Dear Reader,

I’m not sure who’s going to read this. I’m not even sure if anyone should.

But after everything that’s happened, I needed to write it all down. Because even with the answers I’ve gotten over the past few months, I’m still feeling just as lost as I did three years ago.

You know part of the story already. In those first months after the massacre, there were news specials, articles, an hour-long TV documentary, and even an episode of a popular teen drama based on the events at Virgil County High School. And, if you’ve been to any Christian church in the past three years, you’ve definitely heard of Sarah McHale, the Girl with the Cross Necklace. The girl who died defending her faith.

My name is probably less familiar. Even if you’d heard it at the time, you’ve almost certainly forgotten it by now. But I was Sarah’s best friend. I was one of the girls in the bathroom with her the day she was murdered. And I—Leanne Bauer—am one of the six witnesses who survived the shooting.

So much of what you think you know about that day is wrong. The stories have been twisted, tweaked, filtered through a dozen different lenses.

For a short time, all eyes were on Virgil County. Everyone wanted a piece of the tragedy. But within a few weeks, the reporters and camera crews were gone, on to another story.

And we, the survivors, were still here, still sorting through the rubble. Because while the twenty-four-hour news cycle may have moved on, our stories had only just begun. And now they were tangled into a knot of fact and fiction.

Some of that, at least when it comes to Sarah McHale, is my fault.

Virgil County is going to be in the news again soon. People will start remembering our names, looking at our stories. Only, the stories that are out there are wrong. I thought it would be a good idea to gather the pieces of the truth, for all of us survivors to share what really happened to us that day and after. But after the last several months of digging into the truth, I’m starting to think that maybe I was wrong.

Maybe some truths are better left buried.

So I’m writing it down. Everything that happened this spring, everything I’ve found out. I’m going to piece it all together and maybe—hopefully—when I’m done, I’ll know what I should do.