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Narrator (9:59)

All you homeowners have unique needs. Some feel the need to paint their door a vibrant shade of blue. Others have the need to decorate their bathroom with fish anchors and other nautical items. And because each homeowner has unique needs, GEICO helps you get the right coverage for your home and what's in it. That way you get exactly what's right for you, even if your needs are unique. Get more with Geico. This was an experience I had alongside my BFF in high school. This was about 2006, maybe 2007 in rural upstate New York. We met in third grade and are still friends to this day. We're both 27 now. Let me give you some background information now. My friend B and I became instant best friends when we met in the third grade grade and we were inseparable. We frequented each other's homes so much that her mom set up her guest room as my room. I had toys, clothes, pictures. I mean everything I needed was there. I was Family pictures of Bea and I hung up on the walls of the home owned by her very proud mother, Shelly. Shelly had always wanted two daughters and she loved me so much that she actually considered me her second daughter. Now onto the meat of the story again. This incident took place when Bea and I were sophomores in high school. Her mother was divorced and dated a few different men, meeting some off sites like eharmony. She had been speaking to a man for a few weeks, gushing about how manly and charming he was. She was really excited and always showed us their profiles before she decided to go on an actual date with one of these men. She would always say I need my daughter's stamps of approval. One night she called us to her room and showed us this man that she had been talking all about. His profile was simple as one would imagine for a middle aged man in 2007 on eHarmony. The headline read Looking for a Strong Mother. I made a joke about his odd placement for caps and just how strange a way to start out, but we moved forward. It told of his metalwork background, his love of cold steel and his work in a foundry that kept his icy heart just warm enough. I was honest and I told her it sounded off, but he was handsome, sporting black, well groomed hair, a beard, a strong jaw, icy blue eyes and a relatively fit body for a 40 something year old male. I really stressed on the weird vibe. Then B joked how Shele always picked out the antisocial ones and we laughed knowing this wasn't wrong Shele's brought some really weird stories home, but what do you expect from meeting men online? We told her to go for it, so they planned on dinner. It was a haul for him, about a two hour drive. He was driving to our location where they would then take one car into town. B and I helped Shelly pick out her outfit, helped her with her hair and makeup, and then went back upstairs so she could have some free time to herself before the long night. We headed up the stairs where Bea and I were painting a wall in her room, just listening to music and cutting up. He had just let himself in the house like no big deal and then just came upstairs without saying a word. No knocking, no doorbell. The dogs didn't even bark, nothing. So we get spooked, jump, scream and crap our pants a little when we hear a man start walking behind us. We don't know how long he had been in the house. We don't know how long he had stood behind us without speaking. But when he did speak, we shook. Well, well, well. I didn't know I was getting a two for one deal. He said quietly in a gravely low voice. He chuckled as we stood there in shock of the stranger in her room. He sauntered over to us like a man on a Sunday walk. The smell of cigarettes filled the room as if Rod Serling himself was standing in the corner explaining our situation to the audience for our own personal episode of the Twilight Zone. Right then I noticed how much this guy looked just like the guy in the picture Shele had showed us, except he had salt and pepper, not jet black hair, and his eyes were not ice blue but black. Not brown but black. It looked like this guy was 100% pupil. Are you? I was then interrupted by Shelly shouting, who got hurt? She must have thought we were horsing around and that one of us got hurt. This was normal for us because we goofed around a lot. She was jolted at the sight of this man blocking her from us. He turned around just as soon as she reached the top of the stairs and then he held his arms out and said in a way less low tone than he used earlier, shelly, you look beautiful. I knocked but no one answered. I hope it's okay. I let myself in. These are your girls. They're beautiful, just like their mommy. I'll never forget how he said mommy. It felt dirty. Bea and I both side eyed each other, then stepped down off our stepladders. We were both very in tune with each other. I felt weird and I knew she did too and we Both felt the odd air of the room. Shele glanced away from him and at us who were behind him looking at her with wide eyes, both kind of shaking our heads side to side in disbelief. Shele looked back to him. This exchange only took a few seconds, but it seemed like an eternity. She had forced a smile at him and said, oh, I'm sorry. Next time just ring the bell, I'll open the door. He nodded and he walked towards her with open arms and then hugged her like they had been the oldest of friends. She looked at us as they hugged and just kind of rolled her eyes to show us what she thought of his excuse. She proceeded to tell him that it wasn't appropriate as she led him down the stairs and we had heard him apologize over and over. Bea and I instantly ran to our phones. We agreed to text her mom what he had just said to us so we could tell her without him knowing we had sinned. And about 10 minutes later we had heard footsteps up the stairs. It was Shelly and she shut the door behind us and asked us if we were okay. She hugged us and she told us she was sorry. He made us feel uncomfortable. She explained to us that he said we reminded him of his girls and didn't mean to scare us. We nodded. Then they said they were leaving out for the date. We hugged her, said to be safe and we would see her soon. As she headed down the stairs, Bea and I just looked at each other. We both knew that something wasn't right. But we were both speechless from the good scare we received from this dark man. Just about 15 minutes prior, we heard them walking and talking, heading towards the front door. A few minutes later, Shelly shouted up the stairs that she loved us. We yelled back that we loved her too. And then the door shut. We instantly had started talking to each other, saying