No Easy Answers Read online

  As I ran to the next one, I saw a woman getting into her car with her daughter. She looked like she was rushing.

  “I need your phone!” I yelled to her. “Please let me use your phone!”

  “No, no,” she said, hurrying into her car. “I have to leave.”

  With that, she barreled out of there. I think I scared her.

  As she left, I saw two other women outside the house. One of them was Mrs. Taylor; I knew her daughter Anna, a very sweet girl who had been in several classes with me over the years. Her mother recognized me—and saw the look on my face.

  “What's wrong?” she asked.

  “I need to use your phone.” I was breathing hard, sweating, scared out of my mind. She asked me why.

  I said I didn't want to freak her out, but that I thought there had been a shooting at Columbine.

  Mrs. Taylor stayed calm. “Okay,” she said. “You lie down. Lie on your back. I'll go get the phone. You just try to relax for a second.”

  I sat down, burying my head in my lap. Then I lay back with my arm over my face, trying to regain my composure. I still didn't know for sure what was happening. I still felt panicked.

  Mrs. Taylor gave me the phone. I called my dad at work.

  “Have you heard anything on the news?” I said.

  “No,” he replied. “Why? Brooks, what's going on?”

  “Well, first of all, I want you to know that I'm all right. I'm out of the school and I'm fine.”

  “Okay. . .”

  “Dad, I think Eric's shooting up Columbine.”

  There was a pause on the other end. “What?!”

  “Dad, something's going on,” I continued. “I don't know what to do.”

  “I'll be there in ten minutes! Where do you want me to meet you?”

  I looked down the street, trying to place my own location.

  “I'll meet you by Steve's house on Upham Street. I'm right by there.” Steve was my drum teacher, so my dad knew where he lived.

  “Okay. Ten minutes, Brooks. Thanks.”

  My dad hung up and I handed the phone back to Mrs. Taylor. I thanked her, and apologized if I had panicked her. I knew her daughter was in choir right now.

  That was when I realized. My brother's still in there.

  My little brother Aaron, two grades below me, was also a student at Columbine. He and Eric didn't get along. If Eric was still in the school, and he came across my brother … I felt terror overwhelming me all over again.

  I started walking toward Steve's house. A lot of cars were already driving by; the first thing I did was look among them for people I knew.

  First I saw Mr. Johnson and Mr. Bath, two of my teachers from Columbine, and waved them down. They pulled over and asked me why I wasn't in class. They were laughing.

  I just blurted out what I thought: Eric Harris was involved in a shooting of some kind. They both became very quiet.

  “You know, he's in my psychology class,” Mr. Johnson said after a beat.

  Mr. Bath asked if I was okay. I told them yeah, and they said they would see me later. Then they drove off. I kept walking, until my friend Ryan Schwayder drove up in his Jeep Grand Cherokee.

  “Hey, Brooks,” he said. “What's going on? We tried to go back to school and they've got the road blocked off.”

  I didn't answer him. I just opened the door, threw my book bag into the back of the Jeep and jumped in. Inside were two other Columbine students, Matt Houck and Deanna Shaffer.

  Ryan took one look at me and instantly became concerned. “What's wrong?”

  I tried to explain, but I was talking too fast for them to understand. Ryan kept asking me to slow down. I took a couple of deep breaths, and asked Ryan to drive closer to Columbine, so I could get a better look.

  “Why? What's wrong?”

  I took a moment. “There's a shooting at the school.”

  For two seconds, dead silence filled the Jeep.

  Then Deanna's hands went to her face, and she started crying. Ryan's entire body just sank in his seat; I could literally see the energy escape him.

  “Oh, God,” Matt said quietly.

  I tried to explain about seeing Eric, and what he had said to me. “Oh, man, I think he had a duffel bag with him,” I said.

  I asked Ryan if I could use his phone to call 911. Almost like a zombie, he handed it to me. I called the police and told them I had information about what was happening.

  They seemed to have trouble transferring my call at first. I wound up getting forwarded to the Arapahoe County office. As this was happening, all of us looked up to see multiple helicopters descending on our school.

  The battery started dying on Ryan's phone. He let me climb over into the driver's seat and plug the phone into the lighter adapter to get power, while he stood outside with Deanna, quietly holding her.

  Arapahoe County put me through to Detective Kirby Hodgkin, and I started rattling off information. I told them about Eric skipping class that day, what he'd said to me in the parking lot, what kind of car he drove, and what he was wearing.

  “He looked like an Army cadet,” I said.

  I said Eric had just turned eighteen a few weeks ago, and that he'd talked in class about buying guns, saying he “couldn't wait to turn eighteen” so he could legally purchase one. I mentioned that we'd had a falling-out several years before. I didn't think to mention the Web pages.

  While I was still on the phone with them, my dad pulled up next to us. “We're getting the hell out of here right now!” he yelled.

  I didn't know what had my dad so spooked. He later told me that he'd heard a report on the radio saying the shooters had already left the school on foot. My dad was afraid that Eric was walking around in the same neighborhood as us. With guns.

