There were days when we'd all ditch class together. One time I went with Eric, Dylan, and Becca to pick up sandwiches and eat them over at Eric's house. I hadn't been over there in a long time, and it felt strange to be there, but by now I felt at ease enough with Eric to not think twice about it. His parents weren't home at the time, which was probably a good thing. That would have been an awkward reunion, to say the least.
I didn't say anything to my parents about Eric at first. For the first month or so, I wasn't really sure if we would become friends again. We might have made peace, but I didn't know whether or not he had changed. That's the philosophy I go by: “Trust your neighbors, but lock your doors.” I was being careful. Eric was being a good kid again? Go with it, I told myself. But don't get screwed over a second time.
However, by March I realized that things were going to be okay. I decided my parents should know that he and I had resolved our differences.
It didn't go well.
We were sitting at the dinner table, talking about school, and I just decided to bring up the subject.
“Well, you're not going to believe who I've made up with,” I said.
Somehow my mom knew exactly who I meant. “Don't say it,” she replied.
“It's Eric,” I said. I laughed over how bizarre it was, expecting that my parents would laugh too.
They didn't. Instead, my mom stared at me, stone-faced.
“It's a trick,” she said.
“I knew who Brooks meant the moment he said that I wouldn't believe it,” Judy Brown said. “Eric was the only kid who would have shocked me like that. So Brooks was right—I couldn't believe it. And one of the first things I said was, ‘Don't trust him.’”
Randy Brown reacted angrily. He remembers asking Brooks, “What the hell are you doing? This kid wanted to kill you!” He and Judy began a heated argument with their son, who they felt was ignoring common sense in making up with Eric.
Brooks was angry, because his parents seemed to be contradicting their own advice. He pointed out to both of them that they had taught him from an early age to give people a second chance if it seemed like they had changed.
“That was difficult, because we had always taught him that,” Randy Brown recalls. “Because that's the same chance that Brooks never got from the other kids at Columbine. Once kids make up their mind that someone's not wanted, it's hard to break that down. But at the same time, Judy and I hadn't forgotten last year. We wanted Brooks to stay away from that kid.”
The argument grew so intense that Brooks wound up storming out of the house. He drove to the nearby Perkins restaurant to get a cup of coffee and cool off.
My parents and I were still fighting all the time, even in senior year. We had a strange relationship, because I loved them so much and we talked about things that a lot of kids would never talk to their parents about. Yet when we fought, it would get very ugly and very personal. I made a lot of trips out to Perkins—sometimes with friends, other times by myself, but almost always to get out of the house for a while. I can't say we had a love/hate relationship, because I've never hated my parents. But it was certainly a rocky one.
That night, I was angry because my parents wouldn't trust my judgment. It was as if they thought I had forgotten everything that had happened the year before. I hadn't. How could anyone forget that? What I wanted them to understand was that I remembered the same things they did, yet I'd found it in my heart to get past it and start over. If I could do that, and I was the one most directly affected by Eric, I thought they should trust my decision. Especially with all of their lessons about giving people a second chance.
I did give some thought to what they'd said. I wondered if maybe I had allowed myself to forget things because it was convenient to do so. Nonetheless, I was determined to give Eric that second chance. I had made a lot of mistakes in my own life at that point, so I knew that to refuse someone a second chance when he's truly changed is really hurtful and demeaning.
What I didn't know was that my mom was right. Eric was putting on an act, and not just for me. He and Dylan weren't laughing at their troubles in class because they had grown up and learned to deal with them. They were laughing because they knew that, in only a few more months, they were going to shock everyone with their revenge.
11
the calm before the storm
THE COLUMBINE HIGH SCHOOL CLASS OF 1999 HAD ITS PICTURE TAKEN on the bleachers of the gymnasium, with close to four hundred kids packed together like one big, happy family. Up in the far left-hand corner of that picture were Eric, Dylan, and me.
Zach Heckler and Robyn Anderson were up there with us. We learned we would be doing two different poses: an “official” or serious class photo and a silly one. Since he was offering us the chance to do a “silly” picture, the photographer figured we wouldn't do anything to screw up the serious one. We were instructed to hold still for the extended exposure of the picture, so all of us gave our best “serious looks” to the camera.
When it came time for the “silly shot,” Eric donned his KMFDM hat, and he and Dylan both put on shades. Eric suggested that, since we were having a camera pointed at us, it would be cool to point imaginary guns back. So the five of us pantomimed doing exactly that.
It seemed like a funny thing to do. I never thought twice about it.
People always ask about warning signs Eric and Dylan might have shown in the weeks before Columbine. By then, however, it was too late. The warning signs had come the year before. Now they had learned to keep their secret to themselves.
I remember Eric telling me once in class that he couldn't wait until he turned eighteen so he could buy a gun. The conversation was pretty short, and he didn't bring it up again. But when someone says something like that, you have no reason to think he might already own guns.
But Eric and Dylan did.
They bought their first guns with the help of Robyn, who appeared in that class picture next to us. We had first met Robyn as sophomores, when she was dating a guy in the theatre department. Since that time, she had remained friends with Dylan.
