No Easy Answers (19 page)

It seemed to me that I spent most of those first few days crying. The people who saw me then say that I was like some kind of zombie, physically there but with no life in my eyes. When I wasn't numb, I was curled up in a ball, sobbing. Not like me at all, believe me. But then, I really wasn't myself again for a long time.

The only place I really found solace was with a pen. The day after the killings, in the midst of the media barrage, I put my thoughts onto paper for the first time.

Today the school became one, but with fifteen less

Gaining only demons, meant to anger, to depress

We handled those demons, and rose over our hate

To see that finding love was all but too late

The ones that had fallen took from us their joy

Their sweet innocence of being a girl, being a boy

The ones who remained grew old in a day

For the mistakes of two boys, the rest had to pay

As we look back over the smiles and the tears

We know our memories will destroy the pain, over the years

Myself, I know, has been dealt an insane hand

But I know, eventually, I must take a stand

They may call us Columbine—in name we are

But the real name we earned surpasses Columbine by far

The only name I care about that the media was giving

Is the truth about who we are: WE THE LIVING.

There were still seventeen days left until graduation. We didn't know what was going to happen—whether the year would be written off completely, if we'd be attending another school, if anyone could focus on schoolwork in the wake of what had happened. We didn't even know if Columbine itself would remain standing. Some argued that if the school was destroyed, Eric and Dylan would have “won,” while others said the memory would forever taint the building.

The night after the murders, administrators asked Columbine students to gather at West Bowles Community Church, not far from the school. The teachers were going to let us know what had been decided.

We learned that Columbine High School was far too damaged for us to return. It was probably a good thing, anyway. There was no way that some folks could set foot back inside that building. Instead, students would be finishing out the school year at Chatfield High School.

The teachers tried to tell us how we should be feeling about this. That we'd make it through. That “we are all Columbine.” They were trying to help.

But we didn't need to be told what we were going through. We already knew. We were the ones who had lost classmates. We were the ones who were seeing photos of our friends' dead bodies on the front page of the newspaper. No one needed to talk us through how we were feeling. It was already there.

Eventually the teachers announced that they were leaving to discuss other matters. Students were sitting there, acting like they didn't care what happened to them next. Everyone was in shock.

Then something happened.

One kid got up and began speaking into the microphone. I don't remember anymore who it was, or what he said. But it caught people's attention. At last we were hearing from our own. It started a chain reaction. Another kid got up. Then another.

A couple of kids who saw me there said I should get up and speak. I'm not sure what made me do it, but something in me agreed.

I walked up to the microphone, and looked out into that sea of tears and red faces. These were people who had ignored me in the school hallways only days before. Now their eyes were trained on me. Waiting for what I would say.

I had nothing prepared. I just let myself go.

I'd been trained through debate to keep my emotions in check while I was speaking; up there at that microphone, it was all I could do to choke back tears. I tried to make it clear to everyone that what had happened on April 20 had happened to us, not to outsiders or school officials. I said that we shouldn't let anyone tell us how to feel about this, or how to react.

I told everyone that we were in this together. “But,” I added, “It's US—the students—who decide what we're going through. We need to
think about this for ourselves. Don't let the teachers dictate our thoughts to us anymore.” It was our decision, I said. Each one of us could determine our own fate.

I heard students applauding as I walked off. I hoped I'd said something meaningful. Then I collapsed and cried on the floor of the church.

In the days that followed, I spent a lot of my time sitting in front of the TV, watching new reports come in. The things that I saw were news to me as much as they were to the rest of the world. They reported that Eric and Dylan had been planning this massacre for over a year, with Eric keeping a journal that detailed what was in store. It was reported that, had Eric and Dylan survived, they wanted to “hijack a plane and crash it into New York City.”

I was hearing all of it for the first time.

The public, of course, wanted an enemy. They wanted someone to punish. You'd think that by killing themselves Eric and Dylan had denied them that enemy. But they found two anyway, in Mark Manes and Philip Duran.

Philip had worked with Eric and Dylan over at Blackjack Pizza. He told them, when they were looking for someone over eighteen who would buy guns for them, that he knew where they could get their hands on a TEC-9. He put them in touch with Mark, who sold the gun to Dylan for $500.

When that came out, the public was in an uproar. Philip and Mark were instantly branded as killers, and everyone wanted their heads. They were both arrested and convicted; each was sentenced to six years in prison.

There was also Robyn Anderson.

Immediately after the shootings, a lot of people reached out to Robyn. After all, she had been Dylan's Prom date. While Dylan hadn't had
a girlfriend, a lot of people figured that Robyn was the closest thing to it. Kind of ironic; so many people wouldn't talk to me or Chris Morris or Zach Heckler, because we'd been friends with Eric and Dylan. But Robyn they embraced wholeheartedly.

Then the truth came out about what Robyn had done. Around the same time that the police found out about the TEC-9, they also discovered how Eric and Dylan had acquired their other weapons. Robyn admitted that she had given Eric and Dylan the weapons they needed to slaughter the class of 1999.

Did she face charges like Mark and Philip did? No. Not one. To this day, Robyn has never been charged with anything. Mark provided Eric and Dylan with one weapon, and he's in jail until 2005. Robyn got them three guns, and she's at home.

Funny how our system works.

The media were on top of these developments, along with everything else that was coming to light in the days after Columbine. Plenty of people in Littleton criticized the media for being too invasive and violating their privacy. But to be honest, I understood their predicament. They were good people who didn't want to be there any more than we did, but they had a job to do. There were some isolated examples of assholes, sure, but most of the people I met in the media were pretty cool to me. And it was their work that kept information coming out. If it had been up to the police and the school, any reports of bullying would have been suppressed, and the police would have kept quiet about our family's report on the Web pages. The questions about police response would have been pushed aside. It was the media who fought to keep that from happening.

