Up to the point of where you read that Jeremy knew he was going to be in prison for the rest of his life, everything written in this story, spare this final chapter, has been written by Jeremy during the weeks he spent in isolation in his cell. When a guard found Jeremy curled up, leaning on the wall in his cell - his knees pulled up towards his face as his hands held the back of his head, his face turned away - a note was found on a stack of papers next to him. The stack of papers that was next to him would eventually become the papers you’ve read to come to this point, and the note that lie on the papers would be noted as his final words. Jeremy’s fingerprints were coated in blood on the note; he must have put it down on the stack of paper after he hit his head.

This note was addressed to me.

My name is David Sandoval - I was the only person who would put together the papers that held the story Jeremy left behind in his cell, and up to this point, I have not added nor altered any of the words he left. The only reason I am adding onto this story is so that there can be an ending to the story whose writer’s life was so abruptly ended.

I’ll start just before where Jeremy had left off - that seems like it’s the most appropriate place to continue on.

What Jeremy had said about me not giving him my father’s gun was right. There’s nothing hidden behind that, I did not give him the combination – Jeremy was an incredibly smart person, but he was a terribly misguided person as well.

When Jeremy had been taken away to a different hospital to treat his injuries, the police ran a check on whose gun he was using. The gun was legally registered to my father. Within four hours of the shooting at the hospital, the police knocked on our door and asked my father if he could explain how a gun from our home had gotten to Jeremy, who, presumably at the time, did not know us at all.

I slept in the day Jeremy had stayed in my room; I woke up at about 11:45 AM to the sound of my father knocking on my door and telling me to get up. When I put my feet on the ground, I saw that Jeremy was gone.

Was Jeremy with my father? Was he in the bathroom? Was he at least downstairs? I thought of almost every explanation to why Jeremy wasn’t in my room within those few seconds I had.

But, when I heard my father knock on the door again and say, “David, open the door. The police are here.”

I remember the exact moment I heard those words. It hit me then. I could feel my heart begin to race and beat loudly in my ears, and I felt my hands trembling.

Either the police were here to take Jeremy, or they were here to tell me he had done something. Well, little did I know, it was turn out to be that the police were there to eventually take me.

I got out of bed and opened the door, and I saw my father and two police officers standing at my door. My father looked incredibly worried – I had never seen that clearly an expression of fear on his face in my life.

The police asked me to get dressed and then come downstairs to talk to them. I picked out some clothes to wear and went to the bathroom. As I walked through the hallway, I glanced over the railing and saw that there were police officers scattered throughout our house. One of them was talking to my mother as she was sitting on the couch, and two were speaking to my father near our door; Jeremy wasn’t anywhere downstairs.

When I walked into the bathroom, I quickly shut the door behind me and got dressed. I tried to think of what Jeremy could have done, but too many incoherent thoughts ran through my head.

After I had gotten dressed, as I was about to leave the bathroom, I saw the clothes that I had lent Jeremy the night before folded up and placed on the counter.

He must have left the house. More thoughts of what could have happened hit me.

When I left the bathroom and walked down the stairs, the police sat me down next to my mother, and soon my father sat down next to me. Two police officers sat down in front of us.

The first thing one of the police officers asked me was, “Do you know Jeremy Williams?”

I nodded my head. The officer then went on to explain about the situation with Jeremy – he told me that Jeremy had been taken to a hospital up north after he had stormed into the hospital here with a loaded gun and shot nearly everyone who was working.

When the officer told me that it was my father’s gun that Jeremy had used, I felt a cold feeling in the pit of my stomach, and I felt as if my veins were pumping battery acid. And Jeremy had the nerve to tell me how sorry he was for everything he had done the night before that. But, it was when the officer accused me of taking the gun out of my father’s safe and giving it to Jeremy so he could kill the people in the hospital that I was absolutely enraged and honestly offended that they would even think I would do that.

I was taken down to the police department and interviewed about what had happened. I told them that I had lied when I said Jeremy was not involved with the shooting. I told them that Jeremy had been injured, causing Sam to make an early escape, and when Sam had come towards the door, he took me out of the gym and had me stay in the back of the van. I told them that Jeremy and I had made a pact to not tell the police about what had happened – but now that Jeremy had almost literally stabbed me in the back, I wasn’t hesitant to tell the police everything.

