“People outside this community know about us because of one moment in time.”
THIS STORY BEGINS on a slab of concrete in a quiet subdivision a few miles from Columbine High School, with two people staring at the car a teenage girl didn’t get to drive home. Beth Nimmo opens the driver’s door of her daughter’s vehicle and runs a hand over the cracked leather interior as if for the first time. There are many memorials around here, sacred places for a community where the past is also the present and the future. At the park next to the school, where summer softball teams still leave autographed balls at stone markers etched with the names of the 13 victims; at the neighborhood bar down the street, where the murdered teacher’s photo is on a wall; in the new high school library, which now has been around almost as long as the old high school library.
This car is more tactile—more visceral, more personal—like a backpack or a pair of shoes. On that day two decades ago, April 20, 1999, Rachel Scott drove to school in this burgundy 1988 Acura Legend. A few hours later, she became the first victim of a mass school shooting that would signal a new era in American history.
“Nice day,” a passing neighbor calls from the street.
Beth steps back to get a better look at the car. Larry, her husband and Rachel’s stepfather, gave this vehicle to the girl for her 16th birthday. For days after the shooting, the car remained in the parking spot where Rachel had left it. Students covered the windows with painted messages, put teddy bears and folded letters on the hood and on the roof and on the trunk. A large white cross leaned against the driver’s door, and the image was broadcast on television sets and published in newspapers and magazines and on websites around the world.
The notes and the stuffed animals
