I kept my eyes trained straight ahead, away from the media parked on the school’s front lawn. All of my focus was on the door. The same one I’d burst out of five months earlier, smeared in my best friend’s blood.
I swallowed hard as I followed a group of upperclassmen inside. This may sound absurd, but part of me expected the place to look different somehow. Like we’d walk in and see the signs of the shooting everywhere. But it wasn’t like that. Everything in the front hall, the cafeteria—it looked exactly the same as it had the previous semester, before it all happened. It was clean and decorated with Virgil County colors—green and gold—and everyone was running to their friends, hugging and laughing, like any normal first day of a new school year.
You’d think that’d make it easier, but it just felt wrong.
I’d been back here once before that day. Some of the witnesses had come in over the summer to help the detectives map out exactly what had happened. But the school had been quiet then. Nearly empty. And it had been possible to pretend, at least for a few minutes, that I was somewhere else.
But this, it felt too normal. I found myself scanning the crowd for Sarah, as if I expected to see her waiting for me, the way she had been every other morning I’d walked into this school. Her bright purple backpack slung over one shoulder, a Pop-Tart in hand. And she’d always have an extra one for me, because she knew I skipped breakfast in favor of sleeping in.
Of course, Sarah and her backpack and her Pop-Tarts weren’t there. So I just stood in the middle of the cafeteria with no idea what to do or where to go.
That’s when I saw the plaque, a large, shiny black square hung up on a pillar in the center of the room. It was the only real physical change to this part of the school, and I almost hadn’t noticed it. I took a few steps forward, looking up at it, and wishing I had the strength not to.
The plaque was engraved with their names. All nine victims, listed in alphabetical order. I took them in one at a time, even though I already knew them by heart.
Kevin Brantley
Brenna DuVal
Jared Grayson
Rosi Martinez
Sarah McHale
Richard McMullen
Thomas Nolan
Aiden Stroud
Essie Taylor
And beneath their names was a quote from Emily Dickinson: “Unable are the loved to die, for love is immortality.”
I hated that quote, because it was a lie. Even if love were immortality, I couldn’t help thinking that eventually everyone who loved you would be dead, too. And then what did any of it matter? It didn’t. Quotes like those were just there to make the living feel better. Another way to help us ignore the fact that oblivion was inevitable.
I shook my head, trying to quiet the intrusive thoughts. But I couldn’t bring myself to turn away from the plaque.
The shooter hadn’t been listed among the dead. He wasn’t named on any of the other memorials around town, either. From what I’d gathered, that had been a heated controversy over the summer. There were people who had suggested including him. He was just a kid, after all. Sixteen, a junior. In some ways, they argued, he was a victim, too. A victim of bullying, of his own brain, of a gun-obsessed society. As if any of that mattered. This was the one thing that wasn’t about him or why he did it. This was about everyone else, about the damage he had done.
Several of the parents had objected, and I was glad. I didn’t want his name up there. I didn’t want it anywhere near Sarah’s.
“Lee,” a voice said behind me. I looked over my shoulder and found Miles, dressed in his usual black T-shirt and worn-out jeans. For a second, we just stared at each other. Despite everything that had happened over the summer, it felt odd to talk to him on school grounds. It was the sign I’d been waiting for, the one that proved just how different things were now.
After a second, he shrugged and gestured for me to follow him. We wound our way through the packs of students, over to the side of the cafeteria, where Eden Martinez and Denny Lucas stood with their backs against the wall. Eden had a hand in her hair, pulling at the dark, wavy strands, and she looked a little green, like she was on the verge of being sick. Denny still had a cane then, and he was clutching the rubber grip at the top with both hands, like he was ready to use it as a weapon if he had to.
“Lee and Miles coming up on your right,” Eden told him.
“Hey, guys,” Denny said. “Weird day, huh?”
“The weirdest,” I said.
And maybe the strangest part was standing with those three. We were an odd group with almost nothing in common. Eden was a year ahead of Denny, Miles, and me. And before the shooting, we’d all hung out in very different cliques. But they were the only people I could be with. The only group I really felt a part of anymore.
Ashley had graduated in May, finishing most of her classes from the hospital and at home. She’d sent us all a text message that morning, wishing us luck and letting us know we could call if we needed anything. I wondered if she felt lonely, if she wished she could be there with us instead of just watching brief news clips of us walking back into the school. Or maybe she was glad she never had to return. I wondered how I would feel in her position, as the only one of us not returning to VCHS.
Or, not the only one.
I glanced around, looking for a flash of blue-black hair or a skull-patterned backpack.
“Who’re you looking for?” Miles asked.
“Kellie,” I said.
“Kellie Gaynor?” Eden asked. “You didn’t hear?”
“Hear what?”
“She moved.” Eden lowered her hand from her hair and began picking at her fingernails instead. “Her whole family did. My abuela saw them packing up a van a few days ago, and now there’s a For Sale sign in front of their house.”