  I said, “Fine! Fine!” I didn't even take time to change places with Ryan. He and Deanna jumped back in the car, and with me behind the wheel, we took off behind my dad.

  We headed back out to Pierce Street and floored it the rest of the way to our house, not caring that we were probably pushing sixty, sixty-five miles per hour on residential streets. I was still on the phone, so I explained the situation to the detective at Arapahoe County. He took my address and said that an officer would come out later that day to interview me further.

  My dad and I tore around the last few corners leading to our house. He pulled up on the sidewalk, and I parked right behind him—just as my brother Aaron came running out of the house to meet us.

  Thank God, I thought. I was so happy to see him safe.

  When my dad came to get me, he already knew Aaron was okay. After he'd talked to me, Aaron had called to let him know he had made it home. My dad knew I was the only kid he still had to bring to safety.

  Aaron told me that he and his friends had run like hell to get out of the school, made it to his car, and then come home. He didn't tell me how he'd been sitting in the cafeteria when it started, just a few tables away from a propane bomb that had somehow failed to detonate. Or how he'd run through the auditorium, being chased by the gunmen, bullets flying over his head, hearing the girl behind him get hit and scream, “I'm shot!” I would learn about that much later.

  All we knew was that we were safe at home. Far away from the horror that was still unfolding at Columbine High School.

  “Brooks, I like you now. Get out of here. Go home.”

  Those wound up being Eric Harris's last words to me.

  Five minutes after I spoke to him, he was hurling pipe bombs at my friends, firing shotgun blasts at my brother, and murdering innocent students—students whose biggest worries before that moment had been midterm tests and college applications.

  Yet what I didn't know at the time was that Eric wasn't alone in his mission. His best friend Dylan Klebold was with him, firing off bullets right next to him, hunting and killing—and laughing about it.

  Dylan. One of my closest friends since first grade.

  Soon, Eric and Dylan would kill themselves in the library, denyi
ng any of us the chance to question them. I'd never be able to sit down across from the guy I used to throw snowballs at in elementary school and ask him why he had wanted to kill all those people who had done him no wrong whatsoever.

  The hell that Eric and Dylan would create at my high school that day would go on to haunt their families, the families of the victims, and parents and students throughout our community and the world. It would destroy my life, as comments from the sheriff would lead to accusations that I was somehow involved in the plot.

  Worst of all, it left me struggling with the knowledge that not only were my classmates dead, they had been murdered by one friend I'd known since childhood—and another who had let me walk away only a few minutes beforehand. And I would never be able to ask them why.

  So today I'm standing at that same spot where I watched as the end of my world came driving into Columbine's parking lot. I'm standing alone, smoking a cigarette, the same way I did then. Thinking. Reflecting. Trying to make sense of everything.

  Inside the school, our principal, Frank DeAngelis, is leading a collection of students and staff in a massive spirit assembly, reading aloud the words of President Clinton, telling everyone that we're all going to move forward, that the hate in our world “must turn to love.”

  At least, that's what I would read in the papers later. I didn't see it. I didn't hear it. I wasn't interested—nor did I have much of an interest in the “closure stories” being prepared by the pool of media nearby in Clement Park, ready to close the door on Columbine and declare the whole thing as the work of two sick, deranged kids who represent nothing more than the work of the devil, or of violent video games, or just aberrations in an otherwise perfectly civilized high school.

  I knew how ludicrous that was. I knew that we were nowhere near closure on Columbine. We still aren't. I knew Eric and Dylan far better than these analysts who were telling us about the harmful effects of Doom. I knew them far better than Principal DeAngelis, who behind his tears and speeches had no time for the kids like us, who existed outside the norm and were punished daily by our peers because of it.

  I knew that there were more Erics and Dylans out there, and I knew why their disenchantment was growing. I could see the void they were falling into—and I knew that void was getting bigger.

  So I'm mourning the dead today, standing in this spot—this spot that never used to be anything significant—for the first time in a year. But I'm not interested in praying for a solution. I'm interested in finding one right now, in the real world.

  This book is my first step.

  2

  why?

  FROM THE MOMENT I CHOSE TO BEGIN THIS PROJECT, I KNEW THERE would be people criticizing me for it. Many people think that “Columbine is done”—that it's something not worth dredging up again, because we've heard enough about what happened. “It's time to move on,” they say.

  The reason they say this is that the public has settled on what they think caused Columbine: two sick, crazy boys who killed people because they were completely different from the rest of us. “It's a tragic thing,” they'll say, “but not something that requires any further thought.” There are some who still question the behavior of the police that day—as well they should—but there aren't many who are still asking questions about the killers themselves.

  Except, of course, for young people.

  The people who are still in high school know what's going on. They know there's something much, much bigger behind Columbine than what the rest of the world has been led to believe. These folks want to know who Eric and Dylan were. They want to know why two kids who are just like the people they share the school hallways with every day would turn around and do what they did.

  Why? Because they see parallels with Columbine at their own schools every day.

  The kids asking these questions are the kids who play video games like Doom, but don't feel the urge to imitate them in real life. They're the juggalos who listen to Insane Clown Posse rap about brutality and serial killers, but have no desire to kill anyone. They're the “loner” kids who have exhibited all the “warning signs” that experts go on the talk shows about, yet are still doing fine.