I never liked Robyn. I didn't talk to her much. I knew she had a romantic interest in Dylan, but he didn't return it. When they attended Prom together, it was only as friends. However, he and Eric did find a way to use her friendship to their advantage.
Eric and Dylan had tried to buy weapons at the Tanner Gun Show in Denver once before, but failed because they weren't eighteen. Their solution was to find someone who was eighteen to do their buying for them. So they found Robyn.
In police interviews, Robyn claimed Eric and Dylan had told her that the weapons were just for target practice, and that when she asked them whether they would be used for anything else, they replied that they weren't stupid enough to do such a thing. So, without further question, she accompanied them to the show, let them pick out the weapons, and then acted as the buyer. No one at the gun show seemed to question this.
In his journal, Eric described the events of the day this way:
Well, folks, today was a very Important day In the history of R. Today, along with VoDkA and someone else who I won't name, we went downtown and purchased the following: a double barrel 12 ga. shotgun, a pump-action 12 ga. shotgun, a 9mm carbine, 250 9mm rounds, 15 12 ga. slugs, and 40 shotgun shells, 2 switchblade knives, and a total of 4-10 round clips for the carbine. We . . . have . . . GUNS! We fucking got em, you sons of bitches! HA! HA HA HA! Neener! Booga Booga. Heh. It's all over now. This caps it off, the point of no return . . .
Later, we learned of many other warning signs that happened in that final year. However, they were so spread out in space and time that no one could think of putting them together.
The incidents later shared by people who knew Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold spell a tragic story, and if one person had known about all of them, an obvious—yet unthinkable—picture would have been painted.
Columbine student Nate Dykeman told police he had witnessed Eric and Dylan detonating a p
ipe bomb in January of 1998, the same day that the Denver Broncos won the Super Bowl. However, Nate also said Eric's father had found one of Eric's pipe bombs and confronted him with it. According to Nate, Eric showed him the bomb in his parents' closet and said that his dad was going to make him detonate it—but that his dad had never bothered to look for more of the bombs in Eric's room.
Nate Dykeman would drift apart from Eric after the two became interested in the same girl. However, Nate told police that in the weeks before the shootings Eric had showed him a videotape of himself and Dylan firing weapons alongside Mark Manes and Philip Duran. The tapes depicted both a TEC-9 and a sawed-off shotgun. Neither of those weapons would be ideal for target shooting, yet that's what Eric told Nate they were doing.
Chris Morris, a member of the “Trench Coat Mafia” who still worked with Eric and Dylan at Blackjack Pizza, told police that Eric had joked about killing jocks and suggested placing bombs on the generators as a way to blow up the school. However, it had seemed like joking around, Morris said.
Classmates in Eric's government class recall a video he and Dylan shot for “The Trench Coat Mafia Protection Service,” in which the two offered their services to the bullied and oppressed; they could be hired to beat up a bully or wreak havoc on an enemy.
Eric's parents, who were told by doctors that he was struggling with depression, had placed him on Luvox.
Dylan wrote a paper for his sixth-period composition class called “The Mind and Motives of Charles Manson” in November of 1998. Months later, he would turn in an essay to his creative writing teacher that graphically described a trenchcoat-wearing assassin shooting and killing bullies outside a bar.
A co-worker remembers Eric receiving a paycheck in March and commenting that he would use it to buy more propane tanks. The co-worker told police that Eric already owned seven tanks and wanted to get nine more with the check, aiming to have thirty in all by April 20. The employee asked why; Eric replied that it was Hitler's birthday.
Nicole Markham, who dated Chris Morris and went to Columbine, told police that she saw Eric and Dylan standing in the school cafeteria with a piece of paper they were studying intently. When she asked what it was, they refused to tell her, so she playfully grabbed it away from them. She saw that it was a homemade diagram of the cafeteria, with the location of the security cameras clearly marked.
Each of these warning signs, by themselves, seemed little more than odd to the people who observed them. Put together, they form a disturbing picture of what was about to happen.
No one was in a position to put them together.
When I look back, I'm still amazed at the acting job Eric and Dylan did. None of us knew what was going to happen. None of us knew that for over a year they'd been cooking up a plot to attack the school.
Some of my classmates talked to the media about how Eric and Dylan used to sit in class and say things like “Can I shoot that guy?” I remember them saying things like that, too. However, it never seemed serious. After all, there are jokes about violence, and then there are actual threats to commit violence. Eric and Dylan always seemed like they were joking. They would see some jock push a kid over, or hear a kid say something completely ignorant and stupid, and say, “Boy, that fucker should be killed,” or “I wish that guy would get hit by a car.” They were general expressions of frustration. They never said anything like “Boy, I'm going to go home and get my .22 and put a bullet in his brain this afternoon.” It never seemed serious.
Some have suggested that Eric and Dylan never seriously thought they were going to do it until right before they actually did. I don't agree. They knew exactly what they were doing. There's a part of me that would like to believe that Dylan was separating himself emotionally from what was about to happen. Realistically, though, that's not likely. He and Eric both wanted revenge. They had been looking forward to April 20 for a long, long time.
