If I Don’t Make It, I Love You

ON SEPTEMBER 11, 2018, I left my office to get comfortable in my car. Inside, I made final notes in preparation for my interview with Lori Alhadeff, whose daughter, Alyssa, was killed at the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School (MSD) shooting on February 14, 2018. Like many interviews I’ve had with parents whose children were murdered during a school shooting, my anxiety levels reach an all-time high, breaking out in fiery red hives across my chest.

At first, my interview with Lori began with hope. She told me that while Alyssa wasn’t looking forward to Valentine’s Day, she lit up when Lori gave her a gold bag with a pair of diamond earrings and a chocolate bar inside. I gave Alyssa the present, and she was excited. I told Alyssa I loved her. But then, the air changes. That would be the last time I’d ever see Alyssa alive. I try hard to hold back the tears. And in that moment, I want her story to be about something else like Alyssa’s soccer match or her love of the ocean. I want Lori to stop me on the phone because Alyssa has interrupted her. Nothing can be this true. Nothing can be this final. But it is like so many of the Parkland stories we collected.

Lori described, at length, how her daughter looked on the cadaver gurney in the morgue. I cried as she described her daughter’s bullet wounds, her long brown hair, and cold skin. I’m so sorry. I don’t know what to say, I said. It’s okay, she replied. You don’t have to say anything.

I called Amye immediately after hanging up with Lori. I told her I wasn’t sure I had the stomach to transcribe that interview. I was being ridiculous, maybe. But she reassured me I wasn’t ridiculous at all, and said she felt the same way after interviewing Susie, a mother whose daughter watched her teacher get killed at Sandy Hook. Take your time with this, she said. Return to it when you’re ready. I’m doing the same with Susie. Or I can do it for you, and you can transcribe my interview with Susie. We knew how to hold one another’s pain when the weight of these stories became too much.

About an hour after hanging up with Lori, she sent me photos of Alyssa to use in the book. I stared at Alyssa’s soccer picture for two days. Her low ponytail draped over her shoulder. Her eyes smiling across her face. She is a bright star in this darkness. There was no way she was dead. Later in the week I wonder if she had the chance to try on the diamond earrings her mother gave to her? Or taste the chocolate from inside the gold gift bag?

It was days like these that, like Amye, I yearned for this project’s conclusion. I often told her, as much as I love this book, and as much as I feel this is what I was meant to do, I welcome its ending. And with this statement came intense guilt. Amye and I recognized the privilege in those statements. For Lori and many of the parents whose children were killed at Parkland, they can’t walk away. They have to live without their children for the rest of their lives. And it’s not fair.

And while I’ve never met Alyssa, I miss her. I pray one day when I visit Israel, I meet her on top Masada, the holy rock where she was Bat Mitzvahed. I hope we can stand together, close to God, and that she is happy in Shamayim (שָׁמַיִם), wearing her diamond earrings and eating her chocolate in the heavens.

LOREN KLEINMAN, EDITOR

JANUARY 2019

The following students and staff were shot and killed at
Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School:

Alyssa Alhadeff, 14, student

Scott Beigel, 35, teacher

Martin Duque, 14, student

Nicholas Dworet, 17, student

Aaron Feis, 37, assistant football coach and security guard

Jaime Guttenberg, 14, student

Chris Hixon, 49, athletic director

Luke Hoyer, 15, student

Cara Loughran, 14, student

Gina Montalto, 14, student

Joaquin Oliver, 17, student

Alaina Petty, 14, student

Meadow Pollack, 18, student

Helena Ramsay, 17, student

Alex Schachter, 14, student

Carmen Schentrup, 16, student

Peter Wang, 15, student

HERE’S THE FUNNY THING ABOUT TRAGEDY: IT NEVER REALLY GOES AWAY

By Rachel Bean

Rachel Bean graduated from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, in spring 2017, one year before the shooting on February 14, 2018. She was a freshman college student at University of Central Florida at the time of the shooting

On February 14, 2018, I was working in the Digital Services department at the University of Central Florida’s (UCF) library. My office was small; there were only five of us that handled the old documents and books that needed to be transferred to computers, a type of job that twists and bends the past and present.

While I was working, my supervisor, Page, told me there was another school shooting at a high school in Parkland, Florida. My heart dropped to my stomach, and a layer of frost crept up spine. I knew it was my high school because there’s only one in Parkland, and it was Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School (MSD). I graduated in the spring of 2017, one year before. After I heard the news, I turned to the massive twenty-four-hour news sites as well as local and national news. As I read and watched the news, I remained calm. I’d been trained for an active shooter situation, as had the entire staff at MSD, so they’d know what to do. They also had an armed officer on campus, multiple security guards, and a camera. Everything would be okay, but an hour into the news coverage, I realized I was wrong.

I called one of my closest friends, Olivia Sands. We went through K–12 together and ended up at the same college. She lived across the street from me our entire lives, and her brother was a freshman at MSD. Olivia and I shared vigil at our computer screens. She kept calling and calling her brother who couldn’t, or wouldn’t pick up the phone. I went into overdrive: texted my friends who were still in the school, texted relatives of those friends. I hoped and prayed to hear something, anything. While I waited, I also texted my teachers who I’d grown so close to over my four years at MSD: Teachers who were mentors and who I even considered my surrogate parents were now in danger.

Life stalled. Olivia and I kept hearing the same information over and over again, not getting anything of substance. Watching the news wasn’t helping. So I did the only thing I could think of at the moment: I continued to work. Olivia left our computer vigil to be with her boyfriend, and I kept scanning documents and old books for the next two hours trying to keep my eye off the news reports until my shift was over.

At work, my colleagues expressed their concern for me, but I disregarded their offers to listen or to support me. There was no use getting worked up over something I couldn’t do anything about. I was helpless, and that scared me.

After work, I sat on a hard stone bench outside the library and pulled out my phone. I saw the video from inside the school. Bodies on the ground covered in blood. There were sounds of gunshots going off, which were recorded in a classroom that I had spent time in.

