The first chapter is barely over two pages. Cullen begins his account of the mass shooting by focusing on the Friday morning, April 16, 1999, four days before the shooting actually takes place. Frank DeAngelis, Columbine High’s principal, addresses the “two thousand hyped-up high school students in the school auditorium and [the students] give him their full attention” (3).

There are “fewer than thirty-six hours until the junior-senior prom,” and DeAngelis, known as Mr. D, encourages the student body to be responsible, having had a college friend killed in a motorcycle accident. He says that the school is “one large family”; both faculty and students repeatedly chant, “COL-um-BINE!” (4). Cullen concludes the opening chapter,“All two thousand students would return safely on Monday morning, after the prom. But the following afternoon, Tuesday, April 20, 1999, twenty-four of Mr. D’s students and faculty members would be loaded into ambulances and rushed to hospitals. Thirteen bodies would remain in the building and two more on the grounds. It would be the worst school shooting in American history” (4-5).

Columbine’s prom takes place on April 17, three days before the shootings. “Rebels” opens with Cullen offering descriptions of what both shooters—Eric Harris and