Yes, the Ever-lasting contrast. Since existence has known, the 'fight' between good & evil has continued. Obviously, this fight can never end. Good things turn bad, bad things become good. My fav. contrasting symbol, because it is so true & means so much – the battle between good & bad never ends… Here we ponder on the tragedy of Dylan Klebold.
You can read my answer on Devon and Dylan here. Nope. Dylan wasn’t into Devon that way. However, Devon claimed Eric had a crush on her at one point. I don’t know if that was just her assumption or if Eric really did have a fleeting thing for her since he tended to have quite a few favorite flavors of the week. If he did, it was early on at CHS, and couldn’t have lasted very long since Zach and Devon got together in ‘97.
I get the sense that Devon Adams was very sociably inclusive and generous in calling close associates of her’s “best friends”. Like Robyn Anderson, Devon seemed to work on extending a friendship and building trust with timid Dylan. The reward of doing so meant that both girls got to know the “real” Dylan Klebold. It’d take a bit of time to get Dyl to drop his guard but when he finally felt comfortable enough in doing so around those few girls that worked at it such as Devon and Robyn, he’d reveal that more chill, zany side of himself and also the loyalty. Dylan also became very close with Zach and he mentions in his journal that he considers Zach his best friend. Zach and Dylan are super close because they talk on the phone nightly and share their upsets and bond in depression. At some point in ‘97, Devon and Zach become a couple. For Zach, the intimacy with Devon allows him to go to her for counsel to help him with problems. The dynamic for Dylan becomes like ‘threes a crowd’. By Zach and Devon wanting to spend all their time together, Dylan fells betrayed and kicked out like he’s the third wheel. It is not hard to see Dylan grappling with this sudden turn of events in his journal. He recalls all the good times with Zach, all the fun things they did together for the first time. Instead of being angry at Zach for not being there for him, he directs his anger at Devon. Devon is the one that took his best friend away from him. He holds her responsible. In his struggle with feeling angry and abandoned by his best friend, he jokes in a bitterly, sarcastic way about Devon “..who I wouldn’t mind killing.” Did he mean this in the literally sense? I say, no. Was he ranting about Devon maliciously to blow off steam? Yes. The fact of the matter is, Dylan is fifteen and a half years old and has just started writing in his journal and he is years away from the Columbine attack. In my opinion, people say nasty stuff all the time in their journal. This is what journals are for, right? To express all the ugliness you’re feeling. Dylan’s idle consideration that he wouldn’t mind killing Devon is not some red flag clue that he’s serious about doing so or that he is showing sociopathic tendencies. I think to reach that conclusion is a bit of a stretch. Dylan was deeply hurt. His two good friends had found an even closer bond in each other and Dylan felt left in the dust. Dylan was also jealous that he couldn’t have the same sort of thing with a girl. Devon was the key that took his guy friend away, his emotional sounding board. He was angry and expressed that he’d metaphorically like to kill Devon for instigating change that made him feel all the more alone. Saying you want to kill someone in your personal journal is normal and natural. Who hasn’t done this at some point? Come clean, now people. 😉 It’s a way to to exorcise the pain and outrage. It’s cathartic. Nothing more. Also, Dylan remained friends with Devon the whole time he said these things in his journal about her. He was still her friend even though it was a struggle to get used to the new dynamics.
Goofy, sneaky sense of humor, he was morose and make jokes about things that a lot people don’t make jokes about..about death and about really dark things.
“Six months before Columbine, Dylan and Devon were at a friend’s house, watching a movie when kids next door shined a laser light on them. Dylan, Devon, and their friend snuck up on the kids and flashed a halogen lamp in the window. They rounded out the night "spaz dancing”, jumping up and down and listening to KMFDM or Nine Inch Nails.“Columbine – A True Crime Story.
Here’s another account of the incident when Dylan helped Rachel Scott out with the sound for her performance in the talent show. Unusually, this time it’s told by Devon Adams, who says she was in the sound booth with Dylan at the time—this is the first time I’ve heard this version of the…
You could call Dylan a thespian. Beginning with a production of Bye Bye Birdie his freshman year, Dylan ran sound on a number of school shows, including Oklahoma! and Frankenstein this year. Sometimes he worked alongside one of his close friends. “Dylan and [the friend (likely Zach Heckler)] would drink during plays,” says Sarah Slater “They would bring in Aftershock [a potent cinnamon-flavored spirit] while Dylan did sound. They wouldn’t do it every time, and they wouldn’t get drunk. They would go somewhere else and get drunk.”
