At least so far.

I've been reading about Columbine and writing about Columbine for just under five years now, and for years now, I assumed the definitive story would explain what actually drove the killers. And of course I hoped to write it.

Then I read Michael Paterniti's piece in this month's GQ, "Never Sleeps." (Does not seem to be online, but it's in the issue dated April, on newsstands now--Viggo Mortensen on the cover. Ten thousand words.)

Of course. It was about the survivors.

That's what I thought the real story was about five years ago, stumbling around Clement Park in a daze, stunned over the fifteen dead, but terrified about the two thousand young zombies staggering around about me.

Now I wish I had written that story. But I'm kind of glad I didn't, because as I read on and on, I went from amazed to intimidated. It actually made me question my own abilities as a writer, the way reading Nabokov used to. Can I ever do this? Hopefully, someday. He's definitely ahead of me as a writer, though thank God for me, he's been at it awhile longer. (He's a bit younger, damn him, but I took more than a decade to come back to writing.)

So both topics are important--the killers and the survivors--I don't want to get hung up on that, and I'll get my chance to tell the other story here in the next few days. But what he did with his story was just incredible. The writing is just dazzling. I sat there looking up as I read it, thinking "What word can even describe the artistry that is having such an effect on me?" Dazzling. Only word to do it justice.

It propels you first back into the tragedy, in a moving but non-manipulative way, then straight into the lives of five survivors of sorts, in a powerfully empathetic way. Beware: It had me sobbing uncontrollably. But gave me fresh insights into the lives of subjects I had interviewed many times and thought I very well already. The most personal story I've ever seen on Columbine, and the most moving. Five years later, someone has truly gotten it pitch perfect.

Now the disclaimers: I worked as a researcher on the story, but had nothing to do with the writing. I got to know and like the writer, Michael Paterniti during his reporting, but I tend to judge my friends much more harshly. I couldn't read the story for a few weeks, fearing I might hate it. If you believe that biases me, discount my opinion, but I assure you that it made it all the harder for the piece to win me over.

And as a self-appointed guardian of the Columbine myths flame, I have to admit that Mike gets swept up in a few here and there, or in a case or two he just has a different view than me. (He sees it as much more revenge on jocks than I do.) (If I had known he was going to cover some of that ground I would have consulted more closely on that. I may have done him a disservice by not being more aggressive on warning him about certain things.) But that's not what the purpose of the piece, and one of the elements that I think makes it come alive is that he has some experience with Columbine, but not too much. He covered it when it happened (he might have still been with Esquire then), but left after a few days after he felt it starting -- hmmmm, I can't remember, now. He said he sensed at the time, that to do the story he wanted, he had to get out of there, because staying was starting to change his perceptions. Then he came back this January, for a fresh take. And don't get me wrong, he did a tremendous amount of research, but there is so much garbage out there, that unless you've been following the story relentlessly for five years, you're never going to weed out all the myths. So just ignore that quibble and immerse yourself into a story that has been aching to be written.

One final word. One of the subjects of the piece, Rev. Don Marxhausen, the respected Lutheran minister who got fired in the fallout of performing Dylan Klebold's funeral, and one of the wisest men I have ever encountered told me six months after the massacre that no one could tell the real Columbine yet, because that world was still in such a frenzy. It was like one of those Christmas globes with the water inside that you shake up and all the little snowflakes flutter around for a few minutes and you can't see anything. Our little world has just been shaken up, he said. The truth is still obscured. If you care about this story, come back and see me in a year, or better yet five years. Mike Paterniti came back in five years. What he produced went beyond stunning me. It was so powerful, so revealing, that it shook my own confidence in myself as a writer. This is the story I wish I would have, could have written. If you have any interest in this subject matter, do yourself a favor. Go read it.