Just after 10 a.m. — when second period was underway — the girls sat outside West High School passing between them a bottle of rum and taking deep chugs.
One, a senior, said, “It was just a dumb decision.” Her friend, also a senior, said she was drinking “because I’m going through a lot.”
When they’d had so much that they were starting to black out, the first girl said, she remembers seeing their principal walk around to the south side of the school where they were sitting on red benches. Much of what happened next is fuzzy, but both 17-year-olds say he drove them home.