Then, I started to cry.

Grief churned from the pit of my stomach and rose through my throat—it was like bile, bitter and harsh. I couldn’t make a sound. How could I? A couple of my friends who I had met at university found me on that park bench. They didn’t say anything. I didn’t say anything. They heard what happened. Nothing they could say would make the shooting better. They helped me back to my dorm, because my legs felt too weak to stand.

I called my brothers, who had also attended Douglas with me. We’re triplets, and we all shared the same grade. One picked up the phone. One didn’t. Both later admitted they didn’t know what they could say that would help. Neither did I.

Back in my dorm room, alone with my thoughts, I felt rage bubble up within me. I grabbed my cell phone, turned on the camera, and started talking. I talked about gun violence. I talked about how someone went to my school and shot my friends and peers. I talked for nearly seven minutes. Without thinking, I posted it and called it “My high school was shot up today.”

Within minutes I received thousands views, and many hateful comments. In fact, I had more negative comments than supportive. People were calling me a traitor, a liar, an actor, paid by the government to lie to support an agenda. I disabled the comments.

I slept for the next two days, unable to attend class or eat. That weekend I got drunk for the first time, hoping to forget. But the next day I woke up, and life was still the same. My first thought was that I needed to go home. I needed to get a bus ticket down to South Florida to be with my family, to be there for my community and my friends, but I couldn’t. My parents didn’t want me to come home, midterm exams were coming up, and I couldn’t afford to miss classes. So, I stayed in Orlando.

The UCF community hosted a vigil. The speeches lasted an hour; I stayed for three, with Olivia at my side, her brother alive and well, but traumatized. They had posted pictures of the victims. People I knew, people I had known: Coach Feis, who always stopped me from making left turns out of the senior parking lot, but sometimes let me out early if I was skipping class; Nicholas Dworet, who I sometimes saw at the local pool, swimming; and Helena Ramsay, who I met in elementary school and played pretend games with; imagining us as superheroes who could defeat any monster we came across on the playground.

I came home for one weekend in March. There were only a few news vans left at that point. And as the media faded, I continued my life in Parkland: went around town running errands, visited local shops I loved as a high schooler. I couldn’t drive ten feet without seeing a banner of support, or a decal on someone’s car, or red and orange ribbons attached to trees, fluttering in the wind.

Today, the high school looks like a prison. The building where the shooting happened is boarded up, fenced in, and a police car is stationed outside the doors to keep people out. And when I drive on the highway, past the school, no matter whom I’m with (family or friends), words fail me. Silence fills the car, and we reflect on our tragedy.

In some ways, I felt and still feel incredibly guilty for not going home right after I heard the news to be with my friends and family. My guilt even extended to a school project I did in high school. I had always had an interest in school shootings. Call it morbid curiosity. I read books on Sandy Hook and Columbine; I watched documentaries on Virginia Tech and studied the time line of the Pulse shooting. And in my junior year, I made my documentary on school shootings with my friend Daniel from my film class, for the C-SPAN StudentCam documentary contest. I interviewed the mayor of Parkland, the congressman at the time, and I talked my film teacher Eric Garner, who was later credited for keeping nearly sixty-five students safe and calm during the shooting. I took video of students going about their day in the high school, in the building where the shooting eventually happened. Daniel and I won an honorable mention that year for our documentary, never realizing that one day our own school would be victim to a shooting. I mean what were the chances? I can’t help but wonder that maybe, in that documentary, I should’ve pointed out security flaws. Maybe I should’ve done more research on safety protocols. I could’ve done more. I should’ve done more. I didn’t.

I went to the 2018 MSD prom with a friend who invited me, but rather than having fun, I struggled with sadness and remorse. I cried in the bathroom that night. Why was I able to go to such a beautiful event when so many others would never get to go? Life was unfair and cruel.

I even got to attend graduation and watched my surviving friends graduate. But why did I have to refer to them as surviving friends?

I wasn’t directly involved in the shooting. I wasn’t in the classrooms, and I didn’t have any family there, so who was I to feel sad? Who was I to flinch at loud noises? I ask myself a lot of those questions now.

I didn’t want to be defined by the shooting. I didn’t want my town to be defined by the shooting. So I joined March For Our Lives in D.C. I participated in the die-in at Publix, and I joined the MSD alumni group.

Life is different now. Whenever I go anywhere like the movies or to the store, I look for exits, places to hide, and weapons I can use to fight back with in case of an active shooter. I can’t wear my class T-shirt without getting sympathetic looks from strangers on the street. I can’t say I went to Stoneman Douglas without someone asking about the shooting. That’s what we’re known for now, that’s what we’re all known for, and that’s who we are: a town, a city, a family, students, and peers—torn apart by a massacre.

Maybe that’s all we’ll ever be.

A CONVERSATION WITH
LORI ALHADEFF

Lori Alhadeff’s daughter, Alyssa, was killed at the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School (MSD) shooting. Alhadeff is the founder of Make Our Schools Safe and the Dream Team. Learn more about the Dream Team at makeourschoolssafe.org/dream-team. The following is an excerpt of the conversation between Lori and Loren Kleinman, editor, which took place on September 11, 2018.

LORI: The morning started off as Valentine’s Day, a day that was supposed to be about love, and I knew that Alyssa was actually not looking forward to this day, because she’s, you know, a typical teenager, she wanted someone to love her as her Valentine. So, I knew that, and I bought Alyssa a present. In a gold bag, I put a pair of diamond earrings, a chocolate bar, and I put it in this gold bag, and that morning, when I drove Alyssa to school about 7:15 in the morning, I gave Alyssa the present, and she was excited.

We drove to pick up another [kid], a boy, that I drove every morning, and I got out of the car, and I put the earrings on Alyssa. Then we proceeded to the school. Then, we stopped at a light, and I opened the door, and Alyssa had got out, and as she got out of the car, I told Alyssa I loved her. That would be the last time I’d ever see Alyssa alive.

