12 and counting

LINK: 12 and counting

Currently listening to: Stan – Eminem

Dear Mister I’m-Too-Good-To-Call-Or-Write-My-Fans,
This’ll be the last package I ever send your ass
It’s been six months and still no word. I don’t deserve it?
I know you got my last two letters;
I wrote the addresses on ’em perfect
So this is my cassette I’m sending you, I hope you hear it
I’m in the car right now, I’m doing 90 on the freeway
Hey Slim, I drank a fifth of vodka, you dare me to drive?
You know the song by Phil Collins “In the Air Tonight”

What do you remember best about being 12 years old?

Prompt snagged from: NY Times

I musta been what… in the 8th grade at this point? I was already out of step with everyone else—skipping a year of school had made me younger, smaller, easier to single out. By then I was still recovering from the 7th grade nightmare.

When I was only 11 years old, I became the target of a boy named Sam, an international student from Hong Kong. He was 16 years old. He had a car and could drive. He was old enough to be in high school. But for reasons I’ll never understand, he was placed in the 8th grade, while I was in the 7th grade. A child who should have technically been in grade school. That five-year gap felt enormous at the time, almost predatory. From the moment we crossed paths, he fixated on me with the intensity of an apex predator marking its prey.

We met through a girl in orchestra, we were both violinists. She was dating his best friend, also a foreign exchange student. One day, we all had lunch together. That was the moment everything changed. From then on, Sam became fixated on me. He asked me out relentlessly, cornered me, and offered to drive me home. Every time I said no, it seemed to make him angrier and try harder to get me to go with him. Cutting ties with him and the others didn’t solve anything. In fact, it only made things worse.

He began stalking me in ways that seeped into every part of my life. He’d call my house and hang up, again and again. He loitered by my locker until I started avoiding it during lunch, my books and belongings essentially held hostage by his presence. Walking down the hallways, I could feel his stare burning into me, following me from behind. I was only a child, and his warped obsession wrapped around me like a trap I couldn’t escape.

When I started sitting at lunch with my neighborhood friends, most of them were Caucasian, things escalated even further. There was an Italian boy named Tony, who caught on immediately. Sometimes, he would sit directly between me and Sam, blocking his line of sight like a human shield. “What’s up with that guy staring at you?” he asked. He already knew the answer.

Then came the notes.

They began appearing in my locker, folded pieces of paper laced with hate and menace. “If I can’t have you, no one can.” “I’ll kill you and your family.” “We Asians need to stay together.” My hands would tremble as I read them, my chest tightening with dread. Each day, unlocking my locker felt like opening a coffin… was there going to be another threat waiting for me? I’d tear them up immediately, shredding them into pieces small enough to erase the evidence. I wanted to pretend none of it existed, even as the fear hollowed me out from the inside.

By mid-year, I couldn’t handle lunch anymore. I began hiding out in the library, too nauseous to eat. My stomach was constantly in knots, and when I did try to eat, the food wouldn’t stay down. I was hypervigilant, like a cornered animal—flinching at shadows, eyes daring over my shoulder, convinced that he was always behind me. At night, I had no respite. I had nightmares of him dragging me from my bed. The sound of footsteps in the dark made my heart lurch into my throat. I felt like I was going out of my mind. My weight dropped to 92 pounds. I was 11 years old, wasting away in fear.

I told no one except Tony. Not my parents. Definitely, not my teachers. No one. I was too ashamed, too afraid people would think I’d “led him on.” Worse, I was afraid Sam might retaliate against my family or friends if I spoke out. I’d seen the way he glared at Tony, the quiet perilous look behind his eyes, and it was enough to make me cut Tony off too. I didn’t want to put him at risk. I isolated myself because I thought it was the only way to keep everyone safe.

Every day after school, when I boarded the bus, I’d press my face against the window, quickly scanning the streets, praying I wouldn’t see his car following. That became my ritual, survival through vigilance. I was in fight-or-flight mode for the entire year.

It wasn’t until he finally graduated from 8th grade and moved on to high school that I could breathe again. And even then, I never felt truly safe until I heard that he’d gone back to Hong Kong. This was a huge relief to me… otherwise the two of us would have crossed paths again in high school and I don’t think I had it in me to do it all over again…