First let me apologize. I am not a writer by profession, temperament, or talent. I have only a passing familiarity with grammar and would not recognize a conjunctive phrase if it bit me in the but (sic). My editor added the (sic). So, I am an unlikely and ill-equipped choice to be the chronicler of such important events. It was not my decision.

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For the sake of honesty and accuracy let me revise that last sentence. It was never my decision to become a participant, but I take full responsibility for being the chronicler of these events. Weeks ago, I made a conscious decision to fill nearly every free moment with the telling of this story. It’s almost become an obsession, and I can’t tell you, Leah, my wife, or myself exactly why. Maybe it is a way of simply purging myself of the experience. It is not (unlike many in my profession) because I have a burning desire to write the great American novel, and it certainly is not because I feel I owe Adis anything. In fact, I spend more nights than not staring at the ceiling wishing he had never come into my life, because frankly he’s complicated it beyond recovery. Before him I was happy in my cloistered world. For the most part I lived as I was raised and things made sense. I worked hard, did my homework, stuck to my principles and things generally turned my way. Not always, but enough to reinforce the belief that in most respects I was in control of my life and destiny. Please don’t misunderstand me, I was not living an uneventful life or suffering from the delusion that I was immune to the vagaries of chance. Shit happens. Forrest Gump said it, sort of, and it’s my wife’s favorite phrase. I know shit happens, I see it almost every day at work, and sometimes it finds its way to me. I can’t control that (shit) so I have to accept it and concentrate on what I can control. Only now, after Adis forced his way into my happy little bubble, I have to accept that instead of being the captain of my life’s ship, romantically fighting rogue waves and rough seas, I am in fact only a pawn on someone else’s chessboard. So, here I sit at 5:30 a.m. in front of my computer, while my wife and children sleep. My dog has curled up in the knee space of my desk, her head resting on my feet, and I wonder how cruel it would be if I could communicate to her all the realities of her life.

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Okay, enough of that self-serving, depressing stuff. What follows is a chronology of events that occurred over a five month period, beginning last April. Most of these events of course involve Adis, a man who requires no introduction, either directly or indirectly. I first met the famous man a few hours after the incident at Northland High School, and at the start our relationship was purely professional. Unfortunately, it didn’t stay that way. The evolution of our complex relationship forms the backbone of this story. I have been careful not to modify anything Adis said or did in any meaningful way; of course, I’m the one who decided what was meaningful. Beyond that I have taken full liberty to address any and all issues that are remotely related. Translation: I go off on a lot of tangents. Unfortunately, as my publisher tells me, tangents frustrate people, so to keep things moving I have included a few end notes (kind of like footnotes but at the end of the book instead of the bottom of the page).

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One last thing. Most of what has appeared in the mainstream press about Adis (and to no less a degree about me) is either incomplete or completely inaccurate. It never seemed to bother him, but it bothers me. So, for my peace of mind, where it is necessary I have supplemented or directly refuted a fair amount of what is “known” about Adis. So here is my first correction. Adis’s name is Adis. No title, just Adis. At first it was difficult for me not to add an honorific, but eventually I adjusted.

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One last, last thing. At times this will be a hard story to follow, and not just because of my flight-of-ideas writing style. It is impossible to fully understand Adis, and most of the time I was forced to let go of the reins and allow him to take the lead. If I have faithfully reproduced these events, every “where is this leading” thought will have a corresponding “oh, I see” moment. Despite the long, seemingly unrelated and disconnected stories, in the end it all comes together.