My day proceeded, and it was about 2:10 in the afternoon, I received a text message from my friend, and it said, “Shots fired at Stoneman Douglas High School, kids running and jumping the fence.” Immediately, when I received that message, I had this overwhelming sense of loss that came over my body. I quickly put my shoes on, and I went into my car, and drove as fast as I could to the school. I was only able to go so far because there was traffic. I parked my car up on a sidewalk, and I started running toward the school. There was this yellow tape going across, and I had to stop. There were all these people standing around, and kind of looking at each other. No one knew what to think.

A couple of minutes later, Alyssa’s best friend Abby came up to me, and I remember looking at Abby, and then looking at the space next to her. They were like twins, inseparable.

I looked back at Abby, and said, “[Where’s] Alyssa?”

“I don’t know,” she said.

So, a few minutes later, Abby received a text message, and that’s when I found out the worst news of my life. Somebody told Abby that Alyssa was shot. I fell to my knees and started screaming: “Why? No, not Alyssa.”

I got up and ran toward the school. I was stopped by a big police officer with a gun in his hand, and he pushed me back. I told him my daughter was shot.

I asked him, “Where would she go? Where would they take her?”

He said, “The hospital.”

So, a police officer started running with me. He said he’ll take me to the hospital. I started running, and he was running slower than me. I could feel him keeping up with me. He put me in the back of his car, and I can remember feeling like I was the victim. The seats were very cold and the air was very hot around me. He took me to what was called the Command Center at the Marriott in Parkland. I can remember being the only one there. It wasn’t even set up yet.

We run inside, and we tried calling the hospital. Then, I decided to go to one of the hospitals, and I told my parents and my husband to go to one hospital, and I texted, or I put on Facebook, for people to look at Coral Springs Hospital.

I ended up going with a stranger into a car, and he said he’d take me to the hospital. We ended up getting to the light, but I wanted to get a police escort because I knew it would be faster. I got out of the car, then went into the police car, and he drove to the hospital. When we got there, we went into the ER, and I can remember running into one of the rooms, because I thought I saw Alyssa. There was a girl that looked like her, but it wasn’t.

Then, we were speaking to the doctors, and trying to figure out if Alyssa was in one of the rooms. Then they said she could be a Jane Doe in the OR. So, I ended up going back with the police officer. We went back to the Command Center, and this time there were hundreds of people.

They took people that couldn’t find their loved ones to a section of the Marriott, and then they took us into a mini room. . . . Nobody knew anything.

I remember going into the bathroom and screaming because I knew my daughter Alyssa. She was the type of kid that would be able to find me in a second. She knows my phone number, she would’ve borrowed someone’s phone. I knew time was passing and it wasn’t looking good. At 10:00 p.m. our rabbi was there, and I told him he needs to start planning the funeral arrangements for Alyssa, and he said okay.

It was about 2:00 a.m. when someone finally called us into the room, and they told me something bad happened. They didn’t want to say it in front of me. They only wanted to tell my husband. I said, “No. Tell me.” He said that Alyssa was shot in the face so she was unrecognizable. It turned out to be a lie. We left there that night and the next morning I went to the Everglades, the closest place I could think to be with God, and asked him why he took Alyssa. As I left, there was a big gleaming light in the sky. The sun was rising. I went to my mother’s house, and I got my mom. I told her that we were going to the medical examiner’s office which was forty-five minutes away from Parkland. When I got there, I told them I wanted to see my daughter, and they told me that I couldn’t see Alyssa. But, they brought me back an 8×10 color photo of Alyssa’s face, and that’s when I knew . . . with 100 percent certainty that Alyssa died.

I left there and went with my husband to the funeral home. We spent two hours planning Alyssa’s funeral. When we got to see Alyssa I touched her and tried to warm her with my hands. She was so cold. I was trying to bring Alyssa back to life. I was looking at the places where she was shot. She was shot ten times: in the heart, in the femoral artery, in the head, and in the hand. She was shot in other places, too. I cut a piece of Alyssa’s hair off because I didn’t want the killer to take everything from me. I wanted to have something to remember Alyssa by.

I told my husband I wanted to go to the park where they were doing the memorial service for the victims. When I got there, I was angry, and I went up to a reporter, and I told her I had something to say. She brushed her hair off, and said, “Well, we’re not on the air.” So, I went down the line, and there was another reporter there standing with a microphone, and I told them I had something to say. He handed me the microphone and he said, “We’re on in five seconds,” and that’s when I did my speech about Trump, about what he can do.

EDITOR’S NOTE: View the video of Lori Alhadeff’s speech to President Donald Trump: youtu.be/-cmaeYG3EIE

So, the next day, we buried Alyssa, because we’re Jewish, and in the Jewish religion you bury in the next day. There was hundreds of people there, and I put my hand on Alyssa’s casket as it was being lowered into the ground, and I touched it until the last possible second that I could touch it. As a mother, you birthed your child. You raised your child. When your child dies, it’s your job to make sure she’s buried.

So, we ended up sitting shiva for Alyssa for seven days at my house . . . I knew to honor my daughter and to be a voice of change. I empowered myself to want to run for school board . . . to have a seat at the table. To have a vote and a voice. So I ran for the school board and was elected.

LOREN: What are some of your favorite memories of Alyssa?

LORI: Alyssa loved the beach. She loved the ocean. She loved riding the waves in the ocean, especially in New Jersey. We used to go to Long Beach Island all the time. So, when she came [to Florida], the waves weren’t as big as they are in New Jersey. She’d always try to go to the beach, to Deerfield Beach, any second she got. She loved to hang out with her friends, and she loved boys, and she was social. She was beautiful, and very smart. She already had ten high school credit classes, and she was only a freshman. She was taking high-level classes.

