When a kid my age walked past me in handcuffs wearing a t-shirt that read “fuck you, you fuckin’ fuck,” I knew I was in the right place. When you’re desperate to escape an abusive school environment, juvenile hall seems like a vacation.

I figured the judge would lock me up for at least six months. I imagined bunking with the type of kids who treated me like crap in school: the students who smoked cigarettes in the bathroom, carried a switchblade, stole their parents’ cars, and seemed unfazed by the sting of tequila. Except, I wouldn’t have a history with anyone in juvie. Maybe the kids in lockup wouldn’t hate me as much.

Unfortunately, (or perhaps fortunately), my only visit to juvie was for a meeting with my probation officer.

We sat across from each other at a long table in a private room. I’d be lying if I tried to describe what she looked like, but I remember her demeanor: cold and callous. Making eye contact with her felt like being speared by a cactus.

She remained expressionless while my mom tried to convince her I wasn’t really a juvenile delinquent; I just made a stupid, impulsive decision. I was gifted and bright. I learned to read when I was two. I wanted to study veterinary medicine in college. I wasn’t a violent person; I wouldn’t hurt a fly. But cacti probation officers don’t care about anyone’s feelings. She wasn’t there to learn about my promising future. She was there to lay down the law; to warn me about the dangerous path I was on. According to her, I was headed for a life of crime.

I wasn’t anything like my classmates who came to school with ankle bracelets, but there I was, having a meeting with my probation officer. My probation officer. Nobody in junior high had a probation officer unless they did something really bad.

“You know, it’s not okay to take things that don’t belong to you.” Her words slid off the end of her nose and onto the table, falling short of my ability to care. “There’s no excuse for your actions.”

I didn’t say a word. Considering what I had been planning, the diary I stole from one of my bullies should have been the least of her concerns.

“What are we going to do with you?” Gravity sucked her lips into a deep frown. “If you continue down this path, you’ll come back here in handcuffs and you won’t be going home.”

I wondered if I could get that in writing.

“I know you teenagers think you’re invincible, but drugs will ruin your life. You think smoking weed is cool, but it’s killing your brain and if you don’t stop, you’ll end up living on the streets or rotting in jail.”

Drugs? I tilted my head like a dog and stared at her in silence trying to figure her out. I had just been charged with terrorist threats for threatening to kill a classmate and narrowly escaped charges of extortion for threatening to burn her diary… and my P.O. wanted to talk about drugs?

I had never smoked a cigarette and not one drop of alcohol had ever touched my tongue. I didn’t know the difference between marijuana and meth. Do you smoke it? Snort it? Inject it? Those anti-drug programs never taught us how to actually do drugs. All I knew was to avoid shady looking people in white vans handing out small plastic bags full of candy.

Apparently, she thought I was one of them – one of the kids who drank beer behind 7-11, snorted their parents’ cocaine, guzzled tequila from the bottle, shoplifted for fun, and lit fires in the trash cans at school. My egotistical 14-year-old mind thought my classmates who did those things were losers. I had to correct her misconceptions.

“I’m not into drugs or alco-“

“Stop.” She flailed her hands like a babysitter about to be hit by a stray toddler. “I’m not interested in excuses. You either take full responsibility for your crimes or I’ll tell the judge you’re being uncooperative.”

The way she was talking you’d think I got caught washing down a peanut butter and pot sandwich with a beer at lunch. Either I got extremely lucky and the cops didn’t read my notebook, or they didn’t understand what I wrote.

Despite my impulses I remained quiet, doing my best impression of “cooperative.” It was a role I’d learned to play just long enough to find out if I was willing to endure my prescribed punishment.

I wasn’t afraid of going to juvie. I was afraid my probation officer held the power to silence me forever and I’d never get the chance to tell anyone what was really going on at school. She wanted me to accept responsibility for being victimized by kids I never provoked. I wasn’t allowed to defend myself against false accusations of doing drugs. I hadn’t been allowed to speak on my own behalf since my arrest and now I had to be whoever my prickly probation offer said I was.

