Give a Boy a Gun Read online

  The Lawlors were private people. Except for that one time with Samantha in my kitchen, she hardly ever said anything about [Brendan]. I’m not saying that’s good or bad, but you had the feeling that if something was wrong, they preferred to deal with it alone and not tell the whole neighborhood. Not that I ever had a reason to believe anything was wrong, other than what I already told you. But I do know that Brendan was very unhappy about moving. That’s a hard age to leave your friends.

  —Kit Conner

  During the first half of the twentieth century the army trained soldiers to shoot at targets with bull’s-eyes. The targets were changed to human forms after it was discovered that soldiers sometimes couldn’t shoot back in war even if their lives were threatened. Military psychologists have noted that video games mimic military training designed to break down the inhibition against shooting human beings.

  Seventh Grade

  Brendan seemed kind of lost when he first moved [to Middletown]. It was the middle of the school year, and here comes this minivan packed to the roof, and about an hour later the moving truck shows up. The moving guys started bringing furniture into the house, and the family was kind of going back and forth too. It must have been a weekend, because I went somewhere with one of my friends and his mom. I remember leaving my house and seeing Brendan out in front of his house. He just stared at me. No hello. No wave. No nothing. I think I kind of nodded at him and then got into the car and left.

  A little later I come back. I’m getting out of the car, and Brendan comes out of the house and heads straight toward me carrying three tennis balls. So we start to talk, and he’s asking me what school I go to and what grade I’m in and did I like this [video] game and that. You know, kind of feeling me out. And all the while he’s juggling these tennis balls. It struck me as a little bizarre.

  — Dustin Williams, a neighbor of Brendan’s in Middletown

  I don’t think he said a thing for the first two weeks. The only reason I even noticed him was because I sat in the back and he was back there with me in science and English. The way he looked, it was, like, wide-eyed — like a rain-forest dweller dropped into the middle of New York City. I bet three-quarters of the class didn’t even know he was there.

  — Ryan Clancy

  We started talking in the hall. I mean, I was hyperaware of him because he was new and I was new, and your antenna is up for things like that. Like feeling all alone and trying to connect with someone you have something in common with, no matter what. It’s like your boat just sank and you’re in the water grabbing desperately for anything that floats.

  — Emily Kirsch, a former friend of Brendan’s

  I’ve always made a special effort with those [students] I sense are in distress. Believe me, no one comes into this school in the middle of the year without a lot of distress. After the first day of class I took [Brendan] aside and told him I knew it would be hard to adjust and that he should take his time and not worry too much. And I remember the way he looked at me. As if I’d caught him completely by surprise. He may have even blinked back tears.

  —Julia Reingold, a teacher of Brendan’s at Middletown Middle School

  Here’s this cute boy who didn’t say a word for the first three weeks, but once he started talking, it could be hard to shut him up. At first all he could talk about was how big the school was and how much he missed all his old friends and his old school. I mean, I didn’t mind it so much, because I felt like I was about the only person he had to talk to, and, frankly, I was in the same boat. But after a while it did start to get kind of repetitious, and I told him so. It was like day and night. After that, he never said a thing about his old friends or his old school.

  —Emily Kirsch

  Each day fourteen children under the age of nineteen are killed by guns. (National Center for Health Statistics, 1996)

  Eighth Grade

  I tried to think back to what it was like in eighth grade. It was different. I mean, it got really cliquey. But I think Brendan and I felt like, “That’s okay, we’re new here. They just have to get to know us.” But it didn’t work that way. They got to know us, but nothing changed. Instead, this whole jock and cheerleader and designer name thing just got stronger and stronger. They were like the Sun, and the rest of us were all these little planets stuck in orbits around them. After a while I think a lot of us didn’t even want to be in that [popular] crowd. All we wanted was to be left alone.

  — Emily Kirsch

  Things in school definitely changed in eighth grade. At least for us guys on the team. Maybe it was because we knew we’d be in the high school next year. Maybe it was that some of the guys were starting to get bigger. Sometimes Coach Bosco would come over [from the high school] and watch us. You know, like he was scouting us for next year. It made us feel important. All of a sudden we were aware that we were at the brink of a bigger world. Of course, it was just high school. But to eighth graders that was a big deal.

