If I Don’t Make It, I Love You

I DRIVE MY twin daughters to school every morning. The bus stops at the end of our road, but as they’ve gotten older, making that 7:41 a.m. pickup has gotten more and more difficult. The extra twenty minutes is appreciated by all. We live in the country, farther from the city than I would like, which means there are at least two or three long, winding roads leading to the school parking lot. Having grown up in a city, albeit a small one, a school having its own large, roomy parking lot is an unfamiliar concept in itself. But this parking lot, the one it takes me a whole thirty-seven seconds to navigate, has becoming the staging area where my twelve-year-old twin daughters still love me and bathe me with goodbye kisses before reaching the front of the school where their friends can see everything. I slow the car to the curb, wish them a good day as their chestnut ponytails bounce away from me. I watch until they are swallowed by the double glass doors.

This simple act—the dropping off—has become increasingly difficult as the number of school shootings increase each year. They were six when Sandy Hook happened, and taking them to school on Monday was an act of bravery. It was probably the hardest thing I had to do. But then, it grew easier. With each year, each kiss goodbye, the intensity of Sandy Hook seemed to fade a bit. Then, this book.

I spent two weeks in August editing Jolene Leu’s story, in which she described dropping her daughter off for her first day of high school at the same school, Thurston High, in which she herself had survived a shooting almost twenty years earlier. In 1998, fifteen-year-old student Kip Kinkel, killed his parents and then went to Thurston, walked into the cafeteria, and shot and killed two students and wounded almost two dozen more. Jolene witnessed it all.

In our initial phone call, Jolene and I talked extensively about the cafeteria. This was the room, the place, her anxiety, her trauma. When her daughter attended orientation, a week or so before classes started, the sign-ups were held in the cafeteria. Jolene told me how much she struggled just to walk into that space again, all these years later. Then, only days later, she watched as her daughter walked through the doors and into the school.

Now, every time I drop my girls off, I imagine what it must be like not just for Jolene, but for so many of our contributors who, at some point, had to either return to school themselves, or in an unimaginable act of bravery, drop their own kids off at a school. Do they watch those chestnut ponytails bob away from them and wonder if they will ever come back? Do they assess the doors? Pull over in the parking lot and make sure there are no alarms? How do you survive something like a shooting inside what should be the safest place in America, and then willingly bring your children there?

AMYE ARCHER, EDITOR

DECEMBER 2018

The following students were shot and killed at
Thurston High School:

Mikael Nickolauson, 17

Ben Walker, 16

IF I DIE BEFORE I WAKE

By Jennifer Alldredge Ryker

Jennifer Alldredge Ryker was a junior at the time of the shooting.

ONE

I am seventeen, a junior, and habitually late for school. I usually slide into my seat at least twenty minutes late with a latte from the student-run café or from the machine in the teachers’ lounge I discovered last year. I don’t get raised eyebrows anymore about being late, I accept my fate as they add up into detentions and I use that time to do my homework anyway.

My grades are decent enough to be on the honor roll. I love to argue and debate. I have a lot of attitude, but I’m also a pretty good kid, honestly. I’m usually either teacher’s pet or sent outside the classroom for speaking out. I take Shakespeare and sci-fi classes for fun, I’m a choir geek, vice president of the poetry club, and a mat girl for the wrestling team.

I’m also part of an awesome freaks and geeks group of friends. We are more like outcasts banded together for protection and yet we end up being a band of proud misfits having a blast and dealing with teen angst simultaneously. Some of the guys are Boy Scouts. The girls are in choir and band. At one side of the table are the Magic and role playing kids. The other side are athletes, usually wrestling and track and bowling. The table behind us are our goths and skater kids.

Today, I actually show up early to school and sit in the cafeteria with them. It’s my boyfriend’s seventeenth birthday, so the girls and I are planning on how to crash his party. I stand behind him, with my arms wrapped around him, and visit. Student elections are happening, lots of the popular, rich kids walking around campaigning. We roll our eyes and keep talking.

I hear gossip from someone that a kid was expelled from school yesterday because he brought a stolen gun to school and kept it in his locker. That sounds pretty stupid, we all agree. We have so many kids that live on farms and out in the country, many just leave their rifles in their trucks in the parking lot.

The side door of the cafeteria that leads to the choir and band rooms opens but it does so often no one thinks anything of it. Pop. Pop. Pop. It sounds like fireworks echo through the room. We turn to face the sound, it’s a kid with a rifle shooting, spraying from one side of the cafeteria to the other and back. I assume it must be a prank. This is really weird and not funny at all.

