Stay With Me (She's With Me #2) - Jessica Cunsolo Page 0,14
made me uneasy. Someone who wanted to hurt me was out there, and he wouldn’t let a little police APB or locked door stop him.
During those weeks the phone calls started. The person on the other end of the line would hang up immediately if I answered. I was getting way too many hang ups from a blocked number for it to just be coincidental—it had to be Tony. I screened my calls, only answering for my mother, but calls from the blocked caller didn’t stop.
There was never a voice mail, but I could hear him on the other end of the line—waiting, planning, plotting—a promise that he’d never forget about me. I told the police, of course, and they tried tracking the calls, but he always hung up right away, even when the police urged me to engage him in conversation.
The death threats were unnerving when they started coming in. Notes in the mail directed to me told me how I deserved to die, and how he was going to get justice, no matter what the cost to him was, by making sure I was dead, just like his daughter, Sabrina. My mom took my key to the mailbox away when she found out, but I knew they were still coming, that she was reading them.
I couldn’t sleep, I couldn’t eat. I was a shell of a girl named Thea going through the motions while living in constant fear. I started learning jujitsu, and working out to build up strength and learn some self-defense, but I was always nervous; I could never be strong enough to beat him.
The last straw came when my friend dropped me off after school to find black spray paint all over the light-pink walls of my room. I stood still, shell-shocked, in my room, silently turning around and taking in the vandalism. Everything on the surface of my four walls was covered in death threats. Black spray paint over my white furniture, over my mirror, over my posters, anything that touched the wall was included in the canvas of spreading hate.
That was when I realized that Tony was beyond your run of the mill revenge seeker. He was like a wild animal who knew he had his prey caught in his trap, and now he was just toying with his food for amusement. He was teasing me, taunting me, letting me know that I was under his mercy and he could get to me with ease, whenever he wanted. That was when I had my very first panic attack.
After I had calmed down enough, I went to my neighbor’s house, where I called my mom and the police. Of course they couldn’t find him. They couldn’t even prove that it had been him, and that was when it was decided that the best thing to do was just to relocate me. They wanted me to pick up and move to a different state, leaving all my friends, my school, and my identity behind.
The federal agents became involved because of who Tony was, and they set everything up. Apparently, he wasn’t your average father-turned-stalker, but an actual person with a criminal past. They gave me and my mom new identities, a new house, and a new car, and set her up at a new job. They continuously stressed how important it would be to keep my real identity and story a secret. If I slipped up, then Tony could find me. No social media, no posting things on the internet, and especially no telling people.
In January, I became Isabella Smith, one of the most common names in the United States. I dyed my hair blond and cut it into a short bob, wearing it straight every day instead of my natural long, brown curls. I wore thick-framed glasses that didn’t have a prescription in them, and started a new life.
It was good for a while. I let my guard down, made friends, went to school events, and just lived a normal life. I got to enjoy about three months in peace, and started being hopeful about my future. Maybe Tony had given up on looking for me?
It soon became evident that he hadn’t, as suddenly that new reality came crashing down on me as the same patterns as before started happening again. The calls to my new phone number, where all I heard was heavy breathing. Then he started leaving voice mails, telling me that he’d find me and make me pay, make me suffer.