Last Day on Earth: A Portrait of the NIU School Shooter

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I HAVE TO GO BACK TO STEVE’S DOG, the pug, because even though “nothing human is foreign to me,” Steve does things early on that strain that idea.

Adam watches Steve drop the pug numerous times, light it on fire. Its loud breathing just really annoys the shit out of Steve. Then one of Steve’s other friends, Joe Cuzma, comes to tap at his window. This is eighth grade, the same year as the Drano bomb, and they don’t have cell phones yet. They just knock on each other’s windows. But Joe looks in Steve’s window and sees him behind his dog, fucking it. At least this is what he tells everyone at school. “That guy’s messed up,” he says. Joe is tall, excitable, his head waving around and tongue lolling as he holds an imaginary dog and air-fucks it. Everyone laughs. Everyone.

“I was teaching it dominance,” Steve tells Adam and another friend, Rich Johnson. “I was showing it who was alpha dog.” And this isn’t the same as denying it happened.

Steve loses friends, Joe Cuzma and others. He’s very protective of his remaining friends, worries that Adam is spending too much time with Joe Russo and Lee Bode, worries Adam will steal them away and he’ll have no one. So he starts talking about Adam behind his back and doesn’t know that Joe and Lee tell this to Adam.

Adam has another thing Steve wants, a new business with a friend Mike, raising feeder mice and rats for snakes. Steve wants in. So Adam invites him over, a setup. “I arranged a wiretap,” Adam says. He hides a tape recorder, and when Steve arrives, they talk. Steve’s looking at the tanks, figuring his way in, mice scrabbling at the glass, the smell of sawdust and urine. Adam leads with questions to get Steve to admit he doesn’t like certain people, gets him to say bad things about them. Steve’s barely even paying attention, worried about what he has to offer, how he can become a part of this. Adam gets him to admit he stole CD’s and liquor from Joe Russo’s older brother and sister.

Later that week, on Friday afternoon, Steve goes over to Joe Russo’s house, another tract home like his own, but right across from the preserve, away from traffic, on a corner with a larger lawn. Joe, Lee, and Adam are playing a video game on the TV, and this is what Steve fears, Adam taking away his best friends. He tries not to say anything, because Joe’s dad is in the other room. He sits down and then Adam turns off the game. He hits play on a tape recorder, and there it is, for all to hear. What Steve has said about his friends, his admission that he stole from Joe’s sister and brother. He tries to stop it, tries to get to the tape recorder, but Adam stops him, and then Steve starts hitting Adam, screaming.

“He lost all his friends that day,” Adam says.

The next day, Steve challenges Adam to a fight after school. Other kids hear about it. Steve pulls a knife.

“It’s not worth it,” Adam tells him, scared shitless. “All these people, everyone will see. You’ll get in trouble.”

And Steve sees this is true, sees that Adam has cornered him yet again. Then he gets suspended, and Adam only gets detention.

Joe Russo’s older brother is on the football team. He tells all his buddies Steve is bad news, and word gets around. When Steve enters high school as a ninth-grader in the fall, he’s already an outcast.

Goths. This is what Steve and his friends become in high school, except that Steve is an outcast even within this group. Just beyond the school grounds is a parking lot where they all gather and smoke. Long black trench coats, black leather boots, chains and spikes. Officer Lancaster lurking at the edges with his bionic mic, trying to catch drug deals.

It takes time, unbearable time, all of ninth grade and into tenth grade, for Steve to regain his friendships with Joe and Lee, and there’s always an edge with Adam. Steve waits for his life to change, passes the time with Pete Rachowsky, who becomes a drug dealer.

Steve and his friends form a campus club in the fall of their sophomore year, try to get a radio station. It starts with just a few short bits to go with campus announcements a couple times a day. Free Your Minds, they call the club, and it’s unsuccessful. They’re not liked, after all. Who would want to listen to them?

Steve doesn’t care much, though. Somehow, the miraculous has happened. A girl named “Missy” likes him for some reason, and suddenly he has a girlfriend. She’s cute, too, looks like Liv Tyler, wears a black choker. His parents let her stay over a couple nights a week as a “family friend.” Then, in the winter, Missy dumps him, tells everyone he has a small penis, can’t satisfy her in bed. Steve’s older sister, Susan, is no help. She laughs at him too. She’s always had an easier time. The two of them are night and day.

So Steve goes for the lowest common denominator, “Nicole,” “a girl with a self-esteem problem, a girl you wouldn’t want your parents to know about,” according to Adam. Secret sex for that entire summer after tenth grade. No one is supposed to know, except Steve’s friends. At Rich’s house, there’s a foam lounger that reclines. They call it the Flip-N-Fuck. They do it on the ottoman, too, in Rich’s living room late at night, just a moving sheet with two bodies underneath.