  — Dustin Williams

  I don’t think Brendan and Gary really clicked until around the middle of eighth grade, but once they did, it was like a lock. When I was hanging with them, I was definitely the third wheel. They were okay about it, but it was pretty obvious that I was just a visitor to whatever part of their private world they wanted me to see.

  —Ryan Clancy

  “Dylan Bennet Klebold grew up in a house without guns, even toy guns.

  “ ‘Tom [Dylan’s father] was adamant,’ said . . . a former neighbor. . . . ‘[He said,] “We don’t need guns in the house; we’re not going to play with them.”’”

  —New York Times, 6/29/99

  Part of Gary’s Suicide Note

  I could have just gone and offed myself quietly, but that would have been an even bigger waste. If I go this way, taking the people who made my life miserable with me, then maybe it will send a message. Maybe something will change, and some other miserable kid like me somewhere will get treated better and maybe find a reason to live.

  Each year 2.5 million new handguns are sold in this country.

  More of Eighth Grade

  I thought I knew Gary better. We sort of went together on and off for nearly two years. It’s obvious now that I didn’t know him. Not really. I knew he had that whole other thing with Brendan. Sometimes it almost felt like they had their own language. They each just seemed to know what the other was thinking. But now it’s obvious he hid a lot. Not just from me, but from everyone except Brendan.

  —Allison Findley

  Until Gary came into the picture, I think I was Brendan’s closest friend. I can’t say I was really sorry when that changed. By then I’d gotten to know some other girls who were like me—quote, unquote “outcasts”—and we were trying to have a life in spite of all that cliquey weirdness at school. I don’t know why, but Brendan couldn’t get past the weirdness. He was more fixated on it. It was almost all he would talk about. I was trying to get away from it. He just wanted to keep looking at it under a microscope.

  — Emily Kirsch

  Gary and I got into my mom’s car one day. It was parked in the driveway, facing the garage. Gary sat behind the wheel, and I was next to him. He put his arm around my shoulder, and we just pretended we were driving somewhere. We were staring at the garage door with big flakes of white paint peeling off it, but in our minds we were going through the desert. Gary had done that once, so he was talking about cactus and sun-bleached bones and jackrabbits and hot sun.

  I leaned my head on his shoulder, and I could see it all in my mind. The two of us, all alone, driving through the desert, a million miles away from everything. Just sagebrush and creosote bushes and burned reddish cliffs. A trail of dust flying up behind us. Gary pulled me close and kissed my hair, and it was one of those really happy moments. I guess it was about as close as we ever got to blissful puppy love. Ha, ha!

  Then Gary stopped. I looked up and saw that he was staring into the rearview mirror. I turned around, and Deirdre Bunson and Sam Flach and a bunch o
f other kids were in the street, pointing at us and laughing.

  I wanted to die. Gary did too. He couldn’t even turn around. He just slumped down in the seat and stared at that stupid garage door and the peeling paint. It was like they’d just stuck a knife in his heart.

  Sometimes Gary and I could escape into that world where no one bothered us or laughed or made fun. But it never lasted long, and then it was like waking up from a dream and facing the cold, bald truth that it wasn’t real and never would be. For the popular kids the dream was real. They lived it. They never had to be afraid of waking up.

  —Allison Findley

  Ninth Grade

  It started to change at the beginning of ninth grade. I went away with my parents for two weeks in August, and Brendan and Gary stayed home and just hung with each other. When I got back, it was different. I can’t exactly explain how, but I felt it. There was something dark in Brendan. I don’t know where it came from. Whether it had always been inside him, or whether it just started to grow because of the way people treated him in school.

  —Allison Findley

  Gary wasn’t always like that. When we were in eighth grade and some big jock would body-slam us into a chalkboard or rip the pocket off our shirt, we’d be pissed, and we’d grumble about how we’d like to kill this guy and kick his face in. The thing was it was all sort of make-believe wishful thinking. Maybe you’d go home and play Doom for an hour and just blow everyone to bits. But you never really considered getting a gun and going after them. At least, I didn’t.

