No Easy Answers

by Merritt, Rob, Brown, Brooks

  Dylan and Brooks use the Frankenstein program to “roast” their fellow cast and crew members on a tribute video they recorded in late 1998.

  Dylan and Brooks blow a kiss to the camera.

  Brooks, foreground, poses for the 1999 Columbine senior class photo, with Eric and Dylan behind him. By the time this photo was taken, in the spring of 1999, Eric and Dylan were in the final stages of their plan to attack the school.

  For their second class photo, the seniors at Columbine were given the chance to “get crazy” for the cameras. Here, Brooks, Eric, and Dylan pretend to aim guns at the camera. While the gesture was made in good fun at the time, one of the investigators in the Jefferson County Sheriff's Office would later point to the photo as a reason to suspect Brooks as an accomplice in the Columbine killings.

  The Columbine High School yearbook photos of Eric Harris (left) and Dylan Klebold (right)

  From left, author and filmmaker Michael Moore addresses the media alongside Brooks Brown and Columbine shooting victims Richard Castaldo (in wheelchair) and Mark Taylor outside the Kmart corporate headquarters in Michigan in 2001. Moore recruited the Columbine students to assist in a successful effort to convince Kmart to remove handgun ammunition from its shelves.

  Brooks shares a lighthearted moment with his parents, Randy and Judy, at the Browns' home in Littleton, Colorado.

  Two years after she was killed, flowers and cards continue to adorn the gravesite of Columbine student Rachel Scott in Littleton, Colorado on April 20, 2001. Rachel was one of Eric and Dylan's first victims.

  13

  rachel

  PEOPLE HAVE ASKED ME IF, IN THOSE INITIAL HOURS AFTER THE massacre, I stopped to wonder why Eric had let me leave the school. The truth is, the question didn't even enter my mind until later. That day, my mind was solely occupied with trying to find out who was still alive.

  Trevor and I left my house and started driving around, looking for familiar faces anywhere we could find them. It didn't matter who they were; every person we saw was one more person who had survived. We went to Leawood Elementary, where lists of students who were confirmed as alive and safe were being posted. We went to the Perkins restaurant. We drove around the neighborhood looking for big groups of people.

  No matter where we went, I'd find somebody I knew. It didn't matter who it was; we'd throw our arms around each other in relief and cry.

  I remember seeing people like Andy Robinson, Chris Logan, and Dan Berg. I grabbed Zach Heckler in a massive hug.

  “Thank God you're alive,” we'd say.

  There was one person we were looking for more than any other. We'd heard a rumor that Rachel Scott was among those who'd been killed. We'd been at home watching helicopter footage outside the school, and lying near the exterior steps of Columbine was the body of a girl who was wearing clothes just like those I'd seen Rachel wearing earlier that day.

  My brother Aaron was on the phone all afternoon, asking people if they knew anything. I was sitting with my friend Steve Partridge on our porch when Aaron ran out to give us an update.

  “Rachel Scott's dead,” he said.

  Aaron was just giving us a name. He didn't realize that we both knew Rachel, or that Steve had dated Rachel for a long time. When Steve heard the news, he fell silent. Then he collapsed.

  We tried to hold out hope. We knew Aaron was getting his information from gossip; no names had been released yet by the police. There was still a chance.

  That night, we scanned through every crowd. We asked around. “Have you seen Rachel? Do you know if she made it out?” No one had an answer.

  Rachel was special to me for one reason: she defied every expectation I'd ever had of a Christian.

  We had our first real conversation at State Qualifiers for speech and debate that year. We'd seen each other around before that, but hadn't spoken much. In looking back, that's kind of an odd thing; after all, we were both in speech, both actors in the Columbine theatre program, and she'd been dating my friend Steve for nearly a year. Later she would go to Prom with Nick Baumgart. Yet through all that, we never seemed to cross paths.