the same things. B spoke over me. He laid that charm so thick. As soon as he saw Mom, B exclaimed further, and did you see his eyes? What the heck was that? He looked so much like the guy from the pictures, but not exactly. We both concurred our feelings about the stranger, his scent, his demeanor, his voice. He was just like something out of a classic Stranger Danger advert. Again, we agreed to text Shelly how we felt. She thanked us and told us it seemed to be going well and she would let us know that she was safe every hour. Bea and I were just freaked out and even more so that Shele was not. It was like a weird spell he'd cast on her. It was odd, but we wanted to thank the best for Shelly as she was really excited about this guy. She texted us every hour until she got home. Her last text said I'm okay but I'm officially freaked out and I'm coming home now. Be home soon. We freaked out and paced around until we saw headlights pull into the driveway. It had been about five hours since she left and only about an hour since that last text. We were inside with the lights off, watching through the side window trying not to be seen when the motion sensor light flooded the yard and light fell into the driveway. A truck flew into the driveway, the passenger side door flung open before the truck was at a full stop and Shele's feet were on the pavement just as fast. She waved at the driver and she had kind of jogged the door wide eyed. She reached the front door, turned and waved the truck off. She had her house key ready in the hand that she wasn't waving with. She then unlocked the door and slid into the safety of the house. Keep the lights off, go upstairs. Shelly said as she locked the two deadbolts in the chain, not once looking at us. We headed up the stairs behind her. We walk into B's room and look out the window down to the truck still parked out front with the lights on and the engine running. As we all stared at the truck, Shelly told us of the ordeal that she went through. Long story short, he had made reservations at the wrong restaurant so he suggested they go buy some food and have a picnic style dinner at a local park. Shele didn't do well outdoors, she was an office woman so she declined. However, he had just drove so long to get here and then he hit her with well you kind of owe me and she said that made her feel bad knowing that he drove two hours. So when he mentioned that he had a vacation home and he could cook for her close by, she agreed. She said they got to the house and it was nice enough. A long cabin near Bethel, New York only about 35 minutes from our town. Shele said he kept talking about how easy it was to get her alone. He also kept saying that he liked strong mommies because they have such fight. But she caved. This made her skin crawl. This wasn't the man she thought it was. This also wasn't the man in the picture and Shele had started to slowly realize this. Shele said that when she had asked for a ride home due to her feeling ill, it wasn't the happiest, but he complied and he stopped cooking and had started looking for the keys that she knew that he had in his pocket. He had then started asking her about our girls, referring to myself and Bea. This freaked Shele out so bad. And she said she was going to get someone to come get her and that he didn't like. And he found his keys instantly. Once they were out of the house and in the truck, the truck wouldn't start, so they had to move to his work truck. Shele was visibly shaken and wouldn't take her eyes off the truck in the driveway as she had spilled the story out post haste. She said that there was a garage that he said they had to walk around the house to hop in the work truck. She said that she felt she had no choice but to play it cool and just agree to go. She hopped out and walked around the house. And there indeed was another garage with a truck in it. The same truck that we were all currently staring at, just sitting in the driveway. It smelled like bleach and metal. Shelly whispered, she told us on the way home that he just kept asking about us. What did we do that she didn't like? What got us spankings? What were the naughty things we got in trouble for? What would she do without us? And the one question to scare you out of your pants as a parent, would you sacrifice yourself for our girls? Shele said she just stared at him and all in disbelief and then he just laughed. She got more and more concerned as she noticed her surroundings. In the back of the truck that she was riding home in, there were what she thought were chains in a bucket sitting on a desk that was drilled into the floor, a duffel bag, and very large metal objects she wasn't too sure of. This is when he had started to pull out pictures on his little flip phone that he had of us. He must have found Shelly's Facebook. And he took pictures of our pictures and had them on his phone, waving it around, telling Shelly what a good strong mommy she had been to us and she should be proud of what she had accomplished. By this time, they were pulling into the driveway and Shele was done with this crap. She was just about finished when we saw the truck lights then turn off. Shelly immediately picked up the phone and dialed the sheriff and told him quickly that there was an unwelcome person outside our home. Being in such a small town, the sheriff not only went to school and graduated with Shelly, but he only lived three doors down. Just as we see this guy getting out of his truck with a duffel bag, we saw the sheriff whip up behind him the man panicked and literally threw his duffel into the truck and tried to back into the sheriff to get out. When he realized that he was blocked from the rear, he went through the yard. We couldn't believe our eyes. The truck peeled out, taking some of the lawn with it. The sheriff came to the door to check on us and he told us that he had units down the road just waiting for him. We all shared a good collective cry and rejoiced in our safety. It did, however, create some paranoia issues in the next couple of weeks due to the fact that we didn't know how long he was in the house when he just let himself in. Did he put cameras anywhere? Did he mess with the food in the house to hurt someone? I mean, it was bad, but we worked through it. We never heard anything about him being caught, and we did occasionally receive eerie messages on Facebook, two of which we knew were him, but we put that out of our minds. Haven't heard anything from or about him since about three months after the incident when the last message was received. It's been about 11 years since the incident, but we still talk about it.

