I finally allowed myself to exhale. Dylan was back on track. Maybe I had been overreacting by worrying so much about the theft. Boys did dumb stuff, as everyone said.
Dylan’s journals tell a different story. By that point, things had decidedly taken a turn for the worst. Given the chance to travel back in time, I would ransack every nook and corner of my children’s rooms, looking not just for drugs or goods we hadn’t bought, but for any window onto their inner lives. There is nothing I wouldn’t give to have read the pages of Dylan’s journal while he was still alive, while we still had the chance to pull him back from the abyss that swallowed him and so many innocent others.
Later in February, Dylan and I had a conversation about his senior year coming to an end, and he mentioned a senior prank. Assuming the whole class was involved, I asked him for details. He smiled, and said he did not want to tell me.
He and Tom loved practical jokes, but the thought of a senior prank made me nervous. The Diversion counselor had been clear: even the smallest and most insignificant infraction, like toilet papering a house on Halloween, could jeopardize Dylan’s future. If he made another mistake, he’d have a felony on his record.
“Don’t even think about it,” I warned him. He said, “Don’t worry, Mom. I promise I won’t get into trouble.” Diversion was officially over, but Dylan had one last appointment with his counselor, so I called and asked him to please make sure Dylan understood the seriousness of the situation he was in. I didn’t want him to take part in anything at school that might get him into more of a mess—no matter how silly, and not even if he did it with the entire senior class.
His Diversion counselor spoke to him about it at their last appointment, and made the rules clear. Dylan never mentioned the topic of a prank to us again.
? ? ?
Cheez. I’m stuffed. We just got back from dinner with Eric Harris and his parents. We went there to celebrate the end of Diversion for Eric and Dylan. Just hope they will stay out of trouble now for a year so their records are expunged, whatever that means. My, I remember what we were going through a year ago!
—Journal entry, February 1999
We met Eric’s family on the second day of February at a local steakhouse. It had been nearly a year since we’d seen them. The six of us sat in two adjacent booths, with the four parents in one booth, Eric and Dylan in the next.
When Eric’s mom said they weren’t sure what his plans were, I chirped that Dylan would be leaving for college in the fall. Secretly, I was relieved Dylan had a more concrete plan than Eric did. I will forever be humbled by the foolishness of my pride.
Mid-February, Dylan came downstairs dressed to go to work, though he wasn’t scheduled. Eric’s dog Sparky was seriously ill, so Dylan had picked up Eric’s shift at Blackjack. I was fond of the little dog and felt sad for Eric; it’s hard to lose a pet, especially an animal you’ve grown up with. As he left the house, I gave Dylan a hug and told him how proud I was that he was such a responsible employee and a good and loyal friend.
Later that week, the two of us looked at degree requirements for the schools he’d been accepted to, and we both revved up when we saw all the classes he could take. Tom grappled with financial aid forms while Dylan and I began to plan college visits.
One night at the end of February, I surprised Tom and Dylan by bringing home a couple of fruit pies and Seven Samurai, a classic Japanese film from the 1950s directed by Akira Kurosawa. Dylan had heard about Seven Samurai in a class at school, and was curious about it. I’d never seen it, although I knew the American Western remake from the sixties, The Magnificent Seven. Snowy and cold outside, it seemed like the perfect night to light a fire, pig out, and watch a movie, but I worried about my choice as soon as the film began: I wasn’t sure Dylan was going to stick around for a long, black-and-white, subtitled movie about a sixteenth-century Japanese village.
I was wrong. Dylan was spellbound; we all were. Poor Byron dropped in for an unexpected visit in the middle, and even though we couldn’t understand a word of the Japanese dialogue, we shushed him when he tried to talk. He sat down and tried to get into it with us, but he had the reaction I’d expected from Dylan. In a matter of minutes, he’d kissed me on the top of the head and let himself out. Rapt, we barely looked up long enough to say good-bye.
After the closing credits rolled, Tom, Dylan, and I stayed up late on the couch, talking about some of the more remarkable scenes. Because he’d made videos and done sound for plays, Dylan had deep appreciation for the technical challenges the movie presented. He was particularly knocked out by a complicated choreographed battle scene staged in a downpour, which I would come to learn had inspired directors like Martin Scorsese. I was thrilled he’d appreciated the subtle artistry of the film.
The first week of March, Dylan said he and some friends were going to the mountains to do an assignment for his video production class. Tom was scheduled for yet another surgery that week, to replace his right shoulder joint. I asked Dylan who was going on the trip, and who would be driving; I had not met two of the kids he mentioned. March is still winter in Colorado, and I reminded him to bring warm clothing, food, and water in case of a weather emergency. When I kissed him good-bye, I made him promise he wouldn’t trespass. It was public land, he assured me; one of the boys knew the area well. He told me they were making an action film in a natural setting, using toy guns. In truth, they were filming the “Rampart Range” video, which I did not see or even know about until we were deposed, four years after the tragedy. In it, Dylan, Eric, and Mark Manes—the man who sold them one of the guns—shoot the weapons they have stockpiled.
On March 11, I took the day off so the three of us could visit the college in Colorado that Dylan had been accepted to. He was not overly enthused about the visit—he claimed to be intent on moving to a desert climate—but I was pleased to note he became more engaged when we took a tour of the computer lab. His academic performance in high school had always been a little mysterious to us; for someone who had shown so much early promise, he hadn’t excelled. Watching him on that campus, I felt sure he was going to thrive at college.
That evening, Tom and I attended parent-teacher conferences at Dylan’s high school. We’d received a midterm report the previous week showing that Dylan’s grades had dropped precipitously in calculus and English. I was pretty sure it was “senioritis,” a high school senior goofing off after being accepted to college, but wanted to touch base.
Dylan’s calculus teacher told us Dylan sometimes fell asleep in class, and had not turned in some assignments. He’d taught Dylan before, and was disappointed Dylan wasn’t more motivated. I was bothered to hear Dylan was slacking off, but not alarmed.
“Is he being disrespectful to you?” I asked.
The teacher replied with amusement, “Oh, no, not Dylan. Dylan’s never disrespectful.” I wondered aloud if being a year younger than his classmates explained his immature attitude, or if he was blowing off the subject because he planned to take it again at college. Then I worried I was making excuses for Dylan, and I shut up.