Alyssa had such zest for life. She was always doing all these things. One activity from one to the next, which was great. She played soccer since she was three years old. She played competitively. She was the number eight and wore the eight on her soccer jersey. She played the eighth position. So now I say play for 8 or #playfor8, and when you turn the eight sideways it’s the infinity symbol, which means forever. I told Alyssa’s friends #liveforAlyssa, #playfor8. I try to empower the kids to say, “Hey, I still have a life, and it’s really special, and I can live for Alyssa and do all these things for Alyssa, because she can’t. Her voice was silenced. We miss her a lot.

. . . Alyssa was Bat Mitzvahed on top of Masada in Israel . . . Alyssa got to be in Israel on top of Masada. [Really] close to God. That was really powerful, and the Jewish community has embraced my family since the tragedy . . . [Everybody] from every faith has been so loving and caring. It’s helped us with the healing process and empowered me to be positive, to make sure change happens, that Alyssa’s death isn’t in vain. That no other child or family has to go through this.

ROOM 1216

By Dara Hass

Dara Hass is an English teacher at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. Her classroom was one of the first entered by the gunman. Three of her students were shot, and multiple others injured.

PART ONE:
WRITTEN TWO DAYS AFTER THE SHOOTING

On February 16th, I visited the Channel 10 News website and read the time line for the Marjory Stoneman Douglas shooting for the first time since the horrific events only two days earlier. My heart sank when I saw the numbers, 1216, staring back at me. This was my classroom. I am classroom 1216. In my classroom, five of my students were shot multiple times. Many others from my class will have shrapnel souvenirs in their arms, legs, and heads to remember this horror. I lost three sweet, beautiful souls in my classroom that day. I just keep saying to myself this cannot be real.

There are two time lines of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School massacre on Wednesday, February 14th. One from Broward Sheriff, Scott Israel, and one from someone who lived it. I apologize if it is too real and understand if you don’t read it. Maybe I should not write it. I don’t know. I am so sorry if I am in the wrong for writing my time line of the event. My head is still trying to process it all. I honestly just don’t know what to do. I just keep telling my story because I cannot believe it. Soon I will believe it and reality will truly sink in and I may not want to share it again.

2:19 P.M.

UBER DRIVER DROPS OFF NIKOLAS CRUZ AT THE SCHOOL AT 5901 NW PINE ISLAND RD., IN PARKLAND.

2:21 P.M.

CRUZ ENTERED THE EAST STAIRWELL WITH A RIFLE INSIDE A BLACK SOFT CASE. HE EXITED THE STAIRWELL AFTER PULLING THE RIFLE OUT OF THE CASE.

I sent a student out to use the restroom. He said he saw the shooter and the young man told him, “things are going to get bad” and to get out. The brave student reported it to Coach Aaron Feis. Feis took the student off campus. Feis saved this student. This student saved MSD. Feis went into the 1200 building to investigate the report of a student with a gun. He saw Nicholas Cruz and lost his life protecting students entering the building.

2:21:33 P.M.

CRUZ BEGAN SHOOTING AT CLASSROOMS 1215, 1216, AND 1214.

It happened so fast—there was no warning—we all dropped to the floor and hid. I called 911 and texted to my husband that my students have been shot and to call 911. I hugged the students who did their best to hide under and behind my desk. I communicated nonverbally to the students hiding across the room. These students witnessed three of their classmates and friends lose their lives. Injured students were pulled to safety by their fellow classmates. They barricaded themselves under fallen desks. We sat in silence while the 911 operator told us she was with us and help was on the way. I held back tears and panic as I hugged my students. I knew that if I lost control of my emotions then my students would lose hope.

TIME UNKNOWN

CRUZ RETURNED TO CLASSROOMS 1216 AND 1215, AND THEN TO CLASSROOM 1213.

The 911 operator told us to be quiet and the shooter was coming back. The students and I did not move—perhaps we did not even breathe. I texted goodbye to my parents saying I loved them and thanked them for everything they have done for me. They did not know I was in this horrific moment. I did not want them to know. My mom replied to my message thinking it was a Valentine’s Day text with an “I love you too.” I also texted goodbye to my husband and said I loved him and that I loved our girls. I hugged my students. I prayed for God to protect us all. Then, I heard shouting outside my door. I saw movement outside the slender rectangular shattered window on my classroom door. Someone pushed through the shattered glass and an arm went through the window to open the door. In ran law enforcement to get us out of the building.

My students were escorted out of my room to safety by the police. I stood up making sure the students were all out. They were not all out. I stood in shock as I stared at the bodies still in my room. I was silent, but my thoughts screamed, “This can’t be real! These kids have to be okay! Maybe they are unconscious from the shock of their injuries and they will be okay. Perhaps they will never walk again, but they will be alive. I will push their wheelchairs everyday if I have to! They just have to be okay!” I just stood there, wide-eyed at my precious students lying motionless. The officer walked over to me and wrapped his arm around me gently, leading me out of the classroom to safety. I did not want to leave the students. They needed me. They needed me to comfort them. I wanted to just hold their hands and tell them they would be okay. The voice in my head screamed, “They have to be okay!”

Law enforcement got us out and safe in sixteen minutes. They saved us.

2:29 P.M.

CRUZ TAKES A SOUTHBOUND TURN, CROSSES FIELDS, AND RUNS WEST ALONG WITH OTHERS WHO ARE FLEEING AND TRIES TO MIX IN WITH THE GROUP RUNNING AWAY.

Once out of the building, I felt confused, shocked, and just plain helpless. I was frozen crying in front of the building as I watched students and police run in all directions. Another officer ran over and he quickly walked me to the safety of the sidewalk. He talked to me and calmed me down. The officers were so kind and gentle as they guided me out. The shooter was still on campus and they needed me to get to safety, yet they still showed their hearts with patience.