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Narrator (25:09)

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Commentator (25:13)

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Narrator (25:15)

What's happening?

Commentator (25:16)

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Narrator (25:40)

Up until junior year of high school, I flew mostly under the social radar and stuck to my status as a nerd girl. But When I was 15, I joined Varsity cheer. My school's cheerleaders weren't popular by definition, but everyone kind of knew who we were because we were on the announcements, performed at pep rallies, and generally engaged with the students a lot. I made a lot of friends that year, and some of them happened to be the cool kids. For a while, I thought this was my long awaited karma payoff for the years of bullying that I'd suffered at their hands. I even developed a crush on one of them. A crush which the junior cheer captain herself volunteered to help me pursue. Homecoming is a big deal where I'm from, and I began fantasizing about my crush, asking me to go with him. I had heard rumors that he was planning a dramatic proposal, and as homecoming season approached, I became more and more sure I would be his date. The junior cheer captain who was close with him kept dropping hints that I was right. One day at practice, she asked me what my favorite candy was, and I knew it would be so my crush would know what to give me. You can imagine my surprise when, after an exhausting theater rehearsal, I walked into the parking lot and was confronted by a guy I'd hardly spoken to asking me to be his date. My theater friends all applauded, assuming I was overjoyed. I saw both of my parents in the parking lot recording the whole surprise. But most importantly, the cool friends that I'd recently befriended were standing right there behind him, egging him on. I didn't understand why, because he wasn't popular at all. In fact, he was known to be kind of creepy. The junior cheer captain was laughing, encouraging him to give me a box of my favorite candy he was holding. She had definitely orchestrated the whole thing. I didn't really know the guy, but I didn't want to humiliate him in front of the coolest kids in school. So I faked a smile and rolled with it. I promised myself that I'd deny him later in private so that he wouldn't be embarrassed afterwards. When my parents excitedly asked me how I felt about the ordeal, I explained how uncomfortable it made me. I said that I got strong creepy vibes from that guy. That didn't fly with my parents. My mother had accused me of having my expectations way too high, and my father demanded to know if I was secretly a lesbian. I had never had a boyfriend or shown much interest in dating, which is why he had asked this to make his case stronger. I had just become best friends with the only openly gay girl our school had ever seen. Long story short, I knew that if I shut down my date, I'd effectively declare war on my parents. However, I played my dad's protective instinct against him and persuaded him to let me friend zone my date. After all, he knows how high school boys think, right? I texted my date that night and explained that I only saw us as friends but would still be happy to go to homecoming with them. He was very polite about it, although I could tell he was interested in me romantically. It seemed we had reached a deal until the next day at school when one of my cheerleader friends referred to my date as my boyfriend. I corrected her and I told her that we were just going to homecoming as friends. She seemed confused and told me my date was telling everyone who could listen that I was his girlfriend. A few more of my friends approached me with similar comments, and I confronted my date about them. He denied all involvement and suggested it was just a rumor. I reminded him that we were just friends and that I had zero romantic interest in him. He said he understood. I got a call from the junior cheer captain. She pretended to be sweet and conspiratorial, but I was still annoyed that she had led me to believe that my crush would be asking me to homecoming. She began her attempt to persuade me that I was wrong to friend zone my date. She said that she had spent many, many afternoons planning his proposal with him, and she knew he was kind of creepy from afar, but he was sweet and caring underneath all that. I said if he was such a catch, then she should date him. Annoyed, she dropped the sweet act. She told me that I had to date him because he liked me so much and he had gone to so much trouble to ask me to homecoming. I had to give him a chance because she'd gone out on a limb for me. I told her she was wrong, that I didn't have to do anything I didn't want to do, and I owed him nothing. I ended up hanging up on her soon after that, but that was just the beginning. Starting the next Monday, he would corner me in the hallway and give me a rose he held in his teeth. He usually did so between my sixth and seventh periods when my path through the hall crossed his. I was deeply uncomfortable with this and and I told