I told them about how I lied to the officers and how I let Jeremy stay with me. I told them that the last time I had seen him was when we both were going to sleep and that he had made absolutely indications that he was planning it.

My first thoughts were that this was a spree killing, but after knowing Jeremy for about a year, I didn’t think he was someone who would just act on their feelings. He was the kind of person who would hold in whatever feelings he had until he had an advantage in his situation if he used it. As it turned out, it actually was just a spree killing – after reading the story Jeremy had written and speaking with him, he had literally thought it up the night before he did it, and in the morning, he got up and went for it..

The police held me in custody for a few days because they didn’t know what to do with me. Eventually, they charged me with being an accomplice after the fact, and I was sent to a juvenile prison for two years on October 27th. I finished up my middle school education through the juvenile prison’s program, and I was released on the day of my fifteenth birthday.

When I was released, my mother gave me thirteen letters – only one was opened. She told me that she had opened the first letter that was sent to me so she could see what the sender wanted.

Who was the sender, though? I looked over the letters before I opened them, and I could see that the handwriting on the envelopes looked familiar. The sender had used their initials for their return address. The initials were familiar as well – “J.R.W.” I had seen them before, but I just couldn’t remember whom they belonged to.

And then I saw the address. It was from the prison Jeremy was in. “J.R.W.” stood for Jeremy Robert Williams. I took out the first letter he had sent me and began to read it. It was dated almost one year ago to the exact date.

“David,

I don’t know if you’ll ever get this letter, but I wanted to tell you that I’m sorry. I’ve only heard small details about what’s happening to you. When I was in the hospital, a doctor mentioned you were taken into custody – that’s the last I heard. I really hope you’re doing okay. If you could write me back, I would really appreciate it. You don’t have to say anything nice, you don’t really have to say anything. I know that you must be unimaginably angry with me, that you must hate me. I don’t want to keep hurting you. I just want to know you’re okay - if you could just write back once, that’ll be enough for me. Please let me know if you get this. Unless you send me a letter telling me stop, I’m going to write you once a month. At least if you write me a letter to stop, I’ll know you’re alive.

Jeremy.”

I opened the rest of the letters and saw that he had written me once a month. Most of his letters were just asking for forgiveness. If he didn’t know I had gone to juvenile prison, then he must have thought I just wasn’t replying to his letters, so he kept on writing out of hope that he would hear something from me.

In the thirteenth letter, which my mother told me she had received two days before I had been released, Jeremy had written such a short note compared to the others he sent that it startled me.

“David,

I know that after twelve letters, either you’ve died or you hate me to the point where you won’t even acknowledge my existence, and I’ll respect that. I’ll stop writing you. Just as a last attempt at making contact with you, I’ve been able to put you and only you on my visitor’s list. I’ve spent the two years being very well behaved, and they finally allowed me to put you down as the only visitor I can have. Here’s to a good four years of friendship.

Jeremy.”

I called the police station ten minutes after I read the last letter he sent me. I called them, told them my name, and asked if I was actually on the visitor’s list to see Jeremy. When a secretary told me I was, I asked her when the next time I could come see Jeremy was.

Fortunately, the next time I could Jeremy was the next morning from between 8AM to 12PM, then the following afternoon from 3PM to 6PM.

When I went in to see Jeremy, I saw that some of the people that I was in the waiting room with could vaguely recognize me. I didn’t know what they would do if they recognized me as ‘the accomplice after the fact’ to a brutal slaughtering of over two hundred people.

When I was called back to the visiting area, that’s when I knew the people in the waiting room recognized me. I heard harsh words about me being whispered through the room, and I could feel the glares burning through my skin.

I was taken to a booth where a good inch of glass separated me from the person who would on the other side; I was to communicate with Jeremy with a phone that was to my left side.

When Jeremy sat down behind the glass in front of me, I could barely tell that he had aged at all.

Before I could continue to look at Jeremy, I saw an officer standing closely behind Jeremy. I looked over my shoulder and saw there was an officer standing closely behind me as well.

When I turned back around, I saw that Jeremy had sat down and was close to the glass separating us. He had his arms resting on the small desktop that was in front of him; I then rested my arms on the desktop.

He was wearing an orange jumpsuit with a white t-shirt under it – the bright color the jumpsuit was seemed to extenuate how pale he was. His brown hair was shaggier towards the front; his hair made it difficult to see his eyes until he pushed it back.