Once I reached the sidewalk and was at a safe distance from the building, I began to breathe again. The officer let go of me and said I was safe and to head to the police car barricade. I nodded and wiped the remaining tears from my face. I took a deep breath and began to turn toward the barricade, which consisted of crowds of concerned people surrounding police cars and ambulances. As I took my first step, one of my students came to me covered in blood. I looked into his sweet blue eyes pleading for help. His eyes that were so scared and lost. I said that I would take him to the paramedic, and asked him where he was hurt. He looked at me with a mix of sadness and confusion and said I don’t know if it is me or my friend. I nodded realizing he was sitting next to two of the students who had been shot. I put my arm around him and led him to medical help. Once I was able to get him to the paramedics, I turned and encountered more injured students who needed my help. Students covered in blood and wounded. These are faces I will never forget.

3:41 P.M.

A COCONUT CREEK POLICE DEPARTMENT OFFICER DETAINS CRUZ AT 4700 WYNDHAM LAKES DRIVE. HE IS POSITIVELY IDENTIFIED AND TAKEN INTO CUSTODY.

I am thankful to be alive and home with my family and friends, but I have a huge heartache for all the lives and innocence lost. I tell myself it all happened so fast and there was no warning, but it does not ease the pain in my heart and the tears in my soul.

I can’t sleep and my head hurts. My eyes are swollen from tears. The anger is starting to seep in. Why does this evil happen? Why were these precious lives taken? Three students in my class lost their lives. The rest will live with metallic reminders. My friends and fellow staff members are gone. Those sweet young lives taken for no reason.

I just don’t understand, and probably never will. I just pray it ends here and no one will ever have to endure another tragedy like this one.

PART TWO:
WRITTEN TWO MONTHS AFTER THE SHOOTING

It took two weeks for the constant anxiety attacks and crying to fade away, I still have those moments, but not as frequent or intense as I did in February. I have begun to live in the “new normal.” That is what they call it, the new normal. It is anything but normal.

I have witnessed something horrific. I have endured the fallout of the emotional roller coaster, which occurs after a traumatic event. My life will never be normal. I will always have a sense of fear and look for exits everywhere I go. I startle at the smallest sound, which I brush off with a forced laugh and smile to put others at ease. I focus my thoughts on logic and reality to help guide my way through the pain and confusion of emotions. There will never be a clear answer to why this happened. I will never be the same person I was before this tragic day.

I am weeks away from starting the 2018–2019 school year, and my classroom along with everything inside it is sealed up tight. I don’t care because it is just material things that can be replaced. My heart just aches for the innocence lost in that classroom. That is something that can never be replaced.

I will never be the same, but I will push forward. That is all I can do. I will take each day, each moment with my loved ones, each moment with my students as a gift. I will be strong. I will be loving. I will be positive, passionate, and proud to be an Eagle. I will forever be room 1216!

A CONVERSATION WITH
MITCHELL DWORET

Mitchell and Annika Dworet’s seventeen-year-old son, Nick, was killed in the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School on February 14, 2018. Their younger son, Alex, was shot and injured that day. Alex survived. The following is an excerpt of the conversation between Mitchell Dworet and Amye Archer, editor, which took place on October 9, 2018.

AMYE: Can you share a little bit about Nick and his love of swimming?

MITCHELL: We joined him up [when he was seven] and he really took to it. He started meeting friends and learned all four strokes. He liked the competition. He learned to win, lose, how to follow directions. He just had fun with it. They’d write on their bodies, “Eat my bubbles.” And I would joke with Nick later on, even when he was almost six foot, “Nick, let them eat your bubbles.” It was a funny thing, he’d roll his eyes.

Then, at fifteen years old, Nick quit swimming. Broke my heart, broke my wife’s heart. He said “Dad, I’m so bored, the same four strokes.” He had reached nationals with Coral Springs Aquatics. And he just was bored.

When high school came around, we had a choice between going to different schools and he picked [Marjory Stoneman] Douglas for the swim team. As we were walking through the school, we said, “Nick, let’s just go over to swim team and talk.” He was like, “No, I don’t wanna go over there.” And, as we passed, the coach started talking about water polo with some people. “You don’t have to swim, you can do water polo.” He was like, “Okay, it’s a team thing. Let me try it.”

At the same time, he also was struggling academically. But with water polo, he met a lot of kids and made some good friends. Nick was still somewhat fast, he was first to the ball at water polo. But, since he had such poor grades, he couldn’t play water polo, either, at that point because of his grades.

So one of his friends said, “You have to meet the coach that I swim with TS Aquatics in Tamarac, his name’s Coach Andre.” He went, met Coach Andre, and hit it off. He trained Nick to not only become a great swimmer, but instilled important life lessons on becoming a better person.

Soon after, he also started going out with Daria, who was a swimmer, but went to a different school. So Daria came into the picture, his coach at TS Aquatics, and new teammates from many different schools around the area, private and public schools.

That’s when he got his GPA up to three-point-something. He was doing really well. His swimming was just extraordinary.

But he learned from that experience. He wrote an essay, which I later found, and the title of the story was, “Never let a stumble on the road be the end of your journey.”

Nick also became very big into inspirational things. He has on his board, “When you want to succeed as bad as you want to breathe, then you’ll be successful.” He was reading a lot of finance books and he would underline a lot of financial stuff and also inspirational stuff that related to finance and life.

Nick was reading his last book and he got up to page 59. He was reading Napoleon Hill, Think and Grow Rich. That was the last book he was reading, and he’d underlined a lot of things in it.

AMYE: What is it like for you to live among Nick’s things? Do find that comforting?

MITCHELL: Sometimes I’m in denial that Nick’s gone as we move into our eighth month that this happened. I have a very hard time. Like yesterday, Aalayah Eastmond thinks of Nick as a hero. She was the girl that his body fell onto, he stood up in front of her. But she did an interview and the writer wrote, “his lifeless body was on top of her.” It’s very hard for me to read, to think of my son’s lifeless body on top of someone. Then again he is a hero, and I cherish Aalayah for all she is doing to honor him.