him so, but he wouldn't stop. I took different routes to escape him, but the junior cheer captain and her Posse made a point of tracking me down so he could find me elsewhere. Every time he did this, everyone in the area would treat it as a sweet romantic gesture, despite my obvious discomfort. Wouldn't any girl be lucky to have a boy so devoted to her who gave her a rose every day? He was still telling everyone I was his girlfriend. The final stroll for me was when he walked into a class he wasn't in to find me and then give me my daily rose. When he came in, I told him to get out and leave me alone. His feelings were clearly hurt and he left looking like a kicked puppy. My classmates started calling me cold and heartless. It didn't matter what I had to say about him. I was an ice queen refusing the sweet boy's advances. Everyone in the school had decided that I was in love with them and that nobody cared what I had to say about it. My actual crush, who was part of the popular group, joined the junior cheer captain in pressuring me into returning my date's feelings. At every event where the cheerleaders were present, my date would push his way to the front of the crowd. He would go to great lengths to get my attention. At football games, he would have a flag in the student section, so I'd look at him when we were cheering. The other girls would make comments on how endearing he was when he waited in the parking lot by our bus back to the school, all to hug me and tell me how great I did. I didn't know what else to do other than let this happen. I had only recently ascended to a position of visibility. If I conflicted too hard with the cool kids who were dead set on setting me up with this guy, I could be an outsider all over again. I hoped that if I just kept ranting to my real friends about how creepy he was and publicly let him do what he wanted, it would all blow over. My school had a 15 second attention span, so some scandal had to one up me sooner or later. The truth emerged, as usual in the locker room. It turns out the junior cheer captain had been telling him during their afternoons together that I was into him. He would come to her for help, announcing his crush on me, and she'd gone a step further and convinced him that I felt the same, despite the fact that I didn't even know his name. She lied to him for weeks prior to the homecoming proposal, and when I told her that was wrong, she didn't care. She told me I should be grateful because everybody was starting to think that I was gay. My best friend and I inspired to spread a rumor that we were dating. After all, everybody thought I was gay, right? But my date wasn't fazed. In fact, he told everyone that he'd just turned me straight again. Gross. Three weeks after he asked me, it was finally Homecoming night. Thanks to cheer obligations and a complete coincidence involving a switch backpack that left me without my dress, I ended up only attending the dance for half an hour. My date awkwardly stood on the side of the room while I danced my heart out to Mr. Brightside by the Killers. I almost felt bad for him when, right at the end, the junior cheer captain appeared like a summoned demon to suggest that we slow dance at the next opportunity. Thank God I escaped that one by walking to the DJ and suggesting he play footloose. My date walked me out to the parking lot to wait for my mom to pick me up. While we waited for her to drive around, which took entirely way too long because she still hoped I would stop making a fuss and date him, he asked me out. I politely declined. He quickly stammered that we could go with a group of people like the junior cheer captain and my crush. I denied him again and made it clear that we were only friends and I wasn't interested in romantic endeavors because I was too busy. That was actually true. I was in all advanced classes, varsity theater and cheer, and I worked part time. A few days later, a teacher eloped to Vegas and nobody cared about my love life anymore. My date and I were distanced again by classmates and activities and work. It finally appeared that everything was going back to normal. That Friday at the football game, my crush had asked me to sit on his shoulders for the Alma material kind of a romantic thing at my school. Overjoyed, I accepted, and I hoped that this was the beginning of a new chapter for me. I ignored the frantically waving flag in the stands. On Monday, my date stood on a chair in his second period class. And then he announced that everyone should be wary of my crush because he would steal your girl. I heard everyone buzzing about it a few hours later when someone called me a horrible name. I again for breaking my date's heart. I knew I was being dramatic, but I decided to not go to lunch that day, terrified of running into him. I'm so glad I didn't. Later on, I saw on Snapchat that my date had carved my name into his arm with a pair of scissors. His bleeding arm was screenshotted and sent to me by half a dozen people, most of them demanding why I'd hurt him like this. He did it in the middle of lunch in a crowded cafeteria and somehow no administration