Prom date remembers Rachel Scott

Nick Baumgart share his poignant momories of victim, Rachel Scott.

Prom date reminisce the good times spent with his friend, Rachel.

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He's thinking about Rachel.

Nick Baumgart has a show - me face. He's just 17, a high school senior, with adolescent acne and eyes full of promise. He likes acting and cooking and his is an eager face, a what-will-the-world-unfurl-for-me-today face.

This week, though, pains haunts it. He tugs at his lower lip a lot and he does a lot of hard swallowing. His eyes are dry but red. He hurts. He, too, is thinking of Rachel.

Rachel Scott- an actress, a musician, a poet, a kid -was 17 when she was shot deaad Tuesday. Nick had taken her to the prom the Saturday before.

Nick sees her as she was last Saturday night, the only girl at the prom in a sleek, black dress. (Everyone wore pooky pastels)

He tugs at that lower lip. He sees her in the limo, talking the crazy talk that made her so fun. She had a good time pndering, he rmembers now, if elephants have toes. He sees Rachel in the resturant, the only one in his group who dared sample the pate. He looks at the photo of her, so pretty, so bright, see her laughing as she struggled to pin on his boutonniere.

Nick sees Rachel alive, and he's hopeful. "Shes' certainly not gone. She's going to be a part of us."

Nick and his friends have spent hours remembering Rachel. Joking about how she used to imitate the spitting dinosaur from "Jurassic Park". Laughing at how she would take any dare you could throw at her.

They're decided to finish the play she was writing and produce it next year at Columbine. They hope, too, to publish her notebook of poems. As a tribute to Rachel, Nick's even considering a career in acting. He's always wanted to be a chef, but he met Rachel through the drama club, and somehow sticking with acting just feels like a good way to honor her.

"In a lot of ways, she's going to keep living." Nick promises, sure in this case it's not a cliche.

Surrounded by friends from his church youth group, Nick broke down and sobbed Tuesday night when a classmate told him she had seen Rachel dead in the schoolyard. Since then though, he has tried so hard to convert his hurt into hope. Unlike many of his friends, he evens wants to go back to school- not back to Columbine, but back somewhere- to finish out the last 19 days of his senior year. He thinks that will give him closure.

His mom, Bonnie, worries he's being too much of a trouper. "There's a lot buried in there," she says.

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