Tuesday

About seven-twenty Chris kissed me goodbye, or at least gave me his cheek, which is what it’s gone to lately (he’s fifteen) and clattered down the stairs and out of the house. Cassie stopped at the door to put on her shoes �?her beloved black velvet Doc Martens, which she wore rain or shine, even with dresses �?grabbed her backpack, and headed after her brother. As she left I leaned over the banister to say goodbye, like I always do: “Bye, Cass. I love you.�?“Love you too, Mom,�?she mumbled back. Then she was gone, through the back yard, over the fence, and across the soccer field to the high school, which is only a hundred yards away. I dressed, made myself a cup of coffee, locked up, and drove off to work.

Around lunchtime I got a call from Charlie, a friend, asking me if I’d heard about some shooting at the high school. I said no. I tried not to panic: for one thing, it didn’t seem like anything Cassie or Chris would be involved in. Probably just some kids facing off in the parking lot, or a drive-by on Pierce Street. For another, my coffee buddy, Val, and I had just picked up lunch at a local market, and we were ready to eat. Besides, I had always thought of Columbine as a safe school. Wasn’t it?…I decided to call Brad, just in case he had heard anything.

Brad was at the house when I called; he had left work early and gone home sick. When he picked up the phone, I told him what I had heard, and he said he had just gotten similar news from Kathy, a friend at work. Brad had also heard several pops outside, and one or two louder booms, but he wasn’t too concerned. It was lunch time, and there were always kids running around outdoors. Probably just some prankster setting off firecrackers.

After I hung up, Brad put on his shoes, went out to the back yard, and looked over the fence. There were cops everywhere. Back in the house he turned on the TV and caught what must have been the first news bulletins. Shortly after that the first live coverage was aired. All at once the pieces came together, and he realized that this was no prank:

My eyes were still glued to the tube, but I knelt at the corner of the couch and asked God to take care of all those children. Naturally, my thoughts were focused on our kids, on Cassie and Chris, but at the same time, in the back of my mind, I was sure they were both okay. It seems that if something were to happen to someone so close to you, you would sense something, feel something. I didn’t.

The next thirty-six hours were pure hell. By the time I got to Columbine, hundreds of desperate parents and relatives, police officers, bomb squads, reporters, and onlookers had already descended on the area around the school, and complete pandemonium reigned.

Enough facts had emerged for us to know the seriousness of the situation, but the details were disjointed, contradictory, and confusing. All we knew for sure was that two un­identified armed gunmen had gone on a rampage through the school, mowing down students and boasting as they went. Everyone was frantically looking for someone; people were crying, praying, hugging each other, or just standing there stupidly, staring numbly as the whole chaotic scene unwound around them.

Many of the families with children at Columbine were shep­herded to Leawood, a nearby elementary school, to await word from the police as to their safety; others of us were stuck at a public library, because Leawood couldn’t take any more people.

It was like a battle zone. Soon lists of the injured and safe were being printed out and distributed. In between scanning the latest updates I ran breathlessly from one cluster of students to another yelling for Cassie and Chris and asking if anyone had seen them. Searching the school grounds itself was out of the question, of course. The whole campus was cordoned off and surrounded by an eerie ring of rifle-carrying SWAT teams.

Chris showed up early in the afternoon; he had fled to a neigh­bor’s home near the high school and finally got through to Brad, who was stationed by the phone at home. Brad reached me on my cell phone. Immediately I breathed easier: Thank God; now we only have to look for one child. But the relief did not last more than a second or two, as my thoughts raced back to Cassie. Where was my daughter?

Though hundreds of fleeing students had been loaded into buses and driven off to safety in the immediate aftermath of the shooting, others, like Chris, had escaped the mayhem on foot, and in some cases it was hours before their whereabouts were confirmed. The injured, many of them unidentified, had been rushed off in ambulances, and dozens of others hid for hours in closets and classrooms throughout the building. Some, we found out later, were lying alone bleeding to death.

Around five o’clock those of us still waiting for news of our children at the public library were told that one last busload of students was on its way from the high school, and we should go over to Leawood to meet it. Brad and Chris had joined me earlier in the afternoon, and immediately we jumped into the car and drove toward the school as fast as we could.

Although our destination was only a few blocks away, it was a terrible drive. Nearly every street near the high school had been barricaded, and the few that were still open to traffic were clogged with TV trucks and vans from every media outlet in Denver. Overhead, TV helicopters clattered, and in front of us and behind us sirens wailed. My heart was pounding so hard, I could hardly bear the anxiety.

Finally, we got to Leawood. Jumping from the car, I craned my neck to look first one way down the street, then the other. No bus. We waited. Minutes passed, and we kept check­ing and rechecking the street. Still no bus. Finally, it dawned on us: there was no “last busload�?coming. I was beside myself; distraught beyond words. Up to that point I had still hoped for the best, but now? I felt deceived. Not intentionally, perhaps, but deceived nonetheless, and so bitterly that it almost choked me.

Weeks later we heard the police were certain that all the missing were dead as early as eight o’clock that evening; that they had accounted for everyone else. But because they didn’t have positive confirmation, they hadn’t said this, and so I continued to grasp at straws. Maybe she’s hiding somewhere, I tried to convince myself. She’s always been resourceful, and might have found a good place. I just hope she’s not hurt. Or: It’s better she’s hurt than dead. If she’s injured she can at least be helped. But she’s got to make it through the night, or at least until somebody gets to her…Hope is really the only thing that will keep you going in such a crisis, even if it’s a thin shred.

By nine-thirty I couldn’t stand the tension any longer, and since the police were not giving out any new information, Brad and I decided to go home. It wasn’t that we felt like giving up; that wasn’t at all the case. But what was the point of hanging around Leawood the rest of the night? Back at the house Brad climbed on top of the garden shed in our yard. He wanted to see for himself what was going on in the school:

Standing on the roof of that shed I could see the whole school. Using binoculars I could even see right into the library windows. I could see the yellow letters stamped on the blue coats of the ATF men; they were walking around in there, heads down, as if looking for something. I couldn’t really see what they were doing, but I guess they were stepping over bodies, looking for explosives. Later we heard that they found dozens of bombs�?/FONT>