Suddenly, a hot, searing pain shoots through my hand and something hits my boyfriend’s chest. I stare at my hand black and red blood pouring out and I’m being pushed down by my boyfriend as he gets up. I realize I’ve been shot. As I fall, I’m shot again, this time through my back. I try to scream, but no sound comes out, instead blood does. I learn later, several people have nightmares about me with blood coming out of my mouth.

I fall to the ground. I stare at my hand thinking, I should put that between my legs and apply pressure but then I can’t figure out how to move. I look at my friend and say, I’ve been shot and he says yeah, me too. Months later, he says we never had that conversation.

And then it’s quiet. I think the screaming and the shooting has stopped. I fall asleep.

I wake up and my head is in my friend’s lap. She rocks me back and forth crying and telling me to wake up and not die. I think she’s being melodramatic and I try to tell her I just need to sleep. I’m tired. I’ll be fine.

I wake up again to the sound of people running. I open my eyes and it looks like firefighters and EMTs. I realize I still have a butterscotch Life Saver in my mouth and I shouldn’t be falling asleep with something in my mouth or I might choke. I spit out the Life Saver. An EMT notices and realizes I’m still alive. I find out later that the rules of triage mean he should be passing me over for someone else who is considered less of a lost cause. He takes a chance on me. I wake up again and I’m being lifted up while being on a stretcher into an ambulance. I’m worried they’re going to drop me. They ask me my name and where I’ve been shot and even though I can think the answers, I can’t get the words out.

I wake up in the ICU. My contacts have been taken out, and I can’t see. I have tubes coming out of me everywhere. One tube is lodged down my throat, so I can’t speak. A respirator is breathing for me. My right arm is in a cast. Tubes for IV, wires, I am connected to machines everywhere, heart monitors. What. Is. Happening? Where am I? Why am I here?

What is going on? My mom rushes toward me. She tells me everything is going to be okay. She says the hospital is taking really good care of me and not to worry. I try to talk and she rubs my forehead and tells me to calm down. She says there is a tube down my throat so that’s why I can’t talk. “Don’t panic,” she says, “It’s there to help.”

I wake up again and apparently don’t remember the last time or several times that this conversation had taken place and we do it all over again and again. Sometimes it’s my mom and dad, sometimes just one or the other. The TV is always on. The news is always playing. At one point I keep seeing pictures of my boyfriend and my school and my friends and my own picture. My mom hands me my glasses and although my writing hand is in a cast, I’m handed a paper and a pen from my mom so I can at least communicate.

I write with my left hand, Am I going to die? My mom says, “Oh honey, no. You’re going to be okay.”

She tells me there was a shooting at my school. She tells me I’ve been shot. She lets me know that both of my lungs collapsed, so once I’m strong enough, they’ll take me off of the respirator and try to get me out of the ICU. I was brought back after flatlining several times. I needed lots of blood. The doctors saved my fingers, but they gave my dad a choice of what position they should be fused in—straight or slightly cupped. My dad chose cupped so they wouldn’t catch on things and I could still hold things. I was going to need more surgeries and they didn’t know if I would be able to regain any more function.

My mom lets me know some of my friends are in this hospital and have been coming by to check on me. My boyfriend has been sent to the other hospital in town and has faxed over a note. My dad reads little bits at a time and gets choked up. I cry, he cries, my mom cries.

It turns out my boyfriend and his brother and several of our friends had tackled the gunman and taken the gun from him. He had another gun on him and shot my boyfriend with the handgun too. They beat him up and subdued him until the police could arrest him. They were calling the guys heroes.

Two kids died. One of them was engaged to my friend and going into the army in a few weeks. The gun had been put to his head and the trigger pulled. The other kid had been shot in the walkway to the cafeteria. The shooter had killed his parents the night before. He shot his mom multiple times in the garage while she was carrying in groceries. He told her he loved her. He shot his dad earlier when he found out his dad was going to put him into military school. His parents were teachers at the other high school. He told his friend not to go to school the next day, he had been planning this for a long time. He stored guns in his room his parents never even knew about. He had been obsessed with shooting the school and violence. It was rumored he had been diagnosed with schizophrenia. I hear his parents didn’t know what to do with his violence obsession and anger. I would spend years hating them for not helping their son and not addressing his issues.

Reporters swarm the hospitals. Some pose as doctors and pretend to be family or friends to get inside. My parents shield me from the chaos as best they can.

