'Deceptively Strong'

After a Year, a Virginia Tech Survivor Is Coming to Terms With a Tragedy

BLACKSBURG, Va.

Spring comes fitfully to this Blue Ridge valley, the wind carrying snow flurries one day and kites the next. In the cold sunlight, the dogwoods bloom and then the lilacs, defiant. It is a season of struggle. Derek O'Dell digs out his favorite fleece jacket, studying the holes in one sleeve.

April fills him with dread, sounding an internal alarm he can't silence: Something bad is going to happen . . .

He turned 21 this past Sunday, but his haunted blue eyes seem much older. O'Dell is tall and thin, bordering on gaunt. "But I'm deceptively strong," he says, flexing a rock-hard biceps as proof. Just beneath the muscle bulge are two small pink scars -- proof in their own right -- where the bullet pierced his flesh.

No bones were broken or tendons shredded. Three hours after the campus shooting spree ended, O'Dell was out of the hospital and on national television, wearing a tie his father had to knot. The arm is fine now. He was able to return to Virginia Tech within a week. He credits God, not luck.

A year later, O'Dell is a junior majoring in biology, hoping to become a veterinarian. He is studious, polite, shy. He is president of the college chess club. He roots for the Phillies and loves playing soccer. He rescues abandoned guinea pigs. He will likely marry the same girl he took to his high school prom. These are the familiar traits of Derek O'Dell.

But he has become someone else now, a stranger. He startles at loud noises and scans every room he enters for an escape route. He locks bedroom doors and smells gunpowder in his sleep. He distrusts the tender beauty of springtime. Like the season, he is unsure how to define himself.

Survivor, hero, victim, witness.

The yellow rubber bracelet circling his wrist reminds him how to move forward each day.

LIVESTRONG, it says.

Play to the future, analyze quickly. Anticipate what the opponent is going to do. Derek O'Dell began playing chess when he was 6, and became Virginia's middle-school champion when he was in eighth grade. The game suited his quiet nature and quick mind.

Shyness typically made him gravitate away from the front of most classes, choosing seats where he could hear the lecture with minimal risk of being called on. German was the exception.