Nice and quiet.

You know those kids who everyone says were so “nice and quiet” and then go off all crazy and shoot up a movie theater? Chris was nothing like that. Chris was the type of kid who everyone said would either be dead or jail by the time he was 20. No one would have been surprised to see him on the 5 o’clock news after high-jacking a school bus and driving it off a bridge. His teachers all thought he was “deeply troubled,” and they avoided giving him anything lower than a “B,” so as not to “set him off.” To his classmates he was just plain creepy. They whispered behind his back that he had killed his parents and buried them in his backyard. Obviously this wasn't the case, since his parents were the ones who drove to see the psychiatrist every Thursday, but it was clear to everyone that Chris just wasn't right.

There wasn't any one thing that jumped out and screamed “crazy.” Sure he dressed in black, but so did nearly half of the school. His writing tended toward the depressive, but it’s not like he wrote about drowning puppies or burning down churches. No, what was most off-putting was his reluctance to speak beyond two, maybe three words at a time.

“So Chris, you hear the latest Cannibal Corpse?”

“Sucked.”

“You got a lighter on you Chris?”

“Don't smoke.”

“What's your problem? I mean Jesus, did your dog die or something? Just what the hell are you always brooding about?”

“You'll see.”

And that was the line that gave everyone pause. “You'll see.” Like he was building up for something. Like he had some terrible plot festering in his mind. Like he wanted to be sure and give people fair warning of a coming travesty.

“You'll see.”

So the kids set up an invisible perimeter around him, and tried to avoid any unnecessary eye contact. They politely differed to him when going through doors but always had an exit strategy when he was in the room. Chris was the dark cloud on the horizon, and everyone wanted to be ready for the storm.

One day Chris didn't come to school. No one said anything, but the whole atmosphere relaxed a little. No one looked over their shoulder or worried where they sat.

And that was the day, that James, the “nice and quiet” kid, decided to pull out his Dad's Browning 9mm during lunch and gunned down 23 of his fellow students and four hapless teachers before setting off the fertilizer bomb he had planted on the roof. Everyone got the warning, but no one got the message.

You see?