Give a Boy a Gun Read Free Page B

from a dream and facing the cold, bald truth that it wasn’t real and never would be. For the popular kids the dream was real. They lived it. They never had to be afraid of waking up.
    â€”Allison Findley

Ninth Grade
    It started to change at the beginning of ninth grade. I went away with my parents for two weeks in August, and Brendan and Gary stayed home and just hung with each other. When I got back, it was different. I can’t exactly explain how, but I felt it. There was something dark in Brendan. I don’t know where it came from. Whether it had always been inside him, or whether it just started to grow because of the way people treated him in school.
    â€”Allison Findley
    Gary wasn’t always like that. When we were in eighth grade and some big jock wouldbody-slam us into a chalkboard or rip the pocket off our shirt, we’d be pissed, and we’d grumble about how we’d like to kill this guy and kick his face in. The thing was it was all sort of make-believe wishful thinking. Maybe you’d go home and play Doom for an hour and just blow everyone to bits. But you never really considered getting a gun and going after them. At least, I didn’t.
    â€”Ryan Clancy

    â€œThe . . . cliques that rule American high schools are every bit as murderous as Harris and Klebold, only their damage is done in slow motion, over a period of many years, and fails to draw the attention of parents or teachers.”
    â€”a posting on the Internet

    Gary would try to play it down, make fun of it. He’d say, “Hey, doesn’t matter, I’m just a loser.” I’d tell him no, he wasn’t a loser. But it was like he couldn’t hear me. The rest of the school said he was a loser, and that just drowned me out.
    â€”Allison Findley
    People talk like our school is this sick, depraved place. That’s so wrong. I talked to my mom and her friends about it, and they say it was just like this when they went to school. It must be like this at every other high school. Yes, kids can be really mean to one another, really cruel. But that’s the way it’s always been. I mean, isn’tpart of growing up just learning to deal with it?
    â€”Deirdre Bunson
    Brendan and Gary got picked on. That’s a fact. We all did. Little guys; fat guys; skinny, gangly, zit-riddled guys like me. Anyone who wasn’t big and strong and on a team got it. You’d even see big guys on the football team push around some of the smaller players. Middletown High is big and crowded, and you’ve got ten dillion kids in the hall at once. Maybe if it’s an all-out, knock-down-drag-out fight, some teacher will notice and try to stop it. But if it’s just some big jerk shoving you into a locker, who’s gonna see?
    â€”Ryan Clancy
    Julia [Reingold, one of Brendan’s seventh-gradeteachers] is a close friend and has amazing radar for the kids who are going to need support but might otherwise fall through the cracks. One of the kids she mentioned was Brendan, so I made sure he was one of mine. I got him into my office one day, and he just about “yes, ma’amed” and “no, ma’amed” me to death. “Yes, ma’am, everything’s fine.” “No, ma’am, I don’t have a problem with anyone.” But you could see the pain and anger in his eyes. Of course, I had fifty boys and girls like that, all of them feeling more or less the same thing. And I was responsible for another 350, so what could I do?
    â€”Beth Bender, Middletown High School counselor

    â€œÂ â€˜Every day being teased and picked on, pushed up against lockers—just the general feeling of fear in the school. And you either respond to a fear by having fear, or you take action and have hate.’”
    â€”Brooks Brown, a student at Columbine High who knew both Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, Rolling Stone , 6/10/99

    Several news organizations pointed out that