He first payed attention to me when I was a ninth grader. I was young for my grade, only thirteen, small, and shy.  I would later learn he was in the grade above me, but he was three years older.

I was walking home from the bus stop, about a mile through a not-great neighborhood. I was also carrying a box of chocolates, you know the school-fundraiser chocolates? Well, I had a box of those, and a heavy backpack that dwarfed my tiny frame. He got off a bus right behind mine, and as I walked through a small park, he tapped me on the shoulder,  introducing himself as Tyler, and offering to carry my box. I agreed, since I had seen him before, and he seemed pretty nice.

He took my box, and we started walking in the direction of my house. I don't remember the details of what we talked about, but I do remember that, by the middle of the walk, he had convinced me to play a game of truth-or-dare. It started out innocently enough, but as we stopped at my house, he dared me to kiss him. I blushed, and refused the dare. But I was interested in him, and he was nice, and so I took my chocolates and went inside, not telling my mom that I had walked home with some boy.

We didn't talk for a while. His bus came later than mine, and so I was usually walking home by the time he got to the bus stop. It was near the end of the year, so the school year ended without us talking again, although I saw him a few times.

The next year, I switched schools, and the school I was at shared a bus with Tyler's high school. We talked several times, and I thought we were just friends. He gave me his number, although I never texted him, and he pressured me to date him, although I didn't want to. After a while, I got really uncomfortable with how often he asked me out, despite me telling him I didn't want to date him. I stopped talking to him, and I stopped sitting near him on the bus. He would still tell people we were dating, which I didn't like, and I eventually asked my school if there was anything they could do to get him to leave me alone. He suddenly stopped riding the bus, and although I never asked him, I assume they kicked him off. The problems didn't stop there, unfortunately. If anything, they got worse.

He started following me home. His little brother went to school where my bus dropped off, so he was often there still when I got off the bus. He would follow me partway home, and then turn around and go back. He caught up to me a few times, and although I tried to get him to leave me alone, he continued asking me out, asking me to sleep with him, trying to get me to go out with him. I even called 911 once because I was scared, but they told my mom that since he eventually left me alone, and since I didn't know where he lived, they couldn't do anything.
It came to a head one day, when I was walking home from the bus stop. I had a minor concussion from a PE incident, but since my mom was at work, I still had to walk home. I remember being dizzy, having a massive headache, and I wasn't thinking clearly. I hadn't seen him in a few days, but he was there that day. He started walking beside me, talking to me, and everything was fuzzy. He asked me to homecoming, and I decided to tell him that I was dating someone, a girl from my class, thinking that telling him I liked girls would get him to leave me alone. It didn't, and he started trying to kiss me. I wound up calling my older brother John, who got his bike and came to get me. John ended up decking Tyler, and I rode home on his handlebars. I followed up with my report to the school the next day, and at the end of the week, I was called into the office to find out that Tyler had been expelled from his school, and my school district had told him he could not come on district property. He stopped following me, and I thought it was over.

Now, the way my high school is set up, underclassmen take their classes at one campus, and the upperclassmen take their courses at a college campus in the downtown area of my city. After my tenth-grade year, I moved with the rest of my classmates to the downtown campus, and we started our classes. We were given a lot more freedom as juniors than we had as sophomores. We made friends with a lot of the college kids, and we hung out downtown or in the cafeteria area during free periods. Our particular group generally sat in an alcove area with two tables, although we only took up one of them. The other table was generally occupied by a few people studying, talking or on their laptops. I was sitting with my friends, defending myself from Ley, who thought it was funny to try and startle someone. We were laughing, until I looked up to see Tyler, at the table across from ours, staring directly at me. I was shocked, and I instinctively moved backwards, putting Ley between myself and him, before quickly gathering my belongings and running up to the library. Ley, who was one of the college students, and Vivie, a fellow junior, followed me, concerned. I explained to them that the guy across from me was Tyler, the creep I had told them about, the guy that had stalked me for almost a year. Unfortunately, although I went to my school, since Tyler was a college student, they couldn't do anything. I went to the campus police, but they couldn't do anything since he hadn't done anything to me while at the college, except sitting at a table near me, which isn't against campus code. That was the day that I stopped walking around campus alone. I was always with one of the college guys, either Ley or one of the other people in my group. I never walked anywhere by myself, even if it was the bathroom, I walked with a group or in hallways with lots of people. I've seen him around several times, and he looks at me, stares at me. He hasn't come back to the table, but I can feel him watching me. He tried to talk to me once, but Ley shut that down, threatening to beat the crap out of him. I'm a senior now, and I still see Tyler around. I just can't wait till I graduate and can get out of this school.