Give a Boy a Gun (5 page)

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.

— Deirdre Bunson

I love football. It's been a part of my life ever since I was small. My parents have had season tickets for the Marauders for nearly forty years. I can count on one hand the number of Friday nights we've missed. Football is part of the social fabric of this town. It brings us together and gives us something to look forward to and talk about. I firmly believe that it has a positive and long-lasting benefit for the kids, and the adults as well.

I love the excitement and the crowd and the food. I love cheering for my students and the sons of my friends. If a former student comes back to visit, I'm more likely to see him or her at the game on Friday night than anywhere else. I will be delighted if someday my own son plays for the Marauders.

You cannot blame what happened here on football. You simply have to think of the thousands
of schools in this country that have football teams, and where nothing like this has ever happened. What happened here goes much deeper.

—Beth Bender

I think Brendan got it worse than the other kids. Like you'd see a crowd of guys talking to some girls but intentionally blocking the hall, you know? Like asserting their power. Trying to impress the girls, or whatever. Some kids would see that and just, you know, try to find another way around or wait until the crowd broke up, even if it meant they'd be late. But Brendan couldn't stand it. He knew what they were doing, and it just made him nuts. Some jocks are saying that Brendan went out of his way to start fights, but I don't think it was that. I think he just felt really strongly that he had a right to go down the hall and that it was wrong for those guys to block it just to prove they owned the place.

— Dustin Williams

“How many kids ostracized, humiliated, and assaulted in American high schools, like the survivors of Columbine High, are left scarred for life? How many commit suicide every year? So long as some kids go out of their way to make high school hell for others, there are going to be kids who crack, and not all of the kids who crack are going to quietly off themselves.”

—a posting on the Internet