noticed or cared. The school was buzzing, my day was a broken hearted victim, and I was the evil, secretly gay girl who wouldn't give him a chance. I got so many dirty looks from people by fifth period I was ready to just walk out. But my good girl instincts kicked in and I decided to tough it out for two more hours. Around that time, I got a panic text from one of my cheer friends. While she had initially been insistent that I date the creepy guy, she had apparently changed her mind after the lunch incident. Earlier, she told me that my date, who was in her fifth period class, was going off the rails. He had started out saying that he wanted to kill himself because I wouldn't love him. This had then escalated to saying that he'd killed my crush for lying to me and stealing me away. Finally, he had started talking about how he knew where I lived. My parents had given him my address when he'd initially wanted to ask me to dance at my house, and he would make me pay for wronging him. I knew that after sixth period, our paths through the hall would cross. Since the beginning of this ordeal, the school would crack down on students getting outside, and my alternate route to escape in was no longer an option. My class was at the far end of the hall with nowhere to go but into the central hub, and he would be coming from the other end of the hallway towards mine. I was stuck up a chimney, basically. Desperate, I texted the junior cheer captain to finish what she'd started and tell him that I wasn't and have never been interested in him. She made this mess and I would make sure that she had to clean it up. She said that she'd go to the counselor, but that she didn't know what else to do. This was way beyond her control now. For the first and only time I skipped class, I hid out in the theater hall and waited for the seventh period. I got a few texts during the passing period that my date was waiting for me by the bathrooms. There was a little alcove right there where you can't see people coming from around the corner, and the thought of him hiding there and waiting for me to walk by alone horrified me. Right before seventh period began, a few of my classmates burst in cackling and proclaimed that my date was coming down here after school to kill my crush. They thought this was hilarious, but judging by the look on my crush's face, this wasn't a joke to him anymore. Our teacher brushed this off as Typical theater drama pun fully intended. I watched the clock and tried not to cry, knowing that by the time the bell rang, my date would be outside waiting for me and my crush to emerge. That day ended up being a work day, so my crush and I were able to escape the classroom and hide out elsewhere in the theater hall to get away from him. He opted for the black box theater and I went for the lighting closet. Obviously, I didn't witness what happened, but my best friend filled me in afterwards. Allegedly, my date had turned up three minutes before the bell rang and stood outside the classroom where we couldn't see him. When we opened the door, he told everyone standing around that he was ready to have a knife fight with my crush. We don't really know if he actually had a knife or not, but the idea that he might was enough to terrify me. His arm was wrapped in paper towels that he was bleeding through. My best friend told him that my crush and I were gone, but he didn't believe her. He stood outside for 25 minutes until the administrators began walking through to make sure that no one was in the school who shouldn't be. My date wasn't in theater, so he wasn't allowed to stick around that night. I texted him that not only would I never date him, but but could no longer even see a friendship between us. I then sent him my number to a suicide hotline and I told him to get help. Finally, I told him that he needed to learn what no meant and that I never wanted to speak to him again. He responded that he was sorry and he asked if there was anything he could do to fix this. I told him no. I don't think he learned the meaning of the word after all, because the same pattern repeated itself a few months later on Valentine's Day. This the next year had homecoming, senior year, Valentine's Day, and also prom. But those are other stories. I've since graduated and gone off to college hundreds of miles away from him. My family back home moved from the address my parents gave him. Contrary to popular belief, I'm not gay. My crush, on the other hand, came out a few months later and we were friends for the rest of high school. I'm working on handling romantic endeavors in a healthy way, but he really got in my head. He was the first person to ever show interest in me. Ironically, the last time I saw him was my first and only homecoming game after graduating. But this time I actually had true friends to defend me when he predictably tried to pull some weird stuff with me. The worst part looking back was somehow being at fault for everything. Even to this day, people from my high school reference the whole situation as that one time you wouldn't date that poor shy kid. I can't even appreciate red roses anymore.