The days pass. I get off the respirator and the feeding tube comes out. I’m still on machines to drain the liquid from my lungs with chest tubes and an IV. I’m moved out of the ICU, and respiratory therapists come in to my hospital room routinely to work on my lungs with these huge buffer wheels against my back. I have a cup with a ball in it that moves when I suck into the straw to measure my lung power. It wears me out fast but the room chants, “Suck, Suck, Suck!” to encourage me.

Friends, ex-boyfriends, family, teachers, coaches, and childhood doctors come to visit. The amount of love and care is so amazing. Letters, flowers, stuffed animals, and phone calls pour in. The best phone call is when my boyfriend calls from the other hospital. An hour or so later, he walks through my hospital door. It’s an unforgettable moment. We hug after being apart for seven days. We both cry. I think the whole room cries with us.

After ten days I get to go home. It isn’t the intended restful time to heal. Instead it’s angst of not being with my friends and boyfriend. It’s painful. I’m still working up to lung strength to be able to take big breaths again, my hand throbs constantly. I take a half of a Vicodin and I fall asleep face-first at a restaurant into my strawberry waffle breakfast. The phone rings nonstop with reporters.

I go back to school right away, but it isn’t at all what I expect. I don’t know why I’m surprised. I was an outcast before. Now, it’s even worse. People don’t want to make eye contact with me. The popular kids are still worried about their elections and their friend—the shooter. They care more about their friend and grieve harder for his family than they do for any of us, the twenty-five of us who were shot. Reporters stand outside, camped in vans. They stick microphones in our faces. The chain-link fence is covered in notes, flowers, ribbons. I feel lost. I shadow my boyfriend in his classes. I’m glued to him. He’s my superhero. No one understands our bond but us. We are unbreakable.

TWO

Returning to “normal” wasn’t easy on many levels. In the weeks and months that followed, it seemed as if some wanted to extort us—the injured. We felt so much anger and frustration. Other students seemed almost excited for the attention. The Portland Trail Blazers and President Clinton visited. We, the injured, were cast aside and used as props when needed. Or maybe, we slunk back as best as we could because it was all too much.

That summer, the other injured kids, minus one who was still in the hospital after being shot in the head, went to a Young Life camp together. It was probably the last time we all really got together as a large group for fun. We did obstacle courses, zip lines, and sang songs. We were kids. Treated like kids and got to act like kids. It was fun, a warm environment, but we had aged. We may have been just teenagers, but because of what we went through and how close we came to dying, we were somehow different. We were fragile and invincible all at the same time. We had flashbacks and anger and tears together.

We went home. Back to the media. Back to the chaos. Back to senior year. We had almost died at the school. Some did die. Our childlike innocence was gone. Everything was annoying, buzzing chaos in a larger picture that no one understood. Everything seemed trivial and surface level. It was hard to not be confused and angry at everything and everyone.

We graduated high school and a month later, my boyfriend left for his three-and-a-half-month Marine Corps boot camp. We wrote letters back and forth in achingly slow snail mail. A friend drove me eighteen straight hours to see him graduate from boot camp in San Diego.

I turned down an internship for Good Morning America so I could stay with my boyfriend and he stayed in the marine reserves rather than active duty to do the same. I went to community college and worked at a jewelry store. I joined Gun Control Incorporated and traveled as a spokesman. I argued on the steps of the Capitol for background safety and safety locks. I traveled for Ribbon of Promise and spoke on behalf of ending youth violence. I got to meet families of other school shootings. I went onto talk shows. I spoke at summits.

My boyfriend became a spokesman for the NRA. In the same time span I had met Jim and Sarah Brady, responsible for the Brady Bill, I also sat down to dinner with Charlton Heston. I learned there were extremists on both sides, but the ultimate goal of gun safety and common sense was severely important to both of those organizations.

In November, 1999, I testified against our shooter. I shook the entire time, but I stood in front of him and read my statement. The body has a memory. Of the trauma. Of the physical pain. When I was done, the judge had tears in his eyes and asked for a break. It was a very emotional time. Many of us spoke, many parents spoke. Most of us cried. There were hugs and hand holding, people with folded arms. One parent appeared to have a heart attack and needed paramedics in the courtroom. One of the shooting victims went into labor and never got to give her statement.

Part of the plea bargain was that we downgrade some of the charges from aggravated attempted murder to a lesser charge and in exchange, he couldn’t plead insanity or appeal. He was sentenced to 111 years without parole. Relief. Complete ecstatic joy and relief came with that sentence. The appeals did come, he switched lawyers, and so far they’ve all been denied.

