It was sometime during the month of April 2014 my name, along with 14 other female students and a female teacher's name, were put on a list with a gruesome threat written next to each one. The entirety of the situation occurred only several months after moving to Columbus, Indiana from the San Francisco Bay Area.
Telling anyone my name was put on a hit list makes the entire situation seem a lot crazier and scarier than it actually was. Not to say it wasn't crazy or scary but I guess it doesn't feel as insane of a thing to have happen considering some of the stuff that has happened throughout the 18 years of my life. Before I get into the gritty details of what happened, I would like to mention that nobody got hurt (at least not physically).
After school on a Monday, I stepped into the family car with my mom in the driver's seat and my brother in the front passenger seat. My mom was talking on the phone with my dad when I started to listen closer as she mentioned my name and the name of my school. After she got off of the phone, my mom took a couple of seconds to watch the students rush to their cars in the busy parking lot. That was when she told me about the conversation she had with my dad. My high school had called my dad to tell him what had occurred over the course of the weekend.
By the way, most of what I know is small details my mom was told by a secretary at Columbus North High School and rumors I had heard within the next week. Therefore, what I discuss may not be exactly what happened and would like details to be taken with a grain of salt.
What I do know of what happened was that a student had found the list and showed it to a teacher. The first wrong move of many that the school would make was that the teacher told the student to hand deliver the note to the office. I say that this is a wrong move, because what if the student had decided to keep the note to show friends or take pictures of it and post it on social media? I'm not aware of who the teacher was and have nothing against them, however, I do believe that they had the responsibility to deliver such a list themselves rather than give that responsibility to the student.
The student did responsibly taking the list to the office and handing it over to the deans. However, another wrong move was made when the deans did not inform any of the girls on the list the minute that they saw what it said. As I said in the beginning of the article, myself and most of the other girls were not informed of the list's existence until that Monday but the list was given to the office on a Thursday afternoon. Meaning, there were two entire days that I and 15 other people were completely clueless as to what had happened. Again as I said in the beginning, nobody was hurt but that doesn't mean that someone couldn't have been.
For the first time, I was grateful that I lived in a small enough community where nothing remains a secret. Because that same night, I received multiple texts from girls who were also on the list, asking if I was all right and what I knew. That same night I learned who the writer of the hit list had been and more details of what had happened. At the time, the only things I was aware of were that 16 names were written on a list along with mine, it had been found on that Thursday. And written next to my name were the words "throat slit."
It was a very scary thing to learn and I remember shaking like a chihuahua because I was nervous and anxious about what was going to happen. However, I knew the student who wrote the list. I shared two classes with him and I talked to him every single day, as we sat directly next to each other. We sat together in an art class meaning we shared a working table, also meaning I sat close enough to him to occasionally bump elbows.
Although the entire situation was very scary and disheartening, knowing the person responsible helped to calm some of the nerves. At the time, some people believed I was strange to feel better knowing who the person was. The reason that I felt better knowing who the person's identity was only because I knew he would be the type of person to do that as a way to get out frustrations, or he thought it would be funny. Maybe that still sounds scary, but he was a person who was very strange and even a bit dark. But that doesn't make up for what he did and the threats he made, but it might have been a way for me to explain why he did what he did.
In my mind I had no idea why he would write the list and especially had no idea why he would put my name on it along with a gruesome way to die. We weren't close friends or anything, but we got along and the closest thing to us arguing was when we would occasionally tease each other. It wasn't the type of teasing that a bully would do but rather just two people messing around and making each other laugh. There was never any bad blood or purposeful rude comments made that would anger either of us.
He was eventually expelled from the school but no charges were pressed. I'm not sure what happened with the investigation or where he finished high school. Honestly, I don't care what happened to him because after word got out about the article I couldn't walk through the hallway without being stared at, pointed at or whispered about. I was still new to the school so having people gawk at me like a show pony made the experience increasingly difficult. At the time I was also friends with people that made me feel worthless because I was willing to take any friends I could get. And that list gave those "friends" new punch lines to tease me with. And this is the sort of teasing that a bully would do.
The entire situation eventually fizzled out as new things occurred and people started to have new things to gossip about. Yet, after all of this time, I still question his true motives for making the list. I may never get the answers to those questions but that's okay -- I have moved on and now have this crazy story to tell.