It’s devastating what happened to us, what happened to Nick in relation to being a parent. I’m right here at Nick’s empty bedroom. I’m here. This is where he is . . . or was. To look at this, it’s surreal still. I talk to people, I’m talking to you, sometimes it’s third person for me because I can’t believe that this happened. How could this happen, right?

And then when people approach you, “I don’t know what to say.” I don’t know what to say, either. I don’t know, it’s one step in front of the other, daily. I’m getting stronger about it for us, for my other son, of course. I have a double whammy, my other son Alex was injured, he was in the first room. He has shrapnel under his head, he saw three kids get killed.

AMYE: How’s Alex doing?

MITCHELL: He’s doing okay. He’s my hero and he has courage to go back to school there, he has a lot of friends. He’s changed in certain aspects, of course. He’s got PTSD and all that entails. He’s doesn’t feel safe in many places and he definitely looks for escape routes, as an example, wherever he is.

I’m very proud of him, he’s a strong boy. He’s going to the gym, he listens to music. He’s a normal fifteen-year-old kid. He’s come out more about talking about it and also about his brother. He wasn’t talking about Nick at first. They were very close.

AMYE: So he’s grieving plus processing his own trauma.

MITCHELL: Yes, which we all do as a family. I’m in a situation that no parent would, could ever imagine—as the only parent with two children, one killed, and one wounded by this shooting. I also have to deal with the trauma of the event. The trauma started that day while waiting with my wife, in the parking lot at 2:20 p.m. that day—to finding out what happened to Nick at 3:00 a.m. the next morning in a hotel from the FBI. Alex deals with three issues from that event. Being injured, seeing classmates murdered, and losing his brother. We just can’t imagine, this is why he is my hero, my everything.

I’m grieving for Nick. Nick is just . . . he’s a presence, man. I just miss him walking through the house with his swim gear and his backpack and his gigantic water bottle.

AMYE: How has meeting other parents helped?

MITCHELL: Sandy and Lonnie Phillips, from Aurora [Sandy and Lonnie’s daughter, Jessica, was murdered in the Aurora movie theater shooting]—they were coming here anyway, and a mutual friend introduced us. We [had] Sandy and Lonnie over to our house and we sat with them for about three hours. They went over their experience in the past six years and what they experienced immediately after the shooting, what we should look out for. They never invited us to join anything. They came to us as parents. As other parents of mass shootings have come to us.

I’m very close with the other parents through this tragedy. I sit with them, mourn with them, grieve with them, and I honor their children, the husbands, and the coaches. There is a fight to be had, though—

AMYE: There is.

MITCHELL: Grief is grief. But this grief, the trauma associated with this grief and the mass shooting and the politics of it.

My son was in a classroom going to school that day. I dropped him off that morning. I told him I loved him. I didn’t know that would be the last time I’d see him. I didn’t know texting him, waiting for him that day, “I love you, Nick.” And I had a bad, dark cloud feeling that day. When I texted him “I love you” twice, I felt it. I’ve moved on from that point, but I was stuck in that parking lot for a while psychologically.

Looking at gun violence now for what it is, an epidemic in our country. So now I have a voice, I’m getting stronger. I have to tell my story to honor my son, and the sixteen other beautiful people we lost that day senselessly. No other family should experience this, I do not want to visit other parents like Sandy and Lonnie did for me. This is a club you never want to join.

AMYE: How do you feel about the Parkland kids out there advocating for change?

MITCHELL: Oh my God. I’m a big supporter. I don’t buy into, “They wanna be famous.” These are Nick’s classmates. Whenever I talk to the ones that are really the face of it, they say “We do this for you, Mitch, we do this for your son.” They know Nick, quite a few of them. They’re [Nick’s friends]. I support them 110 percent. They are the future. I firmly believe that they made a change.

How could I ever say anything bad about these kids? I am totally in awe of what they’ve done. When people speak bad of them or denigrate what they’re doing or have nasty, cruel comments, I think it’s despicable. I think it’s disgusting.

AMYE: What would you say to other parents who are going through this? Hopefully there won’t be more parents going through this but, unfortunately, after Parkland there have been.

MITCHELL: Again, I don’t ever wanna look at another parent’s eyes and cry together. I don’t wanna do that. Because I look in eyes six years out now and we’re on the same place. There’s no secret sauce here. I would stay close to who you’ve been close to and let go of those people and things that do not serve you. Do not make any major decisions.

Still, you’re gonna be in a different place, you change. I am not the same Mitch Dworet I was on the 13th as I became on the 15th of February. I’m a different person. But there’s the aspects of me that I took, using fitness as an example. I just got back to my running, I’m trying to eat right, I don’t abuse alcohol or any drugs, I went into therapy very early on. I wanna be here for my wife and my child.

But, it’s very difficult. You could just curl up and just wanna die. At first, I wanted to just follow Nick, I wanted to just be with him. It’s a very heavy thing to say but I can’t do that.

AMYE: I imagine many parents would feel that way.

MITCHELL: So, I try and find things that serve me and stay strong so I can be strong for those out there. It’s funny, people will say, “Oh, you need to be strong for others.” In my mind I think I don’t need to be fucking strong for anybody. My grief and trauma, I have to deal with that.

I cannot find forgiveness in my heart at this point in my life. There is no forgiveness. I wanna see retribution and I need to see justice done as quickly as possible. I could put this young man to death with my bare hands right now. That’s how strongly I feel about it.

And I think death by [lethal] injection is too good for him. So I have no forgiveness in my heart. But I’ve hear through others who’ve been through this and there are certain communities that are forgiving, blah, blah, blah, not me. Ain’t happening. I see no forgiveness. I don’t see God. God wasn’t there for seventeen souls that day. But then again, I was blessed to have [Alex] saved that day. This is something that I have to confront and find peace with for the rest of my life.

But I lost Nick. So . . . Where am I?

LEARNING TO TRUST MY INSTINCTS

By Keely Owen

Keely Owen was a fifteen-year-old freshman at the time of the shooting.

