Give a Boy a Gun Read Free Page A

to get bigger. Sometimes Coach Bosco would come over [from the high school] and watch us. You know, like he was scouting us for next year. It made us feel important. All of a sudden we were aware that we were at the brink of a bigger world. Of course, it was just high school. But to eighth graders that was a big deal.
    â€” Dustin Williams
    I don’t think Brendan and Gary really clicked until around the middle of eighth grade, but once they did, it was like a lock. When I was hanging with them, I was definitely the third wheel. They were okay about it, but it was pretty obvious that I was just a visitor to whatever part of their private world they wanted me to see.
    â€”Ryan Clancy

    â€œDylan Bennet Klebold grew up in a house without guns, even toy guns.
    â€œÂ â€˜Tom [Dylan’s father] was adamant,’ said . . . a former neighbor. . . . ‘[He said,] “We don’t need guns in the house; we’re not going to play with them.”’”
    â€” New York Times , 6/29/99

Part of Gary’s Suicide Note
    I could have just gone and offed myself quietly, but that would have been an even bigger waste. If I go this way, taking the people who made my life miserable with me, then maybe it will send a message. Maybe something will change, and some other miserable kid like me somewhere will get treated better and maybe find a reason to live.

    Each year 2.5 million new handguns are sold in this country.

More of Eighth Grade
    I thought I knew Gary better. We sort of went together on and off for nearly two years. It’s obvious now that I didn’t know him. Not really. I knew he had that whole other thing with Brendan. Sometimes it almost felt like they had their own language. They each just seemed to know what the other was thinking. But now it’s obvious he hid a lot. Not just from me, but from everyone except Brendan.
    â€”Allison Findley
    Until Gary came into the picture, I think I was Brendan’s closest friend. I can’t say I was really sorry when that changed. By then I’d gotten to know some other girls who were like me—quote, unquote “outcasts”—and we were trying to have a life in spite of all that cliquey weirdness at school. I don’t knowwhy, but Brendan couldn’t get past the weirdness. He was more fixated on it. It was almost all he would talk about. I was trying to get away from it. He just wanted to keep looking at it under a microscope.
    â€” Emily Kirsch
    Gary and I got into my mom’s car one day. It was parked in the driveway, facing the garage. Gary sat behind the wheel, and I was next to him. He put his arm around my shoulder, and we just pretended we were driving somewhere. We were staring at the garage door with big flakes of white paint peeling off it, but in our minds we were going through the desert. Gary had done that once, so he was talking about cactus and sun-bleached bones and jackrabbits and hot sun.
    I leaned my head on his shoulder, and I could see it all in my mind. The two of us, all alone, driving through the desert, a million miles away from everything. Just sagebrush and creosote bushes and burned reddish cliffs. A trail of dust flying up behind us.Gary pulled me close and kissed my hair, and it was one of those really happy moments. I guess it was about as close as we ever got to blissful puppy love. Ha, ha!
    Then Gary stopped. I looked up and saw that he was staring into the rearview mirror. I turned around, and Deirdre Bunson and Sam Flach and a bunch of other kids were in the street, pointing at us and laughing.
    I wanted to die. Gary did too. He couldn’t even turn around. He just slumped down in the seat and stared at that stupid garage door and the peeling paint. It was like they’d just stuck a knife in his heart.
    Sometimes Gary and I could escape into that world where no one bothered us or laughed or made fun. But it never lasted long, and then it was like waking up