My boyfriend and I got engaged during that same time frame, but now with the sentencing over, we could finally announce it. We married one month after the attack on the Twin Towers—October 2001. My husband went on multiple deployments, often gone for a year at a time. We had two kids, Miranda and Logan. They’re both blond haired, blue eyed and charming with their dimpled, devilish grins.

I’ve told my kids about the shooting at my high school. It became a reality they might have to deal with. It was becoming too common. I told them how their daddy tackled the gunman and that’s why I always called him Superman. I let them know that’s why my hand is shaped the way it is and why I can’t show them how to hold the pencil. They learned about gun safety at home and went target practicing. They also do active shooter drills at school. Their dad was actually the inspiration for the active shooter response program known as A.L.I.C.E. (Alert, Lockdown, Inform, Counter, Evacuate). They learn about our shooting and hear about their parents in school, which is really odd and slightly a sense of pride.

My husband and I clung to one another through the hardest times in our lives. We survived the shooting, deployments, and deaths in our families. Our daughter had a spinal injury while he was away during a deployment. There were multiple hospital trips and after surgery, she wore a spinal halo vest for several months. She was finally declared stable right before he came back home. We took vacations as a family and we tried as best we could with what we knew to stay strong. We didn’t address or heal many of our personal and marital issues, which made things toxic. This eventually led to our divorce.

I wasn’t showing my kids how to handle issues or be healthy. I needed to learn coping skills. With the help of an amazing therapist I started to acknowledge and deal with things that I had stuffed away since the shooting and beyond. We discussed EMDR therapy and spent months analyzing focus memories. I practice mindfulness. I practice grounding. I breathe. I take walks. I listen to music. I write and draw in a journal. When I get upset I write it down and then rip it up and throw it away. Perhaps the most helpful and motivating of all has been connecting with other survivors.

Today, I work a desk job. I share joint custody of my kids and have a healthy routine. I share a house with my boyfriend, with our two cats, and our dog. I’ve lost some family and friends along the way, but gained a sense of confidence and new friends and family. I don’t have my life mapped out anymore. There are unknowns. I went skydiving. I go hiking. I went camping at the Painted Hills for the solar eclipse. I’ve stepped out of my fear and when I find myself cocooning back into my safety net, I look up activities and I get back outside again. I take the kids on adventures to the coast, camping. I’m living.

DIARY OF A WITNESS IN TWO PARTS

By Jenny Gregory

Jenny Gregory was a freshman at the time of the shooting. She witnessed the shooting through a classroom window.

In my last year of nursing school, I read about PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder). I came across a medical term called “survivor’s guilt.” I was amazed there was a term for how I felt all these years after the shooting at my high school. Since that day, I replay over and over again how I could’ve helped my classmates. How I didn’t. I’ve avoided talking about the shooting because I think, deep down, I want to forget it. I want to forget my shortcomings. But I always return. Somehow try to put the pieces together, and answer my own question:

Why didn’t I do more?

When I arrive at school, everyone is chatting, laughing, and dragging their feet to get to class. I glance at the clock and notice it’s time to head to class or be marked tardy, but nobody is moving. Maybe it’s okay to be late. I look into the cafeteria and search for my latest crush, but my elongated gaze is interrupted by a loud noise.

BANG, BANG, BANG!

“Fireworks! Oh, someone is going to get into trouble!” I say to a friend. I see a boy sprinting out of the cafeteria, holding his arm.

I point, “I bet it was him.”

I keep hearing loud cracks, and peer closer into the cafeteria through the window. Something doesn’t look right. Why is everyone ducking? A girl runs out with a handful of other students. She’s crying. “Someone has a gun. Someone is in there shooting at people,” she yells.

I turn back toward the cafeteria when another loud bang rings out. Was that a bomb that just went off? I run as fast as my legs carry me, far from the threat. But then I stop. I’m confused, and not sure what to do next. I look down the corridor, and see the health occupations classroom.

Why didn’t I run down and grab Mr. Duffy? I knew he used to be a nurse, and that the classroom was stocked with some emergency supplies. I sensed people were hurt back in the cafeteria and would need these. Instead, I turned away. I spent years questioning this decision.

I ran in the opposite direction until I saw a familiar face. A friend who’d been dropped off late. They didn’t know what was happening.

I started laughing while telling her what I witnessed. I don’t know why I laughed. I didn’t think this was funny, but I couldn’t stop.