Cliques at Columbine High coexist about as well as cliques do in any American high school: icily. Circulating around the noisy jock center are the preps in their Abercrombie & Finch, cheerleaders giggling near the water fountains, computer geeks, skaters, thespians and debate-teamers. Gangsta…
Dylan had a friend called Devon Adams. As she approached her 16th birthday, she invited Dylan to her party.
“When I first met Dylan, he was very shy, he dressed like a pretty normal kid, jeans and tshirt… He liked computers more than other kids, but besides that, he was fairly normal. He didn’t know how to interact with people without another person there, or something that he could talk about- like a movie, or music.” Devon said.
Behind the reserved, normal Dylan she was familiar with, Devon discovered a rather dark side. Devon went on to say, “He was just kinda goofy, had a rather sneaky sense of humor. And, he was really morose and he’d make jokes about things that a lot of people don’t make jokes about- like death, and about really dark things. […] Dylan, the whole time I knew him, never had a girlfriend, and never talked about a girl he liked, or anything. I mean, I knew that they were girls he liked, and you could tell when he talked to them or looked at them, but he never had a girlfriend or anything. It wasn’t something we talked about, it wasn’t something he was comfortable talking about. […] Dylan was very smart. You could just tell by talking to him, his vocabulary was extensive. A lot of high school kids just don’t use multisyllable words.”
In Vodka, Adams remembered Columbine killer Dylan Klebold. A different, younger Dylan who swam and played and danced. Oh Devon, Thorn said, after Adams finished “that must have been hard for you, God, I’m so proud of you guys!” Later, Adams wondered out loud whether people would really want to hear the poems. Whether they might rather ignore and forget.
“There’s a standard story. Almost a script now, after so many years, but still a story then. The confusion, chaos, uncertainty, fear, running, screaming, searching, calling out. Being found, being lost. The numbness and the rain and the lights and the insensitivity. So much so fast.
"Then I told him about other things, things that happened before. My Subway sandwich disappearing and Rachel being so upset. The expressive way she spoke – so expressive that it literally blew her skirt off. Her speech piece about having sex with a piece of toast. That she had been liked by everyone but her family until after her death. At least, that’s what we thought. That I had lost it at her funeral and laughed and laughed as they played the theme from Titanic, her most-hated song. And that she had been friends with the boy who had a hand in killing her. That he wasn’t a monster until that day. And that I hadn’t just lost her, I had lost him. And, while I got to say goodbye to Rachel, Dylan had been buried without any friends near him. I had betrayed him, and in the process, I had betrayed something inside myself.”
I lost Rachel when I was 16-years-old. Torn out of my life like, suddenly, cruelly, irreversibly. No more laughter in the dark theatre, no more ridiculously silly situations.
I visited her often. I visited her until they closed off the back access to the cemetery and I couldn’t bear to drive past "Baby Land” any longer. The day I graduated high school, I stopped and left her my program.
I don’t remember the occasion nor the day of the week. I can’t recall if it was sunny or cloudy, warm or cold. I think was autumn – but I remember leaves on the trees.
I was sitting on Rachel’s grave, telling her all of the things that I couldn’t tell to anyone else. Filling her in on the gossip. Pretending, for myself more than for her, that she was still alive. In my peripheral, a man lingered. I was always cautious when people approached these two isolated graves. I didn’t trust them. Often they were tourists intent on experiencing something of the more gruesome part of our history, or our story here. And when they weren’t tourists and they lurked, as this man was lurking, they were media, thirty to capture some untold story. As if any of our stories remain untold. I touched the card I laid against Rachel’s gravestone (so it must of been August, her birth month) and stood.
He addressed me first. He asked if I had known her. There’s no reason to lie – especially not when one is so close to death.
“Yes.” He nodded. “Did you?” It wasn’t meant to be hostile, but I held an irrational protectiveness over my friend’s grave site. “No. No, I did not.” Then why are you here? I didn’t ask it, but he answered anyway. I just don’t remember his answer.
But it must have satisfied me because I stayed. He asked where the teacher was buried, so I led him up the small hill to the bench marking the his resting place. We looked down over Rachel and the other student’s grave. The grass looked vibrantly green that day. It must have been cloudy else the grass would not been so stunning.
