It all started with me trying to be bold and proving to my friends that I wasn’t as inhibited as they thought I was…that is the last time I will ever do that. Everything was set up and everything was a lie. I remember it like it was yesterday, probably because this went on for much longer than it should have, but how was I to know what actually was happening?

It was the summer of 2011 when all of this started. My church was at Kings Dominion for their big church youth day gathering for all churches in Minnesota and I was having a blast spending time with all of my friends, feeling a rush of energy going down all the big roller coasters and eating all of the tasty but fattening food. Kylie, Liv and I were standing in line for what seemed to be days, for one of the biggest roller coasters in the park, The Volcano. My name’s Charlotte. Kylie and Liv have been my best friends since kindergarten. About an hour into our waiting, all three of us started scoping out guys that we thought were attractive, mainly because we didn’t know them and they didn’t know us, so it was the perfect set-up…and because we knew none of us had the nerve to go up and actually talk to them. About ten minutes of scoping out the area and not having any luck, I was getting really bored.

“Ooo! He’s kinda cute! exclaimed Kylie, “What do you guys think?”

“He’s alright. He kinda has a baby face and he’s really short.” I replied back to Kylie.

“What about that guy over there?” Liv pointed out.

“He looks like a nice guy and he is cute. OK, I found him. Now you guys are crazy if you don’t think this one is attractive.” Kylie said quietly.
In that moment, I swore I found the perfect guy. Tall, not quite 6’0”, dark brown hair, brown eyes, athletic looking, dressed in very casual but nice looking clothes and he just looked like he had a great personality.

“I dare you to go over and talk to him!” exclaimed Kylie.

“I will.” I replied back. And that is how everything started. I went over and introduced myself and asked him what church he was from, what kind of things he enjoyed doing and all of those other silly questions you ask to start small talk conversations. His name was Seth. He was a sophomore at St. Thomas Academy and he was the kindest guy you would have ever met. Eventually it was time for our group to leave, so I said goodbye to him and we left.

I logged onto Twitter and I had a message waiting for me. It was Seth.

DM from @SSchroeder: “been awhile since we’ve talked but I just wanted to say hi and see how things are going with you!”

It was January. We hadn’t talked since July and now out of nowhere, he decided to send a message. I never expected to hear back from him or hear from him again. One because we lived 3 hours apart and it’d be difficult to hangout and two because it’s not like we were best friends that reconnected, we had just met each other so I figured he didn’t really care and he’d move on; boy was I wrong. Soon we were talking on a regular basis over Twitter, chit chatting about our everyday life and learning more about our likes/dislikes. About a week later, I logged on and I had a very interesting message waiting for me from a girl that I had never met before.

DM from @jenniferw3: “uh hi. i don’t know you but you should really stop talking to my boyfriend. he’s MINE so back off.”

I reread that message over and over, trying to wrap my brain around what in the world she was going off about, so I eventually sent Seth a message and asked him.

DM to @SSchroeder: “who is this jennifer girl? she is messaging me saying i need to stop talking to you bc you are her boyfriend??”

DM from @SSchroeder: “ya…she is my girlfriend BUT i’m gonna be breaking up with her soon so don’t worry about it.”

DM to @SSchroeder: “well, i really don’t want to be in the middle of this so bye.”

April came around and Seth had broken up with his girlfriend. I guess it took him awhile after he and I talked to decide what he wanted to do. He told me he thought she was too clingy and he just didn’t want any of that in his life. Sometime around the middle of April, I was at stage crew and I had a phone call coming in from an unknown number.

“Hello?” I greeted the unknown person..

“Charlotte? It’s Seth. I, uh, was just wondering, if you would go to my prom with me?" he mumbled quietly.

“Seth, you do know that I live 3 hours away, we haven’t hung out besides at Kings Dominion, I hardly know you and I’ve never met any of your family before. I highly doubt I will be able to go.” I replied back.