We walk to homeroom, a short distance from where we stood. My homeroom teacher shuts and locks the door behind us. She scurries us and about five other students to a spot behind her desk. We watch the SWAT team run by. She turns on her radio. There are voices already talking about the incident. I’m wondering how they know so much, and we know so little. My thoughts are interrupted by a radio announcement. “We have the name of the shooter at Thurston High School. His name is Kip Kinkel.” I freeze. Kip?

I wasn’t surprised. He was friendly, quiet. He was also just expelled for having a gun at school, but it never entered my mind he’d hurt people. I will be forever bothered by this initial reaction and curious if there was anything I could’ve done to help prevent this.

I look out the classroom window, and see two girls walking slowly down the breezeway. I recognize the girl limping and cringing. I’ve known her since grade school. We make eye contact. Her eyes beg for me to be her second crutch.

I don’t go. I debated whether I should help her. On one hand, she clearly needed help. It was the right thing to do. On the other hand, I was afraid of getting shot. Afraid of what I’d see by the cafeteria, which was where she was headed. I was afraid of leaving the safety of my teacher’s desk. In the end, I chose the path of the coward. Out of all my missed opportunities to be helpful, I feel the most shame about this.

Survivor’s guilt is not spoken about often when describing victims in the aftermath of shootings. But it’s a common affliction. I’m proof, and feel guilty labeling myself a “victim.” I’m not entitled to PTSD. I don’t have any rights to it. I witnessed this event through a window. The real victims died, were wounded—were actually in the room.

While my story pales in comparison to theirs, I still suffer (and choose to silently). I think I’ll always carry this guilt with me. But, today, I use my guilt as a reminder. To be better. To choose better. To choose differently if there is ever a next time, next time.

A LITTLE MORE HEALED

By Jolene Leu

Jolene Leu was a junior at the time of the shooting.

On a warm, sunny September morning, I dropped my daughter off for her first day of freshman year, at the same high school I attended twenty years earlier, where I spent four years, and made lifelong friends. The same high school where in 1998, during my junior year, a student walked into the cafeteria and shot and killed two students and wounded twenty-five others.

At seventeen years old, I’d sit in the cafeteria every morning with my friends while we waited for classes to start. It was there, in that cafeteria that the shooting occurred. I remember the yelling, the smell of smoke. I froze, while everyone around me jumped into action. I stood, watching. Stuck in place for what felt like forever. Then, after the smoke cleared, I finally made the decision to run. I got out of there with blood on my clothes, but the blood wasn’t mine. I left my friends and my then-boyfriend in that cafeteria and never went back.

When it was over, nine of my close friends were wounded including my boyfriend, three severely. My boyfriend had a gnarly scar from exploratory surgery in which they made sure the bullet passed through him properly. Shortly after he was released from the hospital, we went to see a movie and he sat there as long as he could. Uncomfortable and still in pain, we ended up leaving the movie early. I felt horrible for him and my other friends who were suffering the physical effects of that day. I sometimes felt an enormous amount of guilt that I escaped without physical injury. I shouldn’t have run. I should have gone back in. I realize now that I was suffering from survivor’s guilt, and that it put a great distance between me and the friends I loved.

I moved on as best I could, burying the events of that day deep inside myself. I graduated, met my husband, and started my own life. But, the trauma was still there, bubbling up when I least expected it. In October of 2002, my husband and I found out we were expecting. The predicted due date sent shivers down my spine: May 21st. The same date as the shooting. I was determined I wouldn’t have my first child born on that day. I could’ve chosen to look at it as something positive, but I refused. My daughter was born two days later, on May 23rd.

Later, when the time came to send my daughter off to kindergarten, I was an overly paranoid parent. It didn’t help that her first day of kindergarten, the school went under lockdown because of an incident in the neighborhood. By age eight, I had given her a cell phone to take to school. We made it through middle school with minimal lockdown drills. Still, I panicked with each false alarm.

Then, within days of my daughter starting at Thurston, the high school went under lockdown. The threat wasn’t on campus, just in a surrounding neighborhood, but I freaked out. This was different, this was the same building. Was it happening again? I immediately texted her to see if she was okay. While I waited for what felt like an eternity for her to text back, I thought about the cafeteria, the kids who didn’t escape, who couldn’t run. Would she be one of them? Would she know to run? I started to panic. Then, she responded that she was okay and that everything was fine. It took me an hour to stop shaking.