  Part of the problem was that I knew Rachel was a devout Christian. I never made it a secret in high school that I wasn't a religious person, and devout Christians used to come after me and tell me I was going to hell. They would use quotes from the Bible to throw insults at me. I'd seen them try to force their beliefs on other students, guilting them into it, pressuring them to join up. They didn't want to hear what you thought about God, or the world. All they wanted to hear was “Jesus Christ is my Savior”—and if we didn't agree, we weren't worth associating with.

  I didn't want to be criticized for my beliefs. So I never thought I had a reason to make conversation with Rachel Scott. At least, not until that afternoon at Speech Contest.

  I'd stepped outside for a cigarette in between rounds; smokers generally tended to congregate in one single area at contests. When I walked out, Rachel was there, too, standing alone next to the building with a Marlboro Light.

  “Hey,” she said when she saw me. “How'd it go?”

  We struck up a conversation; it wasn't long before the subject shifted over to faith. It's a topic I get into quite often with people. Yet as we spoke, I realized that Rachel was different from other kids at Columbine for one reason: she listened.

  It was a first. I can't think of any time before that when a Christian asked me about my beliefs without interrupting constantly, or running right over my ideas, or just sitting there and snickering. Yet Rachel wasn't like that at all. Rachel listened to me speak about Taoism and my problems with the Bible and the church. She was genuinely interested, and didn't seem to judge me for it.

  She talked about her own beliefs as well, but not in an attempt to convert me. She was just explaining, and I listened carefully, just as she had done for me. Then we started casually debating the subject.

  “Where does your faith in God come from?” I asked. “After all, you don't see God, right? So how can you be sure that he really exists?”

  “I can see him,” she replied. “I know that God is real. I know it in my heart. You can only believe in what you know to be true. You know your own truth. I know mine. Everyone should be able to find that within themselves.”

  “But with most Christians I know, it's not like that,” I said. “They think their way is the only way to live, and when you tell them you don't agree then they'll just tell you that you're going to hell. I mean, seriously—do you believe that it's your role as a Christian to try and save everyone else?”

  Rachel shook her head. “It's not about that for me,” she said. “I'm not trying to go out there and convert people. I just want to be an example. I want to live my life for God, and let other people take from that whatever they want.”

  I took a drag of my cigarette, mulling that over.

  “You ever read the Tao te Ching?” I asked.

  Rachel shook her head no.

  “Well, basically it argues that the greatest teacher teaches without teaching,” I continued. “I don't know. You kind of sound like you're not so much Christian as Taoist.”

  Rachel didn't say anything. She just smiled.

  It amazed me. The fact that we could sit there, two people on such opposite sides of the spectrum of faith, and talk openly about our differences the way that we did—it wasn't something I'd seen before at Columbine. I couldn't get over how open and honest Rachel Scott was. In my mind, Rachel was an example of what the ideal Christian should be.

  Rachel's beliefs were strong, yet she accepted people who felt differently. She felt that the path to spiritual enlightenment didn't mean scaring people, lecturing or judging them. She just lived her life the best way she knew how, and hoped other people would follow her example.

  Imagine what a better place this world could have been throughout history if more people had shared Rachel Scott's viewpoint.

  Rachel and I never talked about faith again after that; we each knew where the oth
er stood, and stayed friends regardless. It was a refreshing change of pace as far as Christians were concerned; I discovered that I really enjoyed her company.

  The last time I saw her was on April 20. She'd just appeared in the last play of the season, Smoke in the Room, in a role that had required her to cut her hair short and dye it. She was defying people's expectations to the end.

  Rachel was eating lunch with another student, Richard Castaldo, when Eric and Dylan began their attack.

  Rachel and Richard were the first two people hit. Rachel was struck twice in the legs and once in the torso; more bullets tore through Richard's spine, leaving him paralyzed.

  What happened to Rachel next is a mystery. Richard's mother told NBC's Dateline that when Richard first came out of surgery, he described the scene in detail. He said Rachel was approached by the shooters a second time and asked if she believed in God. She said yes, and they killed her.

