Boy do I have a story. It’s a doozy.
Throwback to my freshman year, I lived in Colorado Springs, my school was down the road from the planned parenthood shooting from earlier that year. Just to make it clear we’re all on edge already.
There’s my school and a McDonald’s across the street where me and my friends go to hang out and wait for rides. My parents worked the latest so I’d often be stuck till 5:30-7.
One night, I go with some friends and sit with some of their other friends, including a senior we’ll call Brody. Everyone leaves but me and Brody and we’re both waiting for rides. I’m trying to be friendly so I talk to this kid for a while, all is well, we go home, etc.
Fast forward this kid adds me on Facebook, we message sometimes, he gets weird but not biggie. I go to Arizona for a funeral and he gets Hugh and messages me weirder things about me and my face and some weird sexual stuff and I don’t even know anymore, it was so late at night and so long ago. I blocked him after that because what he said really affected me. After this we hang out with all our friends, the last friend (a girl) leaves and he says “I realized today I can smell the period on people.” I don’t know what the hell that was about but again I was too shy to confront it and basically went “oh uh huh okay”
You’d think it would end here but no, I was an idiot too scared of confrontation to go anywhere. I walk around with him and he points out the river he had sex by, talks to me about how it’s wrong for us to date (AGE GAP) but people have said things about it, hint hint, etc. I say the equivalent of “yeah I’ve heard that too, word, but the age gap is a big deal” and we pretty much leave it at that. I tell him I’m not interested in dating him but he doesn’t seem to like that. A while after that we hang out at McDonald’s again and he pulls out a flask and acid and offers it to me, I’m not about it but laugh it off because it’s high school and that’s just “wacky.” He follows me and my friends around and corners me on my way to class almost daily, the guys don’t seem to notice so they talk and play games with him and he kind of becomes part of it but inside I’m getting a bad feeling.
Tell my friend Selena I don’t feel safe around the kid, she agrees. I go with my friends, separately from Brody, to the McDonald’s one day, thinking they’d be there late, but rides come early. I try going back to the school, he follows me saying “stop telling people I’m stalking you” which I hadn’t done, but snapped back “stop following me if you don’t want people thinking you’re a stalker” and went to school. Faculty member said it was my fault he was following me and I’m asking for it and I’m painting him in a bad light, I cry, it’s whatever, she was a massive jerk to everyone but her random favorites.
Next time I hang out with Selena at McDonald’s because I see no Brody and want to be with a friend. Lo and behold Brody enters and sits directly behind us. I catch a glimpse of him and (this is a great tip if you ever get in a similar situation) keep a low-key conversation but type on my phone “I don’t want to be left here, can I go with you to rehearsals?” To which Selena agrees, then we’re outta there, foiling Brody’s plan to corner me.
Get to rehearsal, tell dad where I’m at, he gets me and I’m crying and don’t want to talk. He suspects it’s Brody and I say yes. They write to the principal about him having a flask and drugs, as well as all the weird stuff he’s been doing. I had one class with Brody and the teacher — let’s call her Mrs Batshit — was told to keep me and Brody separate. Spoiler alert: she didn’t.
I’m in class sitting away from Brody a couple days after this and he hands me a letter and I don’t acknowledge him trying to talk to me. Read it during my off period and my friend helps me write a response letter. He wrote all this stuff about me hiding in the bathroom away from him (my period started one time we were hanging out and I went to the bathroom to clean up and call my dad, before his “I can smell periods” comment), some other stuff I don’t remember well but basically other stuff that he thought was a personal attack that had nothing to do with him, etc. Ends the letter with “Anyways, I hope now you’re comfortable,” in reference to my parents’ email to the principal about him making me uncomfortable, among other things. We fire back a response letter saying not everything’s about him, leave me alone, and “in 2 months I will be comfortable,” because he was about to graduate. Give our letter to him, toss out his letter like an idiot.
He texts my dad (he got the number because I used his phone once when my phone had died) that I was ruining his reputation and he had to keep me in check and he wants him to fix it.
That weekend Brody makes some post about wanting to kill someone, some parent sees and tells the school. That on top of what we told them pushes them to suspend Brody because making threats online isn’t appropriate. This kid pulls a goddamn Hail Mary and keeps posting that shit, posts him at a gun store, news picks up the story about him making threats and him saying he wants to kill, some obviously exaggerated to mess with the media, but it’s enough for him to get expelled.
Go back to school that Tuesday, parents wanted me out on Monday just in case. They didn’t know he’d been expelled just yet and neither did I. There are a ton of cops monitoring campus, I find out what happened, wave of relief.
Kid sends a full novel of text to my friend saying he will never forgive me for ruining his life and getting him expelled. Acts like he did nothing wrong. The usual.
The day I go back im in class with Mrs Batshit and Selena and Mrs Batshit is saying “don’t talk about it” then also saying he was expelled because he made a joke towards some kids at a different school and it went awry, which was BS and me and Selena said it was. She shushed us even though we actually knew what was going on. Kept saying nonsense and shushing us. We’re frustrated but that’s the last we really talk about it.
I didn’t capture everything that happened but it’s a hard thing to relive and I don’t want to think too much about it. I’ve had worse experiences but they’re just assault and this one is at least somewhat entertaining in its weirdness. I swear I’ll never get “I can smell the period on people” out of my head.
TL;DR: a guy in high school wanted to date me, have me do drugs with him, sent me creepy messages etc and I wasn’t interested; among other things he made threats online about shooting people a little after the Planned Parenthood incident (worst timing ever) and blamed his resulting expulsion on me, saying I ruined his life.