  —Ryan Clancy

  “The . . . cliques that rule American high schools are every bit as murderous as Harris and Klebold, only their damage is done in slow motion, over a period of many years, and fails to draw the attention of parents or teachers.”

  —a posting on the Internet

  Gary would try to play it down, make fun of it. He’d say, “Hey, doesn’t matter, I’m just a loser.” I’d tell him no, he wasn’t a loser. But it was like he couldn’t hear me. The rest of the school said he was a loser, and that just drowned me out.

  —Allison Findley

  People talk like our school is this sick, depraved place. That’s so wrong. I talked to my mom and her friends about it, and they say it was just like this when they went to school. It must be like this at every other high school. Yes, kids can be really mean to one another, really cruel. But that’s the way it’s always been. I mean, isn’t part of growing up just learning to deal with it?

  —Deirdre Bunson

  Brendan and Gary got picked on. That’s a fact. We all did. Little guys; fat guys; skinny, gangly, zit-riddled guys like me. Anyone who wasn’t big and strong and on a team got it. You’d even see big guys on the football team push around some of the smaller players. Middletown High is big and crowded, and you’ve got ten dillion kids in the hall at once. Maybe if it’s an all-out, knock-down-drag-out fight, some teacher will notice and try to stop it. But if it’s just some big jerk shoving you into a locker, who’s gonna see?

  —Ryan Clancy

  Julia [Reingold, one of Brendan’s seventh-grade teachers] is a close friend and has amazing radar for the kids who are going to need support but might otherwise fall through the cracks. One of the kids she mentioned was Brendan, so I made sure he was one of mine. I got him into my office one day, and he just about “yes, ma’amed” and “no, ma’amed” me to death. “Yes, ma’am, everything’s fine.” “No, ma’am, I don’t have a problem with anyone.” But you could see the pain and anger in his eyes. Of course, I had fifty boys and girls like that, all of them feeling more or less the same thing. And I was responsible for another 350, so what could I do?

  —Beth Bender, Middletown High School counselor

  “ ‘Every day being teased and picked on, pushed up against lockers—just the general feeling of fear in the school. And you either respond to a fear by having fear, or you take action and have hate.’”

  —Brooks Brown, a student at Columbine High who knew both Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, Rolling Stone, 6/10/99

  Several news organizations pointed out that the ratio of students to counselors at Kipland Kinkel’s high school was roughly 700 to 1.

  Brendan was starting to get known as someone who refused to toe the line. He wouldn’t bow down to the football players. It was the fall, so in gym we were playing flag football. Usually we just went outside and messed around. There’d be two games: the “winner-athlete” game and the “loser-geek” game. That day Herr Bosco decided to show us losers the “right” way to cover a pass receiver. The thing is we were only playing flag football, just a bunch of dorks in T-shirts and shorts.

  Bosco picked Sam Flach and Brendan to demonstrate. Now, you knew right away that this was no accident. Bosco hated Brendan’s “attitude.” So he said, “Sam and Lawlor, front and center.” Jocks have first names. The rest of us mutants are last name only.

  So I figure, maybe Sam’s built like a brick outhouse, but Brendan’s thin and fast, and I bet he’ll try to beat him off the line and get free. Like, welcome to Ryan’s private little football fantasy, folks. Our big chance to surprise the jocks and show them that geeks can play in the big time.

  “Like most students, I lived in fear of the small slights and public humiliations used to reinforce the rigid high school caste system: Poor girls were sluts, soft boys were fags. And at each of my schools, there were students who lived in daily fear of physical violence.”

  —a posting on the Internet after Columbine

  Brendan sets up on the imaginary line of scrimmage, and Sam’s facing him five yards away with this smirk on his face. Like, Come on, loser, show me what you’ve got And I’m dumb enough to be rooting for Brendan. Like, This ain’t the hall, Flach. There’s room to move.