  Later, Richard told police that he remembers Rachel lying on the ground, crying, and that the shooters approached a second time but left him for dead. However, he no longer remembered whether Rachel was asked about her faith in her final moments. To this day, he cannot recall what happened after he was shot.

  “After he got the breathing tube out, he was crying and upset, telling me through sobs how they taunted and teased her about God,” Castaldo's mother, Connie Michalik, told the Denver Rocky Mountain News on April 21, 2000. “Then he heard a shot and he didn't know what happened to her. He asked me again this morning: ‘What did I say? Why didn't anybody write it down?’ He's asked me so many times. Richard has cried a thousand tears for Rachel. He has so much guilt inside.”

  My parents went to Dylan's funeral. It was a small affair; only a handful of people bothered to come out, and the ones who did were mainly there in support of the Klebold family. I heard that there were some nice tributes made there.

  Rachel's funeral, the only one I attended in the wake of Columbine, couldn't have been any more different. It took place in a packed church only a few blocks south of Columbine, and was televised by CNN. The ratings during that funeral were higher than anything else CNN had previously broadcast.

  At first, I went to sit with the rest of the debate team. With dirty looks and whispered comments, they made it clear that they didn't want me there. These people, who had known me for years, had been with me to debate competitions, had been Rachel's and my teammates, were now turning their backs on me because I had been friends with Eric and Dylan.

  “You're going to burn in hell,” one of them told me.

  I suppose that under different circumstances, I would have made some retort. Here we were, at a funeral for someone who had advocated kindness and acceptance; the kids who called themselves her friends weren't exactly following her example. But I didn't have the heart. I was too shocked. I just moved away from them and sat with Steve and Doug.

  Just a few days ago, Steve and I had driven around looking for Rachel, hoping to find her alive. Now she was here, in a closed casket at the front of the church. It still didn't seem real.

  There were several moments during that funeral that truly were beautiful. Rachel's sister did an exact recreation of the Christian dance Rachel had performed at the talent show the year before, accompanied by the song “Watch the Lamb and Who Nailed Him There.”

  When it came time for Rachel's friends to speak, Nick Baumgart gave a genuine, from-the-heart speech that focused on the positive memories we had of her.

  “Her trueness to herself was amazing,” Nick said. “She didn't let anybody affect who she was. She didn't let anybody tell her that what she believed and who she was wasn't okay. She was true to herself, and because of that, she was true to everybody else. In a sense, she is still here. She always will be, and that smile will still be here . . . I'm lucky to have known her. I'm fortunate to have been her friend, and I'm fortunate to have called her my Prom date. But I'm truly blessed to have had her in my life.”

  I was really moved by the beauty of the service . . . until Bruce Porter, the officiating minister, stepped up to give his speech.

  Porter has since written a book called The Martyr's Torch: The Message of the Columbine Massacre. On the back cover of the book, Porter's bio describes him as “a ‘man with a mission’ to call Christians back to their ancient roots of fervent dedication and radical passion for Christ no matter what the cost.”

  That much was obvious at Rachel's funeral. With the CNN cameras rolling, Porter had come to turn the service into a recruiting rally.

  “We've removed the Ten Commandments from our schools,” he told us. “In exchange, we've reaped selfish indifference and glorified hedonism. We've told our children that they were nothing more than highly evolved amoebae, accidentally brought forth from a mud pool somewhere in time. And we wonder why so many of them see no intrinsic value to life.

  “We removed prayer from our schools and we've reaped violence and hatred and murder,” Porter continued. “And we have the fruit of those activities before us now. I want to say to you here today that prayer was established again in our public schools last Tuesday!” Applause rang out as Porter's volume increased. Porter went on to call Rachel a “martyr” who had now “dropped her torch and gone on to her eternal reward.” He started asking who would pick it up for her, encouraging young people to “take your schools back.”

