Let's Not Meet Again

Didn't Go To Hotel Swimming Pools For A Long Time After This

So, this happened quite a few years ago. I was probably twelve or thirteen at the time, and was staying at a hotel with my parents, aunt, uncle, and cousin, who's a year older than I am (and thus thirteen or fourteen at the time). One night, our parents decided to go get coffee together at the little cafe in the lobby of this hotel. Now, it's important to know that this was one of those hotels that was set up over a few buildings with it's hallway set up outside the hotel (like a multi-story motel). You could access the halls by stairs on the corner of the buildings. The cafe my parents went to was several buildings away from the one where we were staying, but that wasn't a problem for my cousin and I, seeing as the pool was just downstairs. At about eight o'clock, we texted our parents on her flip-phone, put on our bathing suits, and went downstairs to the pool.

Things were fine at first. We swam around and caught up on things that had happened at school, the boyfriends she'd broken up with, ect. Eventually, we ended up just quietly floating on our backs, watching the stars. Without looking over at my cousin, I said something to the effect of 'Wow, nice night, huh?' in a weird voice, hoping to earn a laugh. When I heard a guy's chuckle, though, I sat up in the water really fast, my face quickly growing red. I hadn't noticed that I had floated away from my cousin, and was now next to some guy. He was probably in his early twenties, and he offered me a friendly glance, an eyebrow raising.

"Yeah, I guess it is."

At thirteen, I was cripplingly shy, so I just gave a nervous laugh and high-tailed it back over to my cousin, who promptly burst into laughter and started making fun of me, jokingly demanding if he was cute and if he really had laughed at the dumb voice I had made. I was too embarrassed to find the situation funny, and stayed really close to her, not daring to glance back down to the other end of the pool where he was now sitting on the edge. My cousin, Lizzy, just moved on, chatting about random things as we waded in the pool. She got progressively quieter, though, eventually playfully splashing me to get my attention.

"Your new boyfriend is still watching us," She noted, and even though she was still grinning, her voice didn't sound quite so teasing anymore. I glanced over to where, sure enough, he was still sitting on the edge of the pool, watching us. She splashed me again. "Dude! Don't pay him any attention. You may not know much about guys, but I do, and the trick is to just ignore him." She wasn't exactly wrong, I was home-schooled and didn't ever talk to any guys older than I was, and in my eyes she was an expert on worldly wisdom. I watched her face, mimicking her and playfully splashing back.

"Maybe we should go get mom, or your mom, or something," I said, as she shook her head.

"No, let's just go back to the hotel room. I don't want my mom to freak out." That seemed like a good idea to both of us. Her mom was kind of terrifying, when she was mad. "We can text her when we get up there."

I nodded, moving and pushing myself out of the pool, grabbing our towels and shoes. She made some joke about what was going on, but I didn't hear it-- the guy was standing up, too, though he seemed to be pretty casual about getting his own things. When I looked back at her, her expression confirmed she had seen it, but she just kept putting on her shoes. I followed suit, walking close behind her when she turned to head towards the stairs. We began walking up them, both of us a little nervous but trusting it was just coincidence until we heard footsteps behind us on the stairs. A breif glance down showed the same guy just a flight behind us, meeting my gaze with a little grin. He didn't seem drunk or high, at least from my sheltered perspective.

"Lizzy?" I said, quietly trying to alert her that he was so close. She was moving up the stairs much faster now.

"I know, lets go to the wrong floor, we can loop back around and then just... go to our rooms. We'll call mom once we get there." She promised, seeming more strained, her pretty face screwed up a bit with anxiety. As an avid reader of mystery, it seemed like the best possible choice, so we got off two floors early and speed-walked down the outdoor hall and around the corner. As soon as we were out of sight, Lizzy grabbed my hand, taking off at a run and nearly jerking me off my feet.

Before that moment, I hadn't been legitimately scared, but fear is infectious. I squeezed her hand, keeping up pace as footsteps that weren't ours began echoing on the same floor we had chosen to loop around on. We whipped around the next corner, and the next, until we breathlessly found the stairs again and took them two at a time.