“What?” The word came out as a cough. My throat felt tight all of a sudden. The way it does after I’ve been stung by a bee, before Mom gets out the EpiPen. I tried to breathe through it, but overhead, the bell rang, sharp and loud, startling all four of us. Which didn’t help.
As swarms of students flooded past us, heading to their classrooms, I reached out and grabbed hold of Eden’s arm. She jerked back at first, curling in on herself. Then we both mouthed quick apologies.
None of us like to be touched without warning, even by our friends. It was worse back then. Any sudden movement felt like a threat. We all had to learn how to be careful with one another.
When the ringing had died down, I managed to squeeze out a few words. “Kellie … Kellie is … ?”
“She’s gone.”
Later, in an assembly, our principal didn’t talk about the new zero-tolerance policy for violence. Or the various civil suits being filed against the school. Instead, he focused on the one positive thing he could find.
He told us that, to the school board’s surprise, every student who had been in the freshman, sophomore, and junior classes the previous year had returned to VCHS, and our incoming freshmen class was the largest in the school’s history. We’d all come back to our school, he said. We weren’t going to let fear or hate win, he said. This was our home, he said.
Here’s what he didn’t say: Almost every student had come back.
Every student but one.
I spend a lot of time googling the massacre. It’s something like a hobby. Or maybe an addiction.
It started about a month after the shooting, on one of the many nights when the thought of sleeping in my dark bedroom was too frightening to fathom. I’d walked down the hall, to the living room, and logged on to the desktop for the first time in weeks. Mom had mostly kept me away from any media, but I’d picked up things here and there from the other survivors. And I wanted to know what people were saying about Sarah.
One link led to another and another and another. With every article or blog post, I became more anxious, more panicked. My heart was pounding and there were tears pricking my eyes. But I couldn’t stop clicking. I knew I needed to. I knew it
wasn’t good for me. But I was in a spiral that I couldn’t break free from.
Eventually I ended up reading a series of message board posts about the shooting and how it was a conspiracy. There were dozens of commenters, trying to show “proof” that none of it had happened. That this was just the government trying to trick us so they could take everyone’s guns away. And all the teenagers running out of the building—including me—were just crisis actors. “It’s so obviously fake,” one comment said. “Use common sense, America.”
… obviously …
… common sense …
My mom found me at six a.m., staring at the monitor with red eyes and tears streaking down my face.
“Lee, what are you doing?” she asked.
“How can they say this?” I asked her, my throat aching. “They say it didn’t happen. How can they say that, Mom? Why would they say that?”
“Oh, Lee baby—”
“Why would they say that?!” I shoved the desk much harder than I meant to, violently enough that the monitor slid back and smacked loudly against the wall. Which only made me start to panic and gasp between sobs.
Mom stayed home from work that day and called my psychiatrist. We decided to up my medication and increase how often I was seeing my therapist. Mom also put a limit on how much time I could spend on the internet and only let me use my phone when I was leaving the house without her, though I usually just snuck on while she was at work or late at night. It made me miserable, but I was obsessed, and I knew how to clear a search history.
If you’re wondering where my dad was for all of this, then we have something in common. My dad was never really in the picture. He got my mom pregnant when she was a teenager and he was in his early twenties. He took off before I was born, and the only contact I ever had with him was the child support checks the court ordered him to send. After the shooting, I’d kind of thought he’d show up. Like maybe hearing that his daughter had been part of something so horrific would spark some sort of paternal instinct. It didn’t happen, though.
My mom has always had to be both parents. Sometimes I wonder if that means she felt the pain of what happened to me twice as much. I think I was angrier at him for that, for not being there to be a partner for her when I was at my lowest, than I was at him for being such a deadbeat in the first place.
Not that it matters anymore. He died two years ago in a car accident. I only know this because he left some money for Mom and me in his will. I guess some part of him did feel guilty. It wasn’t a ton, but enough to help pay for part of my college tuition.
Anyway, my father isn’t important. He wasn’t there. Mom was. But as hard as she tried after that morning, she couldn’t keep me off the internet forever.
Three years later and I still frequently find myself on Tumblr pages and message boards, reading posts about the shooting from people who didn’t have to live it. Most people have stopped talking about it by now. It’s old news. But there are still some dedicated bloggers who write about VCHS almost daily. Some of them are true crime junkies. Others have formed what I can only really call a “fandom” around the shooting.
Fandom may sound like a strong word, but I’m not exaggerating. There are memes and fan art and—I’m not kidding—fan fiction about the massacre. Sometimes the focus is on Sarah or Miles. Mostly, though, it’s about the shooter.
I’m not going to mention his name anywhere in this letter, by the way, if that’s what you’re waiting for. There’s enough out there about him already. I won’t be adding to it.
Anyway, as angry and disgusted as it all makes me, I still lurk on a few different forums and websites, checking them at least a couple times a week. The more anxious I am, the longer I spend online. And, of course, anniversaries are always the most anxious days. So when I got home on the night of the third anniversary, after spending as long as I could in our secret place in the woods, it was no surprise that I found myself heading straight for the computer, even when I knew I shouldn’t.