  “I want to know right now who will take up that torch,” he said. “Let me see you. Who will pick up Rachel's torch? Who will do it? Hold it high!”

  People in the church began to stand up. Kids and parents were cheering. At the podium, Porter was growing more feverish, more evangelical, as he started to address the TV cameras.

  “Hold up that torch right now!” he went on, his voice rising. “If you are watching from some other place, stand up where you are. Stand up and say ‘I won't be a victim! I will lift that torch high! The love of Jesus!’ I want you to know that by doing that, you've declared a revolution!”

  I sat there in stunned silence. This was wrong. To me, a funeral should be about loved ones remembering the person they've lost, and saying goodbye. Yet Porter had another goal in mind. In one of his own e-mails before the funeral—which he reprinted in his book—the minister wrote, “CNN will be broadcasting from the funeral as a part of a press pool, and there is every possibility that millions will be joining with us as we mourn Rachel and the other students who were slain. Pray that we will be able to speak into the hearts of multiplied millions of young people the reality of Christ's love for them . . .”

  Porter was using the incident of Rachel's death to convert as many young people to his faith as possible. This was a slap in the face to the scores of non-Christian kids who Rachel had befriended, including me.

  Rachel was a Christian, yes. But she was all about acceptance, whether people looked different, acted different, or had different beliefs. She was about reaching out to the less fortunate in school and making them feel welcome. She was about living true to herself, and helping other people live true to themselves. She was about leading by example rather than by sermons. These were ideals that could be appreciated by many of her peers, regardless of their faith.

  Porter noted in his speech that Rachel had reached out to people from all walks of life, and accepted them. If he knew this, then he had to expect that people from all walks of life would be at her funeral. Jewish. Agnostic. Atheist. People who were still discovering their beliefs. This funeral was for all of us to mourn together. It should not have been for harvesting new followers and making political statements.

  If Porter had truly wanted to recognize Rachel's legacy, he could have pointed out how so many people had come to the service that day, or how so many kids wanted to speak in her memory. Perhaps he could have allowed more of them to do so.

  Steve and I sat there for a moment, staring at the hundreds of people around us who were now standing and applauding. We didn't know what to say.

  Then slowly, Steve stood up too, silent a
midst the circus of cheering and clapping. He turned back and looked at me.

  “Rachel's torch,” he said quietly. “Not his.”

  When he said that, I stood up too. In honor of Rachel.

  At the end of the funeral, as people were getting ready to file out, they asked the family to leave. No one was expecting what happened next.

  They opened Rachel's casket.

  There was Rachel. Dead. Her body, right there, in the casket for all to see. I don't know what they were trying to show people by doing this, but in order to exit, you had no choice but to walk right by it.

  As we filed out, Doug was the first of our group to see her. He started crying. It was hard to watch.

  Steve was next. He saw Rachel's body and collapsed on the floor in tears. Here was his former girlfriend, who still meant the world to him, and his body just failed him. Doug and I had to pick him back up and help him out of there. Of course, when I saw Steve lose it, I was right behind him. All the tears I hadn't cried up to that point came gushing out, just like everybody else, as I saw Rachel lying there in that coffin.

  As we walked out, holding Steve, there was a literal wall of cameras and reporters waiting for us. Taking pictures of us, looking at us, videotaping us.

  We just wanted it to be over.

  14

  no answers

  THE DAYS AFTER THE MURDERS WERE A BLUR. I WANDERED AROUND in a daze most of the time, trying to comprehend the nightmare that had hit all of us.

  There were no answers to be found.

  Imagine your own best friend. Someone you've known for almost your whole life. Someone who used to laugh and tell you jokes, and showed you his new Wolf badge from Cub Scouts, and chased frogs with you around the creek behind your grade school on Friday afternoons. Someone who, just yesterday, you ditched school with. Someone you always thought you knew.