Columbine: Chapter 5 Summary & Analysis

This Friday night, as he is on most Friday nights, Coach Dave Sanders is at the Columbine Lounge, which is “an ass-kicking strip-mall honky-tonk.” Coach Sanders has lived in Jeffco since 1974—he moved from a rural community in Indiana to find that Jeffco was also pretty rural. Now, however, it has been suburbanized, and the affluent community that has risen up has been deemed “New Columbine.” The Harrises and the Klebolds are in that category.

Columbine High was built in 1973 as the community “brace[d] for an influx.” It was renovated and expanded in 1995—“curving green glass” now covers the face of the commons, and the new library is only four years old. Jeffco has “no main street, no town hall, library, or name.” Littleton, though often cited as the location of Columbine High, is a “quiet suburb where the massacre did not actually occur.” The “thirty thousand” new residents of Jeffco who have “clustered around” the school have adopted “Columbine [as] the name of their home.”

Dave Sanders teaches typing, keyboarding, and economics at Columbine—he does not have a particular interest in these subjects, but they allow him to coach. He coaches seven different sports, and is a quiet but insistent motivator. His daughter, Angela, “grew up” at Columbine, attending practices with her father from the time she was a toddler. Dave is divorced from his ex-wife and has married another woman named Linda Lou, who had two nearly-grown daughters of her own at the time of their marriage. Linda’s daughters, Cindy and Coni, live together with Dave and Angela—all three girls call Dave “Dad.” They are a tight-knit family, and Angela’s children love and idolize Dave, their grandfather, as well.

As prom approaches, many students have struggled to find dates—one of them is Patrick Ireland, who is in love with his best friend Laura. An athlete who plays basketball, baseball, and water skis while maintaining a 4.0, Patrick is “unfamiliar” with indecision and insecurity. Not wanting to make things awkward with Laura—whom he’d had a falling-out with when they were children together—Patrick asks another girl, Cora, to attend the dance with him as friends. At the prom, which is in downtown Denver, Patrick enjoys himself, and even gets to slow-dance with Laura just once. Meanwhile Cassie Bernall, an Evangelical student, was not asked to the prom. She and her friend Amanda choose to attend the after-party together, where “dates [are] optional.” They dance until the sun comes up.