  These are the kids who hear politicians blaming TV and music and video games, and shake their heads, because they know that's not where the problem really lies. These are the kids who can feel the pull of something else out there—the real cause of Eric and Dylan—and are asking themselves what it is.

  Many people aren't willing to get their hands dirty by probing the true reasons behind what happened at Columbine. It's easier to believe in quick fixes than to accept what the real problems might be.

  After all, what's the easier sell for a politician: to go out there and tell people that they've screwed up, that they need to take better care of their kids, that they've created an ugly, uncaring society for the next generation, and that we need to search our own souls for a solution?

  Or to just tell them that the evil entertainment industry is ruining our kids?

  It's the second option that many seem to prefer. It gets big ratings on TV and high approval ratings for politicians, and makes everybody feel good by providing them with a designated villain. It's much easier to say that Doom and South Park are ruining our children than to think that maybe we have something to do with it, too.

  Want to blame the entertainment industry? Consider this: The entertainment industry makes money by giving people what they want. The day that violent movies stop turning a profit, violent movies will disappear. The day that fighting games lose their appeal is the day that games like Mortal Kombat will vanish. The day that teenagers no longer relate to the angry music of Limp Bizkit or Nine Inch Nails is the day those bands will cease to sell records. The entertainment industry doesn't impose some kind of evil personality on consumers that's foreign to us; it feeds on who we are and how we live.

  Even so, the music industry was one of the biggest targets criticized after the attack on Columbine. Eric and Dylan were huge fans of German techno/metal. They were especially partial to bands like Rammstein and KMFDM; since Eric had taken German for years, he could translate the lyrics, and he liked the fact that others couldn't understand what he was listening to. Eric put quotes from his favorite bands on his Web site. He wore a KMFDM hat to school all the time. His co-workers at Blackjack Pizza say he was always singing the praises of his favorite bands and trying to get others to listen to them.

  After Columbine happened, Rammstein and KMFDM became “villains” in the eyes of the pro-censorship folk. TV news reports pulled out one quote from Rammstein that went, “You in the schoolyard / I'm ready for killing.”

  Yet music doesn't teach people to kill. Music creates an emotion, whether it's anger, sorrow, thoughtfulness, happiness, or humor. What people do with their emotions is up to them. But music doesn't tell people what to do.

  Some have criticized Insane Clown Posse because their lyrics involve sex, murder, and brutality, laced with dark humor. But ICP themselves put it best: they're wearing clown makeup. If you take what they have to say that seriously, then you have something wrong with you—and that's not ICP's fault.

  Marilyn Manson wears a $25 white contact lens in his left eye. He wears costumes onstage. These are not the sages of our age. They aren't leaders. They are entertainers. And although Marilyn Manson, ICP, and Rammstein have some songs with a very powerful message, they aren't trying to change the world. They're just writing about what they think.

  So why is their music so violent? Simple—our society is a violent culture in and of itself, and our music is a reflection of that.

  Ayn Rand wrote, “Would you follow the advice of someone who told you that you must fight tuberculosis by confining the treatment to its symptoms—that you must treat the cough, the high temperature, the loss of weight—but must refuse to consider or to touch its cause, the germs in the patient's lungs, in order not to antagonize the germs? Do not adopt such a course in politics.”

 
Music is the same way; it's a symptom, not a cause. Violent music did not just appear one day and unleash violence upon the world. Society created violent music, because there was something happening in society that made that kind of music appealing.

  So the bigger question is this: What is happening to make society want this kind of entertainment? What do kids see happening in real life that makes violent video games so appealing?

  Every day on the news kids can see that we're living in a violent world, where adults murder, rape, and steal from one another on a regular basis. Real life is far worse than anything Hollywood or game manufacturers have to offer.

  If real-life violence is the problem, would tougher gun laws prevent another Columbine?

  Not really. Existing laws already state that guns cannot be sold to youths under eighteen, and Eric and Dylan found a way around that. Three of their guns were purchased at a gun show, with the help of a fellow student who was eighteen. Their TEC-9 handgun was bought illegally through a network of friends; the final transaction took place behind a pizza store.

  No matter how strict the gun laws were, Eric and Dylan were determined to find a way around them. If people want to buy weapons illegally, it's only a matter of time before they succeed.

  Did Eric and Dylan succeed in getting the guns because their parents weren't paying attention? Were the desire and the means to kill a result of parental negligence? After violent music and media, the parents are the next-favorite target of those looking for quick answers.

  I can't speak for Eric Harris; I didn't know his family well enough to comment one way or the other. But I know Dylan Klebold came from a good home, with two loving parents who were far better to him than many other parents I know. It doesn't make any more sense to blame them than it does to blame Marilyn Manson.

  Perhaps the answers lie a little deeper. Perhaps we have to look toward ourselves.

  A human being is only that which he or she experiences. The human mind at birth is a “tabula rasa”—in other words, we come into the world with a blank slate. We learn from all that we see and hear, and this shapes our beliefs.