No Easy Answers (17 page)

Dylan and Brooks blow a kiss to the camera.

Brooks, foreground, poses for the 1999 Columbine senior class photo, with Eric and Dylan behind him. By the time this photo was taken, in the spring of 1999, Eric and Dylan were in the final stages of their plan to attack the school.

For their second class photo, the seniors at Columbine were given the chance to “get crazy” for the cameras. Here, Brooks, Eric, and Dylan pretend to aim guns at the camera. While the gesture was made in good fun at the time, one of the investigators in the Jefferson County Sheriff's Office would later point to the photo as a reason to suspect Brooks as an accomplice in the Columbine killings.

The Columbine High School yearbook photos of Eric Harris (left) and Dylan Klebold (right)

From left, author and filmmaker Michael Moore addresses the media alongside Brooks Brown and Columbine shooting victims Richard Castaldo (in wheelchair) and Mark Taylor outside the Kmart corporate headquarters in Michigan in 2001. Moore recruited the Columbine students to assist in a successful effort to convince Kmart to remove handgun ammunition from its shelves.

Brooks shares a lighthearted moment with his parents, Randy and Judy, at the Browns' home in Littleton, Colorado.

Two years after she was killed, flowers and cards continue to adorn the gravesite of Columbine student Rachel Scott in Littleton, Colorado on April 20, 2001. Rachel was one of Eric and Dylan's first victims.

PEOPLE HAVE ASKED ME IF, IN THOSE INITIAL HOURS AFTER THE massacre, I stopped to wonder why Eric had let me leave the school. The truth is, the question didn't even enter my mind until later. That day, my mind was solely occupied with trying to find out who was still alive.

Trevor and I left my house and started driving around, looking for familiar faces anywhere we could find them. It didn't matter who they were; every person we saw was one more person who had survived. We went to Leawood Elementary, where lists of students who were confirmed as alive and safe were being posted. We went to the Perkins restaurant. We drove around the neighborhood looking for big groups of people.

No matter where we went, I'd find somebody I knew. It didn't matter who it was; we'd throw our arms around each other in relief and cry.

I remember seeing people like Andy Robinson, Chris Logan, and Dan Berg. I grabbed Zach Heckler in a massive hug.

“Thank God you're alive,” we'd say.

There was one person we were looking for more than any other. We'd heard a rumor that Rachel Scott was among those who'd been killed. We'd been at home watching helicopter footage outside the school, and lying near the exterior steps of Columbine was the body of a girl who was wearing clothes just like those I'd seen Rachel wearing earlier that day.

My brother Aaron was on the phone all afternoon, asking people if they knew anything. I was sitting with my friend Steve Partridge on our porch when Aaron ran out to give us an update.

“Rachel Scott's dead,” he said.

Aaron was just giving us a name. He didn't realize that we both knew Rachel, or that Steve had dated Rachel for a long time. When Steve heard the news, he fell silent. Then he collapsed.

We tried to hold out hope. We knew Aaron was getting his information from gossip; no names had been released yet by the police. There was still a chance.

That night, we scanned through every crowd. We asked around. “Have you seen Rachel? Do you know if she made it out?” No one had an answer.

Rachel was special to me for one reason: she defied every expectation I'd ever had of a Christian.

We had our first real conversation at State Qualifiers for speech and debate that year. We'd seen each other around before that, but hadn't spoken much. In looking back, that's kind of an odd thing; after all, we were both in speech, both actors in the Columbine theatre program, and she'd been dating my friend Steve for nearly a year. Later she would go to Prom with Nick Baumgart. Yet through all that, we never seemed to cross paths.

Part of the problem was that I knew Rachel was a devout Christian. I never made it a secret in high school that I wasn't a religious person, and devout Christians used to come after me and tell me I was going to hell. They would use quotes from the Bible to throw insults at me. I'd seen them try to force their beliefs on other students, guilting them into it, pressuring them to join up. They didn't want to hear what you thought
about God, or the world. All they wanted to hear was “Jesus Christ is my Savior”—and if we didn't agree, we weren't worth associating with.

I didn't want to be criticized for my beliefs. So I never thought I had a reason to make conversation with Rachel Scott. At least, not until that afternoon at Speech Contest.

I'd stepped outside for a cigarette in between rounds; smokers generally tended to congregate in one single area at contests. When I walked out, Rachel was there, too, standing alone next to the building with a Marlboro Light.

“Hey,” she said when she saw me. “How'd it go?”

We struck up a conversation; it wasn't long before the subject shifted over to faith. It's a topic I get into quite often with people. Yet as we spoke, I realized that Rachel was different from other kids at Columbine for one reason: she listened.

It was a first. I can't think of any time before that when a Christian asked me about my beliefs without interrupting constantly, or running right over my ideas, or just sitting there and snickering. Yet Rachel wasn't like that at all. Rachel listened to me speak about Taoism and my problems with the Bible and the church. She was genuinely interested, and didn't seem to judge me for it.