I then saw that his eyes were the only things that had aged. The color had used to be a nice, soft dark green; they now were a bright green. The flesh around his eyes were red – the red could have been from being hit in the face, from crying, from being tired, almost anything.

He seemed smaller than the last time I had seen him. The bones in his hands stuck out much more now, and his neck seemed to be easily breakable.

Maybe he had made himself like that on purpose, maybe because he knew that the easier it seemed to break his neck, the easier it would be.

The first thing Jeremy did when he saw me was pick up the phone on his side and wait for me to do the same. I lifted up the phone on my side and put it to my ear. Jeremy then put the phone to his ear and smiled.

“So, I guess you got my letters,” he said.

His voice sounded rough yet weak.

“Yeah, I got them all yesterday… I just got out of juvenile prison,” I said.

Jeremy looked up me with concern.

“Why? You didn’t do anything…” he said.

“I know I didn’t. They still charged me with being an accomplice after the fact, though. But, whatever, that’s done with now. There’s no point to keep caring about it. How are you?” I asked.

Jeremy glanced around the room before he sighed.

“I’m okay… I’ve been better, though,” he said.

“Yeah…”

We remained quiet for a few moments before Jeremy spoke again.

“Do you think you could do me a favor, David?” Jeremy asked.

“Sure. What is it?” I asked.

“Would you be able to bring me some paper and a crayon?”

“… A crayon?”

“Yeah, a crayon. I can’t use a pen or a pencil in my cell.”

“What, for letters?”

“No, no, I don’t write letters in my cell. I want to write out what happened, and I can’t take a pen or a pencil back to my cell.”

I raised my eyebrow.

“Write about what, exactly?”

Jeremy looked down towards the ground.

“Everything that happened. From beginning to end. I want to get it out of my head. If I can just get it out, maybe I’ll be able to sleep at night…” he said.

“Well, sure, I can bring you paper and a crayon and whatnot, but is it okay if I bring you it? Have you talked to someone about it?” I asked.

Jeremy pointed towards the officer standing beside him.

“I asked him, and he said that he asked someone about it as well, and they said as long as it’s a crayon,” Jeremy said.

I nodded. “Okay… do you want me to go out now and get it?”

“Whenever it’s best for you.”

I brought back Jeremy fifty sheets of paper and three black crayons the next day.

I began to routinely see Jeremy three times a week after that day for a little over a year. Each time I saw him, I would always make sure to bring him more paper and more crayons. He told me that he went through the paper fairly quickly

Jeremy would tell me sometimes that he would be up for days because the memories of everything that happened would constantly play over and over again in his head; he said that sometimes he hallucinated that ghosts of the people he killed were sitting his cell screaming at him; he said that even when the memories of everything that happened wouldn’t rush into his head and keep him up at night, the screaming of those people who died in the gym.

He grew worse and worse each time I saw him. He spent most of his time in prison alone because of the prison’s fear that another inmate may try to harm Jeremy, which was very likely – some of the inmates’ children went to Groven High School, and some had been killed by Jeremy during the rampage.

My last visit with him would be the night before he was found in his cell, the night where I should have seen it coming but chose to ignore it.

I came at 5:30PM the night before Jeremy died to see him. It was a Friday night, and I was the only visitor that came in during the evening hours. When Jeremy came out, there was an unusual atmosphere around him – he seemed gloomy, depressed even. There was a different look in his eyes that I had seen before.

When he talked to me this last time, he seemed so relaxed, like he was at peace with everything he had done. I don’t want to believe that Jeremy was at peace with everything he had done because there was just no way he could have forgiven himself…

Psychologists have told me that sometimes, when a person decides to commit suicide, they feel a sudden calm and feel at peace with the world because they know they will soon be leaving it.

That must have been what Jeremy was feeling. And really, I’m glad for him if his last hours in the world were calm. I know that the way he killed himself was not comfortable, but if he was at peace with himself and everything else that had happened, then maybe it would carry over into wherever he would go.

The last words Jeremy said to me were, “We’ll meet again someday. I’ll miss you.” He then stood up and waited to be escorted back to his cell by the security guard on duty.

I grinned and said, “Like on Monday?” as I stood up as well.

Jeremy smiled and shook his head to say no. The security guard then began to lead Jeremy back to his cell.

Before Jeremy turned the corner to go back to his cell, he smiled at me and raised both of his hands to try to wave to me.

I waved to him, and he then turned the corner.