It prompted a high-pitched squeal from Lizzy, who, at this point, was more dragging me along than anything else. I was scared out of my wits and practically paralyzed, tripping up the stairs and down the hall on our floor. She jammed the key into our room's door and pushed me inside, slamming the door and drawing the blinds as soon as we were inside, bursting into tears as soon as the door was locked. I felt numb. She was crying more from adrenaline than anything, but after she had calmed down she wasted no time picking up the phone and trying to call her mom, who didn't pick up, then my mom, who, similarly, didn't have her phone on.

At the age of twelve, it felt like we must have waited hours sitting on our bed, hugging each-other and shivering from still wearing wet bathing-suits. We did end up calming down, though, offering each-other quiet rationalizations of what had happened. Maybe we had just picked that guy's floor. Maybe he hadn't been trying to follow us. When your scared, it's honestly surprisingly easy to eventually just believe things were all coincidence.

Much calmer, we decided to do a really dumb thing: Go out to the car to get Lizzy's activity bag, full of snacks and her Gameboy. It seemed like an alright idea at the time, since we both believed it had just been a coincidence, and since we were both starving. We wrapped up in towels, she grabbed her mom's keys and her cell-phone, and we made a plan at the hotel-room door: we lock ourselves in the car if this guy comes back, and call whatever numbers we can think of. If he appears while we were walking back, we'd go to the lobby and find our parents. It seemed pretty foolproof, at the time. Now, just kind of horror story dumb.

Nothing happened until we got to the parking-lot in front of our building, when we hear a voice shout at us from one of the halls, "Hey, girls! Where the hell do you think you're going, cuties?" I looked back behind us, to where creep-guy was leaning on the rails ON OUR FLOOR. Lizzy gave some sort of unearthly screech and grabbed my hand again, dragging me along before I could get a better look. She yanked open the car door and dove inside as I tumbled after her, locking the car as soon as we were both inside. As soon as she had caught her breath, she untangled herself from me and pulled herself into the back of the minivan, back into the furthest row and motioning for me to follow. I did so, hunkering down with her between the seats. I had never felt like my own breathing was loud before, but as we lay there in dead silence, it seemed ungodly loud.

Then, tapping.

I squeezed my eyes shut, not even wanting to know what he was doing outside the car. But the sound of tapping was unmistakable, like he was just drumming his fingers on the window. Lizzy pulled me tight, not moving, like he wouldn't be able to see us if we just held still enough. I don't know how long we stayed there, frozen in terror. I wasn't sure what was worse: the darkness of keeping my eyes closed, or what it would be like to look up and see him standing there.

And, just like that, he stopped. Neither of us moved for another ten, fifteen minuets. I started crying, scared to death, Lizzy just holding deathly still until she began pushing me to sit up, hands rough. I realized what she was doing a moment later when I heard her dialing on the phone, and the sound of each of our parents voicemail. She didn't call 911. Maybe now that we're older, we would have, but at thirteen, 911 was a number reserved for house-fires and murders, not guys in their twenties following little girls to the car.

Dumb, right?

We eventually ran out of our car and back to the hotel, slamming and locking the door and falling into a sobbing heap inside. When our parents did get back, they bemoaned not having had their cell phones on and soothed us, eventually convincing us that, though the guy was creepy, we hadn't been in any danger. I think they thought that was the truth, and, honestly, it was what we all wanted to believe. Lizzy and I saw him a few times after that, mostly at night when he sat by the pool and offered us a little grin every time we passed, but we were always with our parents until we left the hotel. When he saw us packing our bags and leaving with our parents, he offered us this forlorn little wave that no one but me saw, mouthing something to me. "See you later, cutie." I didn't tell my parents. It didn't seem worth it.

It's not till now that I realize how creepy this guy really was, and, while he could be just some harmless guy who thought it was hilarious to follow pre-teen girls around a hotel, I'm glad I never saw him again. So, long story short...

Let's NOT meet, creepy pool guy.