Real Encounters

*I never got to meet my stalker*

I live in a small town in the Midwest. It's super safe, the crime rate is pretty low and consists of mostly domestic disputes and traffic violations. There's only about 20,000 people in the town, and it seems like I see someone I know or at least recognize out in public every single day.

Back in 2008, I was about to turn 19 and wanted to have a "real" party for my birthday. I graduated from a private, Christian high school the year before and hadn't ever partied before, even during my first year at a state university. I just wasn't ever interested because my friends weren't, either. I was just the small town girl at a big university who didn't really get noticed, other than the guys on my boyfriend' dorm floor asking what I was doing with him (they were hitting on me, but I loved my boyfriend).

That year, I decided, was going to be different. I had dropped out of college (stupid, I know) and broken up with my boyfriend. I had a few new friends who did party and they seemed to always be talking about how much fun it was to go to house parties. I wanted my 19th birthday to be the first time I got drunk, so I had my older friends help me buy alcohol and invite all of our close friends over to my house.

The night came and went; fun was had and my friends commented on how great my house was for parties. I lived alone in a three bedroom house with an attached garage, so people who wanted to stay over could stay in one of the bedrooms and people who wanted to smoke had easy access to the garage. We sometimes moved my car out of the garage and played beer pong in the garage, too. My friends really pushed the idea of having more parties, and I loved the thought of meeting new people, so we started partying at my house every weekend.

It wasn't hard to get people to come to our parties. It was August and there were three colleges around our town. More than once, my house was full of people I didn't know. I woke up a lot with random strangers in my house, but one of my friends always took responsibility for inviting each stranger over. It was no big deal to me, I would just clean up the house, go to work during the week, and have another party on the weekend. These parties weren't crazy or anything, there weren't any drugs involved, just alcohol, which I thought was totally safe.

One day in September when I was leaving for work, I went to shut the garage door and noticed that the garage door remote wasn't on the car sun visor where I usually kept it. I thought maybe it had fallen off so I got out and searched under the seats. I was more annoyed than scared, because I thought I had maybe taken it out while I was drunk or something to close the garage door instead of using the remote attached to the wall by the entrance into the house. I shut the garage door with the wall remote and went through the house to get back into my car and go to work.

That night at work, I clocked out for lunch and as soon as I entered the parking lot my phone rang. It was a blocked number, the caller ID just said "unavailable". I thought it was one of my friends calling me as a prank, because that's something that we did a lot in high school. I answered, expecting someone to ask me something stupid in a weird accent, but there was nothing. I mean, complete silence. I thought it was weird, but just hung up. I didn't want to waste my lunch break dealing with stupid pranks.

Everything continued on as normal as I worked the rest of my shift. We closed the store and I was walking to my car when I got another call -- it was from "unavailable" again. The same silence rang through the phone when I answered. Absolutely nothing could be heard on the other line. I really thought it was one of my friends, then, because I hadn't had any missed calls and how would this person be calling me as soon as I clocked out and had my phone on me? My friends knew my schedule, so that was the only explanation.

I called my friend Lacy and she said that she had no idea what I was talking about. I didn't believe her at first, but then her boyfriend verified that she had been with him and they did NOT call me. I wasn't sure what to think, but I brushed it off and forgot about it as soon as I got home.