A few months before graduation, parents of seniors at Columbine High School were required to attend a meeting explaining how the ceremony would be carried out. Attendance was required in order to get tickets to the ceremony. So Judy Brown called Sue Klebold, and the two made plans to attend together.
After they had listened to the speech and picked up their tickets, the two longtime friends sat down in the auditorium to catch up. It was their first real conversation in months. Judy learned that Dylan's father had taken him to visit the University of Arizona, where he was enrolled for the fall. Dylan had seen his future dorm room and the student lounge, and taken a walking tour of the campus.
“She was so excited about how Dylan was doing,” Judy recalled of Mrs. Klebold. “Dylan was picking out his room, and he was looking at the girls and talking about them; it was something he had never really done before. He would nudge his dad and say, ‘Ooo, she was gorgeous; did you see her?’
“She said he was so happy that Dylan was on his way,” Judy continued. “She asked him, ‘Are you sure you want to take off like this, to a big college? Do you maybe just want to break away slowly instead?’ But he wanted to go. He picked out a dorm room that was going to be near the cafeteria. He talked about how great the campus was. He was excited.
“He loved computers, and now he was going to computer school. He was planning on going to the Prom. It was so unlike him, seeing him coming out of his shell like this. It seemed like he was happy, like he was finding his way.”
Judy paused for a moment before continuing.
“And all the while, he was planning this massacre.”
The key point I have to stress about those final few weeks at Columbine is that, to me, nothing seemed out of the ordinary. All of the warning signs I saw had happened back in junior year. While friends did observe the occasional odd thing, it was like holding one tiny puzzle piece and trying to figure out what the picture might be. It would all make sense later, but at the time, Eric and Dylan were covering their tracks well.
Dylan wasn't the only one who seemed to be making plans for his future. Eric had applied to join the Marines; the son of an Air Force veteran, he talked often that semester about his desire to serve in the military, and how the idea of being paid to run around with guns and defend America really appealed to him.
On April 15, 1999, Eric and his parents met with a Marine recruiter to discuss Eric's application. Eric was told that his application was being rejected because he had lied and told them he wasn't taking Luvox to treat depression. Because of that—and perhaps because Eric hadn't disclosed his medical history regarding his chest deformity—the military was turning him down.
Eric mentioned that at school the next day. It was the Friday before the attack on Columbine. He seemed disappointed, even though he talked like he was blowing it off.
Sometimes I wonder if, had he been accepted, Eric would have been prompted to make a last-minute change in plans and abort the attack. We will never know the answer to that. On the other hand, it's possible that the entire application was a ruse, just like Dylan's application to college; after all, if two boys look like they are actively planning for their futures, would you ever suspect that they were actually plotting a massacre that would end in their own deaths?
Some adults ask how high schoolers could have been mature enough to carry out such a detailed plan in secret. These people are selling teenagers short. Teenagers—particularly intelligent ones like Eric and Dylan—are more than capable of keeping their intentions secret, especially if they have been planning something for a long time. A lot of strategy can be discussed in a year, and if one of the plotters starts to get sloppy, the other can pull him back into line.
Their plan was amazing in its intricacy. Eric and Dylan had spent over a year working at Blackjack Pizza to save up the money to buy weapons, which they managed through close friends. Had Eric and Dylan been acting like homicidal maniacs when they asked for help with the guns, their friends would have been suspicious. However, because they were acting so much more mature, it seemed believable that they only wan
ted the weapons for target practice. From there, they went “target shooting” for the next few months—to teach themselves how to shoot.
They kept their weapons hidden; nothing was ever left out where their parents would see it, because Eric had already learned his lesson with the pipe bomb.
Rather than act like rebels, they put on their best behavior. Eric, who used to shoot his mouth off on his Web site about the violence he wanted to create, had learned to shut up. He kept his plans to his personal journal now, which no one would see but him—at least, not until the plan had been executed.
In his journals, Eric wrote, “If I have to cheat and lie to everyone, then that's fine. THIS is what I am motivated for, THIS is my goal, THIS is what I want ‘to do with my life.’”
On April 3 of 1999, Eric wrote this final entry in his journal:
Months have passed. It's the first Friday night in the final month. Much shit has happened. VoDkA has a TEC-9, we test fired all of our babies, we have 6 time clocks ready, 39 crickets, 24 pipe bombs, and the napalm is under construction . . . The amount of dramatic irony and foreshadowing is fucking amazing. Everything I see and hear, I incorporate into NBK somehow. Either bombs, clocks, guns, napalm, killing people, anything and everything finds some tie to it. Feels like a goddamn movie sometimes. I wanna try to put some bombs and mines around this town too, maybe. Get a few extra frags on the scoreboard. I hate you people for leaving me out of so many fun things. And no, don't fucking say “Well that's your fault” because it isn't, you people had my phone #, and I asked and all, but no no no no don't let the weird looking Eric KID come along, ooh fucking nooo . . .
No Easy Answers Page 11
