You know those people who you meet, and they’re just off. Well that happened several years ago. And I can’t seem to escape him.

When I was fourteen, my class went on a school field trip to Ellis Island. Me being me, I went off from the group and explored everything myself. I touched everything, feeling the grooves of the paintings, the notches in all the wood, the dipped in and out. Now I couldn’t see the paintings, but the clumped up paint, and the ridges in each and every burlap canvas, ran beautifully under my fingers.

When I was younger, I got attacked by a dog. It left me blind. It didn’t make me scared of dogs, just skeptical around them.

“Ma’am, do you need help finding your group?” A man called from behind me. The tone in his voice gave me shivers but the good kind.

“No,” I responded, “I’m okay.”

And thats where it started, we meet each other and I got his number, and then I fell back into the group. I noticed how smiley he seemed to be, I couldn’t see it, but he would giggle at everything. He knew exactly what to say, and was so optimistic about me being blind, as well as everything else in the world.

“I think I just met the happiest person in the world!” I told my best friend Anya.

“Yeah, yeah, by the way I rolled my eyes.” She said.

After the trip, we went back to Rhode Island. Home. I called him. He said his name was Carter, and he was there for a trip too. Well thats an odd coincidence, I thought.

We became best friends. Talking everyday, trying to be normal, long distance.

There was something off about him, and I just couldn’t pin point it. He was again super happy about everything, his grandma died and he didn’t cry at all, nor did he even mourn. It was like someone took his emotions and crumbled them in a million pieces, into nothing.

When he turned seventeen and I was sixteen, he decided to come down to Rhode Island. He’d been before and his aunt lived here.

We had a time and place set up. It was perfect, I was going to see my best friend. Until it wasn’t so perfect. We hung out the whole day, we got food, went to the park, went swimming, all of it. But he was weirdly happy now. He kept saying how good it is that I’m blind. And how happy he was that my best friend wasn’t there.

It concerned me a lot, he never got excited, he was just too happy. My head began to ache. My legs hurt from swimming so much.

I told him I wanted to go home, and that I was tired and needed to take my meds. When I told him, he flipped out on me. Fear raced through my head as I could hear him swimming closer to me in the pool, he was almost growling, but also not.

I swam towards the stairs, or where I thought they were. What? I thought, they were gone. No no no no, this can’t be happening. He grabbed me and slammed me back down in the pool. When I came up he was gone. I couldn’t hear his breathing, him moving, nothing, it was still. Completely still.

That was three years ago, he found me. He stalks me at night tell me how much he loves that I’m blind. And the police call me crazy.