Let's Not Meet Again

Craig and Laney

Warning: Mention of rape/sexual abuse.

This began in my sophomore year of high school, in English class. There was this guy in my class, "Craig". Craig is a slightly overweight, light skinned guy, with an awkward sort of aura about him. I sat relatively close to him and he was/is friends with some of my friends, and that's how we came to know each other.

At first, he was a pretty typical class clown sort of guy, acted up, didn't do his work, slept through half the class, ect. Anyway, we started working on a small group project for class, and I was partnered up with him. The project was on a matter of opinions, so we had to talk with each other and come up with some valid points for why we felt the way we did.

After that project, we were friends, I guess you could say. He always acted flirty with me, more playful, and tried to impress me by working hard on the mentioned project. So, I wasn't super surprised when he asked me for my phone number. I gave it to him, and that's when things started to really feel strange.

He sent me countless flirty texts, calling me beautiful, telling me I was a lovely person, assuring me in my moments of panic and depression. Overall, he was a nice guy, but I wasn't necessarily interested in dating him. Whenever he would start to act more flirtatious, I would thank him and try to move on to a different topic.

Pretty quickly after we started talking outside of school, he offered for me to come hang out at his house. Something about it made me feel wary, especially when he mentioned his parents wouldn't be home. I felt weird, but not necessarily threatened or panicked by him. I shot down the first offer, but he kept pushing it, saying we could just watch movies or play games or something.

Eventually this kind of drove me away from being his friend. I just wasn't interested in being more than friends with the guy, and it only got weirder that he started to get to know my friends. He would show up uninvited to places where he somehow figured out my friends and I did, much to my dismay, and be his typical self. Something about him truly bothered me and I kept trying to push it aside, just for the excuse that he was just a little awkward or he didn't really know about how to approach girls.

Months after I started to avoid him, ignoring his texts, asking to be moved to the other side of the room, generally darting to different places when I saw him, I found a reason for my discomfort. I had a girl in one of my other classes, "Laney", start to talk with me. I was really shy and in a class for freshman because of poor grades.

Despite this, Laney and I became pretty quick friends. At some point, Laney and I were kidding around about some of the guys we used to talk to or date, and I mentioned Craig. Her face went completely pale, and for once, I saw her actually speechless. And suddenly she stopped talking to me, in class, in the hallway, I'd see her and try to say hi and she would completely avoid me.

Days later she gave me a note, asking for me to meet her in the art room during our lunch so we could talk. Of course I agreed to do so and when I got to the room, it was completely empty besides Laney and the art teacher in the office with the door closed. She ended up telling me that over the summer she went to a party where Craig was, ended up smoking weed and drinking, and went to a back bedroom to pass out for a while. While she was back there, Craig had come into the closed room, noticed her there and very obviously impaired, and started to touch her inappropriately.

She was so out of it that she started to slip into unconsciousness, but she remembers she kept saying "no" to him. The last thing she said she remembered was him taking off his pants. And she woke up the next morning, completely naked in the bed she passed out in, with terrible pain in her lower body.

As a sexual abuse survivor myself, I told her that she should tell the police or get therapy. She said that I was one of the only people she'd told, but that she would get more comfortable with talking first, and that she would talk to someone. I said okay, she was crying by the end of it and I ended up just hugging her there. I wish that was the end of it, but it wasn't.

Now having a legitimate reason to avoid Craig, I did so as much as possible. Going as far as asking my guidance counselor (who was a very close friend of mine at this point) to leave classes early so that I didn't see him in the hallways. The weird thing is, I saw him more anyway, when I would leave classes or when I would go to the bathroom or the nurse, he always seemed to be there. And he was always looking in my general direction, even trying to approach me some days.

I spent two more years avoiding this guy at school, blocking him on social media, avoiding the people I used to call friends, trying to get help for Laney, ect. He never seemed to be too much of a thorn in my side, because as soon as I began avoiding him, he pretty much left me alone. Until I got into my freshman year of college, I hadn't heard from him at all. We ended up going to the same community college due to a scholarship that both of us managed to get through the high school. I saw Craig occasionally as I was darting to my classes, and in the first week of going to my classes, I got a few friend requests from people I'd met so far.

One had no pictures of a person, just art as their profile picture. Not wanting to come off as rude if I had met them and just not remembered their name, I added them. Occasionally they would send me supportive messages in regards to things I posted on Facebook. I said thanks and kind of moved on, not thinking too much of them. A few weeks ago, I made a post saying that if people sent me pictures of themselves, I'd draw them. The person I added requested that I draw them, and I asked them for a picture so that I could do so.

I kind of leapt back, seeing a picture of Craig that was very close up of his face. It shocked me so badly that I immediately blocked the person on that page as well. I was talking with a friend at the time, she knew about what Craig had done, and was telling her that he found me again. She immediately told me that he messaged her too and that he was generally being a creep to her. She also blocked him on both of his pages.

Thankfully, I don't go to the same community college anymore and I've only seen him once since I blocked him again. I live in a very small town, so it's pretty common to see a bunch of people you know when you go out somewhere. I wonder all the time what would have happened if I had gone to hang out with Craig. I know it isn't super creepy compared to some of the situations on here, but I felt it belonged here better than other places.

So Craig, let's not meet again.