It was M's first day back in class after two weeks in the psychiatric ward. I was trying to gauge his jittery behavior and the subdued belligerence in his voice. But I also was struggling to steady my own capsized emotions. Earlier, in the teacher's workroom, I had heard about the shootings at Columbine: a high school, like ours. Teenagers, like my students and my own children. And teachers, like me. Sickening as a slow-mo of the Zapruder film, the news of Columbine stunned me with the unimaginable and I confronted the thought that so many teachers subdued daily in order to do our jobs: that could have been us.
Now, on the fifth anniversary of Columbine, all I can think about is M.
Over his four years of high school, I had watched M's genius flare and then implode into irreparable shards. M was 14 when we first met. Despite his John Lennon spectacles, his honey-blond hair that floated just above the shoulders and his frayed, three-piece, pin-striped suit that he bragged he had plucked from the Goodwill rack, he had the bearing of a king. His sheaf of poems - some typed, some scrawled in a manic hand - possessed that "something" unnamable in art, but which I knew in my gut was the real thing.
At school M positioned himself as the consummate artist-intellectual-bohemian. He strode the halls carrying an ever-present chess board and a dog-eared collection of poems by his current favorite (Was it Sexton? Or Baudelaire?) that he read intently as the other students scrambled around him. Like E.E. Cummings, he painted, along with writing poetry. He loved acting and won a few lead roles in drama productions.
With his exceptional talent, his brainpower and a knack for being charming (or was he manipulative?), he made himself the center of a coterie of students that idolized him. Sometimes, he'd take on, like a pet, a girl who was smitten by his dramatic recitations of John Donne (or was it Allen Ginsberg?) during the lunch period. He was carpe diem in the flesh, and the brainy, artsy girls he hung with just couldn't resist that.
But like some of the artists he adored, he was temperamental, given to drastic mood swings and, when crossed, a volatile temper. Over the years, I heard convincing rumors that he was a druggie, that he painted pictures in his own blood, and that, like his mother, he suffered from manic depression and delusions. He exposed some of his demons (or did he celebrate them?) in poems that I recall as rambling proclamations that were always self-aggrandizing and sometimes violent. When it came to attention, he was needy as a diva and could turn just as mean if he didn't get the immediate spotlight. "Ms. Russo, look at my new poem - I just wrote it now!" he might interrupt in the middle of class.
"You can read it to us at the end," I'd say.
"But it's so good, you've got to hear it now!"
If I put my foot down, and too often I didn't, he'd immediately get huffy and slam the poem away in his notebook or rip it to pieces. He might curse, just quietly enough so I couldn't be sure I'd heard right.
Over the four years, his behavior became increasingly self-destructive. On the first overnight field trip I arranged, when he was a freshman, I found him proudly walking naked in the hotel hot tub. Later, as a senior, he won the lead in a major production and lost it because of his refusal to come to rehearsals - he, after all, didn't need to rehearse. Because he was gifted, and because I was convinced that he was often merely posing as an eccentric, I overlooked his infractions.
However, in the final weeks of his senior year, he had lost whatever center he'd had. He'd had a real meltdown, and was committed under the Baker Act. On this first day back, he seemed worse - compulsively riffling through papers, unable to sit still, unwilling to join in, constantly muttering. Just before the last bell, he got himself worked up over some private unfairness and started steaming. "I'm so mad, I could just kill everybody," he announced.
I was not sure if he knew about Columbine yet, in which case he might just be riding the wave. I looked him full in the face for what may have been the first time that day. "Don't talk like that," I said, "especially not today. People might believe you."
"Okay," he said, staring back. "I'll just kill you and me then."
I let it go. I had always known M to speak in hyperbole, as do we all: I could have just killed him, I could have wrung his neck and I could have just died. I had known for years that M was given to extremes; that was part of his persona. But his hospitalization made it clear that he had real mental and emotional problems.
The landscape of school life had shifted dramatically with the actions of Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris. We were suddenly flooded with a barrage of warnings to pay attention to student behavior. Don't take anything for granted, said psychologists on talk shows. Follow up on your intuitions, said educational specialists. Report anything suspicious, said our principal. And be vigilant.
A few days later, in the middle of a lesson, M stood up from his desk, put on the headphones attached to his portable CD player, strode to the computer and began furiously typing. I asked him several times to come back to his desk, but he ignored me. When I threatened to write a referral if he didn't comply, he let loose a torrent of curses that shocked even his classmates. He was removed to another teacher's room. The next day, I decided it was better to be safe than sorry (or was it partly revenge?). I went to the school resource officer and, by lunchtime, M was gone.
I never saw M again. Four weeks after he was expelled, M was permitted to attend his graduation. I was sick and missed the ceremony, but the accounts of his behavior became legendary. Before receiving his diploma, he plopped down on some steps and began sobbing. Awhile later, he began to pull off his clothes. He was exposed almost completely when he was escorted away.
Gianna Russo is a poet and creative writing teacher at Howard W. Blake Magnet School of the Arts in Tampa.
