If I Don’t Make It, I Love You

IN THE WEEKS that followed the shooting in Parkland, Florida, it became clear that something was happening among students in America’s high schools. Tired of being shot at, tired of watching their friends die, and tired of being afraid, young people were speaking up and using social media to shine a brighter light on the issue of school shootings. This was also the case at Great Mills High School in St. Mary’s County, Maryland, where dozens of students were joining the movement to end gun violence. There was a walkout on the one month anniversary of Parkland, and several students were joining the movement on a national scale. Then, tragically, Great Mills became the site of a school shooting only days later.

This story was slightly different from the others. While it lacked the terrifying designation of “random,” it was equally as horrific in its familiarity. A seventeen-year-old student used his father’s gun to shoot and kill sixteen-year-old Jaelynn Willey, a young, bright girl who was also the ex-girlfriend of the shooter. When news broke, I panicked. I have two daughters, and I remember thinking it’s hard enough raising girls in this world, now we have to worry about this? I was also painfully aware of the privilege in that statement, as there are so many communities in which mothers have been worrying about losing children to gun violence for decades.

Still, as a mother of girls, researching twenty school shootings and the boys behind them has taken a toll. When my daughter wanted to break up with her boyfriend a few months back, I was a nervous wreck, I advised her to go easy. Don’t hurt him, I thought to myself, he might hurt you back. She was eleven. Teenagers hurt one another. It’s inevitable. Girls break hearts, boys break hearts. How does it end up like this?

The new culture of activism was obvious when we started this project. Connecting with those who had lived through some of the earlier shootings had proven difficult, but with Great Mills, we were easily able to connect with Mollie Davis, a student who has become an important voice in the March For Our Lives movement. In Mollie’s story, we see the transmutation of the life of the American teenager from carefree and innocent to terrified and hunted. A change I am acutely aware of as I navigate the teen years with my own daughters.

AMYE ARCHER, EDITOR

DECEMBER 2018

The following student was shot and killed at
Great Mills High School:

Jaelynn Willey, 16

A DAY IN THE LIFE OF
AN AMERICAN HIGH SCHOOL STUDENT

By Mollie Davis

Mollie Davis was seventeen years old at the time of the shooting.

That day comes in flashes of memory:

A boy runs by my math class so fast he is a blur of a human. I tell myself he’s running to get away from a fight. Learning later that he was running for his life, shakes me to my core. I see him in my head everytime I look out the door of my math class.

Two people from my class running into the hall to see what’s going on.

My friend texts—they heard someone had a gun and to get in a classroom.

The two students who just left come running back in, saying people are fleeing and something about a gun.

There is some talk of a balloon pop, a sound I realize I had heard, causing mass hysteria. I get a sinking feeling, but I push it aside. I still think this whole thing is a joke or some sort of misunderstanding. I text my parents, angry that someone is causing so much panic as a sick joke. As I do, I hear the voice of a teacher from the hallway yelling at everyone to get in their classes. This normally happens after fights, no biggie.

Then, the urgency.

Two minutes later, the voice of our principal over the intercom informing us there is no immediate threat, but to go on lockdown. I hear a slight panic in his voice. The sinking feeling comes back and I shove it aside again. This can’t happen to us, not my school.

My class does not fully lock down. Many of the classrooms downstairs do, but upstairs is a different story as we’re farther away. We lock the door, but leave the lights on and stay at our desks. We talk among ourselves and I text my group-chat of friends, all of us trying to piece together what we know. One of my friends downstairs says she can hear people yelling about victims and while at this point I knew rationally something had happened, I was in shock and still did not genuinely believe it.

News articles with confirmed police reports start to emerge on social media and we pass them around the classroom, all of us stare at the screen, stunned.

Time is fuzzy, I can’t recall exactly how or when things happened, they just seem to happen all at once. Time still hasn’t gone back to normal. At some point, before the police get to us, reports are that seven people have been shot dead. While this would later prove untrue, seeing that number makes it all real. I start to cry.

A friend messages me asking if I’ve seen Jaelynn because her mom hadn’t heard from her, I haven’t, and little do I know, I never will again.

At some point, I’m in the corner charging my phone when heavy footsteps approach. The police come into our classroom with guns pointed telling us to put our hands up. My warm cell phone in my left hand falls to the floor, I pray it doesn’t shatter. They tell us that it’s over and that we’ll be leaving soon. They leave again.

After some time they return and tell us that we’re evacuating to another high school. My teacher quips with them about wanting to “just go home from here,” and asks if we can use the bathroom. They walk us to the bathroom and back, and tell us to hold tight because they’ll be back for us. After what seems like days of reading news article after news article and texting loved one after loved one telling them I’m alive, the police return for the last time to escort us out.

Before we leave the room they line us up against the counter to pat us down. I am shaky and have a little trouble following directions, which causes me to laugh out loud. I want to scold myself for laughing in that situation but I didn’t know what else to do. Shock is weird.

We are told to leave everything behind except the valuables we can carry in our hands like our chargers and phones. Just before we go downstairs I realize I left my glasses behind and my teacher convinces the police to let him get them. We start to make our way downstairs and to the back exit in the cafeteria to the buses.

Down the long hallway to the cafeteria we pass classrooms doors with ALL CLEAR written on them in big black marker.

Police line the hallways with long guns and block us from seeing where the shooting happened. Now everytime I walk this hallway I feel like a zombie. This happened. Here. At my school. My school isn’t safe anymore.

On the bus to the reunification center, I’m crammed against a window in a seat with two other people. I stare out at all of the police vehicles, at the people on the streets who’ve come out of their houses to stare. I want to scream, but I can’t do anything but sob.

At the center, there is a sign-in sheet, someone asking me for my name. My hands shake so hard my name is near unreadable. Apparently this is part of why it took so long for my dad to get to me.

We’re shuffled into a conference room full of people and I realize that we are the last bus. There are no survivors coming later. I spot my friend Carolyn and step around people and chairs to get to her as fast as I can. I hug her like my life depends on it. We sit down and I stare into the crowded room. Some people are so chill it’s like nothing happened. Some are a total wreck. I see a teacher with tears streaming down his face.

For hours I stare the wall some more, eat pizza, and charge my phone before being picked up by my dad. We walk the equivalent of a city block in the rain back to his truck. I talk to a reporter briefly, and we head home. Halfway home, my chest starts hurting so bad I can’t sit up straight and when I get home after I hug my mom, I more or less drag myself upstairs and into the shower. I stare at the wall and almost burn myself with scalding hot water for forty-five minutes before getting out and putting a new outfit on.

When I tried to wear that sweatshirt again over a month later my back broke out in hives, like my body was rejecting it.

In the end, two people were shot at my school that day. Desmond Barnes, only fourteen, was shot in the leg and has survived his injuries. Jaelynn Wiley was only sixteen and is dead. She will never graduate, never have another summer break, never attend college. I didn’t know Jaelynn well, but I knew some of her friends and got to know more of her friends and family after the shooting. If love alone could have saved her, I know it would have.