“Please, just ask your parents. I really want you to go with me. I will pay for the flowers and the meal before.” Seth addressed quickly.

Thinking of how the crazy idea of me, a small town girl, going 3 hours away to a prom where I wouldn’t know a soul would work, I quietly spoke, “Okay, I will ask. When is prom there?”

“May 6th at 6:30p.m.” Seth responded in a confident tone.

After talking to my parents about the situation multiple times and taking a week to think about how I was going to respond to his invitation to prom, I finally agreed to go; the only problem was I wouldn’t be able to watch my school’s prom because it was the same exact day and time.

May 5th came around and it was time to drive to the cities. Seth and I had talked earlier in the week and agreed that it would be a good idea to meet up the night before to hang out and get the jitters out. Seth gave me his address and told me to look it up on Google Maps for directions on how to get there. We agreed to meet up at his house in Mendota Heights so my mom could meet his parents, I could meet his family and get to know them a little better. Once we got to Mendota Heights, I was starting to get really nervous, like the nervous where you get extreme butterflies in your stomach. I pulled out the directions from Google Maps and read them off to mom while she drove around and around the neighborhood, desperately trying to find his house. Eventually it got to the point where we could not find his house anywhere in sight, so we pulled over and I called him.

“I’m sorry, the number you are calling is no longer in service.” Seth’s voicemail chimed over and over.

“Mom, he isn’t answering and it says his number isn’t working. I’m gonna try it again.” I quietly told her.

“Hello? Where are you? I’m sitting outside watching for you. Are you still coming?” Seth asked.

“We’re driving around trying to find your house, which we cannot seem to find. Can my mom talk to your mom please?” I snapped back at him.

“She’s outside right now and I can’t bring the phone to her.” Seth mumbled back.

Mom and I decided to go and ask different families that lived in that neighborhood if there was a family in that neighborhood with the last name of Schroeder and where they lived if there was. Everyone that we had talked to said that there wasn’t a family with the last name of Schroeder that lived in that area. At that point, I was feeling really upset and as if something wasn’t right, so I decided to call Seth back.

“Seth? It’s me. If you want to hangout, meet us at SuperAmerica within the next half-hour. We can’t find your house and it’s getting late.” I quietly told him.

“I don’t have a way to get there,” Seth stated quietly, “my dad’s at work and my mom went to the grocery store like 5 minutes ago.”

I was really starting to get frustrated with him. Every idea that I brought up, he always seemed to have an excuse for why it wouldn’t work! I finally had enough of all of the excuses. I told him it that is wasn’t going to work to hangout, that I was going back to my grandparents and how I would talk to him later. That night my mom came to me and told me how she had a bad feeling about all of this while we were driving around and when he kept saying how his parents were busy. She ended up calling the Mendota Police Station that night and found out that the address that Seth gave us was a fake address, there was never a family in that neighborhood with the last name of Schroeder and the phone number that we were calling, traced to a town that was an hour away from where they said they lived. My mind was going absolutely crazy hearing that I had possibly been scammed! Fake address? No family that ever lived there with that last name? A phone number that was traced to a completely different town that I never had heard of? What was going on? Who would do such a thing? I needed an explanation for all of this so I called Seth back, hoping to get an answer.

“So, you should probably tell me what’s going on right now. That address you gave me? It’s fake,” I continued yelling at him, “you do not actually live in that neighborhood OR in that town! What is going on? My mom needs to talk to your parents right now or I cannot go to prom with you.”

“Charlotte, I’m sorry. I don’t know what to say. She can’t talk to them because they just went to bed and…” Seth replied.

“My mom’s calling in the morning to talk to them,” I interrupted, “if she talks to them great, I will see you at prom. If she doesn’t, have fun at prom by yourself. I’m sure you can find somebody to dance with.”

