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IT'S BEEN NEARLY A YEAR since Amanda last visited with her best friend Cassie.

It was a Tuesday morning, right after their first-hour photography class. Cassie was worried about her outfit. "I can't believe I wore this shirt," she told Amanda. "It looks terrible on me."

Amanda reassured her, told her she looked beautiful, told her she loved her, and told her she'd see her later, probably during lunch, when they usually studied together in the library.

"She looked so pretty," Amanda tells me. "She was one of the most beautiful people I knew. But that was so like Cassie—to be unsure about how she looked. She was so normal, wanting to fit in, wanting to have friends."

Amanda Meyer and I are sitting at the cafe in a Barnes & Noble in Littleton, Colorado. She is telling me about Cassie Bernall, her best friend.

We're not very far from Columbine High School, where Amanda is now a senior and where, on April 20, 1999, two students gunned down a dozen classmates—including Cassie—and a teacher before killing themselves.

Almost everyone knows about Cassie. How she died after being shot in the library at Columbine. How she, according to many reports, said "yes" when asked if she believed in God. How she lived a good life after being rescued from a dark past that included a time when she dabbled in Satanism, wrote letters about killing her parents, and swore she'd never turn to God.

We know a lot of facts and tidbits about Cassie. But those facts and tidbits don't have much lasting importance.

When Jesus sat with his disciples, taught the crowds, and visited one-on-one with people, he was pretty clear about one thing. Relationships are what count—relationships with God and relationships with others.

Amanda and Cassie knew how important relationships could be. Each of them had a relationship with God, and that became the foundation of their relationship with each other. That's how they built a true friendship.

Amanda has talked about Cassie quite a bit in the last year. To newspapers and magazines. To Oprah. To 20/20.

But I don't want to know just about Cassie. I want to know about Cassie and Amanda together. I want to know about their relationship, what it's like to have a true best friend.

So Amanda tells me.

"There was a Bible Club party the end of my sophomore year," she says. "I was hesitant about going because I hardly knew anyone except Amy, who gave me a ride. It was going to be a huge game of Capture the Flag. I was assigned to guard my team's flag with Cassie, a girl I recognized from school but didn't know.

"We devised this great place to hide the flag, right behind a tree. It was perfect." Amanda smiles.

"Then we just had to sit and wait for people to come after the flag, so we had lots of time to talk. It was small talk at first, the typical things."

But the small talk quickly changed into more. Amanda and Cassie heard that someone had gotten hurt in the game. It was Amy, Amanda's ride. She'd had a severe reaction to a bee sting.

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