Students were stunned and grieving on Wednesday, walking around the school area with blank, vacant stares, looking a little like the Kosovar refugees arriving in Albania. Perhaps no group was more visibly shaken than Columbine High's athletes, the "jocks" reportedly targeted by Harris and Klebold. A group of football players stood around uneasily Wednesday morning, discussing their anguish, confusion and guilt about the rumor that the rampage was meant for them.

"I'm feeling kind of guilty for the victims and the families," said junior Landon Jones, who plays several sports, including football and basketball. "They might first start hating the suspects and then start hating us. Jocks already have the stereotype of being jerks."

Ironically, these students said, though jocks had been the reported targets of Klebold and Harris, none of their friends had died or been wounded by the killers. Many of the jocks had just left campus for lunch when the melee began. Jones, for instance, was just driving off for lunch when the shooting began. A friend jumped in his car and yelled, "Get the hell out, they're opening fire in our school." They heard gunfire echoing in the parking lot, but they never saw anything.

"At the time it's almost like a movie," Jones recalled. "You're like adrenalin's going. You don't picture kids dying, you just picture a rush to get out of there. And then later on you get by yourself and you start realizing it's more serious than just a movie."

"None of my friends were there," said Brad Johnson. Having missed the chaos, they were having particular difficulty connecting to the horror. "I just can't picture kids actually dying," Jones said. "I don't want to picture it."

Most students said Columbine High had the standard cliques -- jocks, brains, potheads, geeks and Goths -- but denied there was significant animosity between the groups. Despite some of the athletes' worries, no students specifically blamed the jocks for the killings. But several identified a few athletes as repeatedly harassing members of the Trench Coat Mafia. "There were jerks who did it," said Snow. "But for the most part everyone got along."

For their part, some of the jocks seemed to be struggling with the notion that their persecution of outsiders could have had something to do with triggering the carnage. But most rejected the idea that their cruelty might have had deadly consequences. Johnson, especially, lashed out at the killers. "I think they're just whining. Everybody gets picked on in their life. It makes me mad."

But Johnson described his sorrow at the murder of his friend Isaiah Shoels, the African-American student whom the killers reportedly sought out in the library, ridiculed as a "nigger" and then shot in the head. "I walked to class with him every day," Johnson recalled. He was one of only five or six black students at Columbine. "Nice kid, couldn't have been more than five feet tall. He didn't offend anybody. I'm going to miss him."

Despite reports that the killers targeted minorities, all of the victims but Shoels were reportedly white. By all accounts, students of color, who made up only 3 percent of the school's population, mixed easily with whites. A few Latino students, who asked not to be identified, said they had not experienced discrimination at the hands of the overwhelmingly white majority. "I'm surprised anyone in the school knew what the word minority is," Snow said.

Ultimately, Johnson expressed guilt about the students who died in an assault meant for jocks like him. "I feel guilty because I keep hearing they were after jocks, and they didn't hit one. I would have gone in there and I would have given my life for those innocent little kids, the little freshmen and sophomores ... They wanted to hit jocks, they didn't hit a one. I kind of wish I was in there, so I could have helped them."

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