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Instead, Pais, 18, seemed to share her darkest thoughts online.
Images of a handwritten journal, signed with Pais’ full name, showed a young woman in prolonged despair. Journal entries dated over the past year included admissions to harboring increasingly “extreme” views and to looking forward to acquiring a firearm.
She felt, Pais appears to have written, like a pot of scalding water “on the verge of boiling over.”
On Wednesday, the police found Pais dead of an apparent self-inflicted shotgun wound near the base of Mount Evans in Jefferson County, Colorado, more than 2,000 miles away from home. Officials in Colorado had been searching for her for 24 hours, saying they believed her to be “infatuated” with the mass shooting at Columbine High School in April 1999, and that she had flown to Denver on a “pilgrimage.” Hundreds of Colorado schools were closed Wednesday as a precaution.
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The authorities have not confirmed that the online journal belonged to Pais. But the entries — including one with drawings of one of the Columbine gunmen, Dylan Klebold — so alarmed Miami Beach Police officers that they alerted the FBI about them after Pais’ parents reported her missing Monday, according to Mayor Dan Gelber of Miami Beach.
Her parents told the police in Surfside, Florida, where the family lives, that they had not seen Pais since Sunday. The Surfside Police then contacted officers in Miami Beach, where Pais went to school.
The Colorado authorities said Pais flew to Denver on Monday and purchased a shotgun and ammunition at a gun shop near Columbine High School. They started a manhunt Tuesday, saying they considered her armed and dangerous.
On Wednesday, the family’s Surfside home was ringed in yellow police tape. Chief Julio Yero of the Surfside Police walked in with other officers to tell Pais’ parents that she had been found dead, and to offer condolences. The family did not speak to reporters.
Six miles away, at Miami Beach Senior High School, students grappled with the news that one of their classmates, perhaps intent on hurting others, had flown across the country, bought a weapon and taken her own life.
“I didn’t believe it — I didn’t understand it,” Brandon Bossard, a sophomore who had a second-period class with Pais, said after dismissal Wednesday. “She’s so quiet. How could someone so quiet be like that?”
He said Pais would sit alone, in a chair against the classroom wall. Other students also described Pais as keeping mostly to herself, wearing baggy T-shirts, jeans and boots and, often, earphones as she listened to music.
“She was really smart,” said Jade Leeyee, a 17-year-old senior who sat in front of Pais in English class. “She was a genuine person, and she had such a pretty smile.”
In art class, Pais was usually “kind of in a corner,” said Katherin DeVargas Gil, a 17-year-old senior who had known Pais since their freshman year.
Alberto Carvalho, the superintendent of the Miami-Dade County Public Schools, said at a news conference outside the school that, to his knowledge, no teachers or administrators had known about Pais’ apparent online journal, or that she might have needed psychological help. He described her as a high-achieving student with no history of disciplinary problems.
But the journal describes months of feeling lost, hopeless and misunderstood. “I wish I could get a gun by the end of the summer,” she apparently wrote in July.
The journal included drawings of firearms and a bloody knife, and a mention of dreaming about a shotgun.
It is unclear when the images of the journal entries were posted online. Pais appears to have taken a break from writing entries between November and February. When she returned to her journal, she wrote about wanting to “focus on the task at hand.”
“The last few days have been especially painful and tumultuous, which kickstarted me again to start reviving my plans and getting on with them,” she wrote.
Her last entry is signed and dated March 30.
Last month, Pais also appeared to seek advice online about how to purchase a gun.
“I am planning a trip to Colorado in the next month or so and wanna buy a shotgun while I’m there and I was wondering what restrictions would apply for me?” she appears to have written on the website of the National Gun Forum, posting as “Dissolved Girl,” the same handle used to post her journal. “I’ve found a few private sellers I might want to purchase from,” the post said. “Thank you for reading, I appreciate your response!”
Several people responded, and Pais thanked them.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.