I am fifteen years old, and I’ve already had a very near-death experience inside the place I’m supposed to feel safest: my high school. I’ve been participating in active shooter drills my entire life, yet nothing prepared me for the real thing. In the moment, I had to make a series of choices, some conscious—some not, and hope they were right.

At the start of fourth period on the day of the shooting, I asked my teacher if I could run over to the freshman building quickly to get a permission form I needed. She told me no. It was 1:10 p.m. and class was starting. I was frustrated, and I could have fought with her, but I listened. As class went on, I heard loud, startling noises, like large boxes dropping. There were workers on campus that day, and I assumed they dropped something very large.

Soon, my teacher gave me permission to get my form, and as I stood up from my desk, the fire alarm started to go off. I almost ignored it since we already had a fire drill that day, but I went with procedure. It soon became very obvious that this was no drill. As I walked outside toward the senior parking lot I saw a lot of smoke. I heard loud screaming. There was complete chaos. Then, for what felt like a whole minute, the air grew silent. Gunshots. Gunshots everywhere. I quickly realized there was a shooter. Someone was shooting at us.

Coach Aaron Feis was by the freshman building yelling and directing kids to go the other way. I listened to him. I ran for my life with a small group of my friends at my side. I didn’t know it, but I was one of the last people to see him alive. In his last moments, he saved me, my friends, and countless other students.

No one knew where the shooter was, it was terrifying. I stayed against the outside wall, leading my group of friends all the way to the bus loop. I could hear my heart beating loudly in my ears, and I could hear my families’ voices telling me they loved me. I had been late that morning and in my rush out the door, I forgot to say goodbye to my mother. Would I ever see her again? I felt sick to my stomach. I thought it was the end. I got to the fence where I thought I was safe, and as I began to prepare myself to hop over, I heard someone screaming RUN, RUN!

Loud, alarmed voices were screaming at me to run back into the school. I hesitated. Outside felt safe, and inside did not. Still, something told me to listen. I ran back into the school and into the leadership room, where I dove into the closet. One of my best friends was there, with at least thirty of my classmates. For over two hours, we hid in the closet sweating with no fresh air. We had no idea where the shooter was, who the shooter was, or if we would be okay. We had no cell service, but I was able to connect to Twitter through Wi-Fi. I couldn’t even believe what I was reading. The top trend was a shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. This couldn’t be real. How could my school in Parkland, Florida, be the site of a school shooting?

We soon heard the SWAT team above us, bursting open doors and moving desks. Their footsteps shook the ceiling. Soon after, banging—loud and furious—on the door of the classroom. When the SWAT team pulled us out, they had huge guns pointed at us, and I was more terrified than ever. I had to run out of my school with my hands up. I ran past the freshman building and saw black body bags, not realizing at that time that some of my friends were inside.

Later, when it was safe to go home, I remember getting into my car and just feeling numb. My mom was terrified and confused. She didn’t believe what had happened, and neither could I. I sat on the couch and cried. Everything hurt. Then, my friend’s face was on the evening news. Jaime Guttenberg. She was the first one to be confirmed dead. After that it just started to become one after the other. Alyssa, Martin, Luke, Gina, and Alaina, the names seemed endless.

In the days that followed, I realized how lucky I was. Had I gone to the freshman building when I wanted to, I would have been in the middle of the shooting. If I had not run into Coach Feis, I would have run straight into danger. If I had stayed outside instead of listening to those voices, it might have been my face on the news that night.

While I’m lucky to be alive, I have lost several of my friends. That’s a loss I will never fully heal from. I miss them. It was hard, and it still is hard. They cross my mind every single day. Every day I wake up I think of them and see them everywhere. Seventeen, my jersey number for volleyball, was also the number of classmates and friends killed that day. How could a number begin to mean so much? It’s always been my favorite number, but now it means so much more than that.

One thing I learned through this experience is to trust my instincts. If I didn’t trust my instincts on February 14th, I don’t know if I would be here. Also, I have learned to live everyday fully. You never know when life will end. I’ve been given a second chance at life, and with it, I choose to honor my friends, every day.

DADDY, KEEP GOING

By Andrew Pollack

Andrew Pollack’s eighteen-year-old daughter Meadow Pollack was killed in the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School (MSD) shooting. He’s a school safety activist credited with helping to pass the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Public Safety Act, and coauthor of Behind the Gun: How Parkland Created Its Killer and Our Schools Became Unsafe (Post Hill Press, 2019).

Before Valentine’s Day 2018, I had a great life.

I provided a good, middle-class upbringing in Coral Springs, Florida, for my three kids, Huck, Hunter, and Meadow. I never went to college. But I’d built a good scrap metal business back in New York where I grew up, and then a good real estate business when I moved to Florida. My youngest, my princess, Meadow, was three months away from graduating high school. She’d head to Lynn University in Boca Raton and I’d ride off into the sunset. Literally. I was ready to sell the house and drive my truck across the country to join my wife’s family in Northern California. Maybe build a little ranch up there.

On Valentine’s Day, my wife Julie wanted to take a day trip. We put our bikes in the truck, packed a picnic, and drove out to Shark Valley in the Everglades. There’s a nice fifteen-mile bike loop there. We were halfway through the loop when I got a text from my son saying there was a shooting at the school. Maybe someone shot a gun by accident, I thought. But then I got more calls. People said multiple shots fired. An active shooter. But I still didn’t think anything of it. It’s not me. Not my kid out of the three thousand at that school. We drove through every fucking red light to get back to Parkland.

When we got to the high school, my son, Huck, and his mother (my ex-wife) were there looking for Meadow. They couldn’t find her. After an hour or so, Julie and I decided to check the hospitals. Since Julie is an ER doctor, accessing hospital information would be easy. On our way, we ended up behind police cars and an ambulance. When we got to the hospital, Julie went inside. I stayed outside and talked to the officers. They told me the ambulance I followed had Nikolas Cruz in it. I didn’t know what that meant then, or who he was when they wheeled him out.