What made me open up to him? Seasoned from (one may say too) many interviews with the police, FBI, private investigators, the media, film writers, counselors, family, friends… I was used to being honest about it. About it all. No, not all. Omission is a form of dishonesty in some cases, in this it was a form of survival.
I had my wall. The things I spoke about, horrific, terrifying, sorrowful things I had created a fortress for where they could reside and I could visit them when I needed to, but I could check my emotions at the door. These were things that had happened to me, that was fact. I’ve found it’s often harder for others to connect with a story when one inserts very personal emotions into it. So I don’t. My emotions, my pain, my tears… those were things that others didn’t need to be privy to, so I stashed them away for a rainy day.
I think there were thunder clouds in the sky.
We sat. He may have asked me questions, I don’t recall. I don’t know if he pried or if I just told him what I thought he’d like to know.
There’s a standard story. Almost a script now, after so many years, but still a story then. The confusion, chaos, uncertainty, fear, running, screaming, searching, calling out. Being found, being lost. The numbness and the rain and the lights and the insensitivity. So much so fast.
Then I told him about other things, things that happened before. My Subway sandwich disappearing and Rachel being so upset. The expressive way she spoke – so expressive that it literally blew her skirt off. Her speech piece about having sex with a piece of toast. That she had been liked by everyone but her family until after her death. At least, that’s what we thought. That I had lost it at her funeral and laughed and laughed as they played the theme from Titanic, her most-hated song. And that she had been friends with the boy who had a hand in killing her. That he wasn’t a monster until that day. And that I hadn’t just lost her, I had lost him. And, while I got to say goodbye to Rachel, Dylan had been buried without any friends near him. I had betrayed him, and in the process, I had betrayed something inside myself.
How long did we sit there? How long did I weave my story, tragic and yet true, in that cemetery? How long did I allow the broken bits of me tumble out onto that cold, stone bench and down the green hill to settle like so many scattered birthday cards upon Rachel’s grave? I couldn’t tell you then, and, after all these millions of seconds, I can’t tell you now.
From this distance I would almost believe that he was a ghost. He had no car, no companion, he seemed to have materialized and, in memory, to have simply disappeared. I would think that he was nothing more than an apparition except that we embraced.
It was time to go. Hanging around the dead too long leads me down a dark road and I had to leave before I lost the light. I went to hug him goodbye, and he said the only thing that I know he said:
“When you hug a friend, always hug with your left arm raised, because it brings your hearts as close together as they can be.”
And I left. I drove away with the sense that I had just experienced something that would change me. A Moment that would be an indelible part of who I was and am for the rest of my life. But it was only after I left that I felt that. I wonder if he did, too.
As much as I miss my friends who are dead, their absence is a finality. I can never see them again, talk to them, laugh with them, touch them. They are gone. My longing for them is something different than what I feel for this man who I met for such a brief time on a dreary autumn afternoon years ago. Who was he? Where did he come from? What quality did he possess to allow me to transcend years of careful suppression?
I will probably never know. Without so much as a name or even a solid memory to begin from, there is little hope that I will know anything beyond my vaporous memories and a passing sense of magic.
At Devon’s sixteenth birthday in July 1998, the pre-printed birthday card that Dylan gave her reads;
“What are the chances you’re getting a birthday present?” Inside, the cards says, “Between slim and nun.” A tall, slim cowboy is next to a nun.
“Ahh a nice dab of mildly distasteful prewritten, pointless humor to brighten yer day AAAA?!!!,” Dylan wrote.
And because Devon had totaled her 1973 Pontiac Ventura one week before her birthday Dylan added, “Happy B-Day. Don’t run me over or you’ll lose yer license and ill be pissed he he he.”
Guardian Angel?
Nearly six months after Columbine, Devon Adams called the Klebolds on what would have been Dylan’s 18th birthday, September 11, 1999. They still had the same phone number and she left a message. She called to “Let them know I was thinking of them. I was keeping them in my thoughts. Let them know I hadn’t forgotten about them. I hadn’t forgotten about Dylan, and I was still around.”
Devon also had a gift for the Klebolds and went to their house, where she spent a couple hours talking “about memories and stuff.” She recounted how he helped her after her car accident.
”I think they thought it was pretty cool,” she said of the car story. “We were T-boned while crossing an intersection, and Dylan stopped his car and ran up to my window and was just like, ‘Are you OK? Are you OK?’ and he was freaking out, and I just told him to go get my parents and tell them to come up here and get me.”
