An anonymous email, a black van, and a well-known politician. Eli Matthewson tells the story of a teenage betrayal.
Listen to the story as it was told at The Watercooler or read on.
When I was 13, I was the second smallest boy in my whole year at school. You know how high school seems like the weirdest place because there are people that look like adults and people that look like children, but they’re all wearing the same thing? I was at the child end of that scale. I looked a little like a porcelain doll that had become sentient; I was very small, with pale skin and big blue eyes.
I really struggled starting out at high school. I’d hate to brag but I killed it, socially, at intermediate. My friends went in together and bought me a Playstation in my last birthday of intermediate. Then I left and went to high school, and I had no friends.
I had one close friend who came through to high school with me but he was a very loud, outspoken atheist who liked to kick people in the shins. Which proved to be a barrier for making new friends.
But a few months in, I'd made two new friends. He was a boy: a very committed Christian who sung in church bands, and she was a short Korean girl who managed to stop all bullies from attacking her by making jokes about what made her different before they could. He was very nice and she was very funny.
Year 9 was the first time my family got the internet at home, which was great because I didn’t have to go round to my friend Belinda’s anymore to play Neopets. I got very into MSN messenger. I used all the techniques, including quickly logging in and out to get peoples' attention. Classic tactics.
I got very into MSN messenger. I used all the techniques, including quickly logging in and out to get peoples' attention. Classic tactics.
One terrible thing I did early on in MSN was, when my new boyfriend got a girlfriend I (quite possibly because of what I now realise were maybe some deep hidden feelings for him) logged in and just messed with them. “She said you are annoying”. “He said you are a little bit of a bitch”. Because it wasn’t face to face, I felt like I could do this without consequence.
One day I was on MSN and an email came up from a weird email address:
billenglish@hotmail.com. This was 2002, he was still the leader of the opposition.
The email said:
Hi Eli,
Tomorrow afternoon at 3pm a Black Ford Focus will be outside your school gate waiting for you. Get in it immediately.
We know where you live, we know the subjects you take, we know what Peter does for a job, we know who works with him.
Do not show this email to anyone.
~
Peter is my father’s name.
So I didn’t show that email to anyone. And then, as I waited and sweated and panicked. I got another email:
Why did you not respond? If you ignore the instructions of this email you will pay.
I showed my mum. We printed them out. We went into the police station. I took three days off school. Which was awesome; I finished Pokémon Crystal.
When I went back to school they gave me my dad’s cellphone, in case anything scary happened. Which was cool because I was one of the first people in my year to have a cellphone. Not like today when you get them in the womb.
For years I was still scared by it. I still thought about that black Ford Focus.
Many years later I was at a party for a guy called Guy, who was the social king of the school. We were on a party bus - in Christchurch - so we went to the same bars they always do - Clock Tower in Hornby, out to Templeton, and to one in Addington.
At one of these bars I ended up chatting to the boy and girl I had made friends with way back at the start of year 9. We were still friends, not super close.
We were hanging out - we were talking about freaky internet things, and suddenly she said:
They both pretended nothing had been said. Which was gutting because I had so many questions. Number One: Why Bill English?
“Oh, it’s like that email.”
I said “What email?”
She said “That email we sent you.
“What?”
“Black Ford Focus… Bill English…”
This was four years later. I tried to ask her more questions but she pretended she hadn’t said it. They both pretended nothing had been said.
Which was gutting because I had so many questions. Number One: Why Bill English? I really want to know that.
I don’t hate that they did it but I hate that they didn’t tell me for that long. I do find comfort in them freaking out, spending four years going “He showed those emails to the police! What if they find out our IP address. What if we get arrested!?”
I didn’t tell anyone about it for years, until one day at drama school we did an exercise on betrayal, we had to tell a story where we had been betrayed. Then as a group we had to act it out in a physical theatre piece. With someone playing the part of the Black Ford Focus and someone playing MSN.
And as you can imagine, all the feelings were dealt with!
I’d like to think that people of my generation were terrible at the internet because it was new and we didn’t understand it; and 13 year-olds nowadays don’t use the anonymity to do even way worse stuff than this… but actually it’s probably so much worse.
This story was originally told at The Watercooler, a monthly storytelling night held in Auckland and Wellington. If you have a story to tell email or hit them up on Twitter or Facebook.
Illustration: Nicola Edwards
This content is brought to you with funding support from NZ On Air.