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Commentator (41:44)

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Narrator (42:09)

This is gonna be part two. The whole first part of the story that you just heard happened in 2015 when I was a junior in high school and I'm a junior in college now. I was 15 during the first homecoming debacle. Because I'm young for my grade, everyone else involved was 16 or 17 at the time. My parents, after all this played out, had very different reactions. My mother apologized for not believing me in the first place and pressuring me to lower my standards. My relationship with her has become a success story in the past four years, and this experience jump started its evolution. On the other hand, my father has rewritten the narrative entirely, and he insists that he never once advocated that I go to homecoming with my date. He says that he was always wary of this kid, and he also didn't ever ask if I was gay. I'm not. I'm bi, actually, but I didn't realize it until my senior year of high school. I didn't go to the counselor yet because she was shown to be bad at her job. As you'll see in this continuation, she liked a victim blame a lot. Well, she was fired after I graduated in 2017, my high school and home district in general was an administrative nightmare. I've heard from younger friends that after a massive staff turnover, things are finally starting to look up, but none of it improved during my time there. My story was perfectly in character for the level of ignorance my school expressed towards unhealthy activity. My day didn't and doesn't use social media, at least not to my knowledge. I found an abandoned Twitter account that looked like it might belong to him, but it was Last active in 2016. I have no contact with him at all anymore, which I guess is a happy ending. A few people have implied that I'm making all of this up. They're not the first and they probably won't be the last to say so. Even I know this crap is wild and that's why I didn't say a word about it for years. I don't feel the need to prove my honesty to random strangers on the Internet. If there's anything that I learned from this nightmare, it's that people will only believe what they want to believe. The truth is that I had a weird as all hell experience and it's affected my life in a lot of ways. Believe it or not, I still have to deal with its repercussions on a daily basis. This post is less of an update than it is a continuation since all of this happened years ago. Long story short, my ex didn't get the message after the homecoming junior year and he ended up pulling some seriously weird crap even after we graduated. None of it was as epic as junior homecoming, but it definitely cast a shadow over the latter half of my high school experience. From here on out, due to his activity for the next two years, I'll be referring to him as my stalker. For the months after homecoming, things had started to settle down again. I didn't have any classes with my stalker and the only person I still had to deal with was the junior cheer captain. She would go out of her way to be nice to me, inviting me to parties and buying me coffee and giving me rights to games, basically bribing me to keep quiet about what a manipulative person she was. My stalker appeared on Valentine's Day 2016. I was still a junior, but I had almost forgotten that homecoming had even happened when halfway through my day, he had cornered me in the hallway and gave me a rose out of his teeth. I had hoped that that would be the end of it, but I underestimated my classmates appetite for drama. During seventh period theater, we were in the library computer lab after the rose thing. My crush from fall semester, who had since come out as gay, warned us that my stalker was carrying around a present for me in his backpack. I thanked him for the heads up and I told my best friend, the gay revolution lesbian. She and I were sitting together on the inside of a row when the bell rang. We stood up to leave, but the girl on the other side of me turned to face us, blocking us from the exit. She was a close friend of the junior cheer captain's. She asked me what I was doing after school and I knew that she must be trying to herd me towards my stalker so I could collect my presents. I leveled with her and said that I knew that my stalker was waiting for me somewhere, and I told her straight up that I wasn't going to play nice with him anymore. She turned on the same old guild trip as everyone else, telling me how much he cared about me and how hard he had worked on those presents, but I refused to go. I knew that I needed to get out of the school as soon as possible before she just told my stalker to come meet me at the library instead of the theater hall hole. To get her out of my way, I said I'd go meet him after I went to the bathroom. As she moved out of the walkway, my best friend and I hid out in the bathroom farthest from the theater hall. I knew that he wouldn't leave until he delivered his gifts and we had rehearsal that day, so I knew I'd have to go down there sooner or later. My best friend suggested that she go down and retrieve the presents for me so that he'd leave before I had to go to rehearsal. Rehearsal Two more of my friends happened upon our bathroom crisis and they decided to link up with my best friend on our mission. I waited in the bathroom while they went to intercept the gifts. Twenty minutes later, they returned. Among the gifts were three boxes of my favorite candy, an expensive doctor who jewelry box, and a full bouquet of roses. Again, they told me, laughing uncomfortably, that there had been a whole group of people waiting for me to walk into the theater hall. My stalker wasn't too happy to hand over the presents, but my best friend made it clear that I wouldn't be coming to get them so he could hand them over to my friends or never deliver them at all. After about 10 minutes, the group waiting for me dissipated and my stalker gave away the gifts. I was so creeped out that I didn't keep any of them, not even the jewelry box, which was Tardis shaped