Columbine Read Online Free PDF

to, but she liked it better with a man to lean on. Independence had been great, but that life was over now.
    Linda Lou often met Dave at the Lounge after practice, and they spent the evening together there. She loved the place almost as much as Dave did. They'd met at the Lounge in 1991. They'd held their wedding reception there two years later. It felt like home. Dave felt like home to Linda.
    Dave was exactly what Linda had been waiting for: caring, protective, and playfully romantic. He'd proposed on a trip to Vegas. As they'd strolled over a bridge into the Excalibur casino, he'd asked to see her "divorce ring"--which she still wore on her wedding finger. She presented her hand, and he threw the ring into the moat. He asked her to marry him. She gleefully accepted.
    Linda and her two daughters moved in, and she and Dave finished raising the girls and Angela. Dave legally adopted Linda's younger daughter, Coni. He considered all three girls his daughters, and they all called him Dad.
    Dave's lanky runner's build filled out. His beard grew speckled, then streaked gray. His smile held constant. His blue eyes twinkled. He began to resemble a young Santa Claus. Otherwise, Dave remained remarkably consistent: coaching, laughing, and enjoying his grandkids, but not seeing them enough. He drove an aging Ford Escort, dressed in drab polyester slacks and plain button-down shirts. His hair dwindled, but he parted it neatly on the left. He wore great big oversized glasses with frames from another age. Each night ended with him in his easy chair, chuckling to Johnny Carson, with a tumbler of Diet Coke and Jack Daniel's in hand. When Johnny retired, the Sanderses had a satellite dish and Dave could always find a game to settle down with. Linda waited for him upstairs.
    Out of the blue, just a few weeks before the prom, he decided to update his image. He was forty-seven--time for a change. He surprised Linda in a pair of wire-rimmed glasses, the first big fashion statement of his life. He'd picked them out himself. "Woo-woo!" she howled. She had never seen a Dave like this before!
    He was so proud of those glasses. "I finally made it to 1999," he said.
    The big debut came Easter Sunday. He showed up in the glasses at a boisterous family gathering with the grandkids. Nobody noticed.
    Alone with Linda that evening, he confessed how badly it hurt.
    Dave was planning more changes: No basketball camp this summer. Less coaching, more time with his own girls and his grandkids. There was still time to set it right.
    He was trying a new bedtime drink, too: Diet Coke and rum.
    The Sunday before the prom, the family threw a birthday party for Angela's four-year-old, Austin. Dave liked making peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for the grandkids. He sliced off the edges, because they liked it fluffy all the way through. Dave would hide a gummi worm in the jelly, which surprised them every time.
    Austin called to talk to Grandpa on prom weekend but missed him. Dave called back and left a message on the machine. Angela erased it. She would try again during the week.
    ____
    Prom was scheduled for April 17, but for most kids, it was the culmination of a long, painful dance stretching back to midwinter. Night after night, Patrick Ireland had lain on his bed, phone in one hand, a ball in the other, tossing it up and snatching it out of the air, wishing his best friend, Laura, would take the hint. He kept prodding her about her prospects. Any ideas? Anybody ask yet? She tossed the questions back: Who you going to ask? When? What are you waiting for?
    Indecision was unfamiliar ground for Patrick. He competed in basketball and baseball for Columbine and earned first place medals in waterskiing while earning a 4.0 average. He kept his eye on the ball. When his team was down five points in the final minutes of a basketball game, and he'd just miss an easy layup or dribbled off his foot and felt like a loser, the answer was simple: Brush it off! If you wanted to