'Deceptively Strong'

At the GQ party, he and Laura stayed close to another honoree, a medic from Iraq. Josh Brolin came up and introduced himself, first name only. Kanye West drifted past with a phalanx of bodyguards.

Back at college, the survivors were invited backstage at a Dave Matthews concert. They became a stop on the presidential campaign trail. Former president Bill Clinton asked to meet them, and signed autographs.

It was fun, but the attention was vaguely unsettling, too, like the earnest assurances of the cashiers who told Derek he was in their thoughts whenever he went to buy something at the campus bookstore.

"I want to be a person, not this victim."

Derek is carrying 15 units instead of his usual 18 this semester, and he can laugh when his friends joke whenever he gets a good grade, that the professors just feel sorry for him. He lives with three roommates in an apartment furnished with an aunt's hand-me-down sofa, a foosball table, a poker table and a bigger table for "beer pong." Christmas lights zigzag across the ceiling, and Hokie memorabilia decorates the walls.

His parents worry that he's "lost his sparkle," that he's learned to give everyone, including them, the answers they need to hear. He wears the purposeful mask his father, who taught him the game, recognizes too well: "his chess face."

It slips as he recounts his first test of strength as a survivor.

Roger O'Dell had undergone successful surgery for ocular cancer the year before, and Derek had been anticipating the university's annual Relay for Life fundraiser for months. The overnight marathon fell on the Friday after the Monday massacre. His parents tried in vain to talk Derek out of going. Beneath his jacket, a small photograph of each of the five people killed in Room 207 was pinned to his sling, and mentally, he checked off another name each time he circled the track. This is Lauren's lap, that was Nicole's lap, Mike's lap, Maxine's, Herr Bishop's. Luminarias lit the field, arranged to spell the word CURE. As the night wore on, the candles were rearranged, and Derek saw the new message they spelled: HOPE.

Weak and fatigued by the time the event ended just after dawn, O'Dell was amazed to hear that another student had run an entire mile for each victim of April 16. He caught up to offer congratulations to the stranger. "Man, that was incredible, how did you do it?" O'Dell exclaimed. His voice catches even now, repeating the answer a year later.

"It was easy. I had 32 angels running with me."

'How Are You?'

He can't bring himself to deal with the book bag yet. The bloodstains aren't his own.

Katelyn Carney, who helped block the door, is in his German class this semester, too. Whenever there's any unexpected noise -- a book dropping, construction outside -- Derek finds himself looking for her, and they exchange a reassuring glance. The survivors get together once a month at the home of Jay Poole, who acts as liaison between the university and the families under the new Office of Recovery and Support. Jay and his wife, Shelly, make dinner for everyone, and Shelly sends all the kids home with leftovers. Sometimes they bring flowers from the grocery store.

Not long ago, some of the survivors gathered for a form of art therapy, creating circle collages to represent what is most important in their lives. Derek decided on faith, hope and love. Most of the pictures he chose are infused with the same color, a young life's themes rendered through a haze of red.

The survivors don't talk much among themselves about the specifics of the horror they alone know, Derek says. Conversation at the monthly dinners is more likely to flit from sports to politics to movies.

But in the secret language they share, a simple "How are you?" carries much deeper meaning, and Derek's standard answer, "I'm okay," is more complicated still.