I understood why she thought I was on the fast track to becoming a career criminal. I was sitting in the same chair many of my peers sat in to discuss possession of drugs, weapons, gang activity, alcohol, and violent fights. No doubt, those were all dangerous activities to get involved in. But I was a different kind of dangerous. I was an injustice collector; a ticking time bomb waiting for a reason to lash out against the next person who crossed my path – friend or foe. I wasn’t on a path of self-destruction through mind-altering drugs and alcohol. I wasn’t trying to alter my experience of life; I was trying to end it. I wanted to burn the world, starting with my school.

Driven by an insatiable desire for revenge, I made no attempt to hide my contempt. But, even when looking directly into my eyes she didn’t see my white-hot rage. Nobody did. It would be decades before I realized why.

The day of my arrest, the school administration confiscated several notebooks filled with fantasies of committing suicide and mass murder at my junior high, yet nobody was addressing the contents. I named specific people I wanted to kill and drew images of those people and school buildings blown to bits. I recorded an audio cassette tape full of death threats against one of my bullies and ended the tape with Green Day’s ‘Having a Blast,’ and left it in her locker. That tape is the reason I got arrested.

Oddly, my P.O. didn’t seem concerned that I had been charged with terrorist threats. All she cared about was the diary I stole and promised to burn if my bully didn’t stop telling everyone I was gay.

After several months passed I became increasingly anxious about going to court for my hearing. I was certain I’d be locked up for what I had done. After a few months of constant anxiety, I was told the judge dropped my case. Just like that. Without meeting me? That was a shock. They let me off the hook and although I didn’t understand why, I didn’t ask.

At the time, I didn’t know it was rare for teenage girls to plan a school shooting. That rarity afforded me every benefit of the doubt. Girls aren’t a credible threat. Girls are unlikely to commit mass murder. Brenda Spencer was an anomaly.

Perhaps I should have titled this chapter The Perks of Having A Vagina.

Click here to read Chapter 2: Cat in a Sweater

Sifting through the day’s mail revealed a giant envelope addressed to my nickname. The return address wasn’t familiar, but the name sure was. Holy shit with a side of shut the front door!

I tore open the envelope and came face-to-face with a glittery Santa Claus smoking a pipe. As I opened the card a sprinkle of glitter guided a lock of dark brown hair to the table. Removing a small school photo from the center crease of the card revealed a scribbled message: “thanks for saving my life.”

I glanced out the window to check for flying pigs. Negative. I considered calling Satan to find out if hell had frozen over. I was sure I’d be eaten by a bear before hearing from him again.

The residential return address suggested he’d been released from jail so I messaged him on AOL to see if he’d respond. He did. Although he had been released from jail, he wasn’t completely out of the woods, though he was forging a path. He no longer wanted to kill everyone; just a few fat cops in his town. He didn’t want to kill me anymore, either. Surprising, since I ratted him out for planning mass murder.

When we caught each other live he hit me with his best shot: “they locked me up because of you.”

“You don’t know who your real friends are until they send you to jail,” I joked, seriously.

The last time we talked, he told me he was going to shoot up his school the next day and asked me to publish his journal to keep his memory alive. I knew he wasn’t joking. He’d been talking about it since his freshman year.

After turning him in, I didn’t hear anything about his situation so I asked him to fill me in. “What the hell happened?”

“After you called the cops on me they pulled me out of class…” he paused. His train of thought derailed. “I told you to look for me in the news on Monday. Why’d you wait until Wednesday to say something?”

“I didn’t wait and I didn’t call the cops. I spoke with your principal on Sunday. He must have waited a few days.” I wondered why he even told me what he was planning in the first place.

“You got ahold of the principal? On a Sunday? What are you, a cop or something? I always wondered.”

“Nope. Definitely not a cop. Just someone with solid researching skills.”

“If you say so…”

“What happened after they pulled you out of class? Did you get arrested?”

“Yeah. They took me to a conference room… asked if I had any weapons on me. When I told them I had a hunting knife in my boot they practically knocked me over to get it. They asked if I had weapons at home and I told them about my shotgun and rifle. They said a concerned citizen tipped them off that I might want to hurt people. I didn’t know what to say so I didn’t say anything.”

“How’d they find out what you were planning?” I wondered how honest he had been with the authorities.

“They didn’t get the whole story, well, not exactly. I admitted to fantasizing about shooting up the school, but said I never made any plans. I didn’t tell them about the bombs. I didn’t know they had a copy of our chats or I wouldn’t of told them anything. Those chats got me locked up for three months. You really thought I was serious?”

