'Scary' Storys

Friends.

When I was seven years old, I was walking to my babysitter's house all by myself. She only lived a block from the schoolyard, I'd done it all the time.

This car pulls up beside me on the road, and the driver keeps gesturing to me to come closer and shouting 'Come here. COME HERE!' I'm frozen on the sidewalk and shaking my head 'no' while my knuckles turn white clinging to my backpack.

All he says before driving off is 'Stay away from Christina.' And then I never saw him again.

Christina was one of my on again/off again friends in grade school, along with another girl who alternated between hating me and being buddy-buddy. I had completely forgotten about it after a while, and went on being on again/off again with both of them.

In fifth grade, the other girl invited me to the pop machine in the back hall at lunch. Cool, okay. Quality time with a girl I've known since I was a baby. Sure. We get back to the classroom and Christina tells me that people were playing with my lunch and hid my stuff, but she was 'nice enough' to bring it back for me. I started drinking the pop I'd brought for lunch and something was really off. I spit it out and ran for the water fountain to rinse my mouth out.

Turns out, Christina and her sister had topped up my drink with Lysol. If I'd drank much more I probably would've been stupidly sick. The police were called, and a restraining order was put on both of them. It was delightfully ineffective however, because the school was so small there was no separate class to put them in. They got three and four day suspensions.

I have no idea if the two events are related, who that man was, or how he knew how bad Christina was at the time. But that memory sticks with me to this day