Leave the stalker on read.

You decide not to respond, hoping that by ignoring her you’ll avoid fueling the fire. It’s all so bizarre and kind of annoying, and you really don’t know how to handle it all.

You begin to close your phone, but then you realize that you now have access to her account. You check out her bio; her name is Tina, she’s 18 and goes to Holy Cross, the all-girls private school near your neighborhood. You begin to scroll through her photos. It’s mostly selfies. At first you think it’s eerie that she has an account filled with dozens of the same close-up selfies of her face, but then you realize that she has slightly different makeup in each one. You admit to yourself that she is very pretty, with alluring cheekbones and a perfect complexion. It’s her eyes that get you though. She does them very well, without using too much eyeliner or eye shadow. You wonder if you could have handled things differently.

Then you get another message from her: “leaving me on read? After all of this? You could have just apologized, but now I think I want to make you my next project. Goodnight darling ;)”.

What could that mean, you wonder? You got nervous at first, but then you relaxed, deciding that you couldn’t be in any real danger. You have a whole foot of height on her, and she seems really weak. What could possibly go wrong?

You put your phone down and drift off to sleep.

A few days go by without incident. You go to class, do homework, eat and play video games. The monotony of life is bearable because you know that the novelty of college is just around the corner. The weekend arrives sooner than you expected.

You decide to take your ball and go to the basketball court on the outskirts of your neighborhood. It’s down a long path from the houses, surrounded by a short fence and sitting next to a creek. You prop up your phone and record videos of half-court shots. When you finally make one, you delete the misses from the video and post the made shot on IG. You get a message almost instantly. It’s from Tina:

“Why’d you delete all the other shots?”

A shiver rolls across your body. You look around nervously. You ignore her message and get back to shooting around, propping up your phone for more video. One of your shots bounces off the rim and over the backboard. The ball clears the fence and rolls down to the creek.

You walk through the gate and trot over to the shallow water where your ball is floating. You step in slowly, your shoes and socks getting soaked as soon as you go in. You lean over and reach for the ball. It spins in the water as you struggle to grip it. You stretch out and finally get the ball. You step back on dry land, looking at your shoes as you shift your weight, watching the water squish out of your water-logged feet.

Suddenly you hear footsteps in the grass getting closer. You look up. It’s Tina.

“There you are, I was wondering where you ran off to!” She is in her school uniform. Her hands are behind her back. There are purple bruise marks on both sides of her nose between her eyes, with a small bandage in between.