When I was in high school we had a major school shooting my sophomore year [Columbine].One of the shooters was a friend of mine and the sound designer for our theatre. The year after the shooting I was the technical director for the theatre and was the only student with a key to the space. I would go in there just to sit and think or do homework during my off hour. One day I had a really awful day with people just being creeps and went into the theatre to work on some stuff when I heard footsteps on our catwalk. The only access to the catwalk is a door in the outside hallway with only 4 existing keys (I had one, 2 teachers and the janitor had the others). Also, it is a physical impossibility to get on the catwalk without turning on the lights (which you need a key to do – to prevent students from possibly getting up there during shows). It only lasted a minute, so I thought it was my imagination. Then it started again, louder and faster. I called out, and the footsteps stopped. All of a sudden the stage lights blared on (the booth was locked, no one was in it, and the board was off) I called out my friend’s nameand the lights turned off, and I didn’t hear anything else.
There was another time when this guy’s ex best friend (Zach Heckler) and I were driving down from the mountains going really fast, when a black BMW like the one this guy used to drive zoomed by us, then pulled in front of us and slowed down, making us slow down as well.No matter what we did we could not pass him, speed up, or see who it was. In about 10 minutes we hit a freak snow storm, and would have spun out if we were going faster. Just after we went thru, there was a 25-car pile up. We didn’t see the BMW after getting thru the storm.
Freaky weird. And true. And stuff like that kept happening.
——— Hm. Wonder what else has happened since?
Published on Youtube – Nov 2, 2013
Former AfA youth poet and Columbine student Dev Adams, talks about her experience in the Phoenix Rising program and reads a recent poem about that experience at the Art from Ashesat the 10th Anniversary Soirée on October 24, 2013, at Skylite Station.
Devon Adams is still very much grappling with the aftermath and ripple effects of the tragedy and losing three friends even today at 31. She struggles with being on both sides of the fence: friends with the victims – including Rachel Scott and “best friends” with the shooter, Dylan Klebold.
It’s interesting to note that she mentions someone on Tumblr portraying her as a roleplayer and doing a better job of herself then she would. *g* I do recall seeing that blog over a year ago and then it was abruptly yanked.
Devon Adams take on her “best friend” Dylan Klebold.
Dylan was incredible talented at sound design, at computer work, and at baseball". According to Devon, Dylan’s talents didn’t get the value it deserved, which depressed him. “He didn’t make the Columbine baseball team because he didn’t have a ‘name’ for himself, so he just gave up. He became apathetic, which is so dangerous
“When I first met Dylan, he was very shy. He dressed like a pretty normal kid: jeans, t-shirts. He liked computers more than other kids but besides that he was fairly normal. He didn’t know how to interact with people without another person there or something that he could talk about like a movie or music or something. But he was just kinda goofy, had a really sneaky sense of humor. And he was really morose and he’d make jokes about things that alot of people don’t make jokes about: about death and, about just really dark things.
Dylan, the whole time I knew him, never had a girlfriend, and never talked about a girl he liked or anything. I mean, I know that there were girls he liked and you could tell when he talked to them or looked at them, but he never had a girlfriend or anything. That was never something we talked about. It wasn’t something he was comfortable talking about.
Dylan was very smart & you could just even tell by talking to him. His vocabulary was extensive. He was using alot of…high school kids just don’t use multi-syllable words.”
“ [Zack ], lucky bastard gets a perfect soulmate who he can admit FUCKIN SUICIDE to & I get rejected for being honest about fuckin hate for jocks. From the wrongpeople.”
–Dylan Klebold
Another one of his favorite bands was the Chemical Brothers. And at one point, Dylan talked with Devon Adams about going to one of their upcoming concerts. But Devon notes, “He obviously never ended up going to it because it came in summer of 1999.” This would have been the concert they would’ve gone to together at Red Rocks Amphitheatre in 1999
At Devon’s sixteenth birthday in July 1998, the pre-printed birthday card that Dylan gave her reads;
“What are the chances you’re getting a birthday present?“ Inside, the cards says, “Between slim and nun.” A tall, slim cowboy is next to a nun.
“Ahh a nice dab of mildly distasteful prewritten, pointless humor to brighten yer day AAAA?!!!,” Dylan wrote.
And because Devon had totaled her 1973 Pontiac Ventura one week before her birthday Dylan added, “Happy B-Day. Don’t run me over or you’ll lose yer license and ill be pissed he he he.“
The Everlasting Contrast 