I'm so late to this.. it'll be buried forever, but someone may find it to be as fucked up as it actually turned out to be. This is a long one, buckle up. And being a real live true story and all of that, names have been changed, but are close enough to matter to get the story across.
In my freshman and sophomore year I went to a high school that was the only one in our county, it was very old with several buildings, and located centrally in our county. During my sophomore year they started building a new school. Which I went to for my junior and senior year since our school district was divided in half, and the new school being just 5 miles from my home on the north east side of the county was where I was sent to.
During my sophomore year, at the older school, between one afternoon set of classes I had to walk across the entire campus, outside, to get from one end of the campus to the other end where my next class was. There was this early gothy heavy metal girl named Anne, who while we didn't share a single class together, had the same walk across campus from and to the same buildings, and we'd end up doing it together for that entire school year. We struck up a casual convo thing after a spell, basically talking shit, usually about popular heavy metal music at the time, like GnR and Metallica,. Maybe even share a cigarette, because back in those days the smoking age was still 16 and smoking was frowned upon but not banned yet in our school district.
So fast forward a bit, and a few weeks into the start of my junior year at the new school, I was pulled out of class one afternoon near the end of day and told nothing more than I was being taken to the principals office. When I inquired as to why and what was going on I wasn't given an answer other than, You know exactly why you're being pulled out of class. Upon arriving to the office, I was made to stand against a wall, still not being told a thing, and I was frisked thoroughly. Then I was made to sit down between several mean as fuck looking adults I had never seen before. With no introductions or explanations, the interrogation started with the principal asking questions to start.
The first being, how familiar was I with a Sue Smith? Well.. I'm acquainted with Sue, she's a straight A student and we share a few classes together. Why?.. What's going on with her?.. I asked. I was told only I could answer that. Then I was asked where she was at. I said, I assume she's at her job, since she does early work release, but other than that I have no idea. Why?.. What's going on with her?.. Maybe near an hour went by where I was literally asked different variations of those same questions, about how I knew her, how well I knew her, and how good of friends we were really.. Along with insinuations that we were really "more than friends". They never seemed happy with any of my answers. And all my questions at finding out what was transpiring was met with.. "Only you can answer that son.".
Eventually one of the fugly old dudes got up, left the room, and came back saying they were going to go pick Sue up at her job and get her side of the story. I, still not knowing anything going on, started to panic more than a little bit about what the fuck this was all about. It's at that point I said I want to call my parents, which I was told I could do later. And more of this type of questioning went on for a bit longer, with them getting more and more irate and upset at my lack of any answers and.. well almost bullying me to answer with something "more".
Then the pictures were brought out. The pictures were of walls, in a dilapidated half burnt out house, spray painted with my name, Riptides Lastname + Sue Smith, with hearts around them. Other photos that said, Riptides and Sue, "Going to close our eyes forever" (which, I believe, was referencing the Ozzy and Lita Ford song popular at the time). My response at seeing those was a literal "What the fuck is all this?? What the fuck is going on?? I'm not answering anything else until I can call my parents!!!" And that's when the principal relented and my dad was called, not by me, but in front of me by said principal. My dad was informed that unless I started confessing I was about to be arrested for felony vandalism and arson. My dad lost his shit saying he was coming to the school right now with a lawyer from his work in tow.
At about this time, one of the fug-plugly guys was again called from the room, and he came back saying Sue Smith had been picked up from her job at the Tast-E-Freez in town, and had been being questioned as well. She also did not have a single clue about what was going on and had confessed to nothing. Luckily, her boss at her fast food job had called her father, because Sue had been picked up in a police cruiser and apparently taken to the Sheriffs office which worried her boss greatly. Her father, who lived near to the new high school, had immediately shown up at the Police dept with his lawyer on the way, demanding a damn explanation.
At this point a few hours had passed, school had already let out, and as they were getting ready to handcuff me and put me in a police car, they get a call. It seems a girl was picked up, walking in the neighborhood where the vandalism had taken place. She was carrying a backpack with.. spray-paint, grill starting fluid, and several boxes of matches. The girl.. Was the same one from my sophomore year who would walk with me between classes. Her home, like a single wide trailer on a long dirt driveway, was right beside this subdivision where they were building new $100k homes. And that's when I found out gothy-type girls name wasn't Anne, but Sue-Anne, Sue-Anne Smith. And she confessed, right then and there, that the house was all her doing, because she had had a major crush on me, and since I had been moved to the new school district, she was distraught, suicidal, and looking to burn some shit down.
I was given no apologies, marched to the edge of the school property, they locked the school up, including the parking lot with my own car still parked in it, and I was told to wait on my dad, where he showed up nearly ready to murder me. I found out much later the girl that had the crush on me was taken to a psyche ward, and she was charged with the felonies, and I never ever heard about her again. The other Sue Smith, A+ overachiever and pretty cool, blamed me wholly, refused to talk to me ever again, and she made good on that. Her father requested that all my classes be changed to not be in the same ones with his daughter. And it pretty much fucked my junior and senior years causing me to eventually drop out and get my GED at the start of my senior year.
All that happened to me damn near 27 years ago now, and still galls me to this day.