invitations. Everywhere I went, that crazy lady was there. She was really freaking me out. By the time I got back to my apartment, I was more than happy to lock the door behind me.

I moseyed around for a bit, getting ready for bed, when I heard something down in the basement. My heart started to pump again. I opened the door and yelled down: "Hello? Anyone down there?" There was no response, but I could hear footsteps. "I know you're down there! Go away or I'm gonna call the police!" I heard an evil cackle and at that moment I KNEW it was that crazy lady that jumped out at me downstairs. The footsteps got closer, so I grabbed the phone and called the police. The dispatcher answered, and I explained the situation. Her response? "Huh. That's crazy. That's the third call we've gotten tonight about something like that. Weird!" Are you kidding me?! I hollered back down the stairs, "I have the police on the phone right now! You'd better leave now!" The crazy lady suddenly made it to the bottom of the stairs and started coming up. Luckily for me, there was some sort of piece of furniture at the top of the stairs. Some sort of combination between a baby crib and a bookcase. Don't ask how those combine, but that's what it was. She was walking up the stairs, I was yelling at her to leave and into the phone to get the cops out there.

Honestly. Not a good place to wake up. I had no closure at all. I lay in bed waiting for my heart to stop pounding before I looked at the clock and realized that I was late for work. I quickly got dressed and ran to wake up my roommate to see if she'd drive me to campus. I wanted so badly to tell her my dream, but I couldn't. To tell the dream would be to admit I was Dragon Lady. ~sigh. I settled for telling my coworkers instead.

Several things happened in the next few days where Desdemona and myself said or did really stupid things that should have revealed my identity, but my roommates were so convinced that it was Jack and JB that they never caught on to any of it. In fact, Crazy V came into our room the morning I was to reveal my identity and stated: "I know it's Jack and JB. There is nothing anyone can say to convince me that it's anyone else. Even if someone else really is Dragon Lady, that's too bad for them because Jack and JB are still going to get all the credit." Desdemona and I smirked at each other, only slightly worried.

Finally, the day of reckoning arrived. We all met up and drove out to Lindon. By this time the group was divided—half were convinced it was Jack and JB while the other half were convinced it was Crazy II. We knocked on the door. My aunt answered and invited us all in. I videotaped the whole thing under the pretense of Crazy III being out of the country and she'd want to see what happened. My aunt had us all put on name tags (brilliant—now neither of us would slip up and call the other by name and raise suspicion) and we started eating dinner. I went around and videotaped everyone's predictions. At one point, Jack called Crazy II—he was lost and needed directions. She was a little irritated—they had set up the whole thing; of course he'd know how to get there. She even almost hung up on him, which would have been really bad, but she decided to play along and got him there. They knocked on the door, my aunt answered it and whispered in Jack's ear. Only a few people could see the door, but when she whispered, they were even more convinced that they were Dragon Lady. Why else would she whisper in Jack's ear? (I told you that she was brilliant.)

They came in, then wouldn't you know, Jack started questioning me as if I were Dragon Lady. How dare he?! Problem is, I can't flat out lie. So when he started asking me if I had relatives in Utah, specifically Lindon, what was I to do? My aunt, knowing I couldn't lie, but also having heard of my great talent of avoiding it, was very curious as to how I would respond. So, I started listing places other relatives of mine live around Utah, then broke off mid-city and said that I had relatives all over Utah. So he pressed Lindon. To which I replied, "If I had relatives in Lindon, do you really think I would have gotten lost on my way out here?" Which, for the record, I had gotten lost. Granted, it was about a week before and it was mainly because I hadn't driven out there for a very long time. Oh, and I had pretended to get lost that day—because we were following the directions on Google Maps which led us to a road closed due to construction. So, playing on my indecisive self, I made my passengers choose which way we should go, and they played right into it. Anyway, I dodged the question and he accepted it. My aunt was so proud.

We sat there eating, debating on who it could be—if by some slight chance it wasn't Jack and JB. I suggested Desdemona and one roommate about choked on her food. "That would make my year," she said. I laughed, because Desdemona had been in on the whole thing. She thought I was laughing at the idea of Desdemona being Dragon Lady.

Finally the time came. My aunt stood up and gave a little spiel about how she was rather fond of Dragon Lady, so after he or she revealed his or her identity, my aunt expected that we all would treat him or her kindly—and not try to get revenge. I then handed her the video camera (I wanted everyone's reactions caught on film for all time), and she asked Dragon Lady to stand up.

One of the boys stood up. Everyone boo-ed him and told him to sit back down. Which he did. Then my aunt asked for the real Dragon Lady to stand. I sat for a dramatic pause. I was so engrossed by everyone's expectant faces that I almost forgot to stand until my aunt repeated, "Uhh... Dragon Lady? Please stand." At which point I jumped up, saw the amazingly shocked faces, and raised my arms in triumph. Seriously, it was perfect. They were all so shocked that they couldn't help but believe me. And then I dropped the bomb that Desdemona had helped with the whole thing. I don't think they could have been any more suprised. Any doubt they might have had, however, was quelched when Desdemona and I spent the next half hour elaborating upon all the stories that we had been dying to tell them for the whole six months.

My favorite reaction? "Even if I had had a million guesses, I would never have guessed you. Well, I would have because I don't know a million people, and you would have landed in there by default—but I wouldn't have meant it."

Even to this day, many of the people involved will still call me Dragon Lady. Hence why I've said many times that it's not uncommon to hear my nym shouted across campus. Just a few weeks ago I saw one guy across Brigham Square and yelled his name. He in turn saw me and yelled back, "Dragon Lady of Japan!" My first thought? "I wonder if any of these people in hearing range are Board readers..." Haha! And once I went bowling with a friend and almost put my name as Dragon Lady. But I decided against it at the last minute... ~sigh.

Needless to say, it was the most intense, complex, and beautiful prank I have ever pulled. I'm not sure I could ever top it. But that's ok—it was amazing. I wouldn't trade that semester for anything.

The end.