But, again, Julie couldn’t find Meadow. Maybe she was at another hospital. When we got back in the truck, a reporter came over to us. I held out my phone and showed a picture of Meadow. While showing the reporter the photo, Julie got a call saying Meadow was in surgery at another hospital. I hoped it wasn’t her, but now I wish it had been. We learned it was a false alarm. It was then I realized: Meadow is dead.

The families gathered at the Marriott to wait for news. I couldn’t go. I knew the detectives would find me. And at 2:15 a.m. they did. Part of me still doesn’t believe it. She was my princess. So sweet, but so tough. She could be a supermodel one day and then go fishing and ATV off-roading with the boys the next. She was an all-American girl. Family meant everything to her. She had this boyfriend, Brandon, for three years. He’s like another son to me now.

Meadow was the light of the room. Whenever there’d be someone new at school, she’d show them around and introduce them to people she thought they might like. So many people came up to me after she died and told me this. She could be so sweet, but also so fucking tough. You know, her brothers always wanted to protect her. But she’d protect them. Out of all my kids, she was the most like me. So I had to be careful around her because if she wanted something she’d always get it.

Ever since she died, she’s been on my shoulder saying Daddy, keep going. Because of this I wanted to do something positive in the middle of this negativity. I raised money to build a playground in remembrance of Meadow and the victims. It was somewhere I could go instead of the cemetery. I ended up raising half a million dollars to make it happen. I did a motorcycle ride for it, we got three thousand riders and raised $80,000 in one day.

But a memorial wasn’t enough. I had to stop something like this from happening again. A week after I lost Meadow, I attended a White House listening session with President Trump where I asked him to fix this. I said to him, “I’m here because my daughter has no voice. She was murdered last week. She was taken from us. Shot nine times on the third floor. . . . Everyone has to come together as a country, not different parties, and figure out how we protect the schools.” He truly listened to what we had to say.

After I gave that speech, President Trump asked to meet with me and my family. A lot of people in the media wanted to weaponize this tragedy to attack him. But he’s a great guy, and we talked about what could be done to end school shootings. I told him he should start a commission to look into all aspects of school safety and make recommendations and pass along best practices. That’s exactly what he did. He told me there were some laws Congress was debating that could maybe do some good, so I threw my weight behind them and lobbied on Capitol Hill. A couple other dads and I helped them push through the Fix NICS Act to close some loopholes in firearm background checks (even though that wouldn’t have done anything in this case), and to pass the STOP School Violence Act to support states in their efforts to make schools safer. Then, I went to Tallahassee to lobby the Florida state legislature to pass the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Public Safety Act. You’d think that, after this awful massacre, it would be easy to get Florida politicians to act on school safety. But it wasn’t. Republicans didn’t want the bill because it had gun control provisions. Democrats didn’t want it because it provided funding to train armed guards. It almost failed. But we pushed hard and got it passed.

But after doing all that, I learned the most important lesson: you can do as many marches on Washington and pass as many laws as you want on the federal and state level, but what matters the most is what happens at the local level. I realized that when the Broward County School Board rejected money from the MSD Public Safety Act to train new armed guardians. They explained it was because they didn’t want to “arm teachers.” It had nothing to do with arming teachers, that wasn’t even possible under the act. But the ideology was so ingrained in the school board and superintendent that it didn’t matter.

Everyone wanted to blame the NRA for this. If I thought it was the NRA, I would’ve gone after them hard. But the shooter didn’t buy his gun through a loophole. Stronger background checks would not have stopped his gun purchase, because he had a totally clean record, despite being in trouble with the law many times over. But the ideological approach to just stop arresting kids in schools and in the community for crimes (pioneered by Superintendent Robert Runcie and Broward Sheriff, Scott Israel) meant he never got arrested. Sheriff Scott Israel declared “we measure our success by the amount of kids we keep out of jail.” His deputies visited the shooter’s house forty-five times and never arrested him, so I guess that by Israel’s standard he succeeded with the kid. At least until Valentine’s Day. And Superintendent Runcie declared “We are not going to continue to arrest our kids,” and launched the PROMISE decriminalization initiative, which lowered arrests by 70 percent in the school, so he never got arrested there, either.

He was also a psychopath who should’ve never set foot in MSD in the first place. But the school district moved him out of the specialized school where he belonged and then hid all of his misbehavior once at the high school. He threatened to kill kids and shoot up the school. He brought in bullets and knives. But none of it mattered because school administrators refused to do anything about it. They were under pressure to underreport and not arrest. The shooter was crying out his entire life for someone to stop him (or to help him) and every public agency, including the police, mental health authorities, and the school, failed him.

This is a story you might not know. It’s a story I fought to learn. In part because the school board tried to cover it up. And in part because no one wanted to talk about anything except for the type of gun he used: an AR-15. It didn’t matter what type of gun he used. He walked through an open gate that should’ve been locked. A campus monitor, Andrew Medina, saw him, and thought he had a gun, but wouldn’t call a code red. Not even when he heard gunshots. He said he didn’t want to get in trouble if it was the wrong call. Medina was a problematic employee who never should’ve been allowed to stay in his position with the school district. I learned after Meadow died she and another girl lodged formal complaints against him for sexual harassment and inappropriate behavior. But again, the administration didn’t take responsibility, and Medina remained at the school. Adding to the school’s incompetence, Scot Peterson, the School Resource Officer, took cover outside and hid, instead of helping the kids. He even prevented more help from coming in.

This was the most preventable mass shooting in American history. It wasn’t the laws that failed. The laws should’ve worked because they say criminal psychopaths shouldn’t legally buy guns. But people failed here. When he went to buy his gun—and when the police and the FBI were called to be warned that he’d use it—the kid had a totally clean record because no one was ever willing to make one responsible decision about him. I guess they figured “what’s the worst that could happen?” Well, the worst happened. And even then, it didn’t matter for them. No one was going to be held accountable if I hadn’t made it my mission. So I am going to keep fighting to #fixit.