The next morning Mom called their house again and Seth said that they were still sleeping and he would have them call her back once they got up. Twelve o’clock came around and we still hadn’t received a call back from them. We called them once more and once again got another excuse from Seth. That was the last straw. Mom called the hair salon and canceled my hair appointment and I locked myself in the bathroom and cried for an hour, hoping that everything that was going on wasn’t actually true. Around 1:00, I called Seth back and he said that he would be going to the school around 5 to practice for his ROTC performance that night at Grand March so he wouldn’t be able to talk until later that night after everything was over; that’s when Mom and I had the great idea of going to his school that afternoon to hopefully get some answers.

We showed up to the school around 2:30 and we found a janitor that worked there. We asked him what time the ROTC group had practice and he said that they were there at 10 that morning and they didn’t have any more practice that day. Mom and I decided to go back to watch Grand March at 7:00 that night and see if we could find Seth anywhere in the building so we could talk to him. A little after 7, I decided to call Seth to let him know that I was at the school, walking around the building looking for him. When I asked him where he was in the building, he started stuttering and couldn’t come up with a decent answer.

“I’ll be right back Char,” Mom blurted quickly, “I’m going to go ask around if anybody knows this Seth guy here.”
Ten minutes later, Mom came back looking really distraught. She had gone around asking any guys and staff members if there was a guy with the name Seth Schroeder that was in the 10th grade class there and every single one of them said there was never a guy enrolled there with that name. I felt sick to my stomach and I started to cry once again. I couldn’t believe what was going on. I couldn’t believe Seth, or whoever this guy was, would do this to me. How could I be so dumb to go along with all of this?

A week went past and I had ignored all of the calls and texts that I had been receiving from him. I wanted an explanation for everything that had happened. Why did he ask me, a small town girl, to prom out of everybody he knew? Why did he give me a fake address and tell me to meet him there, even though he knew it was fake? Why, why, why? My family decided to take everything to the police to see if they could get to the bottom of this.

Throughout the two months of the interviews and questionings with the deputy and the phone calls between the deputy and Seth, progress was finally made. The deputy called us in one day after school was dismissed and told us he had some new information.

“There is nobody with the name of Seth Schroeder. It was a fake name. The profile and pictures that he used, also was fake,” the deputy said calmly, “now, I contacted his school and there was one boy named Tom that was a part of this. He was called into the office and he is suspended from school for a month, because what he did is against the school beliefs.”

I sighed a sigh of relief, “Okay. Good to know.”

“That’s not all Charlotte. He wasn’t the only one talking to you this entire time,” the deputy stated more concerned, “I called that number that you gave me and the person you’ve been talking for most of this time, has been an 8th grade girl, named Elle, that is family friends with Tom. From what I understood, after you and Tom talked at Kings Dominion, he knew that she liked him a lot and would do anything if he asked her to do it. She admitted that he gave her your name and number, told her to have fun and left it at that. I called back yesterday and spoke to her father who said that he had no idea that any of this was going on. He was wondering why Elle started feeling sick to her stomach and started acting weird closer to the end of the week and said that once she admitted to doing this, she really didn’t mean to hurt anybody and she was sorry.”

“Wait, what? I’ve been talking to a girl? But then who was I talking to on the phone? I was talking to a guy over the phone.” I choked out.

“Honestly, I don’t know. It could’ve been her, she could’ve had one of her friends take the phone, I really don’t know. There are many questions with many unknown answers and I’m sorry. The last thing that they said, was that they didn’t want to be contacted anymore by any of us,” the deputy responded back.

To this day there are still many questions that I want to ask her and there are many questions that I will never have an answer to, but that is okay. I never would have imagined this experience to help mold me and make me a stronger person. When you meet somebody new that you thought would be a good friend and that is not already in your group of friends, it can be a fun experience and sometimes that fun experience helps you learn a really important lesson; always do your homework before you start talking to somebody you really don’t know. Things aren’t always what they seem to be and they don’t always play out like you expect them to, and that’s okay because everything that happens in life is meant as a learning experience.