It was late. Mom was already in bed. And there was no chance I’d be sleeping that night. So I logged on and went straight for one of the most active VCHS massacre forums.
I expected to see the usual: debates about old conspiracy theories, discussions about why the shooter might have done it, that sort of thing. There hadn’t been any news on the shooting in years, so the same things tended to be discussed over and over again, just by new voices.
This time, though, there was something new.
The top post was from a regular poster with the username VCHS_Obsessed. He’d written a short message, Hey, guys, have you seen this? Below was a link to an article. The headline made my stomach flip over: “School Shooting Victim’s Parents to Pen Daughter’s Inspiring Biography.”
At the top of the article was the picture of Sarah, the one everyone knows. It was her class photo from freshman year, the one printed in the yearbook just two months after she died. The one that still stares out at Main Street from the sign in front of Virgil County Baptist Church.
That picture is the reason I drive home the long way after school. Because I can’t handle seeing my best friend smiling at me, her red hair worn in two braids, making her look even younger than she was, her brown eyes wide and bright and completely unaware of what was to come.
And, of course, the necklace. I’d seen this photo enough times to know that some sort of digital editing had been done to make it stand out even more—that little silver cross dangling from a thin chain. It rested against her chest, right above the collar of her lavender T-shirt. That stupid necklace. It wasn’t even the one from the crime scene. The famous necklace. But people see this photo as evidence. It makes them feel sure they know who Sarah was.
Here’s the thing, though: She’d only worn the necklace on class photo day because her grandmother had given it to her for her birthday, and her mom thought it would be nice to have it in the picture. Sarah almost didn’t do it—for the simple, silly reason that she liked gold jewelry more than silver—but in the end, she wanted to make her grandmother happy.
I wish she’d taken it off. If she hadn’t worn it, then …
But I’m letting myself off the hook too easy.
Because she did wear it. And now everyone knows her as Sarah McHale, the Girl with the Cross Necklace. Everyone believes she’s something she wasn’t. That she died for something when she didn’t. But that necklace isn’t to blame.
I am.
I scrolled past the picture, guilt already creeping up from my stomach and into my chest. I couldn’t bring myself to do more than skim the article. My hands were shaking and my eyes kept flitting around the screen, unable to focus on the same spot for more than a few seconds. But I got the gist of it.
Sarah’s parents were going to publish her biography. They had found her old diary and wanted to use excerpts as they told the “inspiring story of their daughter’s refusal to deny her faith, even in the face of death.” The book had sold at auction, to a publisher paying six figures. And there was already interest from Hollywood in adapting Sarah’s story to film.
“It’s been three years since she was taken from us,” Ruth McHale was quoted as saying. “It’s been difficult. Some days, my husband and I have just felt like we couldn’t keep going. But God has stood by us. Lifted us up when we needed Him most. And I know that what He wants is for us to keep Sarah’s memory alive. To make sure no one forgets what a brave girl she was, and how dedicated to her faith. We should all hope to be as strong as Sarah.”
I read that quote over and over, feeling sicker each time. I was feeling too many things at once—anger and sadness and guilt.
And dread.
Because if this was really happening, if there was going to be a book and possibly even a movie, that meant people would be looking at Virgil County again. The massacre would be on the news. The stories would get rehashed and repeated. Everything the world got wrong the first time was going to be pushed to the surface again. As if living with the
real memories of that day wasn’t bad enough, the twisted version was going to haunt me, too.
And it would be even worse for Kellie.
I just barely made it to the bathroom before my stomach gave way and the fries I’d eaten on the way home from the woods came back up. I was a fool to think it was safe to grab dinner from a drive-thru, that this might be the first anniversary without vomit. But no. I was three for three.
I flushed the toilet and sat back, leaning my head against the wall as I breathed slowly. Our house is small and the walls are thin, so I wasn’t surprised when I heard Mom’s bedroom door creak open down the hall.
“Lee?” she asked, her voice still slurred with sleep. “Everything okay, baby?”
She wasn’t a light sleeper before the shooting, but since then, every little sound, every sign that something might be wrong, and she’s up. Sometimes, like when I’m having nightmares and she is there to shake me awake, I’m grateful. Usually, though, I’d rather be alone, without the pressure of knowing I’m worrying her.
“Fine,” I said. “I’m okay, Mom. You can go back to bed.”
“All right … Don’t be up too late.”
“I won’t. Good night.”
Her door creaked again, but I didn’t hear it latch, and I knew she was leaving it cracked. She’d be awake until she heard me go to bed.
I sighed and got to my feet. My empty stomach was still churning as I brushed my teeth. I headed down the hallway to my room, where I changed into my comfiest pajamas. Not that it mattered. There would be no rest that night.
I’d been staring at my ceiling for a little over an hour when my phone chimed with a text message.
You awake?
I typed back a quick response. What do you think?
Outside?
Too chilly. You can call though.
A second later, my phone rang.
“Hey,” I said.
“What’re you doing?” Miles mumbled on the other end of the line.
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