“Weren’t you?” He was selling denial and I wasn’t buying it.

“Yeah, well, maybe. I never know what I’m going to do until I get the urge to do it and then I just sort of act on impulse. Like Eric said, follow your fucking animal instincts.”

“Hmmm… three months, that seems short, considering…”

“Yeah, kinda. Three months was long enough for me to calm down a bit, though. Getting out of that school helped. Thanks for getting me expelled, by the way. That was the best thing anyone’s ever done for me.”

“You’re welcome? So, they found your guns, and you got out after three months?” Something didn’t add up. I knew what was in his bedroom. There’s no way they’d let him go after three months.

“I got lucky. The police never searched my house. I burned my diary and got rid of my explosives. If the cops found any of that I’d still be locked up. You could of given them so much shit to put me away for a long time. What if I got out of jail and did something worse like killed a bunch of innocent people at the mall or something?”

He had a point. He easily could have been released from jail only to go on a mass shooting spree somewhere else. However, at the time, I wasn’t concerned about what he might do after getting released from jail.

I thought about telling him the complete truth – that I didn’t turn him in to save other people’s lives – but felt a moral obligation not to admit that, so I was vague. “I made a judgment call that you’d get your shit together the way I did when I was your age. You’re a smart kid. You don’t belong in jail. Once they put you in the system it’s hard to get out. You’re one lucky motherfucker.”

He didn’t respond, so I changed the subject. “What was it like in jail?”

“Let’s just say it made me start thinking differently. I had nothing to do but stare at the walls and go to my counseling sessions. For a month straight all I thought about was finding you and killing you. Too bad you didn’t give me your address to send you my journal. If I had your address I could of sent somebody out.”

“Yeah, how did you get my address to send me that Christmas card, anyway?”

“Trade secrets. Can’t tell.”

“Fair enough. I’m sure it’s on the internet somewhere.”

“Maybe.”

“Hey, remember when we were talking about Columbine and you gave me a copy of Eric’s webpages? Reading the description of how he made his bombs and blew them up in the mountains gave me the inspiration to make my own explosives. But I didn’t tell the police you gave those documents to me.” His attempt to pass the buck was transparent.

“Did I give his webpages to you?” I knew I gave him those documents. I gave him every Columbine document I had, but didn’t want that on record. Besides, those documents were public record and all over the internet. Still, I played dumb.

“Yeah. When we first started talking. You sent me everything you had on Columbine. You gave me their home videos, too. Man, seeing them shooting their guns and walking around talking was like a tipping point for me. It was surreal. I thought you supported their actions. I wouldn’t of told you about my plans if I thought you were against what they did. It helped that you were using Eric’s screen name, too. It was hard not to spill my guts talking to my hero’s screen name. How’d you get it, anyway? I thought AOL suspended his account?”

“Trade secrets. Can’t tell.” I snickered at my computer screen.

“You sure you’re not a cop?”

“As sure as I can be, but I don’t expect you to believe me. Seeing as how we only know each other online, I could be lying to maintain my cover…”

“I guess that’s a risk I’ll have to take.”

He went dark for about ten minutes and when he came back, he got real.

“Before I started telling you shit I was already pushing myself more and more to do it, like, losing my mind intentionally, day after day, pushing myself to get ready to die and kill. Now I’m just waiting for the next person to set me off and that’s what sucks.”

When we first met, he told me he felt a burning rage that made him want to rip people apart with a knife since the age of three. I wasn’t surprised to learn that rage was still boiling over. Still, I suggested the possibility of a rageless future. “It’s not easy getting triggered all the time. At least you’re aware of it. Thankfully, anger fades over time.”

He wasn’t convinced. “See, my anger doesn’t fade. It’s always burning inside me even in this moment, but nobody’s stepping into my crosshairs yet. I’m naturally angry. I could snap at any moment.”

I didn’t know how to respond, so I was relieved when he didn’t give me the chance.

“Why’d you get interested in Columbine?” It was a question he’d never asked me before. “If you can’t tell me how you got Eric’s screen name, the least you can do is tell me why you even care about all this stuff in the first place.”

I wasn’t sure if I should tell him everything, but started typing to see what came out.

