Columbine

by Dave Cullen

The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places. --Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms

Mr. D had the key, on a chain in his pocket, latched to dozens just like it. He had no idea what it looked like. "I'm thinking, He's coming around the corner and we're trapped," DeAngelis said. "If I don't get these doors open, we are trapped." A movie image zipped through his mind: a Nazi concentration camp, with a guard shooting escapees in the back. We're just going to get mowed down as he comes around the corner, he thought. He reached in and grabbed a random key. It fit.

The trauma specialists disagreed. These kids had been raised in a western mentality, they argued: real men fend for themselves; tears are for weaklings; therapy is a joke. "Frank, you are the key," one counselor advised him. "You're an emotional person, you need to show those emotions. If you try to hold your emotions inside, you're going to set the image for other people." The boys, in particular, would be watching him, DeAngelis felt. They were already dangerously bottled up. "Frank, they need to know it's all right to show emotion," the counselor said. "Give them that permission."