and actually kind of cool for my birthday a few weeks later, I got out of school after fourth period and went to a theme park with my cousin. I didn't tell anyone I was leaving or where I was going. My best friend told me that my stalker had waited outside the theater hall for me with a letter and he had a rose in hand until the school kicked everyone out who wasn't in theater. I was assistant director and light crew for one act play during that spring. An acquaintance of mine who didn't keep up with the gossip was in charge of making the program and she mentioned how cute my boyfriend was for taking out an ad in the program for me. I was sufficiently freaked out, I told her that I didn't have a boyfriend and I asked to see the ad that he'd paid for. It was a picture of my stalker and I from junior homecoming, along with a note that said something like, Good luck, Nancy. I love you. I begged my friend to not put it in the program and she didn't. Seeing my obvious discomfort, she refunded him his money and made some excuse about a local business buying more ad space. He tried the same trick for the last show of the year, which I was actually in. He showed up to opening night and got kicked out for filming. The theater department has now instituted a widespread rule of checking with the person an ad is targeted at before printing it, which is more than school administration ever cared to do. During a cleanup day for theater the summer before senior year, a guy from a different school showed up to help. Help in quotations. He had been talking to me over social media for a few weeks, and I knew I was his next target. He'd made a game out of going on a date with every girl in our department. Sure enough, he asked me out while I cleaned up the prop closet and I agreed. He was decent looking and he wasn't mentally unstable, even if he was a player. I also knew that if I played my cards right, I could turn this to my advantage. He was using me, so I just made sure I got something out of it too. We went on our date. It was okay, no weird advances or anything, and he bought me dinner. On the way home, I directed the conversation towards homecoming. He caught my drift and he asked me right there. No muss, no Fuss. I said yes. Senior year had started. My new date was all the way over at a school on the other side of town. My stalker was in two of my classes and had the same lunch as me. I was hyper aware of him staring at me every day, but didn't want to make a big deal about it. I knew he wanted my attention and I refused to give it to him. Instead, I went about my life as usual. I made friends with the teachers who were lunch hall monitors so I could leave the cafeteria, effectively avoiding my stalker. I ate lunch in the theater hall with my best friend every day. I asked my biology and English teachers to not make me sit by him or work in groups with them, and they agreed, if somewhat reluctantly. They, like pretty much everyone else, thought I was a dramatic cheerleader making up stories. I was a senior and I really didn't want to deal with the bullcrap of a crazy stalker anymore. Not that I ever wanted to in the first place. Homecoming was even earlier this year than last year. In my English class, my stalker sat near two theater girls who usually walked a seventh period theater with me, and he turned around to ask them for ideas on how to ask me to homecoming. They were in the camp of classmates who were amused by my stalker's antics, so they wanted to rile him up and watch the fireworks. They also knew about the player who I was talking to because the Innerkins are the worst gossips ever and they gleefully told my stalker that I already had a date. He proceeded to attempt to bite his own finger off in class, which went about as well as you might think. Obviously, he didn't succeed, but he did draw blood and he absolutely terrified my two theater friends who had incited his instability. He stared at me the whole time and I sat on the other side of the room and ignored him. I didn't care what he did. I refused to give him my attention and I wouldn't be intimidated by him anymore. After class, my two friends came up to me and told me the details of what had just happened. Together, the three of us approached the English teacher. She believed me fully this time. He was moved into a different English class by the next week. Side note, bless this teacher. She was the first adult I encountered who actually took action to protect me, and she continued to check in with me about the situation throughout the rest of the senior year. Sixth period became nothing less than a sanctuary for me because for once somebody believed me and they were listening. I didn't have to worry about him after fourth period because I skipped Lunch every day. I was getting confident about my escape maneuvers. I forgot to mention the third and weirdest self harm incident. After getting kicked out of English class, he had desperately wanted my attention, so he got a pass out of his class one day and found mine. He walked to the trash can outside the door to my class and I watched in horror and disgust as he pulled out a tooth and held his face over the trash can spitting out blood. I know that I said I wasn't giving him any more attention, but the kid just ripped out a body part. I feel like I'm allowed to be terrified. Then my usual hall monitor was gone and I got stuck in the cafeteria. I had been out of lunch for so long that I had forgotten my stalker was in the same one until I accidentally made eye contact with him staring at me from across the room like some kind of grudge ghost. The second I saw him, he started speed walking across the room to my table. I ignored him, hoping he was just trying to psych me out, but it didn't work. He sat down in the seat next to mine. I was freaking out. I looked at the girl on the other side of me and I begged her to get him out of here. She simply laughed at me. A year before I would have kept quiet and dealt with my discomfort for a fear of people hating me. But I was a year older and I was already contracting senioritis. So I stood up, grabbed