In each other’s books, they took a real gamble, particularly Dylan. He wrote page after page of specific murder plans. They were at each other’s mercy now. Exposure of the yearbooks could end their participation in Diversion and bring them back on felony charges. For the final year, each boy knew his buddy could get him imprisoned at any time, though they would both go down together. Mutually assured destruction.
Dr. Fuselier considered the yearbook passages. Both boys fantasized about murder, but Dylan focused on the single attack. Eric had a grander vision. All his writing alluded to a wider slaughter: killing everything, destroying the human race. In a passionate journal entry a month later, he would cite the Nazis’ Final Solution: “kill them all. well in case you haven’t figured it out yet, I say ‘KILL MANKIND.’”
It’s unclear whether Eric and Dylan were aware of the discrepancy—neither one addressed it in writing. It’s hard to imagine that Eric failed to notice Dylan’s focus on a more limited attack. Was he including Dylan in the full dream? Perhaps Dylan just didn’t find it plausible. Blowing up the high school, that could actually happen—killing mankind… maybe that just sounded like science fiction to Dylan.
Despite the press’s obsession with bullying and misfits, that’s not how the boys presented themselves. Dylan laughed about picking on the new freshmen and “fags.” Neither one complained about bullies picking on them—they boasted about doing it themselves.
The boys changed dramatically after they began Diversion—in reverse directions, once again. Eric launched a new charm offensive. Andrea Sanchez became the second most important person in his life. Snowing her was the best way to appease the first, his dad. It also kept the program from diverting Eric from his goal. Eric had a plan now. He was on a mission and he was revved. His grades dropped briefly after the arrest, but they rebounded to his best ever once he had his attack plan. It was a lot of work, which he complained bitterly about in his journal; but he worked his ass off to excel.
Dylan didn’t even try to impress Andrea. He missed appointments, fell behind in community service, and let his grades plummet. He was actually getting two D’s.
NBK was nothing but a diversion to Dylan—fantasy chats with his buddy about what they would like to do. Dylan didn’t believe it; he didn’t plan to go through with it. All he knew was that he was a felon now. His miserable life had grown pathetically worse.
Eric was the star performer in the program, at work and at school. He even earned a raise, and when school let out for his last summer, he got a second job at Tortilla Wraps, where his buddy Nate Dykeman worked. Eric started putting away more money to build his arsenal. His cover story was that he was saving up for a new computer. He worked both jobs, in addition to the forty-five hours of community service the judge had ordered for the summer. That was boring, menial crap, like sweeping and picking up trash at a rec center. He despised it but pasted on a smile. It was all for a good cause.
Dylan did not appear to contribute much to the attack, financially or otherwise. He quit Blackjack and didn’t bother with a regular job over the summer; he just did some yard work for a neighbor.
Eric kept both his employers and the rec supervisors satisfied. “He was a real nice kid,” his Tortilla boss said. “He would come in every day with nice T-shirts, khaki shorts, sandals. He was kind of quiet but everyone got along with him.” Nate liked to wear his trench coat to work, but Eric didn’t feel that was professional.
The boys were required to write apology letters to the van owner. Eric’s exuded contrition. He acknowledged he was writing partly because he’d been ordered to “but mostly because I strongly feel that I owe you an apology.” Eric said he was sorry repeatedly, and outlined his legal and parental punishments so the victim would understand that he was paying a price for his actions.
Eric knew exactly what empathy looked like. His most convincing moment in the letter came when he put himself in the owner’s position. If his car had been robbed, he said, the sense of invasion would have haunted him. It would have been hard for him to drive it again. Every time he got in the car, he would have pictured someone rummaging through it. God, he felt violated just imagining it. He was so disappointed in himself. “I realized very soon afterwards what I had done and how utterly stupid it was,” Eric wrote. “I let the stupid side of me take over.”
“But he wrote that strictly for effect,” Fuselier said. “That was complete manipulation. At almost the exact same time, he wrote down his real feelings in his journaclass="underline" ‘Isnt America supposed to be the land of the free? how come if im free, I cant deprive a stupid fucking dumbshit from his possessions. If he leaves them sitting in the front seat of his fucking van out in plain sight and in the middle of fucking nowhere on a Frifucking day night. NATURAL SELECTION. fucker should be shot.’”
Eric betrayed no signs of contempt to Andrea Sanchez. In her notes, she remarked on Eric’s deep remorse.
Few angry boys can hide their feelings or sling the bullshit so convincingly. Habitual liars hate sucking up like that. Not psychopaths. That was the best part of the performance: Eric’s joy came from watching Andrea and the van owner and Wayne Harris and everyone who caught sight of the letter fall for his ridiculous con.
Eric never complained about those lies. He bragged about them.
Eric could be a procrastinator—a common affliction among psychopaths—and Andrea suggested he work on time management. So Eric bought a Rebel Pride day planner, filled a week in, and brought it to his biweekly counseling session to show off. He gushed about what a great idea it was. It was really helping, he said. Andrea was impressed. She praised him for it in his file. Then he quit. He used the book to vent his real feelings. It had come packed with motivational slogans and tips for better living. Eric went through hundreds of pages rewriting selected words and phrases: “A person’s mind is always splattered…. Cut old people and other losers into rags…. Ninth graders are required to burn and die.” He altered the Denver entry on a population chart to show forty-seven inhabitants once he was through.
Andrea Sanchez was delighted with Eric. She worked with the boys directly for a few months and then transitioned them over to a new counselor. In Eric’s file, Andrea ended her last entry with “Muy facile hombre”—very easy man.
Dylan got no affectionate sign-off. And why wouldn’t Andrea Sanchez like Eric more? Everyone did. He was funny and clever, and that smile, man—he knew just when to flash it, too; just how long to hang back, tease you with it, make you work for it, and then lay it on.
Dylan was a gloom factory. The misery was self-fulfilling: who wanted to hang around under that cloud all day?
Inside, he was a dynamo of wild energy, hurtling in eight directions at once, jamming music in his head, thinking clever thoughts, bursting with joy and sadness and regret and hope and excitement… but he was scared to show it. Dylan kept it behind a veneer—you could see him silently simmering sometimes, but he mostly came across as sheepish and embarrassed. Anger was the one thing that would boil over sometimes. The loving part, that stuff could be singing inside from the highest mountain, only he wasn’t about to let it show. The anger would just erupt. That would freak people out. You never would have expected it out of that kid.