“You know how I ratted you out for planning to shoot up your school? I was caught with a similar plan back in junior high, several years before Columbine. I was 14. I was arrested and pushed through the system but they let me off the hook. I transferred schools after my freshman year to get a new start with kids I didn’t know. I wasn’t getting shit on as much until Columbine happened. Then it started all over again. I was “goth” so the administration flagged me as a potential shooter because I wore a long, black cloak. The principal told my teachers to keep an eye on me. Other students started calling me the “Trench Cloak Mafia.” They’d ask if I had a Tec-9 under my cape and when I was going to shoot them. I told them to wait and see. The desire to get revenge came back hard. Obviously, I didn’t go through with it, otherwise I wouldn’t be here talking to you…”

“How’d you turn your life around?” His question was sincere, but I wasn’t willing to return his sincerity.

“I’m not sure,” I dodged the question.

The truth was, at that point, I hadn’t turned my life around. I was still dancing across the line that divides personal responsibility from the belief that violence could be justified and even deserved.

My actions may have saved his life and the lives of others, but I didn’t deserve his gratitude. The only reason I turned him in was because I was afraid not to. I wasn’t concerned about the people he wanted to kill. I turned him in to protect myself and accidentally saved his life.

Click here to read Chapter 4: The Education of an Almost School Shooter

Autumn leaves dance in rhythmic spirals until they collide and hit the dirt. The sun’s golden rays shine like a prism between the leaves still hanging on. Despite our front row seats to nature’s show, he doesn’t seem to notice; he has other things on his mind.

He leans over me, grabs a switchblade from the glove box, and twirls it in the palm of his hand. A swastika carved into the handle makes me wonder how deep his WWII interest really goes.

We’re discussing society’s inability to understand the suffering that drives teenagers to commit suicide – or worse – murder their classmates.

“People find it difficult to relate to a pain they’ve never experienced,” he sighs. “Should they relate though? Yes, they should understand on some level. But, in a way it’s good most people can’t relate because that means they haven’t had to go through it, and that’s a good thing.”

He’s not talking about ordinary pain like the emotional rollercoaster of a bad break-up. He’s talking about the agony of enduring daily abuse at school that crushes your sense of self-worth and reduces you to a shell of a person, completely dead inside.

He knows this pain intimately. Four years prior, two of his friends committed suicide after killing twelve students and a teacher at Columbine High School. After the shooting, he was wrongly accused of helping plan the massacre and some accused him of being a “third shooter.” Though he wasn’t involved, he wasn’t surprised to learn his friends were responsible. He knew exactly why they did it. Everyone did. He experienced the same abuse that pushed them over the edge.

Although several years had passed, Columbine wasn’t over for him and it wasn’t the only storm he was battling. Eleven months after watching those autumn leaves dance, he would commit suicide and leave behind two young children. Although, at the time of our conversation, his youngest child wasn’t born yet and would still be in diapers at the time of his father’s death.

“I can relate,” he taps the steering wheel with the knife’s intricately carved handle, “and the memories of what happened to me at that damned school will remain with me for the rest of my life. I just hope my child’s life is better than mine. I hope she can never relate to the horrors that people like us have gone through.”

Leaning back in the driver’s seat, he sighs with a defeated smile. “So many people think they know what really happened at Columbine.” He shakes his head. “They’ve read reports, books, and articles written by people who didn’t go to Columbine – people who never bothered to interview any of us. I gave a couple interviews in the beginning, but when the official narrative changed, my experience no longer fit their agenda. They stopped airing my interviews and never contacted me again.”

I sigh in agreement with this great truth. He wasn’t the only student ignored by the journalists and authors chosen to deliver a new and improved “official” narrative to the world.

He continues:

“Most people are in denial and they will remain that way. They know the truth, but they refuse to face it.”

Denial is an understatement. About a week after the massacre he witnessed an entire nation rally behind an invented narrative dismissing the severity of abuse he and his friends (including the shooters) experienced firsthand.

Reporters and journalists began to “debunk” the “bullying myth,” a move that contradicted numerous student interviews describing daily abuse the shooters and their friends endured. Some students openly admitted to abusing the shooters on camera and in print. One student was quoted in a national publication saying the shooters deserved to be abused because they were “weird.”

