Hello, there. My name is Darla. I'd like to tell you a story about when I was twelve years old and in the sixth grade. Those were the good old days, weren't they? Well, maybe for you, but not for me. I had a lot of bad things happen to me when I was twelve. This story is about one of those things.
I had my typical crush on a crude thirteen-year-old boy named Elias. By the way, this all happened to me after his friend, Andy, made suggestive comments to me about what Elias wanted to do to me. After that, I was really scared. But that's a different story. This one is about the time Elias stalked me.
Back then, Elias and I rode the same bus home after school. One day, I decided to get off at his house. It was probably the second time I had done so. Everyone on the bus was cheering and chanting my name, and I liked the attention. I guess that's why I did it.
After the bus left and Elias had gone into his house, I began to walk home. I was half a block from my apartment building when I had a feeling I was being followed. I'd had a lot of those feelings back then, and they were almost always wrong. So I expected to see nothing as I turned around, but was surprised to see Elias's family van following slowly behind me.
Suddenly, the van pulled up to the curb in front of me. As soon as it stopped, Elias got out of the passenger side and started barreling toward me. I was frozen stiff. I didn't know what to do. All I remember thinking was, "He's going to hurt me. The bastard's going to hurt me."
He pushed me up against a tree and grabbed both of my wrists. I tried to scream, but nothing came out. No one was around to help me anyway. The driver of the van was staying put. Elias moved his body closer to mine to prevent me from moving, He brushed his lips against my left cheek as he whispered in my ear.
"You keep asking for something, you're eventually gonna get it," he said. "This is the icing on the top of the cake, sugar. You're gonna get what's coming to you, and I'm gonna give it to you."
I tried to knee him in the groin, but I couldn't move my legs. I was completely trapped. He sensed my attempt and let go of my left wrist just long enough to deliver a quick, hard slap to my face.
"You do that again, and you'll be even more sorry than you already are," he breathed into my face.
Then, without another word, he opened the passenger door of the van, got in, and was gone before my brain could really register what had just happened. The next day at school, he acted as if nothing had happened. From then on, I kept my distance from him the best I could.