Columbine

Eric Harris, a senior boy, is desperate for a date to prom. Though dates are not usually difficult for him to secure, he has come up empty this weekend. He is “a brain,” but a “cool” brain. He attends parties, “gets chicks,” smokes, drinks, listens to hard-core German rock music, and refers to himself—a seasoned rule-breaker—as “Reb,” short for Rebel. Cullen says that “Eric outscored much of the football team” when it comes to charm and coolness. He works at a local pizza chain, Blackjack, with his friend Dylan. He is “striking,” with an “all-American” look and a “flirtatious” smile.

Eric is, at the moment, jealous of his close friend, Dylan Klebold, who has a date for prom despite being “meek, self-conscious, and shy.” Cullen notes that Dylan “emulate[s]” Eric—Dylan is deeply insecure and is only able to ever see “the worst version of himself.” Dylan, unlike the clean-cut Eric, has the appearance of a rebel—he is tall, with long curly hair.

Dylan’s prom date is “a sweet, brainy Christian girl” who has “helped to acquire three of the four guns” the boys have between the two of them. Her name is Robyn Anderson, and she “adore[s]” Dylan.

Eric and Dylan are active members of their school community. They attend spirit events, school plays, and football games. Both are into sports, and Dylan is especially obsessed with baseball.

Eric “fancie[s] himself a nonconformist,” but “crave[s]” approval and fume[s] over the slightest disrespect.” Dylan’s nickname is VoDKa—he is a heavy drinker. “To adult eyes,” Cullen says, Eric is the more responsible and obedient boy—however, the reality is that Eric carefully manipulates others to see how much he can get away with, and “suck[s] up like crazy” to get out of trouble anytime he’s caught.

One adult who is “acquainted with Eric’s wild side” is Robert Kirgis, the owner of the Blackjack Pizza franchise where Eric and Dylan work. The three of them sometimes used to go up to the roof after closing time to drink and fire off bottle rockets. Kirgis thinks that both boys are “bright young kids,” and observes that Eric is “like a robot under pressure” while Dylan is “unreliable.”

Cullen writes that “nothing separated the boys’ personalities like a run-in with authority,” noting that Eric was “unflappable” and “calmly calculating,” and often kept both himself and Dylan from getting in too much trouble—on the occasions that they were caught, Dylan, caught up in “pure emotions,” often “erupted.”

Eric and Dylan are “technology hounds,” and have an active life on the internet—they create websites, direct short videos of themselves, and play online games. They look, from the outside, like “normal young boys, a little full of themselves” but not “unusual for high school” kids.

Cullen describes the geography around Columbine, which sits at the base of a mesa called Rebel Hill. The Rockies dominate the landscape, and the range just over Columbine “is taller than the highest peaks in all of Appalachia.” Columbine itself is a massive, 250,000 square-foot building—practical and spare, “like the people of Jefferson County,” which is known locally as Jeffco. Denver is just ten miles to the northeast, but the rural sits in close proximity to the urban.

Dylan and Eric’s friends have noticed that the two of them are cutting class and falling down on their schoolwork—Dylan keeps falling asleep in class, too. At lunch one day, one of Eric’s friends takes a video of their group. In the video, someone the boys don’t like walks into the cafeteria, and one of Eric’s “buddies” remarks that he “hates” the random guy. Eric replies that he “hate[s] almost everyone,” but especially wants to “rip [that guy’s] head off and eat it.” None of his friends find his violent language, or flat affect while delivering it, unusual. When a “busty” girl walks by, Eric waves her over to their table, and the boys flirt with her.