Most people have read this in the papers by now, but at one of my city’s local malls, a gunman killed eight people and then himself. He was 19, and he was someone I knew. I knew him from a couple of years ago at my high school, before he moved to a different school, before he dropped out. I knew him as a very different person. He didn’t seem depressed or violent in the least, nor a bit disturbed. He stuck up for me. I used his nickname when talking to him – and he used mine. He was someone I thought I’d become good friends with, up until he left.
I didn’t hear from him again.
Wednesday afternoon, though, it was all over the news. I’d been working at my first job when people started talking about it. The news was immediately turned on in the break room. Multiple people started calling my phone, thinking I was working at that particular mall – my new job is in a different mall, a few miles away.
When I got home that evening, it was clear what had happened, who had done it… And the mall closed down. It’s closed again today, but is apparently supposed to reopen tomorrow.
I saw his face on television and dropped what was in my hands.
“That’s R….!” I cried.
Then I folded my hands over my mouth. Disbelief isn’t even close to what I was feeling… How could one person change so much over two and a half years?
It’s sunk in by this point, and the names of the victims have been released. But I still can’t believe that I once had ties with him. He was just so quiet!
I found out later that this made international news. Relatives and friends in various parts of the world called, e-mailed, requesting information, wanting to know if my family and I were safe.
Three of my friends work at the store he opened fire in. One was in the lowest level (it happened on the higher floors), the other was on her lunch break, the last wasn’t working at all. I sent out a mass text to those I believed could have been there… They all responded within a few hours. Relief and… Disbelief.
He left two suicide notes… A will… He wrote that he would soon “be famous.” Infamous is a better word. He became a monster within six minutes. If he had reached out to someone, if he had been rational… Wednesday would have just been another ordinary day.
But it wasn’t.