My kids know about my experience in the shooting at Thurston High School. They know I never liked violence or crowds and that I would get exceedingly upset with each new mass shooting. But I tried not to let it completely control me. I wanted their school experience to be their own. I supported my daughter going to Thurston because of all the great memories I had there before the shooting, but, it wasn’t until she started attending that I realized just how deep I had buried that day.

2018 was the twentieth anniversary of the shooting. I left the house early, as usual, to drive my daughter to school. As we passed Thurston, blue ribbons hung on the chain-link fences outside of the school and across the street at the park. It wasn’t until I saw the banner that read THURSTON STRONG that it all hit me. As I watched my own daughter walk past the ribbons and into the school that held so much of my past, I began to cry both tears of sadness and joy. I realized that despite our tragedy, my community and my classmates persevered. And that in some way, Thurston High School will always be a part of me. And I’m okay with that. In fact, I might even be a little bit proud.

RUNNING

By Aubrey Bulkeley

Aubrey Bulkeley was a fourteen-year-old freshman at the time of the shooting.

I stood in front of my closet staring at my least favorite clothing. I told myself, “Aubrey, just pick something. It’s not like there’s going to be any cameras.” So, I donned a pair of washed-out jeans, tank top, and plaid button-up shirt. Like most days, I left my house before my family and walked through my uniform, suburban neighborhood to catch the school bus.

At school, I wandered the breezeways rehearsing lines for theater class. Once my friends arrived, we stood in our usual spot in front of the counseling offices, across the courtyard from the cafeteria.

Before the first bell, I heard what sounded like firecrackers coming from the cafeteria. As the commotion continued, I watched people rush out of the cafeteria, scattering in every direction. There was so much yelling. None of it made sense.

Several of my friends wanted to see what was happening, but I knew heading toward the cafeteria was a bad idea. Despite my unease, I remained in my familiar corner of the courtyard, attempting to comprehend the disjointed details.

Through the cafeteria windows, I saw a puppet-like figure holding a rifle. The pop, pop, popping sound paused. Then a reverberating boom. A scream erupted from within me as I ran in the opposite direction of the courtyard, stampeding down the hallway alongside my classmates trying to escape an unknown threat.

My best friend was running in front of me. Suddenly she stopped, attempting to go back. I shoved her down the hallway shouting, “KEEP RUNNING.” The throng dispersed the farther I ran. Once I reached the south parking lot, I gathered behind the last row of cars with a few friends. We debated what to do next. No one, not even teachers knew what was going on. The high school spread the distance of a football field, and we had no active shooter procedures. A teacher came out of his classroom from the last wing of the building. Waving wildly, he yelled, “Get back inside.” This was the first time I had seen an adult since I heard the popping noises.

Instead of going in the closest classroom, I made my way to Spanish class. I was supposed to have a test. Once there, an authoritative announcement came through the intercom: Close the curtains. Turn off the lights. Hide. My classmates and I piled behind a half wall. We were in lockdown long enough that administrators checked on us four times—taking head counts and compiling witness lists.

Still in lockdown, but free to move about the room, a student told me I should call my parents. My mother answered with a panicked, yet expectant “Hello?” In a detached tone I told her I was all right, and she should go to the church across the street from the school.

After the call, another student in the room turned on KDUK, the local radio station. The host said on air, “This is not a joke. There has been a shooting at Thurston High School.” These words confirmed the sights, sounds, and feelings I experienced.

Being locked in a dark classroom became tedious. I gazed out the back window to pass the time. My parents managed to get on campus and were right outside. I immediately told my teacher and, because of the lack of procedures, rushed out to meet them. While we embraced, a classmate came out and told me I had to give my statement in the library before I left. My parents and I walked through the empty breezeways. Police tape hung between the poles cordoning off sections of the school.

In contrast to the empty breezeways, the library was jammed with people. A classmate sat at a table with a police officer, giving him his bloody shoes. I waited while my parents talked with people trying to get more information. I observed everything and absorbed nothing.

After we left the library, I walked flanked by my parents. As we got to the end of the breezeway, I spotted the camera. At that moment the photographer snapped my picture. My thoughts from earlier in the day had been realized in a sick twist of irony.

Sometime that evening, a detective came to my house to take my statement. Sitting at the circular dining room table, he had me draw a picture of what I saw through the cafeteria window. My mother gasped at the image. Then the adults spoke over me: How shocking it was kids our age witnessed such a thing. Yet, living through it, I had become an adult even though I wasn’t mature enough to be. I didn’t tell my parents anything more of what happened that day. That picture was their only window.