my backpack and stomped out of the lunchroom. The hall monitor stopped me asking where I was going and if I had a pass. I said that I was going to talk to the crisis counselor and he let me go, probably because he didn't want to touch that with a ten foot pole. I walked directly to the counselor's office, signed in and found myself sitting in her office a few minutes later. I told her the whole story from the beginning. I had been to her office once before and she shooed me away after saying I was being too dramatic. This time she didn't. Instead she spent the greater half of the hour I was there asking why I hadn't come to her when this all started. When I finally got her to address the actual problem, her first question reaffirmed my fears. She went on to ask me after I told her about the self harming threats and general creepiness. What about him made me so opposed to dating him? I thought I was going to scream. I had a gut feeling that the truth wouldn't get me anywhere and I needed action. I didn't care how I got it done, but I needed him out of my life and definitely out of my classes. So knowing full well her attachment to Jesus, I pulled the Saving Myself for Jesus card. I put all of those Sundays being forced to go to church to good use and it worked. She finally stopped asking me why. I waited. Why not just date him? And asked what would make me feel safer. I told her to get him out of my schedule and she said she'd look into my options. Within a day, I was called back into her office. She had gotten him placed in another lunch period. Blood biology was only offered fourth period and both of us needed it to graduate. I still considered this a victory though. I only had to see him for 50 minutes every day. She told me to come talk to her whenever I needed someone to lean on and she would make sure that my teachers understood well, My Stalker found new Methods of seeing Me My best friends didn't make the cast of the winter musical, but I did. I didn't realize that I had been isolated until my stalker joined the crew and regularly tried to intimidate me. He would drill holes in set pieces that didn't need work because I was sitting near them and he wanted to watch me flinch. He would steal the props I used and hide them in the shop so I had to be near him to retrieve them. My new crush and I were co dance captains and she convinced her friend that the set had to keep my stalker off stage at all times. After the musical ended in spring, my new crush told me that she heard my stalker was getting angry about me playing hard to get. I was hanging out in the theater hall with a few crew kids getting ready for a one act play when one of them pointed at me, shocked, and then went, your Nancy. He told me that he had seen pictures of my backyard. I was confused and weirded out, so he explained that my stalker had shown him pictures of my backyard and porch. I asked to see them and he said he didn't have the pictures, he'd just been shown them by my stalker. I didn't really believe him and he could tell. So he said, you have a big bay window in your living room, a bunch of bikes on your back porch, and a big rose bush. It was an accurate description. I don't know for sure how to explain that, but I've theorized that my stalker had at some point been in my backyard before we adopted our purebred Doberman. The dog had freaked out in the middle of the night a few times, but we always brushed it off. Now I wasn't so sure. My bedroom was in the front of the house, so I tried to reassure myself by thinking that he hadn't seen me changing or anything super scary, but it didn't really help. My best friend was disowned by her mother and stepdad, and within a weekend, she was shipped off to go live with her biological father. I told myself I could survive the next four months and graduate and that I'd never see my stalker again. I persuaded my parents, as prom and graduation had approached, that I only wanted one present. My best friend. They paid for a plane ticket both ways and flew her home to be my date to prom. I kept her a secret so I could surprise our other friends when she showed up at prom to dance with us. My stalker only briefly entertained the thought of asking me to prom, which I later discovered was the cheer captain's doing. I guess she had finally started to realize the full effect of her actions because she told him he needed to leave me alone. I don't know what else, she said, but he went eerily silent in the weeks leading up to promotion. He still came to the last play of the year, but he didn't film me this time. He waited for me outside the auditorium afterwards, but I was with other people on our way to the cast dinner, and he didn't try anything. At prom, my best friends were elated when they saw that my best friend had returned. We danced and talked crap and had a great time together. It was honestly one of the best moments of my life when they walked in and saw her. Of course, my stalker tried one last time to change my mind. My friends and I were sitting at one of the tables together, laughing and catching up, and I saw my best friend's expression turn into a glare when someone walked up behind me. I turned around to see my stalker waiting behind my chair. I stood up and said as calmly as possible that he wasn't welcome here. I was also 17 and pissed off and feeling unstoppable. So I tacked on, if you ever speak to me again, I'll rip your balls off. It was the last thing that I ever said to him. My best friend flew back home, and we all graduated and everyone went our separate ways for college. I saw my stalker again at the first homecoming after I graduated high school, but he didn't talk to me. He just stared at me the whole time. Later on, he showed up to my sister's fall play at her alma mater, and he asked a cast member where she was and if I was there. Lucky me, the cast member was one of my littles and he told my stalker he needed to leave immediately. I guess this story has a happy ending. I got away in one piece with no foreseeable appearance of my stalker in my future.

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