Chapter 28

As I’ve explained, when it comes to girls, often the best strategy is to take whatever I think I should do and then do the opposite. Following my own instincts, I’ve found, generally leads to disaster.

And Lilly was no exception.

I didn’t get a cell phone until after freshman year of college. I was, like, one of the last people in my generation to get one. So I was a little behind the learning curve. I did not know, for example, that caller ID was a standard feature on all cell phones. And this created problems.

I had Lilly’s number from when we used to go on coffee dates. And even though she’d explicitly told me she did not like me, that she liked Sam Dayne, and even though we’d had the most awkward boating date ever, a date so uncomfortable that any guy of at least average intelligence would shrink away from contact with that girl ever again, even in spite of all this, I figured we should keep in touch over the summer. Just in case, you know, she changed her mind. So I called her. Every. Single. Day. She never picked up, though, so I figured she was just busy. I did not realize that her cell phone was recording each missed call, and furthermore, that she was most likely ignoring all the calls in the first place. I didn’t want her to know how often I was calling, though—I might have been naive, but I wasn’t stupid—so I left a voice mail only once a month, imagining she’d think I was calling only once a month, too. “Hey there, it’s Josh, just wanted to say hi.… Haven’t heard back from you since I called last month.” I’m usually pretty good with technology, but somehow it took me the entire summer to figure out that my cell phone had caller ID, that I could ignore incoming calls from people with whom I did not want to speak, and, most importantly, that my phone recorded all missed and ignored calls in a list that I could review at any time. I distinctly remember the moment when I realized this. I had just parked my car and was still sitting in the driver’s seat. I thought: I have been calling her daily. All summer. That’s what, a hundred calls? I almost threw up on the dashboard.

After that, I tried to stop bothering Lilly. I still liked her, of course; that didn’t go away. But I figured I’d already put her through more than the FDA-recommended lifetime dose of uncomfortable situations. So I kept my crush under wraps from her. We hung out in the same circles for the rest of college, but I made sure only my closest friends knew I still liked her. That is, until one of them told her.

But I’m getting ahead of our story. Back to this cell phone caller ID disaster. Yeah, my instincts aren’t the best. But they aren’t the worst, either. And I know that thanks to Stella. Stella the Stalker.

Anyway, Stella and I had Statistics together sophomore year. The class was at nine thirty in the morning, which, for college, is really, really early. But I was also really, really interested in statistics, so I signed up. Every morning before class, I would eat breakfast by myself in the cafeteria. A few weeks into the semester, I noticed that when I got up to leave, this girl Stella—I didn’t actually know her name yet, so at the time she was just the emaciated-looking girl with stringy brown hair and a penchant for what appeared to be homemade dresses—would stand up, too, from her table across the room. She would follow me outside and then walk about three feet behind me all the way to class. I am not exaggerating here, people. Three feet. Silently. Never said a word. Just followed right behind me for the ten-minute walk from the cafeteria to the math building. After a few weeks of this, I couldn’t stand it any longer—I turned around and introduced myself. She took this as an invitation to walk side by side with me, which she started doing each day, still in complete silence. Sometimes, I would glance over at her desk during Statistics, and 100 percent of the time (I was able to make this calculation thanks to what I learned in the class, obviously) she was staring at me with creepy, saucer-sized eyes.

This all got to be pretty annoying, so I started trying to fake her out at breakfast. I’d get up and put my tray in the dirty-dish rack but then duck back into the food line to get a banana. Sometimes I thought I had fooled her and would be able to walk alone, but inevitably I found her waiting on the sidewalk somewhere along my route to class. She would be standing there by herself, and when I walked by, she would wordlessly fall into step beside me, like this was all totally normal.

It got worse. I played intramural soccer every Sunday afternoon on a team with my friends. I played on my crutches. I wasn’t really good or anything, but I did all right. Anyway, when I got home from my games each week, I would always have an e-mail waiting from her. The body of the e-mail would be blank; the subject line would be the score of the game with my team listed first, like “1–2” or “4–0.” But I never actually saw her on the sidelines, so I couldn’t figure out where she was getting this information. Later in the season, I realized she must live in the dorm that overlooked the field. In other words, she was sitting at her window, watching all my games and keeping track of the score. During time-outs, I would take quick glances to look for her face looming in one of the windows. I never did see it, though.

And it got worse still. She learned my class schedule and combined it with her walking routes so that in between my classes we would pass each other on the sidewalks. She figured out my weekend interests and I began spotting her sitting alone in the theater when I went with my friends to watch a movie or comedian on campus. This was when I started worrying she might be watching me sleep or something, and when I decided it all had to stop.

I had become so aware of her movements that I was basically reverse-stalking her. Like, I knew that every Wednesday at one o’clock she would be in the lobby of the campus center, sitting on the couch pretending to read while she actually watched the front doors, waiting for me to walk by. So that Wednesday, I walked right up to her in the lobby of the campus center.

“We need to talk,” I said.