That was the last time I ever saw him.

I got a call at two in the morning from the hospital on Sunday morning, telling me that Jeremy had self-inflicted head trauma and had passed away around midnight. The prison called me a few hours later and asked me to come claim the items that were left behind in Jeremy’s cell. I came into the hospital around noon to go into Jeremy’s cell with a small box and gather up what he left behind.

A guard told me that Jeremy had apparently gone back to his cell and remained very quiet the entire night. But then, around midnight on Saturday morning, he suddenly began to bash the back of his head into the wall. He didn’t scream when he first began to bash his head into the wall, but when an autopsy showed that Jeremy had hurt himself so badly that he had gone blind, he then screamed and continued to bash his head into the wall.

The guard who had found Jeremy told me that when Jeremy began to scream, he screamed the words, “Get it out, get it out!” more than anything.

After he had bashed his head severely into the wall, Jeremy then curled up into the position security guards found him in – his knees pulled up towards his face with his hands holding the back of his head, his face turned away into the corner.

The autopsy showed that Jeremy had put himself into a coma because he had done such damage to his brain and skull. He died after almost twenty hours later.

Lying on his bed, just a few inches from where he had bashed his head into the wall, he had left the papers that he had written out the story of everything that happened up until he was put into prison, wound together with ripped up shoelaces. On top of the papers, there was a note he had left to me.

The note had his bloody fingerprints on it, and they had found traces of the blood from his head in his pocket, leading to the assumption that Jeremy had bashed his head into the wall and gotten his blood over his hands before he took the note he had left to me out of his pocket and dropped on the other papers.

I gently picked up the papers Jeremy had written the story of what happened on and set it in the box, making sure that none of the fragile pages would rip on anything else I had placed in the box. I then carefully picked up the note that Jeremy had left me and unfolded it.

The only words on the paper were, “Please don’t make this same mistake.”

I folded the note back up and placed it next to the papers. I felt that I was going to cry, but I just didn’t want to do it in Jeremy’s cell. It would overwhelm me if I cried in Jeremy’s cell. I forced myself to carry on and to keep picking up his things.

In the end, the only things I had taken out of Jeremy’s cell were his papers, the note he left me, and a pile of letters from people that neither I – nor he, apparently – knew at all. I told the prison that I had claimed his things in the cell, and I then left.

I haven’t been back to the prison since.

A lot of people have asked me what happened to Jeremy’s body – was he buried, was he cremated? I honestly don’t know. And even if I did, I wouldn’t tell anyone. Relatives of both Jeremy and Jeremy’s mother requested that no one release any information about any kind of burial plans for them, and so far, people have respected their request for privacy. The same went for Sam’s family – but I have heard rumors that Sam and his father were buried in the southern part of the state.

As for the others who died? I don’t really know about any of them, spare my sister – she was buried, along with dozens of others who died. I’ve tried to stay as detached from this part of my life as much as possible.

As you read, Jeremy was charged with hundreds of things, the primary charge being murder in the first degree – the murders of dozens and dozens of people were seen before the theft and destruction of property charges that followed.

He pleaded guilty to every charge, and as a result of that, he received the death sentence at age nineteen, three months before he turned twenty.

He spent the last handful of months in his life on death row in an extremely locked down environment, and he knew he wasn’t going to escape it unless he left life itself. So, at the age of twenty-one, he left.

There was nothing for him left to do in life; there was no “life” that he needed to continue on. What he wanted to do the most was leave some kind of lasting story behind the reasons why all of it happened. He wanted to leave the message that there was a reason behind why everything had happened. When he found a way that people could see why it happened, he put all of he could into it – he worked on it until he was gone.

When I first met Jeremy in creative writing, I really liked him. He seemed like a caring, decent person. When I was running through the woods with Jeremy with a bullet in my leg and blood stained all over my clothes, I absolutely hated him – all I wanted to happen to him was the same he had put me, my friends, everyone else through. When I came home from the police station, I loved him and didn’t want him to leave. When he went to the hospital with a gun and killed all of those people with my father’s gun, the only thing I wanted was for him to die in prison. When I got out of juvenal prison, I just wanted him to be okay, whether he was alive or dead.

I’m not mad at Jeremy. If this is what he wanted, if he’s now at peace, I’m glad for him. I’m glad that it’s all out of his head – I’m glad he can finally sleep.

But still, sometimes I just wish he hadn’t left so quickly.