currently reading
Columbine, by Dave Cullen
(2009)
[amazon]
confession: columbine fucked me up.
i was in my freshman year of high school; thirteen years old; watching channel 5 news for days. the day it happened, i didn't move from the television. i remember being completely horrified. i remember that i'd never felt like this about any news story before; that i'd never felt like this about anything before. plain and simple i was devastated.
worse, i had nightmares -- images that are burned into me, that i STILL, ten years later, think about and cringe. so many different takes on the same idea: it was happening to my school, to me. i was running down hallways, i was finding dead bodies in front of my locker, i was hiding under tables in the library, i had a gun pointed at my head and heard the shot. this shit did not go away for years, i would just wake up in a complete panic, think about it all day -- i can compare it to other things now, but at that time i'd never been so psychologically compromised. i think it had a lot to do with how i lived my life in high school, which is nuts.
i saw this book on display last year, when it came out. i got a lump in my throat and felt panicky, memories and nightmares flooding back with a single word. i walked by it, continued shopping, and finally circled back to pick it up and read. i read the first page, and started crying, and didn't flip to the next; i just put it down and left.
last week, i was in that same bookstore with a gift card, and there was only one book i wanted, only one book i'd been thinking about obsessively. so i sucked it up, brought it home, and immediately handed it to my roommate: here, read this, it's a phenomenal book.
a.k.a. GET IT OUT OF MY HANDS, JESUS. I CAN'T READ THIS. WHAT WAS I THINKING. TAKE IT AND KEEP IT IN YOUR ROOM FOR TWO YEARS, THE WAY FRIENDS WHO BORROW BOOKS ALWAYS DO. HIDE IT. DON'T READ IT, SO I DON'T HAVE TO HEAR ABOUT IT.
she left it on the living room table.
i picked it up this morning, and just read. it is a devastating book. so well written, so meticulously detailed, so great at personifying these boys and their victims and the town they ruined. dave cullen writes in a way that is utterly shocking:
Earlier that year, he'd rescued Rachel Scott, the junior class sweetheart, when her tape jammed during the talent show. In a few days, Eric would kill her.
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Rebel Hill slopes gradually, rising just forty feet above Columbine, which sits at its base. That's enough to dominate the immediate surroundings, but halfway up the hillside, the Rockies are suddenly spectacular. Each step forward lowers the mesa toward eye level, and the mountains leap up behind, a jagged brown wall rearing straight off the Great Plains. They stand two to three thousand feet about it - endless and apparently impenetrable, fading all the way over the northern horizon and just as far to the south. Locals call them the foothills. This Front Range towering over Columbine is taller than the highest peaks in all of Appalachia. Roads and regular habitation stop suddenly at the base of the foothills; even vegetation struggles to survive. Just three miles away, and it feels like the ends of the world.
in a bizarre way, this is closure for me. i am so happy i bought it, so happy i moved beyond the first page, and am truly grateful to have a book on a topic so close to me that is so obviously a labor of love and dedication. i recommend that anyone and everyone - nonfiction readers or not - get yourself a copy.