From my tone, I thought it was pretty clear that the exchange wasn’t going to turn out real well for her, but she just smiled shyly, like this was the moment she’d been dreaming of for many months. She closed her book and slid it into the canvas bag sitting on the floor beside her Velcro-fastened sneakers.

“I would be pleased to talk with you, Joshua,” she said. She looked around like she was wondering if our conversation might be too special to hold in a crowded place like this one.

“Okay, here’s the thing,” I said, looking down at her on the couch. “You know how every morning you leave breakfast at the same time as me?”

Her face fell. “You noticed that?”

“Noticed? Of course—how could I not—of course I noticed! You walk beside me every single day.”

“I meant how we finish eating at the same time,” she said. “I was hoping you would just think it was coincidence.”

“Um, no, didn’t think it was coincidence,” I said. “I also noticed how you know my class schedule and follow me around between classes.”

She didn’t attempt to deny it. Instead, she tried to distract me with flattery.

“I find pleasure in being with you. You are different from other men.”

It was strange. I’d spent my whole life trying to become a man, but when she actually used that word, it made me shiver with discomfort.

“That kind of thing is not normal,” I said.

“But if I didn’t follow you around, how would I get to see you?” she asked. She looked genuinely confused, like everything so far had been part of the early stages of a normal relationship, and the only problem here was my not being comfortable with her entirely reasonable actions.

I decided two things in that moment. Number one, she needed a wake-up call. Number two, I would be her alarm clock.

“Okay, check it out. There are three types of social encounters,” I began. “Number one, a planned encounter. That’s like when you meet someone for lunch or coffee at a set time and place. Number two, a random encounter. That’s like when you just happen to walk by someone on the way to class. With me so far?”

She nodded.

“The third type is a planned encounter disguised to look like a random encounter. That’s like when you stand in the grass and wait so you can wave at me when I walk by on my way to English Lit.”

She was quiet for a while as she considered this.

“So you don’t want to hang out with me anymore,” she concluded.

Um, what? When had we ever hung out?

It was true, though; I had no interest in hanging out. But I couldn’t say so directly. After all, I had experienced my fair share of rejection. I knew how it felt to be in her shoes. In fact, I had made some uncomfortably stalkerish moves myself, what with calling Lilly every day the previous summer. I wanted to believe that calling someone once every twenty-four hours wasn’t quite as bad as physically inserting yourself between a guy and his class multiple times each day. But still, I had to have some sympathy for Stella.

“No,” I said. “I’m happy to talk to you. I just think we should have more of the type-two encounters and less type-three.”

She stood and threw her bag over her shoulder.

“Don’t worry,” she said. “I will no longer be bothering you.”

She said this in a cool tone, as if I should feel bad and argue with her that oh, no, she isn’t a bother at all—but the truth was, my daily life would be more pleasant without her.

“Great!” I said. “Or, that is, I mean, it’s great that we’re on the same page now.”

The next morning, I enjoyed an incredibly peaceful walk to Statistics, and then another Stella-less journey back to my dorm. If I had known it would be this easy, I would have explained the three types of social encounters a long time ago. But later that day, as I walked by the library on the way to my next class, I shivered as I passed the spot where she always used to stand. She wasn’t there, but I felt sure she was watching me. Maybe I was being paranoid, I told myself. Just to be sure, I looked up at the library and scanned all four floors of windows for her face. Nothing. Whew! I was getting paranoid. I smiled and shook my head as I continued walking. I passed by a tree that had been blocking my view of a few of the windows. That’s when I glanced back at the library and saw her face pressed against the glass on the second story. I was so startled that I literally jumped, nearly knocking over some girls walking behind me. I apologized and then looked up at the window again, but she was gone.

When I got back to my dorm, I wrote her an e-mail. “Watching from windows still counts as a type-three encounter.”

She replied a few hours later with a four-thousand-word e-mail that contained a summary of every conversation we had ever had, including what each of us had been wearing on that day, as well as her interpretations of the significance of the T-shirts I had chosen (e.g., I wore this shirt on that day because it was the same shirt I was wearing when we met). Her e-mail was creepily written in the third person, referring to herself as “the girl” and me as “the boy.” It concluded (eventually) with a promise to neither talk to me nor watch me from any windows ever again.

And Stella was true to her word. After that I saw her only once every couple months, usually at the library if I was there studying or whatever. I’d say Hi, Stella, but she would ignore me. Which was kind of awkward—but honestly, less uncomfortable than when she used to follow me around.

The thing I preferred not to admit was how much Stella reminded me of myself: the social awkwardness, the chance meetings that were not actually happening by chance. I mean, I had gone out of my way freshman year of high school to meet Liza Taylor Smith, right?

The truth is, I only thought of Stella as a stalker because I wasn’t interested in dating her. If I had been attracted to her, I might have thought her tendency to plan her life around mine was cute. That’s the thing about us human beings: If we have a crush on someone, that person’s every behavior attracts us even more. But if we don’t like that person, the very same behavior will annoy us.