He was bewildered when, out of nowhere, all previously reported incidents of abuse were dismissed, downplayed, and invalidated in favor of a new and final narrative: Eric Harris was a classic psychopath who wanted to kill everyone and didn’t care if he died trying; Dylan Klebold was suicidal and settled for a suicide-murder mission to escape his pain. Neither Eric nor Dylan were relentlessly bullied as previously reported. What little bullying they did experience was typical for any school. Bullying didn’t cause or contribute to the anger, rage, contempt, and suicidal ideation that led to the shootings, therefore bullying played no part in the massacre.

He watched helplessly as “experts” with fancy titles dismissed the truth like magicians with a wave of their hand. These are not the facts you are looking for. Nearly everyone bought it. Strangers across the world began to believe bullying played no role in the massacre because so-called experts said it didn’t.

Just like that, the multitude of firsthand accounts of severe abuse at Columbine – incidents that would get an adult arrested on felony charges – were reframed and swept under the rug.

The shooters didn’t have it that bad. Being called ‘faggot,’ loser,’ and ‘freak’ is just part of high school – the shooters should have just ignored it. Getting shoved into a locker isn’t a big deal; everyone gets slammed by an upperclassman at least once. Dylan got called ‘stretch’ in gym class, but they could have called him something worse. Students threw garbage at them and broke glass bottles at their feet, but it didn’t happen every day.

When someone falsely told the principal they brought drugs to school, it was just a harmless prank – surely the culprit didn’t know they’d be humiliated by getting searched. The jocks left threatening notes in their lockers, but who doesn’t get threatened in high school? Paper is harmless, nobody got hurt. Okay, so a student crossed the line by throwing a cup of fecal matter at them… and someone threw ketchup-covered tampons at them in the cafeteria, but it wasn’t the end of the world and it certainly wasn’t a good reason to kill people.

These constructed narratives made it sound like Eric and Dylan killed people because someone called them names. To reduce their motives to such simplicity is to miss the entire point. He knew, as did all of their friends, that the shooters were reacting to the fact that nobody did anything to stop the abuse. They saw a hopeless future where “adult” society, aka “the real world,” would only be an extension of high school. And it’s hard to say they were wrong about that.

The abuse was real. These new narratives were false. He knew the truth. How could he forget? He lived it every day. Although, with the exception of private conversations he didn’t put any effort into clearing the air. He wasn’t like that. He knew the impossibility of changing people’s minds. Let ‘em think what they want. They’re not looking for the truth.

If you wanted the truth, he’d give it to you. If you didn’t want the truth, that was your problem.

I knew firsthand how nonchalant he was about correcting people’s mistaken beliefs. We met when he offered to provide me with accurate information about the Trench Coat Mafia for my research website. He was casual about the offer, asking if I was interested in what he had to share, rather than telling me everything I published was wrong.

He stares out the front windshield rhythmically tapping his right palm on the side of the steering wheel.

“People who didn’t even go to Columbine convinced the majority of the world that bullying didn’t happen, and Eric and Dylan were just angry and depressed for no reason. What the hell do they think made them so angry in the first place?”

He sighs out of his nose, shaking his head. He gazes out the driver’s side window for several seconds lost in thought.

“Actually, they’re right. It wasn’t bullying. It was abuse. When people talk about bullying it makes you think of overturned lunch trays, food fights, and shoves in the hallway. Calling it “bullying” diminishes the level of abuse we all suffered. If I had gone to the police after someone threw that glass bottle at us, they wouldn’t call it bullying – they’d call it assault… a real crime.”

I nod silently in agreement.

“People want to believe it’s a perfect little world where the birds chirp and there is no pain or cruelty, and that is not reality,” he said. “Pain is necessary for life. It can’t end. However, the frequency of intentional pain will decrease as mankind and society evolve. At least one can hope.”

Although his words sounded hopeful, his whole being radiated defeat – absolute defeat. Like there was no way to win the battle the world had waged against him. He was a different person than he had been prior to the massacre. Apathy had crept into the cracks of his smile and stubble replaced his long, golden hair.

And now he’s gone.

Joseph Benjamin Stair committed suicide on September 13, 2007. He was twenty-seven years old. He left behind a wife, a sister and a brother, two small children, and a world that would have benefitted greatly from his wisdom.

Click here to read Chapter 6: Confessions of a Former Columbiner