I found myself talking to quite a few reporters in those first few days. After my first interview with Ward Lucas, they just started coming out of the woodwork. They mainly wanted to hear my story about the Web pages. They wanted to know more about these “warnings” the killers had left behind.

They also wanted to know about my last conversation with Eric. “What did he say? Did you see any guns with him? Why did he let you go? Why did he tell you to leave the school? Did you know what was going to happen?” They wanted to know if the rumors about bullying and cruelty at Columbine were true, and if they'd played any part in Eric and Dylan going over the edge.

I told them the truth; I didn't censor myself. Other kids were sugar-coating Columbine, making it sound like this peaceful, tranquil land of flowers and honey that Eric and Dylan had just walked into and shattered. “Oh, sure, there were jocks and everything,” they'd say. “But it was never that bad. We just can't understand how this happened in a school like ours.”

If people wanted to know what Columbine was like, I'd tell them. I'd tell them about the bullies who shoved the kids they didn't like into lockers, or called them “faggot” every time they walked past. I'd tell them about the jocks who picked relentlessly on anyone they considered to be below them. The teachers who turned a blind eye to the brutalization of their pupils, because those pupils weren't the favorites.

I told them about the way those who were “different” were crushed, and fights happened so regularly outside school that no one even paid attention. I told what it was like to live in constant fear of other kids who'd gone out of control, knowing full well that the teachers would turn a blind eye. After all, those kids were their favorites. We were the troublemakers.

“Eric and Dylan are the ones responsible for creating this tragedy,” I told them. “However, Columbine is responsible for creating Eric and Dylan.”

As I would later learn, this wasn't what I was supposed to say. I was supposed to jump on the bandwagon like everyone else. I was supposed to put aside what we'd all experienced over the past few years and pretend that Columbine was a wonderful place. Do you want to know the truth behind the slogan “We Are Columbine”? It's simple: We were still the same Columbine, where rumors determine truth and you don't go against the group mentality.

It was almost sad, the way some of my classmates defended the school. It was like an abused kid whose father dies after years of torturing him. That kid's not going to tell you the truth about his dad. He's going to defend his father and talk about how great he was. That's basically where things were with Columbine. Few people would speak the truth about the way it was. It was infuriating.

To be fair, I admit that there was one time I lied to the media to protect someone. Then again, when you consider who it was that I lied to, you can't exactly blame me. It was the day that
Inside Edition
came knocking on my door.

I said before that the media was pretty cool to me, and they were only there because they had to be. However,
Inside Edition
did not fit that description. Other reporters were moving carefully, trying to be sensitive when they talked to us.
Inside Edition
was there for one thing only, and that was the big scoop. We were all seeing pain and suffering. They were seeing dollar signs.

A few years ago, some friends of mine had made a video for a class at Columbine. It was a promotional thing for the play we were doing,
Get Smart.
And the promo had to do with this evil guy blowing up the school.

In the video, the guy points a milk carton at the school and fires a laser out of it. It was over-the-top. It was funny. No one could have possibly taken it seriously. But in the wake of the Columbine massacre, people were looking for anything that might look suspicious; because the guy
in the video was wearing a black trench coat, it was immediately assumed that Eric and Dylan must have modeled themselves after it.

So
Inside Edition
showed up at my door, and said that they had a copy of the video. “Do you know anything about it?” they asked.

“Well, yeah,” I said.

“Did you help to direct it?”

“No,” I replied. “I didn't have anything to do with it. I've just seen it.”

They seemed disappointed. “Oh. Well, we're looking for someone who did make this video who will talk to us. Because we're pretty sure that Eric and Dylan saw this video, and that was what inspired them.”

Then I got worried. One of the guys who had made that video was Scott Fuselier. His father Dwayne was part of the FBI's Columbine investigation team.
Inside Edition
didn't know that yet, but they would figure it out before too long.

I liked Scott and his dad a great deal. “If this comes out,” I thought, “Scott's dad will be absolutely crucified.”

So I lied. I said, “Well, now that you mention it, yeah, I did help to make it a little bit.” It was bullshit, sure, and lots of people have told me I shouldn't have said it. But in my mind, it was a choice between watching Scott and his dad getting completely screwed—along with everyone else who had been involved in making the video—or trying to take the blame for them. After all, for me, it was no big deal. But, I thought, if
Inside Edition
reported that this FBI investigator's son had made a video that inspired the killers, their lives would be over.

Of course, I didn't stop the media from figuring out who had made the video, and questions were raised, but fortunately Dwayne Fuselier remained on the case. Scott thought I was just clamoring for attention. I've never been able to tell him the real reasons for what I did.

In those early days after Columbine, the people who had been friends with Eric and Dylan stuck together, mainly because the rest of the world
hated us. In the same way that people wanted the book thrown at Mark Manes and Philip Duran, our community made us guilty by association. Losing our friends was difficult enough as it was. Imagine listening to your classmates whisper that you were in on it, too.

We didn't really hang out. But when we'd see each other around, we'd feel a mutual respect, just for getting through it all. Often we wouldn't say anything to each other. Just a look, or a nod, was all we needed.

We were torn by conflicting emotions. On the one hand, Eric and Dylan had been our friends. They were dead. They were gone. On the other hand, they had killed thirteen other people. People we had been close to. We had to make a decision: How should we grieve?

Many were struggling with that question. Crosses were erected on Rebel Hill, overlooking the school, that represented each of the lives lost: fifteen crosses in all. Those who put them up wanted to recognize that Eric and Dylan were victims too, even if they were victims of themselves.