  Herr Bosco’s the QB, and he yells, “Go!” Brendan takes three steps, fakes left, goes right, and POW! Sam knocks him right on his butt. You could see Brendan didn’t know what hit him. He was flat on his back, probably seeing stars.

  I look around, and all the jocks are sniggering and chuckling. And the biggest smirk is on Herr Bosco’s face. “Uh, Sam,” he goes, “this is flag football. No hitting.”

  Sam just smiles back. “Gee, sorry, Coach.”

  You could see that Brendan was still woozy as he got to his feet. You think Bosco bothers to ask if he’s okay? No, he’s too busy looking for the next victim. By then I’d backed away to the rear of the crowd, where all the geeks were cowering in fear, praying Herr Bosco wouldn’t pick them next.

  —Ryan Clancy

  Sam Flach will die slowly. I will shoot him in one knee, then the other, then a gut shot so he’ll have no friggin’ doubt where he’s going. And he will stare up at me with a fear in his eyes he has never known, and I will put that friggin’ barrel right against his forehead and say, “Gee, sorry, Sam,” then blow his friggin’ brains out.

  —an E-mail from Brendan to Gary

  To be on the outside and watch it was amazing. Except the real word for it is probably more like horrifying. At the red-hot core were most of the football players and some of the guys from the other teams, and the cheerleaders and some of the pretty girls. Ninety percent blondes, in case you haven’t noticed.

  Next came the rest of the athletes and a few popular designer label guys who weren’t athletes but were just really nice and likable, and the nicer girls and some of the pretty girls who were also popular and athletic. And then came the rest of us, only it didn’t matter who or what we were. And that wasn’t only the way we outsiders saw it. It was the way everyone saw it. I mean, the teachers and the administrators. You’d get to class late, and they’d make you go back and get a pass. But Sam Flach would stroll in late and say he’d been talking to Coach Bosco, and that was just fine. Even the grown-ups outside school, like the guy who pumped gas at the station and the lady who worked behind the counter at Starbucks. They all knew the football players by name, and they’d do extra things for them, like wash their windshield or slip them a free
brownie. There were days when you just felt like it was their world. And somehow you hadn’t been picked to be part of it.

  — Emily Kirsch

  Everyone around here knows the football players. Either they see them at the games or they read about them in the newspaper. From about the middle of August until the end of November the sports section is all about the [Middletown] Marauders. And there’ll be those human-interest stories in the other parts of the paper too. Like how Dustin Williams went to the elementary school to talk to the kids, or how Bosco got the team to spend a couple of hours cleaning up some park so kids could play there. And there are always pictures of them, of course.

  There’s basketball and wrestling, too. Except the basketball team’s not so hot, and even though the wrestling team is pretty good, the only people who come watch them are the wrestlers’ families and friends. The baseball team is like a joke, and you never even hear about the tennis and soccer teams. Then they cover stuff like girls’ field hockey and volleyball just to be politically correct.

  It’s like, big stories and lots of photos about football, small stories and a few photos about basketball and wrestling, and the rest is just box scores. You have to feel bad for the guys on the other teams. Unless they’re total all-American superstars, they’re not even noticed. And as far as the rest of us are concerned, the people in this town don’t even know we exist.

  —Ryan Clancy

  “Outcasts loathed Columbine. With equal venom, they detested popular kids and an administration that in their minds kowtowed to the popular kids.”

  —Rolling Stone, 6/10/99

  Why shouldn’t athletes be treated with more respect? They’re the ones who are actually out there fighting for our school. Everybody thinks it’s so great, but how do you think it feels when they lose? Each one of those players has to feel responsible for that. Everyone else walks around saying, “Oh, we would have won if so-and-so hadn’t dropped the ball.” Meanwhile so-and-so has to come to school, and you think he doesn’t know what they’re saying behind his back? How do you think that feels? I mean, being blamed. If [the athletes] have to take the blame for when they lose, shouldn’t they get the rewards when they win? That’s what school spirit is all about. The fans aren’t the ones who give our school its pride. It’s the players. They’re the ones that give Middletown a sense of accomplishment.